Is this the stupidest Rick And Morty episode ever?
There's a 2001: A Space Odyssey reference, which is not a good sign
TV Reviews Rick and Morty
“Rickdependence Spray” is the dumbest episode of Rick And Morty I’ve seen, and since I’ve seen every episode of the show, well, you do the math. It’s so dumb that I spent about ten minutes assuming it was building to some kind of “Vat of Acid Episode” style meta joke; that, in the last minute or so, Rick would pull back the curtain to reveal this was all part of yet another sadistic game to teach Morty a valuable lesson about not lying to his grandfather. But then, I went on the same journey with last week’s episode, and at a certain point, you realize that there’s not going to be another twist. That this is very much a story about Morty’s enhanced sperm terrorizing the planet; Rick fucking a CHUD (Cannibalistic Horse Underground Dweller) princess; Summer having one of her eggs removed and blown up to gigantic size; and one of Morty’s enhanced sperm successfully impregnating that egg, and turning it into a… heavy sigh… giant incest baby.
Maybe there’s a second layer here—but wait, I said that last week, didn’t I? Fuck it. This is dumb. It is very dumb. It is aggressively dumb. There are jokes in here that Family Guy, at its absolute shittiest, wouldn’t touch; and while sure, that’s probably because the Fox censors only let that show get away with so much, it’s still galling to see Rick And Morty, which usually does a great job at being an extremely smart kind of stupid (or stupid kind of smart) do something so half-assed. The episode commits to the bit, I’ll give them that. They dig down until they hit a bedrock of gross inanity, and then they keep on going. There are a few moments of self-awareness, a few winks at the audience that yes, everyone involved knew exactly what they were doing, but I’m not sure the winks were enough. Especially in the last five minutes or so, when it stopped trying to even be inventive in its bullshit and just did the same shtick that pretty much every adult cartoon has been doing for the past ten years—see, it’s a big asinine climax spetacle, but it’s ironic. Or something.
We’re five seasons in at this point, and if I ever need to point to an example of the definition of coasting, “Spray” is it. Is it funny? I laughed a few times—more than enough time to keep this from being an absolute disaster. And I suppose there’s some charm in the show shrugging its shoulders and deciding to just not give a shit for the week; I’m not sure they’ve earned it, exactly (we may be five seasons in, but this, what, the 44th episode of the run? That’s awful early to start resting on the laurels), but I get it, work is hard, stupidity is forever, and if you had a chance to produce a half hour of television devoted to a horney pubescents’ mutated killer sperm, why the hell wouldn’t you. Good taste and comedy instincts aside, it reads like one of those bucket list entries you lord over everyone else at the retirement home.
That doesn’t necessarily make it a fun viewing experience for those of us stuck at home, though. Again: there are some good jokes. The sheer outlandishness of the premise is worth a few points at least, and watching Morty desperately cover his tracks as the situation gets increasingly worse (and as Rick begs him to cover for him, since Rick doesn’t initially know the truth and assumes he fucked up some science on that big barrel of “100% Horse Semen”) is funny, in a familiar but enjoyable kind of way. There’s a weird self-awareness throughout the episode, like watching the long form of one of those “Interdimensional Cable” sketches—like you can almost feel the writers/actors/animators watching you with sick grin, nodding along. Yes, we know this is dumb as balls. Yes, we’re pretty surprised we got away with it. Isn’t that crazy.
But that’s not really enough. The thing about trying to do an aggressively dumb episode is that you need to escalate so that all the stupidity just gets to be so much you can’t help but laugh at it. “Spray” is clearly trying to accomplish that here, with the third act involving Rick learning he fathered a child with the CHUD princess… Poneta, and the wild battle in Las Vegas as the army, the CHUDs, and everyone else (including Cirque Du Soleil performers and the Amazing Jonathan) fight off Morty’s giant sperm, but there’s a certain emptiness to it all that’s impossible to completely shake. Rick And Morty was never going to be able to lean on the novelty of its particular vision forever, but the show has still managed to offer up smart concepts and good character writing even when we know more or less what to expect. This feels like someone writing a parody of a show that’s already only a half a step away from self-satire, and the results are passable, but entirely forgettable.
