Remembering the Pilot Episode of “Rick and Morty” Three Years Later

I remember like Casper did.

Last night, Adult Swim aired a mess of animated pilots that had already streamed on adultswim.com a few months ago. Those thinking that this would be an odd weekend for a TV network to showcase new programming may be correct…but not when it comes to Adult Swim.

You see, exactly three years ago this weekend (December 2nd, 2013) Adult Swim premiered the very first episode of Rick and Morty. The name of the episode was “Pilot” which is typical for most every TV show to name their first episode that, but this franchise did more than just ‘pilot’ a franchise…it launched one.

I still remember a lot of the cool shit leading up to this show when it premiered. Who remembers the side walk deal in Time Square NYC, or the crashed billboard. I distinctly remember show co-creator Justin Roiland telling me how excited he was for the show really before anyone really knew him. Shit, at that time, most people were asking Roiland’s partner-in-crime Dan Harmon a million questions about Community during AMA’s and Comic Cons. Now, Justin and Dan do three or four panels at San Diego Comic-Con and they all get back to the rafters from wall to wall.

How ’bout some fun ‘Did you knows?” Did you kids know that Adult Swim head Mike Lazzo didn’t even want Justin Roiland the voice of both Rick AND Morty? Justin and Dan even auditioned a shit-load of actors that were pretty famous and none of them worked so Justin just kept on getting at Mike over it. Now, you couldn’t even imagine ANYONE else playing either of those roles. Seriously, if Michael Cera got the “Morty” voice role, this shit woulda been canceled by now.

Starburns Industries had as much to gain as anyone! Before this show got picked up, the best known shows that this studio produced came from Dino Stamatopoulos. Now, Starburns has programming on Viceland, HBO,  Netflix, and produced an Academy-award nominated feature called Anomalisa. 

From Simpsons couch gags to now the face of a Monopoly games, Rick and Morty has come a long way. And while fake news sites continue to squabble over a premiere date for the show’s third season, I’m just as happy to just check out the fruits that this franchise has given us like comics and games to tide me over until another season comes about. These guys earned it…

Read our review of the pilot episode of Rick and Morty here.