Solar Opposites (Season 1)

Over the past five or so years, I've really enjoyed the work of Justin Roiland just because he's been involved with some stuff that I really enjoy. He's done a lot of work with Dan Harmon who is one of my favorite TV writers and has created some of my favorite shows like Community and Rick and Morty. And one of the more interesting things was seeing what elements of Rick and Morty were Dan Harmon and which elements were Roilands. Solar Opposites is a pure example of Roiland's solo work.

Also, it came out at a really opportune time because what else are you going to watch during Quarantine?

Solar Opposites is a premise you've seen in some variation at some point in your life. It follows a family of aliens who come to earth, live in suburbia, and are the fishes out of water while they do sci fi shenanigans.

The minute I saw trailer I saw it as Third Rock from the Sun meets Rick and Morty and that pretty much holds up. It's Third Rock from the Sun in the premise of Aliens living among us in suburbia, and its Rick and Morty in the sense that they have ridiculous Justin Roiland level sci fi adventures and things get pretty crazy.

The question is, how close to Rick and Morty is it?

That's kind of hard to tell with only eight 30 minute episodes. The first season of Rick and Morty is really  good but I don't think they knew exactly where it was going to go when they did that first season so they kind of just ran with whatever to see what worked.

It kind of feels that way with Solar Opposites.

We're quickly introduced to Korvo (voiced by Roiland), Terry (voiced by Thomas Middleditch), Yumlack (Sean Giambrone), and Jesse (voiced by Mary Mack). Korvo and Terry are your polar opposite adult characters where Korvo is very mechanical and hates life on earth, whereas Terry is fun loving and thoroughly enjoys living on earth. Yumlack and Jesse are opposites in that Yumlack is a sociopathic murderer and Jesse wants to be a normal girl in high school. The two pairs have their own adventures dealing with science, or school, or glib globs or whatever word Roiland is making up these days, and then the whole thing starts again in the next episode.

The big difference is that the show is on Hulu and there really are no limits to what they can do or say.

The F bomb is dropped a lot and there is a lot of really graphic animated violence. I am kind of lukewarm on it because while Rick and Morty pushed a lot of boundaries, it still has parameters to meet to be on Adult Swim. And most of the time, it's those parameters that help shape stories. If there are no limits like in Solar Opposites, it can usually devolve into senseless violence or just a bunch of cursing that sometimes just falls flat.

It's also a little bit different because Roiland is a little more extemporaneous in his writing. He's really good at improvisation so without the story structure and writing of Dan Harmon, the dialogue and story seems more improvised and not as polished. Whatsmore, it feels like there is a lot more pop culture references just for the sake of pop culture references and again, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

The strengths and weaknesses of Solar opposites are very in tune with the strengths and weaknesses of Justin Roiland.

The stories, though scatter shot, are incredibly inventive and creative while trying to embrace the limitlessness of his imagination. At the same time, it doesn't feel very succinct yet. The most succinct parts actually have nothing to do with the aliens at all and the miniaturized humans Yumlack ends up putting in a wall in his and Jesse's room. I won't ruin that because its arguably the best part of the show, but it's hilariously done and almost feels like it was the show Roiland wanted to make instead.

The voice acting is fantastic. I think Roiland has a pretty great range of voices that are really funny, but at the same time it's easy to enjoy it even when he starts using the same voices over and over again because they are good voices.

Overall, I have nothing horrible to say about Solar Opposites. As I said, it has the strengths and weaknesses of Roiland himself. I don't know who Mike McMahan but I'll be interested to see if he is able to distinguish himself as much as Roiland did from Harmon. Overall, the show feels very similar to Rick and Morty in good and bad ways. It distinguishes itself enough to be enjoyable and not a cheap knock off, but it'll likely need at least another season to really distinguish itself as a new enjoyable thing.

I want to see a season two to give it that shot to distinguish itself, but right now it feels very much like the spiritual spin off to Rick and Morty you saw with shows like American Dad with Family Guy. American Dad did eventually distinguish itself, but it took a little bit and it never really made the same traction as Family Guy did. I could see a similar situation occurring with Solar Opposites to Rick and Morty.

But what did you think? Do you think Solar Opposites is going to be the American Dad to Rick and Morty's Family Guy? Do you want to see more episodes of the miniture people in the wall? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for shows or films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for Reading!