Co-creator Dan Harmon apologized for the Rick and Morty Season 3 release date delay while speaking to an audience at the Sundance Film Festival. But in addition to his explanation for the premiere delay, IndieWire captured a key bit of info about a Season 3 episode that’s sure to piss off a lot of Rick and Morty fans: there won’t be an “Interdimensional Cable” episode.
Rick and Morty Season 1 episode “Rixty Minutes” set the template. Rather than a tightly plotted sci-fi narrative, “Rixty Minutes” is mostly about Rick and Morty watching TV, with each channel broadcasting from a different dimension. It’s a scattershot collection of sketches, ranging from the funny (Ants-In-My-Eyes Johnson) to the unfunny (Gazorpazorpfield, Baby Legs, Trunk People, Unmuscular Michaels, Two Brothers ). Instead of the series’ characteristically rigorous writer, “Rixty Minutes” and its Season 2 sequel, “Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate,” are loaded with rambling improvisations. Loose and non sequitur, the “Interdimensional Cable” concept is very nearly the inverse of Rick and Morty’s best qualities.
But while “Rixty Minutes” may be the series’ worst episode, “Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate” improved on the concept in every possible way. Not only is the hits-to-miss ratio way higher — with hallucinatory sketches like “How Did I Get Here?,” “Lil’ Bits,” “The Adventures of Stealy” and the now-classic Plumbus episode of “How They Do It” — but “Interdimensional Cable 2” also introduced a frame story worthy of an entire Rick and Morty episode, complete with a Werner Herzog cameo as an alien anthropologist monologuing on humanity’s phallic obsessions.
They got “Interdimensional Cable” right. But if the subtitle “Tempting Fate” wasn’t enough of an indication, both Justin Roiland and Harmon have been hinting that a similar episode wouldn’t appear in Season 3 for months.
But don’t worry, inexplicably numerous “Rixty Minutes” fans. “We’re doing something different,” Harmon told the Sundance audience. This echoes what Roiland said in 2016: “we’re introducing something amazing we can’t say much about.”
