hot take:

it's wild people still try to analyze this show's "messaging". it's like probably 95% of other situational comedies: spectacular nihilism. nothing matters except you watching it. there are no transcendent or eternal values.

this is how all 22 minute sitcoms are formatted, so they can return to baseline at the end of each episode and let the writers start over for the next episode without having to update/re-reference the show's bible. the longer, seasonal arcs of TV shows like this work "best" for the format--a potentially never ending set of episodes--when there are no lessons learned, no lasting changes, nothing that forces the writers room into character development. trying to do something else, results in something like Community: a hilarious show that executives do not know what to do with or how to market, because you can't have a show where characters actually learn and grow and stay together forever AND prevent the power dynamics of executives/labor from infiltrating the longer arcs.

this show has been explicitly oriented around singular episodes from the beginning. its creativity and appeal--in my opinion--is to work within that vacuum but still make each, singular episode leverage existing tropes that raise the stakes for the characters/universe to the highest possible levels: oblivion, eternal insanity, massive loss of life, collapse of civilization, torture, genocide, slavery, tyranny, etc. and at the end of the episode, they're just eating pancakes or watching TV, because none of it mattered. my personal favorite episode of R&M is explicitly this (The Ricklantis Mixup, S3:E7) because it explicitly doesn't involve any of the main characters and the episode even starts with "our" rick saying some shit like, "i feel bad for anyone that cares about anything going on with the citadel of ricks" before taking us on this intimate and emotional journey exploring the absolute hellworld that is the citadel of ricks.

there is a throughline of sitcom animation starting with the simpsons -> south park -> R&M where each iteration of the sitcom with ageless characters realizes that articulating values, having longform arcs, and developing principles just gets in the way of the limitless episodic format.

make no mistake, i am not a fan of this phenomenon as much as R&M can entertain me. personally, i would love it if TV weren't like this. i wish they were all like that <5% of stuff out there that doesn't conform, where some weird company trying to be edgy took a shot on some scrappy team of misfit toys with just enough cache to make a thing that makes us forget the confines of the format and just listen to a human story where we laugh and cry and interrogate ourselves. i'm sure there are others, but the only 25 minute show coming to mind that has gotten under my skin like that being aired now is Mr. Inbetween (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr_Inbetween).