The Premise
Rick and Morty is an Adult Swim animated sci-fi comedy created by Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, now in its ninth season on HBO Max. The setup is still the setup: Rick Sanchez, a nihilistic alcoholic super-genius, drags his anxious teenage grandson Morty through multiverses, alien bureaucracies, and increasingly cursed dimensions while the rest of the Smith family (Beth, Jerry, Summer) tries to hold together a suburban household that keeps getting portal-gunned. Roiland was fired in 2023 after domestic violence charges, and Rick and Morty are now voiced by Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden, with Sarah Chalke, Chris Parnell and Spencer Grammer still holding down the family. Scott Marder runs the show.
The Case For
At its best, the writers' room here still does something almost no other comedy attempts: they take a Rick Sanchez trope apart, name it out loud, and then build the episode around dismantling it. Marder's run has quietly dropped the "canon expansion" homework and gone back to weird, self-contained half-hours. The animation looks more expensive than it has any right to, the sci-fi premises are legitimately clever, and the Cardoni/Belden recasting landed better than anyone predicted — Belden's Morty in particular is uncanny, and Cardoni gets the burp-slur cadence without doing a pure impression. Chris Parnell's Jerry might be the most consistently funny character on television. When it's cooking, it's still the sharpest cartoon on any streamer.
The Case Against
The floor is much lower than the ceiling. A rough episode is a smug premise repeated for twenty-two minutes with a shrug ending. The show's habit of cutting its own emotional beats off at the knees, funny in season two, has hardened into a tic. There's also the Roiland problem, which no amount of good work erases for some viewers, and the fanbase reputation still trails the show around like a bad smell it can't shake.
Who It's For, Who'll Bounce
If you liked Futurama, Community, or the sicko-brained parts of Adult Swim's late-night block, you're already in. If you find the "genius rants at his family" archetype exhausting, or you bounced off the show years ago because of how its loudest fans behaved, nothing in season nine will change your mind. It's not appointment viewing anymore. It's the thing you throw on because it's better than whatever algorithm slop HBO Max is auto-playing next.
The Ruling
BACKGROUND TV is the honest verdict. The craft is still there. Direction is tight, the voice work survived a recast most shows wouldn't have, and the writers can still land a premise. But nine seasons in, the surprise is gone. You know the shape of a Rick and Morty episode before the cold open ends, and even a good one rarely demands your full attention. It doesn't lecture, it doesn't preach — if anything it's allergic to sincerity, which is its own limitation — so the Lecture Test doesn't apply here. This is a show working at a high level of execution inside a very familiar box. Perfect for folding laundry. Funnier than 90% of what's next to it in the menu. Not something you sit down and clear the room for anymore.
Sources: