Solar Opposites: Living in the Shadow of Rick and Morty

Orson Welles wrote, directed, and starred in Citizen Kane when he was 25. Despite the fact that its’ box office performance was only considered mediocre at the time (it was eventually re-released and made plenty of money, don’t worry), it was…you know, Citizen Kane. Even now, just the title is considered shorthand for ‘great fucking movie’. The myth is that Orson Welles spent the rest of his career trying to live up to the impossible-to-meet expectations set by Citizen Kane, his debut feature film. Though it is somewhat disproven by the string of successful movies he acted in, or directed throughout his career or just the famous opening sequence in Touch of Evil; I still find it more believable than not.

A similar thing has been said of creative people in all kinds of mediums after they create something both hugely popular and widely respected. They said it about David Foster Wallace after Infinite Jest, that the rest of his career and the numerous books he published after his opus were all just him attempting to grapple with and live up to the legacy of his masterwork. It was said of Kurt Cobain after Nevermind came out. Of Vince Gilligan after Breaking Bad.

And the thing is, no matter how successful those people were after their big break, the thing they would be remembered for; there had to have at least been a part of them that had those same worries and goals themselves, right? The need to surpass and differentiate themselves from their best known work. How could they not? An artist is never fully isolated from their fans and critics, especially today. What the public thinks of your work matters because your job depends on exactly that. So no matter that In Utero was an incredible collection of grunge rock at the time, there had to be a small part of Kurt Cobain that was thinking of Nevermind, even if he would rather not have.

This is something I’ve been thinking about since I finished watching the first season of Solar Opposites yesterday.

If you don’t know, Solar Opposites is a Hulu animated sci-fi sitcom that premiered on the streaming service just a few weeks ago in early May. It concerns an alien family that escaped the destruction of their home-planet only to crash land on Earth a year before the series starts. The plot revolves around the alien family trying to live in a midwest suburb after having learned most of what they understand of humanity through television. It is hilarious, more violent than you’d expect, and occasionally surprisingly insightful. There are two main creative voices behind the series, Justin Roiland and Mark McMahan, both of whom previously worked on the show whose name appears in the title of this article that is, let’s be honest, probably the reason you clicked. Yay, SEO!

Justin Roiland, of course, is considered the second most important creative voice in Rick and Morty after Dan Harmon, TV Genius.

That is Harmon’s official title, by the way. If you write an article about Rick and Morty, by law you must refer to Dan Harmon, TV Genius by his formal moniker at least twice. Which I have now done. You’re welcome, Dan!

Justin was simply the co-creator, frequent episode writer, and voice of both Rick and Morty. Mike McMahan was one of the more important writers in the Rick and Morty writer’s room and wrote at least five episodes of the show himself. Both of these guys put a lot of work into one of the biggest and most influential shows of the last decade, is what I’m saying. Rick and Morty is a phenomenon beyond what even the most successful television shows around can dream of. If you are a particular sort of nerd, I guarantee you someone has made a Pickle Rick reference to you sometime in the last two months, for which I’m sorry. I don’t know of any other modern series with that sort of reach (except for Game of Thrones, but this article isn’t about failure).

But Rick and Morty isn’t just a great show that Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan worked on, it’s their break. It’s the thing (at least from the vantage point of now, May 27, 2020) that they will be remembered for. Unless you’re a huge fan of Justin Roiland deep-cuts like 2 Girls, 1 Cup: The Show, I guess. In which case, I both very much want to meet you and very much don’t.

I won’t pretend to know what exactly Justin Roiland and Mike McMahan want for Solar Opposites. I don’t know if they’d prefer the audience see the show as entirely separate from Rick and Morty, or if they want viewers to look for connections between the two animated sci-fi comedies. My guess, though, is that while those two guys are more than proud of all the work they’ve done (and continue to do) on Rick and Morty, they would probably like it if the people watching weren’t constantly comparing the two series to each other and trying to decide if this new show is just ‘Rick and Morty-lite’, or ‘Rick and Morty ripoff’, or ‘Rick and Morty + etc…’. They’d probably want you to just appreciate the show as it’s own thing. Which makes sense, of course. Unless you’re writing a sequel, you want your work to stand on its own for both you and the audience.

But when you watch Solar Opposites, it is almost impossible not to think of Rick and Morty. It starts with the main character’s voice. Korvo, the alien in the facemask in the picture above, has nearly the exact same voice as Rick. Only in this case he’s not a drunk and he’s slightly dumber and slightly nicer. If you are at all a Rick and Morty fan, it will take most of Solar Opposite’s first season to stop hearing Rick and start hearing Korvo. It’s also in the art style. Mike McMahon, in a fascinating interview about the process of creating Solar Opposites, admits the art style is the same but says that he sees this as more Justin Roiland’s drawing style than Rick and Morty’s.

The more I think about that idea, the more I think it’s sort of the crux of the whole series for me. In the second episode, when Yumyulack (the ‘son’ in the alien family) activates his self-defense suit and proceeds to murder the entire Neo-Nazi bar that was threatening him in increasingly gratuitously violent (and wince-inducing-ly hilarious) fashion; do you think that is a classic Justin Roiland-style joke, or do you think of the many hilariously violent massacres that Rick has orchestrated in Rick and Morty? When Korvo talks about using ‘Sci-fi goo’ to magically fix either himself or some damaged object, is that Mike McMahon showing us how clever he continues to be at skewering genre tropes like technobabble, or is that a joke we’ve seen Rick make more than once in Rick and Morty? It’s very tough to tell.

And the thing is, I’m not even sure it’s a fair criticism I’m making here. Of course any writer is going to have interests that carry across multiple works. Of course a cartoonist’s signature style is going to be seen as similar no matter the specific work he put his name on. I’m not on here bitching about the fact that The Simpsons, Futurama, and Disenchantment all have the same art style, am I?

But the fact remains that I do think about Rick and Morty a lot when I watch Solar Opposites. It’s not fair to Justin Roiland and Mike McMahon to think this way either, in my opinion. Solar Opposites is interested in different themes and humor than Rick and Morty. The family dynamic at the heart of Solar Opposites is about ten times more heartfelt than the one in Rick and Morty. There isn’t the cloying air of college-freshmen-in-Philosophy-101-Nihilism in Solar Opposites as there is in Rick and Morty, for which I am eternally grateful. Unlike Rick and Morty, Solar Opposites doesn’t actively spit on the idea of growth for its main character.

And then, there’s the Wall. I’m not going to go into too much detail here to avoid spoilers for those who need to catch up, but suffice it to say the Wall is both one of the most ridiculous and one of the smartest swings Solar Opposites takes throughout its initial run. Watching what you originally believe to be a one-time throwaway joke evolve into an entire world and plot of its own is one of the most enjoyable and left-field narratives I’ve experienced on TV this year. It takes Justin Roiland’s and Mike McMahon’s talent for taking a concept way further than you think it’ll go, and gives it steroids. The show is great, honestly. I can genuinely recommend it as wholeheartedly as I would recommend Rick and Morty.

But, when my roommate and I were watching the episode in season one of Solar Opposites entirely dedicated to the Wall, the first thing my roommate said was: “It’s just like the Rick and Morty Tales from the Citadel episode.” He was referring to the Rick and Morty episode that detaches itself from the main cast to only spend its time among the inter-dimensional Ricks and Mortys trapped in the space-station city of the Citadel. It’s a great episode. But I don’t think the comparison is quite fair. The Rick and Morty episode has no real prior buildup. Part of the reason it works so well is it’s so unexpected. So it has no real expectations to fulfill for the audience.

The Wall episode, on the other hand, is something Solar Opposites had been slowly and subtly building toward for the prior six episodes of it’s eight episode run. Despite how ridiculous it seemed for the writers to focus on this plot initially, real work was done in drips and drabs to lay the foundation for the Wall episode. And it’s worth it. The episode is hilarious, moving, and features some of the smartest world-building you’ll find anywhere on television.

Yet I can’t blame my roommate for instinctively making that comparison. It was right there in front of him. As a general audience, we are more media-obsessed than we have ever been. The connections between shows come before conscious thought. In the same way that Chris Evans is Captain America forever, and Elijah Wood will always be Frodo despite his eclectic and impressive post-LOTR acting career, and Robert Pattinson just wants us all to forget about when he used to sparkle; Justin Roiland’s voice and drawing style will be connected to Rick and Morty first and foremost.

But maybe we can use Solar Opposites an opportunity to look past the surface level similarities (voices, drawing style, certain joke structures), and instead analyze the unique choices and themes Solar Opposites chooses to explore. This requires more out of the viewer, it requires engaging with the show at least a couple levels below the surface, thinking about what it’s actually trying to say instead of just watching the colorful exterior. It’s tough, but if you pull it off, I think you get more out of the show, out of any show, than you would otherwise.

Watch Solar Opposites and give it a try. Maybe it’ll pay off for you. And even if it doesn’t, you’ll still probably laugh.