[motohagiography]

Is Flanderization just synecdoche - where one attribute becomes the reference for the whole, or is it a new co-oridnate on the spectrum of metonymy and simile?

The comment about Rick and Morty actively avoiding the flanderizing of their characters seems a bit off, as the whole season 5 finale was the flanderization of Morty, where he (a version of him) self actualizes as blandly malevolent, likely acting on urges that Rick identifies a few episodes prior in Morty's weak dad (Jerry) as not nice, but predatory:

> "You act like prey, but you're a predator! You use pity to lure in your victims! That's how you survive! I survive because I know everything. That snake survives because children wander off, and you survive because people think, "Oh, this poor piece of shit."

If they were avoiding flanderizing Morty, they would seem to have just backed right into it.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Rick And Morty really took a nosedive for me the last couple seasons. It's always just been a fun-when-high recycling of Star Trek episodes and well-known sci-fi ideas to me, but it always had its own style, clever writing and great acting(especially Sarah Chalke).

Lately the writing has felt a lot lazier, and I guess they ran out of good Star Trek episodes(understandable since none have been made for almost 20 years now...) to "steal" because a lot of the episodes felt like gimmicks based on some action anime I never heard of, fucking Ocean's 11, superheroes, dragons(seriously?), etc.

[Bakary]

I don't think they ran out of sci-fi tropes so much as they ran out on the core idea of the show. They took two established characters (Marty and Doc Brown) and explored/deconstructed the inherent absurdity and great dynamic between those two that was never fully exploited by the original films.

The decline started once they had done what they could with it.

[mtlmtlmtlmtl]

Right, that makes sense. I honestly wasn't aware of the Back to the Future inspiration, I watched it as a kid and it was never really my type of movie.

[jaimebuelta]

Also Rick and Morty is an incredibly nihilistic show. The character dynamics are terrible (to each other), and that limits the long term capacity for stories.

They were able to pull a good few seasons, but it starts looking as the same destructive jokes over and over.

I still watch it and enjoy it, but I feel a bit empty inside, it’s such a bleak view inside humanity…

[panick21_]

There were defiantly some weaker episodes, but some are still really good. The new season ep 1 was pretty good. You can't keep peak quality consistently, no show really can.

You are gone have some stinkers in there, like dragons. Their take on heists was pretty damn awesome I have to say, very nice spin on the traditional heist. The dragons thing was terrible.

[A4ET8a8uTh0]

To the best of my understanding, no. Part for whole thing is like an extended symbol and as a poetic device short lived at that, while flanderization is appears to be characterized as a longer term process that effectively focuses on a specific part without excluding the rest ( its importance is just progressively diminished ).

<<If they were avoiding flanderizing Morty, they would seem to have just backed right into it.

I am not sure if I agree. The show is not even. Some episodes are absolutely brilliant and some are very forgettable at best, but I can't really cast Morty as being flanderized since it is not main protagonist's sidekick, but 'evil morty'. And even then, it is not Umbrella Corporation level of evil, where it is apparently written somewhere down in the business plan, mission and strategy to be evil. He is evil based on the goals he chose for himself and what it takes to get him to those goals.

[lvxferre]

> Is Flanderization just synecdoche - where one attribute becomes the reference for the whole, or is it a new co-oridnate on the spectrum of metonymy and simile?

Not quite; it's a character development process, not a figure of speech. The final result might lead to the attributes being the sole reference for the whole, but what matters is the process.