There’s a joke of a theme, involving Kathy Ireland (not actually her voice) and the death of a marine who looks like a badass but absolutely isn’t, but even the novelty of making a joke about how stupidity of the theme feels staid. The Simpsons pulled this shtick ages ago, and while they doesn’t mean it’s off limits, there’s nothing fresh about doing a ridiculous story and then shrugging your shoulders at the end of it. It’s that old problem with lampshading in art: just because you have someone point out how bad a thing is in the context of the fiction doesn’t actually make it less bad.
And hell, I didn’t need a theme, I just needed a script that didn’t assume “random and gross” was also always funny. This is bordering on Assy McGee territory, and the thing about Assy is, those episodes were only 11 minutes long. “Spray” has isolated moments of cleverness, but more than anything, it feels like where Rick And Morty is going to end up once the ideas run dry. Not the worst show on the air, as the cast and artists and writers are too talented, but one that goes through the motions without any effort, because they know that’s probably going to be enough. It’s more or less how last week felt too, right down to the “well, let’s push boundaries of good taste because that’s what this show is all about, right?” vibes. The only reason this week is any better to me is because at no point did anyone pretend I was supposed to feel anything about any of this.
I mean, we also got to hear Keith David saying, “Jesus, how big are space dicks?” That was pretty funny. I definitely snickered at that one.
Stray observations
- Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way, but the joke never really lands or matters.
- Didn’t really talk about the horse-sperm extracting machine that started all of this, but then, what the hell am I supposed to say? It does seem a bit excessive even for Morty; you’d think someone who’d owned their own sex robot (and then had to deal with the child that sex robot produced) would be little more gunshy about sticking his dick into machines, but hey, I haven’t been a teenager for a couple decades, maybe I’ve forgotten what it’s like.
- “This is out there, even for us.” “They can hear you, Morty.”
- Christina Ricci was in this, apparently.
- Really can’t overstate how bad that post-credits gag was. Just really unfunny and indifferent.
284 Comments
Can someone explain the Nancy Reagan joke? I don’t know at exactly what level of irony to take it.
Do I have to?
I think what he’s asking here is whether it’s supposed to be straightr, like nancy didnt get credit for her contributions, or absurd like Nancy obviously didnt do anything.
Frankly I’m too young to know.
Yeah do teenagers in 2021 make a lot of Nancy Reagan references? I mean, I live in Canada but I bet my teen and early 20s kids barely know who she is.
Summer making a joke about Nancy Reagan was screaming REALLY loud “This is written by a 50-year-old man”.
Eh, a fair amount of teens/Gen Z are getting more aware of the shit-show that was the 1980s backlash to the ‘60s and ‘70s. TV helps with the ‘back to the ‘80s’ spate of shows.
I think kids today know now how bad Reagan was at a higher level than people my age. I was born in the late 80’s so all we got as kids was how Reagan defeated the commies and reinvigorated America after the 60’s and 70’s. It took a few recessions and noticing a 30 year dive in quality of life after the pot began to boil for my generation. Gen Z never got lulled by 90’s sugar highs.
She did a lot of presidenting for him when he was demented but honestly I would have chosen Calvin Coolidge’s wife instead considering Nancy is pretty famous for getting policies in place and very active and front and center when it came to programs like the War Against Drugs. Honestly Nancy having control when he had dementia just seemed like another power move for her. I think modern teens would probably be even more anti Nancy Reagan since everything I’ve seen that discusses her in the context of like Black Lives Matter etc talks about how racist she was
Bart: Hey, I know it wasn’t great, but what right do you have to complain?Comic Book Guy: As a loyal viewer, I feel they owe me.Bart: What? They’ve given you thousands of hours of entertainment for free. What could they possibly owe you? I mean, if anything, you owe them!Comic Book Guy: …..Worst episode ever.
