Rick and Morty may take obvious delight in getting Werner Herzog to say “penis,” but at its core, it’s the most realistic portrayal of the enduring, cyclical nature of family dysfunction you’ll find on what is still technically Cartoon Network.
For all of Rick and Morty’s proudly sophomoric fart jokes, intricate running gags, and cutting one-liners, everything, no matter how zany or absurd, is built on a far more prosaic, and far more affecting, foundation. I can’t help but think of it whenever I watch Rick and Morty, the demented sci-fi cartoon Harmon cocreated with Justin Roiland, which returns to Adult Swim for its third season on Sunday night.
The concept of the spit draft may be solid, practical know-how from an industry veteran, but it’s also a telling insight into Harmon’s creative process and priorities. In Poking a Dead Frog, Mike Sacks’s 2014 interview collection about the process of comedy, the former Community writer Megan Ganz shares the most useful advice she ever got from the NBC sitcom’s creator, Dan Harmon: “ had us write these things called ‘spit drafts.’ …You write out the script scene by scene with dummy dialogue that you’ll later replace with actual jokes. … If you’re stuck and you feel like you have writer’s block, this is a really helpful method because it distinguishes between, ‘OK, do you have story problems or are you having a hard time writing the dialogue?’”
