Beware the Moon Baby

For as successful as Rick and Morty has been, it’s never felt like a show that absolutely demanded a spin-off. While other series can develop characters that are worth spinning off (think, for example, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and spin-off Angel), this is generally because each character serves a specific purpose. When characters are different enough in their lives, or are likely to have wildly different adventures from each other, then it makes sense, from a certain perspective, to spin them out and give them their own shows. And sometimes it works, prompting a larger, richer universe (a la the ArrowverseWhen it was announced that the CW was creating a show based on the Green Arrow, people laughed. The CW? Really? Was it going to be teen-oriented like everything else on the network and be called "Arrow High"? And yet that one show, Arrow has spawned three spin-offs, various related shows and given DC a successful shared universe, the Arrowverse on TV and streaming., as another example).

For this to work, though, you need two things: one, a character worth spinning off and, two, adventures that will feel different enough from the main series that launching a spin off makes sense from a narrative perspective. The FlashStruck by lightning while working in his lab, Barry Allen became a speedster known as The Flash, launching an entire set of super-fast superheroes. and Green ArrowCreated in 1941, this superhero was inspired by Robin Hood. He didn't find real fame among comic fans until he was teamed up with Green Lantern for a run in the early 1970s, becoming a social hero. have different rogues to fight, different kinds of adventures to follow, so giving each of them their own television series makes sense. But in a universe like the one in Rick and Morty, where every episode can be its own, wild adventure, where continuity doesn’t really have to matter, and where anything can happen at any time with very little in the way of narrative explanation beyond, “because it’s funny,” it’s much harder to make a spin-off and actually make it feel necessary.

That brings us to President Curtis, the third spin-off so far from Rick and Morty. The show already got Vindicators 2 back in 2022, a 10-episode series that attempted spinning out a team of superheroes previously seen in an episode of the main series. Then there was Rick and Morty: The Anime, a weird side-series / reboot for the franchise that wasn’t well received and may not get another season. That series at least tried to focus on the main cast in new adventures, but even then the series wasn’t what fans were looking for. And now, with President Curtis, we have another attempt to take yet another character from the main show so they can go off on their own wacky adventures.

And it’s not that the premise is bad. We’ve seen President Curtis (voiced by Keith David) in a handful of episodes in the main series. He’s worked well as a foil for Rick, challenging the mad scientist and getting into more than a few battles with our protagonists. In theory he could have his own adventures in this weird, strange universe. The issue is that anything that happens here could end up feeling like a watered down version of the main series. Part of the appeal of Rick and Morty isn’t just the adventures; it’s the specific, lived in dynamic of the main cast, all of whom have begun to feel fleshed out and real. A spin-off focused on new characters has an uphill battle to both maintain the madcap pace of the original show while trying to get us invested in a new cast of characters. President Curtis doesn’t lack for madcap adventures, at least not in this first episode, but it absolutely lacks a strong reason for us to care about anything going on so far.

The series focuses on Curtis and his two aides: cyborg Roe Banks (Stephanie Beatriz), Curtis's newest Chief of Staff, and Special Agent Francis O'Doyle (Jim Rash), a half-leprechaun assigned to Curtis as his primary bodyguard. On her first day Roe gets mixed up with Curtis and O’Doyle’s attempt to fight off a CIA agent who attempts, unsuccessfully, to steal the original moon landing footage. But, as Roe learns, there’s actually two reels of moon landing footage: the real version and a fake version that was filmed first, just in case the real landing went wrong. The CIA wants the real footage, but not to embarrass Curtis; they want it because what’s on the reel could expose a dark CIA secret: a moon baby.

As it turns out, the original astronauts put a genetically engineered baby on the moon, and over the years it’s thrived, building its own weird moon base. But with so many nations heading to the moon, the CIA wants to cover up its secret. Curtis and crew have to get to the moon first and rescue the former-baby, now a moon man. But when they get there they might just discover that the moon man has his own game to play, and he might not take kindly to anyone getting in his way…

One issue with President Curtis is that it lacks the lived in feel that Rick and Morty has. From the beginning, Rick and Morty worked so well because it was effectively parodying the dynamic of Back to the Future: a wild-eyed scientist and his young associate. The series has since fleshed out that dynamic and made it more real, and more interesting, but that short hand, Doc Brown and Marty McFly vibe, helped the series find its step. Even Vindicators 2 could parody other things to make the series work, at least to an extent, using the shorthand of superhero media (which was all the rage at the time) for decent parody material. But it doesn’t feel like President Curtis finds that same ground in this first episode.

Chalk it up to its weird setup. The show wants to be a presidential adventure series, but it’s already too weird to be a solid parody of the likes of The West Wing or Madam President. It’s too surreal to work on that front, and because of that it doesn’t have anything to ground itself. Instead of playing its adventures maybe a little more straight, going for a sci-fi House of Cards or even a fantastical Veep, this show feels like it’s trying to be Rick and Morty again, just based out of Washington D.C. That idea seems to be less interesting than you’d think.

It also doesn’t help that it lacks a character dynamic that works in a shorthand way. Curtis is the president, but he’s not a normal president. His bodyguard, which for some reason he only has one, is weird and kooky. And his chief of staff, who for some reason is on her first day on the job and doesn’t even know Curtis, is a cyborg with her own special abilities. No one here acts like an easy point-of-view character, not in the way Morty was at the start of Rick and Morty. The adventures are already out there and wacky, and the episode struggles to find its pace because of that.

And there’s also an unstated but simple fact holding this series back: if any threat were ever to get too big, Curtis would honestly not be the guy to handle it. This is a show set in the main world of Rick and Morty, not some side universe or pocket reality. As such, if a world-ending threat were to come for Earth, the person that would save us all isn’t President Curtis, it’s Rick. That leaves this series, so far, feeling like B-squad adventures that weren’t good enough, or interesting enough, to give to Rick Sanchez to handle.

Hell, the whole adventure with the CIA and the Moon Baby feels like a Junior Varsity adventure. While some parts of it are very amusing, it lacks the strong, wild punch that even the worst Rick and Morty episodes are able to bring. It doesn’t help that I wanted this episode right after an episode of Rick and Morty, and that show was doing its usual way-out, big concept adventures while Curtis is here fighting a moon man who’s barely a threat at all. This adventure would be beneath Rick or Morty which, I guess, is why Curtis got it instead.

There’s a grain of an idea here that might work, but President Curtis is going to have to find itself, and fast, if it’s going to pull it off. And bear in mind this is an animated show, so it’s entirely possible we’re stuck with ten episodes at the current level of comedy because the show can’t really pivot between weeks to punch up its writing. This show is already in the can, produced over a year or two by animators before it even aired. Whatever feedback the series creators could get will only get to them after the fact. Maybe the series improves over this season, but it’s more likely that any improvement (if there’s any to be had) would come in a future season.

And I’m just not sure the show is good enough to warrant more of that. We’ll see how it plays out over the course of this ten-episode run, but right now President Curtis feels like the kind of idea that was better on paper than in practice. This first episode, while not dire, was not a great introduction to the series, and if the rest of the season plays out the same way there’s a good chance we’ll be seeing yet another one-and-done spin-off for the Rick and Morty universe. This first episode just isn’t good enough.