That scene always rubbed me the wrong way, not least because Simpsons writers are paid very well. Why act like it’s charity?
I feel like the tone of this review seems to warrant a lower score than B-
R&M seems to be one of those shows that the AV Club is, for some reason, legally not allowed to give lower than a B-range grade no matter how harshly they criticize it. Just look at the Westworld reviews that went, “This episode went nowhere, meandered aimlessly, and had an underwhelming payoff to this character’s arc. Grade: B+” Meanwhile, some other shows get heaps of praise for the same grade. Yes, yes, the grades are stupid and arbitrary and I should focus more on the actual text in the review the author wrote and blah blah blah I can’t hear you…
AA Dowd blows the site’s curve by refusing to risk grading too highly, everyone else has to overestimate to recalibrate.
My guess is they’re sucking the show’s dick so much so that Harmon doesn’t turn up at their offices and…well, just be Harmon.
They’re just frightened of angering the sichuan sauce crowd.
That seriously turned me off from saying I watch Rick & Morty to…just keeping it on the low down. With everyone. Probably a good thing, since the show’s rapidly moving from deconstructing sci-fi/fantasy tropes and themes to deconstructing itself.
Saaame. Some of my favorite episodes of TV are R&M, and yet if someone asks me what I’m watching, it won’t come up unless I know them really well.
Have you had to deal with Rick and Morty fans when you insult their precious?
“The jokes were bad, the plot was infantile, and the whole thing seems half-assed. It’s got a little something for everyone. 9.8”
I understand all of your criticisms, some of which are definitely warranted, but it’s weird the AV Club got somebody to review a show that the writer clearly does not like.
“This is objectively the worst piece of media in human history. B minus.”
Seriously Zack, if you don’t have the stomach to dip into D territory, you could at least have stretched down to a C.
i get it, if you give like a c-range or d-range review you risk the writers bitching about it and the network not doing nice interviews. wish it weren’t so.
Sounds like a solid D to me…
HE’S LIKE THE ANTI-A. A. DOWD!“This is the greatest, most perfect example of the cinematics arts ever commited to celluloid. C+.”
“And the star also sat down for a very nice, warm, and complimentary interview with us this week [link]. Now on to the review!”C
I kinda respect that more.
That sounds about right. Most films are neither the worst thing ever or the best thing ever.
Rick and Morty fanboys would probably put out a hit on Zack if he gave it a C
Sure it sucks, but it’s not like that can just come along and cancel out all of that fanboydom.
I just watched a trailer for Fuckboy Island so I’m guessing the worst Rick and Morty is still better than at least 80% of what’s on right now.
Imagine having the opportunity to professionally review a 30 minute jizz joke and NOT giving it a D.
Zack, blink twice if the R&M creators are holding your children hostage
I’m starting to think that these reviews are themselves a meta joke, where the letter grade has nothing to do with the actual text of the article.
Well if this isnt AV club in a nutshell. Five bags of popcorn and a soda
Ooh, the dreaded B-. This must be *really* bad.
Truly awful. I didn’t think they could top last week in that regard, but they found a way! Funny forgives a lot but to be painfully unfunny and dumb and then have the gall to introduce the incestuous offspring of Morty and Summer! I am disgusted.
Yeah, these last two were troublingly bad.
One of the strengths of Rick and Morty is it’s story structure. Like a lot of people might not have connected emotionally to that one but it had structure. It took a single concept, did enough engaging twists and turns to keep us (at least me) interested.
Now it just feels like they half ass a bunch of concepts that aren’t all that related to one another.
Now it just feels like they half ass a bunch of concepts that aren’t all that related to one another.
Rick and Morty has always been like that, if we’re being honest. I think the difference now is that you’re finally tired of it.
I don’t know if the burden of fulfilling that massive 70 episode order is wearing on the show’s crew or if they’re simply out of creative gas, but this show has rapidly turning into basically every other mediocre edgy adult cartoon: a bland assortment of time-filling parodies and shock humor which doesn’t seem to care about itself.
