Patreon: www.patreon.com/StudioErsatz Twitter: twitter.com/PhD_Pataphysics 0:00 Welcome to TV's Ironic Age 21:20 The whole family's watching... 29:13 A waxy yellow buildup... 38:50 Shitting on Sitcomery
That final bit at the end about irony being for emergency use only really spoke to the tiredness I feel for just about every non-interaction that I have on the internet in general.
picking rick and morty as the ending for the final chapter in this was a good choice. Because I think it also illustrates how this formula goes nowhere and recently there has been a push to move past. After a while the show really only started to spiral in on itself, the whole bit what if Doc(from back to the future) was actually extremely jaded and nihilistic wore off as all the other characters become jaded and its literally stated in the show(from the therapist) that this nihilism and cruelty is mistook for intelligence and is a coping mechanism for a cruel cruel world, not to mention all the parts of the show people remember and are the most impactful is when that defense is dropped. I mean in the recent season they basically pointed out how this formula literally coddles the show into never evolving or changing because they split off all the parallel universes where rick is the smartest from the rest of the multiverses so it always goes back to the same place. Now whether the show will evolve past that has yet to be seen but I think its a good representation of the growing pushback to this type of nihilistic and ironic theme and the growing realization that it only destroys not creates
@@hollowify_tensa_zangetsu I got this bit from jreg(explaining him is to hard to do it here i think someone made a video on him) ,and im parahpraising cause i dont remember the exactly quite but,he said "ultimately irony cant be self sustaining. it is a corrosive force". AKA irony poisoning.
On one hand I have those moments when I love meta stuff in media. A wink to an audience. Sonething to enritch the story. A line that could also adress a viewer. I love catching that stuff. On the other hand I hate how it is everywhere now and it often dosen’t mean anything, dosen’t gell with story or themes. It comes off as: „Aren’t we META? Arent’s we SMART?!” It’s tiering how the the actual smart stuff gets mixed in with it… I’m glad I found your videos. This was a great topic.
"diffference being the writers in this show take pride in how they do it" damn something i knew so well but never thought to put the words to bonapetit good vid ty
Oh, really interesting! I've been avoiding more and more the increasing number of tv shows and other types of media relying on layers of irony and post irony and post-post irony. Really interesting dive here, gives me more to think about, thanks.
Id also add that while Rick and Morty and Family Guy are cut from the same cloth, and I dont like either, at least FG isnt under some grand delusion its incredibly smart art
On a more serious note, I think the death of irony is why audiences are -- or at least were, in my experience -- really hungry for moments of real drama and stakes. The evil genius Morty, or this particular Rick's origin story, are what the people seem to want most. I think the same urge is what's driving a lot of younger audiences to sincere romantic schlock like in Bridgerton, Twilight, or Shadow and Bone. Most of all I'd say that the ultimate refuge of the irony-poisoned is horror. Horror is a supremely self-aware genre, filled with references and tropes, so it scratches the itch, but the characters within it -- with a few meta exceptions -- totally committed to their diagetic world. So the audience stays in the perfect St. Elsewhere zone of seeing the strings and getting it on a different level, but still being invested and non-cynical for an hour and a half. Horror has somehow walked this tightrope for a very long time, as it was progressing in ironic self-awareness just behind sitcoms. I think it's because by and large horror movies reject nihilistic post-irony.
Rick and Morty really is a more pretentious Family Guy. Shows of that nature want to appear smart without being so. An insecure product won't (or shouldn't) stand the test of time, yet somehow this show got plenty of seasons. Seems to speak to an entire, insecure generation of men. There's nothing more pitiable than someone begging you to take them seriously while simultaneously pushing any cares away.
