Solar Opposites Review
By Sarah K.
Solar Opposites is… something. It’s not quite a Rick and Morty spinoff, but certainly doesn’t stand on its own. Although it seemed funny at first, there are a number of problems with it from the characters, to the humor, to the premise itself.
The Characters
The characters of the show may look different, but they don’t feel like anything we haven’t seen before, even from its own creators. They’re all very static with nonexistent season arcs, none of them truly changing in meaningful ways. We loved Rick and Morty for its ability to mesh its high concept sci-fi adventures with significant character moments, but this show is void of such nuance.
I can’t help but draw comparisons between Rick and Korvo. You can blame it on the similarities of their diction delivered by Justin Roiland, but it goes deeper than having nearly identical voices. Even though Korvo is far from a drunken mad scientist grandfather, he says everything with a very familiar dry sense of antisocial pessimism. Rick is described as “grumpy, sociopathic, emotionally unstable, bad-tempered, dismissive, narcissistic, cynical, self-centered, destructive, incredibly intelligent, alcoholic, self-loathing, rude and crude mad scientist,” and Korvo checks 90% of those boxes. And because he’s so similar to Rick with a little more dryness and therefore much less substance, he’s nothing new or interesting to watch.
Terry is the token sidekick of the lead, the wide eyed unremarkable, taking punches but still being supportive at the end of the day. He functions as nothing more or less, sometimes instigating plot conflict but not in any way that matters at the end, and would be hopelessly uninteresting without Korvo to bounce off of. As an easily impressed, gullible, immature foil to the protagonist’s personality, he’s a cliche, forgettable trope throughout the season.
The children, Yumyulak and Jesse, aren’t very engaging B-story either. It’s a lot of Yumyulak being mean to Jesse and Jesse trying to educate him, convince him of something, or getting him to like her. If it’s not that, it's the children being bullied by the community which could’ve been used as social commentary on the issue particularly concerning racial disparities, but is instead played for laughs. The glass ceiling episode goes so far as to insult social commentary. The sci-fi tools they use to fight this oppression are all concepts presented in other media jammed into eight episodes, and none of their attempts amount to anything of substance.
The Humor
You would think that because it’s not on network television and can get away with a lot more vulgarity than Rick and Morty, the jokes would be funnier. But I watched the entire season without an audible laugh, whereas I’ve watched Rick and Morty start to finish maybe a hundred times, and never find the jokes less funny.
In being able to have obscene with jokes about necrophilia, having sex with old people, and teachers 69ing in the cafeteria, we lose the witty, nuanced humor that we find in Rick and Morty. Even the characters breaking the fourth wall prompts a yawn, and that’s something I’m usually a sucker for. The use of obscenities should not come at the expense of wit, and the absence of layered humor just makes me want to turn back to Rick and Morty.
The Premise
“A family of aliens from a better world must take refuge in middle America; they disagree on whether Earth is awful or awesome.” While this sounded great and made me think we would see alien perspectives on flaws in our society, but they don’t do a good job of that at all.
The showrunners could’ve used this premise to say something meaningful about humanity, but instead simply threw these characters in situations to watch them be naive, which just wasn’t compelling. We didn’t get anything new in terms of commentary or story. Whether it’s simply boring on paper or bordering on cliche in execution, not much in this series surprised me.
The first episode is probably my least favorite, with the flimsy premise of the leads bringing a cartoon character to life that doesn’t show us much about the characters other than… how dumb they are I guess? In the second episode, they try to figure out how to make humans like them which again, only shows their lack of self awareness or common sense.
In the third episode where Korvo becomes a famous magician, gets full of himself, and dismisses his family, is a trope we’ve seen time and time again. Then to have it be an elaborate ruse the entire time for Korvo to have a taco party and talk about ship parts, even that’s unoriginal. As recently as episode 3 of season 4 of Rick and Morty, they had a twist at the end where the entire episode was revealed to be a plan Rick had to keep Morty from writing a heist movie. It wasn’t groundbreaking then, and it still isn’t here.
The unoriginality and lack of creativity doesn’t get much better as the season continues. The creation of a robot gone wrong and the butterfly effect are both stories that have been done a thousand times before and much better. The flowers growing on the children’s heads seemed very reminiscent of Rick Potion No. 9, the Pupa is every mischievous pet or small child trope ever, and the running theme of the aliens trying to make people like them is too on the nose.
The show is almost impossible to become emotionally invested in, devoid of stakes, meaningful themes, and character development. Riding an entire show on the concept of its characters not knowing what anything is or how anything works in the human world has not only been done countless times, but seldom works when audiences don’t relate to such naivety in our own setting. When it's done well, it goes to show flaws in our world and serves as social commentary of sorts, but the most we get of that is in the little one-liner Korvo gives us at the end of their intro, most of which aren’t even that deep. If the whole would've leaned into the social commentary angle, something it would be prime for, we’d be having a much different conversation. The worst part is, I know that these showrunners are entirely capable of doing so.
The Wall
My personal favorite parts of the show were the ones inside the wall, where we did see higher stakes and better character development, not only in the episode dedicated to it but also in the smaller moments earlier in the season.
It only took seconds for me to care about the oppression of the people, Tim and his cause, the milkman and his mouse Molly, because these are all relatable stories grounded in truth and they actually say something meaningful about it.
It had great parallels in its satirization of the world, from the caste system we’re controlled by, to our administration’s constant lying shown shown through the Duke, and the impossibility of revolution due to humanity’s cycle of shifting power.
It had us caring about the characters and what happens to them with such little time. When they did such a good job with these elements in this little corner of the overarching story but fell so short in the rest of it, it just makes me want more of the wall. Imagine if the show had spent as much time on dissecting these themes as it did just showing nonsensical alien shenanigans. That’s not to say only shows who do these things are worth watching, but if they’re going to have these elements and angles in their story, I find it hard to believe why they wouldn’t lean into them instead of discussing man caves, making people like you, and bringing mascots to life.
Conclusion
I don’t want to say that Solar Opposites is just an unimaginative, unfunny, uncompelling version of Rick and Morty, because I’m sure the showrunners didn’t intend it to be any sort of version of its predecessor.
But in knowing it can’t be too much like Rick and Morty while also being unaware of how similar it is, the viewers are left with a drier, emptier show that makes them want to switch on the more fulfilling option. I don’t think it’ll ever be able to stand alone, much less rise above the superior show. Having finished the show the night Promortyus premiered and laughed more in that 22 minutes than I did the entire season, it became clear that this one is sorely lacking. It was a fun watch, but not one that I’ll likely suffer through again on my own. I hope the seasons get better as they go on, with better humor, character development, and story.