I’m an apologist for the previous episode but I have to admit that Zack and the consensus are basically right about this one. It is probably the dumbest episode of R and M I’ve ever seen, not the worst maybe (that’s probably the dragon one) but the dumbest: just unrelentingly juvenile and gross and stupid without anything going on with the characterizations or some clever spin or meta comment to make it work. The sperm and the CHUDs are both like parodies of something you’d have in a Rick and Morty episode, or usually something that would be a one off quick joke at most. Instead here they are the legitimate subjects of a full episode, which is absurd and not in a fun way
The dragon one is funnier if you’ve read Anne McCaffrey’s books.
A lot of people including me, liked the last episode. AV club tends to be more critical then most, but if you look at commentd and reviews for the last episode, people generally enjoyed it.
This was… dumb. I can kind of get the sense of why they thought it was funny… it’s like one of those jokes you have with your friends where it just keeps getting more ridiculous and you’re laughing at how far you’ve taken it. But to people who aren’t on you wave length, you just sound excessively stupid.
“I am disgusted.”I mean, isn’t that the whole point of this damned show?
It is, in fact, not.
No..
Being disgusted? No, why would it be?There are easier ways of experiencing disgust, I assure you.
all i have to do is look under my fingernails, yes.
*laughs and chuckles*
Eh, THIS is where you draw the line? Ho him.
the incestuous offspring of Morty and SummerHarmon and Roiland are testing the waters for the future episode where Morty and Summer will hook up as a “parody” of Rule 34.
Are you forgetting that time Rick, Summer, and Morty were all telepathically linked with a bunch of slut dragons and flew around as a magical Voltron of orgasmic bliss?
the season finale that leaked by accident is even worse than this one.
You have to understand my skepticism about how that would even be possible… Do they cannibalize each other or something!?
I don’t see season five Morty being all that ashamed of using the horse extractor. The very premise of this ep is flawed
Rick: “I’ve just got to confirm this is really horse DNA so I can use it to make a weapon for killing horse-people.”Morty: “No, don’t bother testing it! Even though it sounds like not doing so might get me killed!”Rick: “For some reason I will listen to you even though I never do!”Morty: “This definitely won’t come back to haunt me even though it always does!”
It touched horse peen, no matter what else in the universe Morty has used to get off he’s not going to easily cop to mechanical/adjacent beastiality.
Even to Rick, who literally fucked a horse?
Especially to Rick, who fucked a *living real life humanoid female horse*.
Just seems to me Rick wouldn’t bat an eye and Morty would’ve known that.
I 100% felt the same way. Felt like season 1 Morty.
I think 14 year old boys still have some deep shame about jacking off, even if they do it all the time, and this isn’t even regular jacking off it’s secretly jacking off into a piece of veterinary equipment meant for horses which is pretty damn weird even for Rick and Morty. On top of that he would (rightly) get in trouble with his Mom for defiling equipment at her workplace. His motivation to keep it a secret was understandable to me
“This episode was terrible. It sucked. Actually…B minus, it was okay.”
It worked for me. I think the premise of Morty doing something SO shameful, that he’d be willing to let it go WAY too far rather than admit it was a good well of humor, and by golly, they found that “something.” The sperm were too abstract to be gross-out for me, and I was loving every minute of the stupidity. But then I’m the kind of person that prefers “Oprah’s Vagina” style South Park to the episodes that try to have profound satire behind it.
What’s not to get about the summer and Beth bit? It was just commentary about men stealing women’s ideas. The line “you became a woman today,” was actually quite clever. It was just an underdeveloped subplot in the whole random mess.
Is Zack afraid to score R&M episodes lower than B for some reason?
I think the meta joke that Rick and Morty is telling now is that boy, isn’t it a stupid idea to order 70 episodes of a show all at once? We may not laugh at the episodes anymore, but at least Roiland and Harmon are laughing every day.
i’ve suspected that we were going to veer into this territory eventually, especially with who Dan Harmon is as a person.I dont mean that in a “Dan Harmon is a piece of shit” way, I mean it in a “If someone gave him gobs of money and said make 70 episodes of a cartoon he’d go a little crazy” way.
