Commentary: ‘Rick And Morty’ Paved The Way For Satires Like ‘Grimsburg’
by Frank Martin
Parody and satire stories have a wide range of material they can cover. Rick and Morty took this concept to an extreme as it covered numerous tropes and motifs all across various forms of science fiction. This trend continued with Solar Opposites, considering it featured the same creator. But many animated shows have moved past science-fiction satire. Two Fox animated shows have done just that — Krapolopis, focusing on Greek mythology, and Grimsburg, a heavy satire of murder mysteries.
Grimsburg is named after its fictitious setting. It’s dubbed the murder capital of the world as the town encompasses all forms of murder mystery tropes and stereotypes. The main plot focuses on a washed up detective, Marvin Flute (Jon Hamm), who is invited back to solve a string of murders. He even has an extra-sensory perception of deduction, something he calls his “detective sense.” It’s a means for him to satirize popular and notable detectives from all realms of fiction.
Mel Brooks is a master at this form of storytelling. Spaceballs does it with space fantasy pioneer Star Wars, and Blazing Saddles, obviously, focuses on the western. But doing this in the form of film is very different from doing it in an animated show. Having multiple episodes allows the stories to focus on multiple premises. Crime noir, Greek, mythology, and science-fiction are multifaced with a lot of ground to cover. It’s hard to do this in one single film. But the fact that the shows try to take one trope in each episode and expand upon it allows time to fully give each genre the attention it deserves. Rick and Morty has withstood the test of time by doing it for multiple seasons. It will be interesting to see if Grimsburg can have that same success.
Grimsburg air Sundays on Fox and streams of Hulu.
