Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland has revealed why we haven’t seen more of the show’s popular Interdimensional Cable episodes – despite admitting it will likely "happen again" someday.
"We took a crack at it in season three, but there was something about it that felt forced," Roiland tells us. "It needs to come from a really happy, silly, unnatural place for the dumb sketches to feel right."
There have been two major Interdimensional Cable episodes – 'Rixty Minutes' and the appropriately titled 'Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate' – both of which centered around Rick and Morty flicking through a multiverse of cable TV channels. The episodes are the Adult Swim series at its most surreal, with Roiland voicing a series of trailers, shows, and commercials that are essentially all self-contained comedy sketches. They helped form a large part of the show’s early absurdist appeal – and birthed moments such as Ants-In-My-Eyes Johnson and Real Fake Doors.
But instead of becoming a series staple akin to The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror, Rick and Morty later sidestepped Interdimensional Cable in favor of other high-concept episodes such as 'Morty’s Mind Blowers'. Despite that, Roiland is warming up to the idea of an Interdimensional Cable comeback.
"I think it will happen again," Roiland says. "When it works best, you find a really good, emotional B-story to pair with the crazy, absurd comedy. I think with the second one, the B-story is also absurd and crazy. It didn’t quite hit the same level of brilliance as the first one. The first one, with the story of them looking at other versions of their lives, was some heavy, emotional character study that I felt paired so hilariously with the ridiculous free association nonsense that I was recording."
"If we did it again," he continues, "we’d want to find a story that pairs nicely like that. Like everything with this show, if we feel like it’s being forced or shoehorned in, we kind of back off. It’s always going to be better when it comes naturally."