I dont mean that in a “Dan Harmon is a piece of shit” wayAlthough…
Wait, hold on. This isn’t a “Dan Harmon going crazy” episode. This is a “Dan Harmon getting lazy” episode.The problem with this episode isn’t that the premise is dumb, or that it’s gross. I mean, it is both, but that’s not a dealbreaker when it comes to Rick and Morty. The problem is that it’s really, really poorly written. It’s so bad that I could have written it and then, even grading it on a curve where I’m not a writer of animated TV comedies, I would have realized in the cold light of day that it’s a piece of shit and deleted it.
Did they get sober or something?
“Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way, but the joke never really lands or matters.”Because they never earned this and it’s somewhat galling that they seem to believe they have.Idk what to say about this shitstain.
– From a plot standpoint, this wasn’t a strong episode. Even the animation felt a bit off. Why would “Sticky” be the only sperm to recognize Morty and decide not to harm him? Why does “Sticky” have a single eye and two tails? Why does the Sperm Queen have two eyes and the ability to speak? Why do none of the other sperm share these traits? Why does the President’s glass never actually fill up as Jerry pours water? It’s pretty clear they were going for a joke fest here rather than a solid story.- That said, the jokes really worked for me, to the point that I can honestly forgive the loose story. Taking bets on the Marines? Excellent. Everyone going out of their way to be misogynistic, especially in light of a threat that seems like the literal antithesis of Morty’s “Bechdel Test” fantasy from the story train? Love it. Kathy Ireland and the thong? Everything here is just so absurd that I couldn’t help busting out laughing, and I think that’s what sells it more than anything.- Robe Morty drinks orange juice on the roof to rehydrate. If nothing else, when it comes to sticking his dick in machines, the boy has consistency.- I spotted at least three “Return of the Jedi” homages: Rick in seminal carbonite (“Han-Job Solo,” nice), Rick using Morty’s pants to choke out the Sperm Queen Jabba-style, and Beth/Summer racing on sperm like Luke and Leia on the speeders on Endor. Were there any others?- “Okay, let’s go see this latest piece of Marvel shit you kids are jizzing over.” -Beth, apparently keenly aware of when this episode was going to premiere.- Four episodes into the season and none of the clips from the opening have made it into a show yet. Normally the first one sneaks in around episode 3 or 4, but nothing so far.- Again with weird bleeping. When the family is escaping and Morty runs out of laser ammo, he literally says “shit” like, four times in a row, with half of them get bleeped and half not. There are other examples, but it’s getting really hard to figure out the rules here. Almost makes me want to just wait until the episodes are on HBOMax uncensored. Almost.- President: Morty, you’ve always been a straight shooter.
Morty: YOU CAN’T PROVE THAT! Wait, what? Oh, oh, yeah, right.- The Grand Canyon: America’s G-Spot!- While I’d love to hear more pitches, my current vote for the mutant sperm name is “Cumpelstiltskins.”- “No fear, no humility, ZERO CHANCE OF CONSEQUENCES!” If that’s not proof that we’re just dicking around this week, I don’t know what is.- I think we all need an episode devoted to differentiating between catapults and trebuchets. I think technically trebuchets are a type of catapult, so maybe it’s a rhombus/square dynamic.- “Oh no, I can’t reach that!” -Blazen, hilariously ready for death.- “This is the first time I’ve ever regretted being taken alive.” Rick has a regret?- Rick: Morty, you nasty little world-ending pervert!
Morty: I’m sorry!
Rick: What was it like?
Morty (sobbing): Fantastic!- CHUD King: I have an heir.
Rick: I have a substance abuse problem.- Summer: Mom, I promise to use condoms, even when it’s butt stuff.
Beth: Okay, we have a LOT to talk about tonight.
