Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Long before Netflix and Hulu were disrupting traditional television, Dan Harmon was deconstructing what network TV was and could be. Harmon’s Community, with its high-brow mockery of the sitcom format, silly sense of humor, and genuine heart, remains one of modern TV’s most impressive cult hits, and now with the runaway success of Rick and Morty and the quirky gem that is HarmonQuest, the creator has done it again. If you needed proof that there’s always an audience for great alternative comedy, that proof is Dan Harmon.
Adult Swim recently announced that Harmon and Justin Roiland’s latest series, Rick and Morty, broke viewing records for the channel. It’s weird to think that an animated comedy about an alcoholic grandfather and his ever-anxious grandson traveling through the multiverse would be one of the most popular shows on television, but that’s the universe we’re living in. And thanks to his longtime colleague Spencer Crittenden, Harmon has broadened his empire of quirky and nerdy television with HarmonQuest. Decider had the chance to talk to Harmon, game master Crittenden, and co-host of HarmonQuest and the podcast HarmonTown Jeff B. Davis about the evolution of the D&D-based show, what the future of television may look like, and the comforting nihilism of Rick and Morty.
Originally created for Seeso, HarmonQuest is a delightful amalgam of things that shouldn’t work together but do. Half animation, half live action, the series follows Harmon, Davis, Erin McGathy, and their comedian guest of the week as they play through a tabletop adventure led by Crittenden. No one ever really knows what they’re doing and most adventures descend into chaos, much like the incredibly popular D&D episodes of Community. It’s very silly and very fun.
When asked which guests have been his favorite, Harmon pointed to Paul F. Tompkins and Gillian Jacobs. “Paul because he’s such a good improviser and is himself familiar with role-playing and Gillian because she’s a Juilliard trained but totally tabletop game illiterate person who just put herself into this character,” he said.
Davis agreed. “[Jacobs] played it with a really beautiful mix of zeal and total ignorance of what was going on, but she didn’t let that slow her down at all. She was just pedal to the metal crazy,” he said. “It was adorably strange.”
Harmon also praised Aubrey Plaza’s episode. ”She was so uncompromisingly Aubrey Plaza, you know with the deadpan thing. If we were at all insecure maybe we’d think ‘Ah, she’s not having a good time. Let’s pack it in.’ But she’s just so smart and funny and random. She just started like bullying Jeff.”
Though each episode almost feels like watching a well-structured improv show, Crittenden revealed that Season 2’s adventure took roughly two months to plan without notes. That planning involves creating outlines, maps, characters, monsters, treasures, and several other elements that are easy to overlook when you’re laughing at Thomas Middleditch’s weird accent. “It’s not like I was working day-in and day-out the whole time. But the whole process took I want to say four months of working,” he said.
HarmonQuest started as a Seeso original. However, shortly before Seeso’s announcement that it will be shutting down at the end of this year, the series was acquired by VRV, which has been releasing Season 2. According to Harmon, the shift in companies hasn’t changed the show too dramatically. “It’s very much like being at Seeso in that you’re in a family of people that you’re rooting for them, you know?” he said. “They’re not like a suppressive network that you’re trying to sing for your supper. You’re partners with them.”
“Also, because it was the second go at [HarmonQuest], I think we were better at it,” Davis said. Season 2 allowed the creators to better figure out how to host a tabletop game filmed in front of a live audience. “I think it was just a little bit more comfortable for everybody too. So I think that’s always good when you’re improvising to have that kind of playful comfort level.”
For his part, Crittenden actually noticed a difference in fan response between seasons. While Seeso released the entirety of Season 1 as one package, VRV has been airing new episodes each week. “When Seeso’s season came out, that was all in one burst,” he said. “Everyone was gung-ho for a month or so, and then it kind of tapered off. Whereas this is more like a slow build.”
“It’s like there’s a different relationship between the fans and the show then there was last season,” Crittenden added.
HarmonQuest’s move to the AT&T-backed VRV now marks the third Harmon project that has found its home on a niche streaming service. Season 6 of Community premiered and ran on the short-lived Yahoo Screen (it’s now on Hulu), and as mentioned before, HarmonQuest was on Seeso before the animation-focused VRV acquired it. The creator’s willingness to experiment in the age of streaming isn’t anything new. Back in 2002, Harmon launched Channel 101, was one of the first sites to connect audiences to content creators. Historically, Harmon has been more open to gambling a bit with his TV projects.
“That’s a tough one, ain’t it?” he said when asked what he thinks the future of TV may be. “You’ve got these big media giants that aren’t really going anywhere because they’re huge. They have huge war chests. I think they’ll continue to drive their resources into new platforms, and they’ll be competing with each other to figure out what’s the trend supposed to be.”
He also discussed why he thinks Seeso failed. “Seeso represents Universal guessing that baby Netflix is the future of TV. I don’t think they guessed wrong,” he said. “I don’t want to start a fight with Universal or anything, but I think that’s the business model you’ve got to give five years.”
He admitted that he didn’t think his take on the future of television would be very accurate, but he did reveal what his ideal world for content distribution would look like. For Harmon and his animation studio Starburns Industries, that would would be an autonomous, a la carte distribution landscape where consumers could hand-select the shows and movies they want to pay for. “I think that’s the world that would satisfy me the most because I’d love just a fair fight with everybody else and make a bunch of money if my show was popular in perfect proportionality,” he said. “But I don’t know if that’s where the world is going to go.”
Harmon also talked about why he thinks Rick and Morty has become so wildly popular with younger audiences, especially in today’s crowded TV landscape. “I do feel like if we all have one thing in common in the last 10 years or so it’s been a sort of encroaching — we’re starting to worry that life is meaningless, you know?” he said. According to the creator, the show plays a lot with recreational nihilism. “It’s like your mom playing peek-a-boo. It exploits your greatest fear and then rescues you from it by saying ‘You’re not the only one thinking about this … You’re not the only one feeling this way. We all feel this way.’ As soon as you say that, it starts to get better.”
Consistently, think pieces and arguments about why this brightly colored and hilarious show is one of the best things on television run alongside reflections on its depressing nature.“People observe that the show is very nihilistic. I don’t think that that’s inaccurate at all, but I think there is a difference between nihilism for the sake of cynicism, which is almost like a vandalism of the human spirit, and nihilism for the sake of therapy, which is like a primal scream that almost undercuts itself,” he said. “As soon as you do realize the depths of the universe, as soon as you do realize that you are meaningless, that’s an invitation to realize that everything is meaningful, every part of the universe is its center.”
However, Harmon thinks there is light lurking underneath all that darkness and nihilism. “I think [Rick and Morty] is just hopeful enough, yeah. But more importantly I think that it’s a trustworthy show,” he said.
“I think that because of the internet’s swallowing of television, young — and by young I mean 18 to 34 — people have just spent half a lifetime being lied to a lot. More than when when I was growing up,” he said. “Like everything, like even if it’s punk rock, can turn out to be lying to you for the last 20 years or so, and it’s really hard to tell what’s cool and what’s just manufactured cool and all this stuff.”
“I think Rick and Morty goes so deep and dark right out of the gate that you know one thing for sure — this is my buddy. I can trust this show,” Harmon said. “So if that buddy then is going to say, ‘Don’t feel so bad,’ then that’ll get through to you a little quicker than a librarian in a Pringles commercial.”
