It would be interesting to see how many of the writers changed between seasons because there is a difference in the humour, the characters and the themes they're exploring
Well I can give it a shot.
Seasons 1 and 2’s writing were dominated by Roiland, Ridley, and Harmon all working in tandem (and hating each other more by the day).
Roiland started to slack off in season 3 due to his feud with Harmon so Ridley and Harmon took over with input from the new writers Harmon brought in. This season was the first with a gender balanced writing room, but Roiland resented the scope and rigidity of Harmon’s influence.
Ridley wrote the stand-out season 3 citadel episode The Ricklantis Mixup as well as the first season’s citadel episode, but he stopped writing for the show after season 3 concluded. From then on he only participated as a voice actor on both Harmon and Roiland projects, perhaps just not finding it fun to break stories with either of them anymore.
Mike McMahan, a writer’s assistant from season 1, became the showrunner for season 4 in place of Dan Harmon, whose perfectionism during season 3 caused major delays. However, McMahan left after season 4 to work with Roiland on Solar Opposites.
While McMahan was showrunner, Jimmy Kimmel writer Jeff Loveness stepped in as the new stand-out writer during the 4th season, giving us Claw & Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty, Promortyus, Never Ricking Morty, and The Vat of Acid Episode. They were a mixed batch of episodes in terms of reception but the fact that he wrote the script on all of them shows how involved he was. Before leaving the show for good, he wrote both the premiere and the finale episodes of season 5. Loveness’s influence on the writers room was clearly very strong at this time and can be seen on the Rick and Morty Companion Podcast.
By the time season 5 was in production, Scott Marder took over as showrunner after McMahan’s departure and Harmon’s perfectionism was completely gone. And you can really tell. There’s an unhinged spontaneity about season 5 that the team admitted was fueled by a lack of direction after the loss of the show’s producer Mike Mendel.
I think Dan Harmon spelled it out the best:
"I would compare [making Season 5] to a shopping spree after the death of a loved one, where you're determined to make life normal, but you're actually behaving kind of insanely." – Looper
Though the loss of Mendel was the biggest hurdle to work through during the season, I doubt it made it any easier that they lost an OG season 1 writer in McMahan’s departure.
After Jeff Loveness closed out season 5 with the lore episode of Rickmurai Jack, Albro Lundy (who worked on Vat of Acid with Loveness) took the reins on the continuation for season 6. And he’s been doing the big continuity-focused episodes ever since, writing season 7’s Unmortricken as well as season 8’s The Rick, The Mort, And The Ugly and Hot Rick. Honestly Albro Lundy basically runs canon at this point. I admire him but I also got beef because how do you write Vat of Acid and then portray C-137 as a victim of circumstance who has magically changed his ways? Fuck that boring shit!
On a different note, I would be remiss not to mention Anne Lane and Heather Anne Campbell, who seem to be the only female writers who managed to stick around and write more than 1 episode for the series. All those new female writers in season 3? You can bet your asses they’re gone! The simple fact that a woman can survive in the writers room now is a significant improvement.
Lane handled Beth-centric episodes from seasons 4 to 6 and Campbell wrote season 8’s episode about child Beth. My favorite among them? Lane’s Bethic Twinstinct. Perfect blend of humor, character and perversity that Rick and Morty is known for. Is Lane still around? No idea. For all I know she wrote clone lesbian sex and Morty crying about getting his dick chopped off and then bounced. But if we’re counting all the episodes they wrote so far and not just the Beth ones, Campbell’s Fear No Mort is of course the winner.
But essentially Rick and Morty is a story of the original vision of a show changing over time because the working conditions were too fucked up and toxic to be sustainable. So basically everything collapsed, writers fled or took other jobs, and the newcomers had to figure out how to make something out of it. And I really don’t have an issue with that! It’s just off-putting when there’s a real disconnect between the old and the new, to the point where it feels almost like a retcon or an inconceivable reframing of what came before.
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