Me: I mean, it’d still be an effective protection against STDs, right?- “I love kissing those big old horse teeth. It’s like licking tile.” And Rick called Morty nasty…
Trebuchets are absolutely a form of catapult and specifically a counter-balanced one that didn’t rely on tension from a form of compression.Also, as a woman who likes anal….you absolutely, 100% AT ALL TIMES should wear a condom when doing so. You can clean back there, do multiple enemas but under no circumstances should you stick your own biological parts into that orifice unprotected. This is how you get awful infections that aren’t necessarily a traditional STI (but by default is by the act….). Wrap it up if you like it and need to go back there. If not just for the man but for the women since inevitably you’ll use that same piece in the normal place and can get us both sick.
A trebuchet involves an arm that is a flexible board with a rope at the end and a net or sack with the projectile at the end of the rope. the tension in the arm provides a lot of the force moving the projectile.A trebuchet is more complex than a standard catapult and the physics are much harder to express
That was rather informative.
I’ve explained this to guys multiple times. I’ve got an IUD and I’m ok with unprotected sex if my partner is clean and I know it (if you’re not in a committed relationship, get tested regularly, don’t be that person). But they need to protect themselves and us. I’m seeing somebody now who’s amazed I’m into it and they’re more than happy to wrap it up for us to have that kind of play.
yeah, this is pretty much how i felt. the story was dumb, but it had a lot of good indivdual jokes. My favorite had to be just Morty’s expression when he saw the machine.
It reminded me of the Jack Black musical skit from “Mr. Show”
I think we all need an episode devoted to differentiating between catapults and trebuchets.Thankfully trebuchets are a sub-category of catapult, as are onagers. Here’s a simple mnemonic device to tell the difference between a trebuchet and an onager:If torsion makes it go, that’s an onager, bro. If it’s got a counterweight, that’s a trebuchet, mate.
i hated this episode of rick and morty, and i hated this review…
but at least you taught me something valuable.
haha the “i have a substance abuse problem” was a particularly good line read
You *especially* should be using condoms when it’s butt stuff.
– “Okay, let’s go see this latest piece of Marvel shit you kids are jizzing over.” -Beth, apparently keenly aware of when this episode was going to premiere.
Given Disney+ and their ‘episode at a stretch’ there were many he could’ve been jizzing over, though this was well-timed.’
Uhhh…not exactly.Mom! We’re gonna miss the movie!
Mostly I’m just surprised that this was the first of the episodes 37,000 jizz jokes.
All fairness I’m feeling some sort of delayed gratification BDSM going on with not getting Disney+ already so… kinda apt
“I love kissing those big old horse teeth. It’s like licking tile.” Carnac the Magnificent: What are things John Elway’s wife said on their honeymoon?!?
HIYO!
HI-YO!
Yeah I kind of liked the fact it was just a dumb, standalone episode. I also don’t think the rampant misogyny was being played for “Ha ha” funny but more as biting satire.
It felt like they were shoving that in there to give the episode some semblance of a theme, but it was too all-over-the-place to really arrive at one. It just felt like a thing that kept happening because the writers decided to commit to it.
That said, “You became a woman today” is a great line.
I liked that the misogyny didn’t go anywhere. I hate the cliché were the woman always takes revenge (usually by showing she is 100000% more capable at the thing the dude was bragging about)Leaving out the revenge might make people uneasy, because it illustrates that misogyny is inherently bad instead of cutesy foreplay for a few rounds of metaphorical cock&ball-torture
Luckily, this episode isn’t a documentary.
I swear last week’s episode was full of unbleeped “fucks” that kind of surprised me.
It was the first episode of the season for me, totally uncensored. Every one after has been.
