October 10, 2017
I've seen a few episodes of "Rick and Morty," but I'm not a regular viewer. The ones I saw were pretty funny.
Apparently, dedicated fans of the show fashion themselves as smart. Good for them.
I won't waste a lot of breath explaining the controversy surrounding the show, McDonald's and the chain's long-gone promotional Szechuan Sauce that was made available for the Disney movie "Mulan," so I will defer to The Ringer's Claire McNear:
It all began innocently enough. In April, Rick and Morty, the deliriously creative and frenetically dark comedy on Adult Swim, kicked off its third season. The premiere revealed that Rick, the show’s alcoholic supergenius inventor, is motivated not by the promise of world domination or scientific inquiry or getting laid and/or drunk and/or revenge or any of the other goals that usually motivate supergeniuses. Instead, all Rick really wants is to enjoy a limited-edition Szechuan dipping sauce that McDonald’s distributed in the late 1990s to promote the then-just-released Mulan. It’s a funny joke: Thing No One Remembers Or Cares About is in fact a Thing Of Great Importance to the main character of a cartoon. Ha ha, very good, let’s move on.
As McNear notes, fans did not move on, and in a "hey look we're cool" move, McDonald's actually did bring the sauce back — at limited locations for one day only.
When some locations didn’t have the sauce or ran out, some fans responded by acting like this:
To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humor is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theore pic.twitter.com/sy9VmJCdTG
— 665.5 zant (@maniadrone) October 9, 2017
Cops are at Wellington McDonalds where tons of angry people lined up for hrs for Rick and Morty Szechuan sauce only to learn they had none pic.twitter.com/3T272osid4
— Lulu Ramadan (@luluramadan) October 7, 2017
Here at the San Jose Mcdonalds. This is our reaction to the shortage of #szechuansauce #giveusthesauce #rickandmorty pic.twitter.com/sIGaUZKDKj
— Kevin Alberi (@Chauncey_Boy) October 7, 2017
Fast-food workers are usually criminally underpaid and already have to handle a variety of jerks on a regular basis, so acting like this is cruel. Unfortunately, McDonald's caved and is promising to bring back the sauce this winter in an expanded capacity.
You spoke. We’ve listened. Lots more #SzechuanSauce and locations. Details soon. And that’s the wayyy the news goes! pic.twitter.com/ooIrbZBsOw
— McDonald's (@McDonalds) October 8, 2017
Going to go ahead and say that rewarding this behavior in an attempt to appease the temper tantrums from self-righteous cartoon fanatics is not a good look. Then again, I was planning on screaming "chocolate" at a Philadelphia restaurant that sells chocolate in honor of my favorite animated show, so what do I know.