Maybe it was because last week’s episode was so violently the Worst Episode Ever™ I had less problems with this one just being dumb fun. I’ve just made peace with this being a dumb show now I guess? In any case Solar Opposites is way better than the last two seasons of R&M
Solar Opposites is a great tuned-down version of Rick&Morty, and with a lot more internal consistency
Sticky seems to be a defective sperm. But his 2 tails are only used to identify him when there’s so much potential for dark jokes about him being stupid or psychotic and creating a deformed baby (come to think of it: why wasn’t incest-baby deformed. That seems like an obvious story-direction even if it’s not how actual incest-babies work)
Pretty much every line you’ve posted here had me cackling like an idiot. From a plot standpoint, this episode was rough — at least Planetina gave us some emotional beats and developed Morty’s relationship with his mother. But, from a pure comedy standpoint, this episode was firing on all cylinders.
I get what you’re saying, but…it still felt lazy to me. Coming up with a bunch of jokes can be funny, but it felt a bit juvenile and, sort of like the Family Guy Peter knee injury gag, just…got kind of old. Individually, those jokes you mentioned were funny, and Morty’s reaction over the horse sperm extractor was fantastic. Over the course of the episode, though? It all just got a bit fatiguing.
The bleeping has always been kind of sporadic. It has to do with the number of curses they’re allowed (which depends on the outlet, I guess) and which ones they think are funny to hear v. funny to bleep.I’m recalling this from a half-remembered interview with Harmon from more than a year ago, so I might have the details wrong. But something like that.
“This review kind of reminds me of my ex-girlfriend: “I love you! You’re my soul-mate!” […5 minutes later…] “I hate you! You suck! Die, Die, Die!”Rinse, repeat.
I can’t call this one awful because the dragon sex episode still exists. Until they can find a way to remove that from the timeline, it will always be the gold standard of awful Rick & Morty.
This was supremely silly, but not so dumb as to be actually bad. I’ve seen people losing their minds over how gross this is, and really, it’s just a weird concept of sentient sperm attempting to take over the planet stopped by an army of underground horse people. And that’s a sentence I really just typed out. And the end tag was dumb, but “Timeless Puppet Jerry” is a very high bar. Could take them a good while to reach that again.
“Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way, but the joke never really lands or matters.”
Because it’s never mattered up until now. Both Summer and Beth (especially Beth) have shown themselves to be incredibly capable people who can keep up with anyone. Suddenly they’re ‘women who don’t get listened to’ or ‘women with good ideas that get stolen by all the men’ and that doesn’t ring true for the viewer from what we know of these characters or even this universe.
My issue is killer sperm due to weird pervert stuff was done in an Anthology film called Chill-a-rama that is fairly recent. This wasn’t good enough to make me forget that sketch.
I’ve seen people losing their minds over how gross thisWhat gets me is how tame it ultimately seemed. Like, jerking-off-into-a-sock jokes are 100 years old. There are no points for edginess left in this topic, yet Rick and Morty just keeps going back to this well. It’s boring.
Yeah I don’t get it, it’s like someone behind the episode thinks that the fact that teenagers masturbate is the funniest thing ever, when it was maybe a funny observation for all of us for a year at best when we all go through puberty. It’d be one thing if that was what Rick and Morty was supposed to be targeted at (don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware that plenty of pre teens and teens watch Rick and Morty), but in general, the series is aiming for a somewhat older demographic. So an episode like this feels like it’s coming from someone who doesn’t even properly understand who the series is for. And considering the writer of this episode hasn’t written any others, I’m inclined to believe that’s exactly what happened here.
someone behind the episode thinks that the fact that teenagers masturbate is the funniest thing everAgree 100%. I said that to myself as I was watching, “This must’ve killed in the writer’s room and they just ran with it” because I found the sperm joke had exponentially diminished laugh returns. I kept waiting for the twist, like the next layer of the joke… but that never came (heh).I also felt like Morty was beyond this. It felt like a season 1 episode… scared, embarrassed Morty. This didn’t feel like the Morty we saw towards the end of last season/start of this one.
i think the incest part is the gross part they’re upset about.
I don’t know. Those jokes weren’t pushing the envelope of even 25 years ago, since there wasn’t the hint of actual incest which would offend our sensibilities, it was just some scifi inconvenience.90s sitcoms actually went further with the ol’ “accidentally made out with your cousin at a party” gag (which is also a lazy attempt to shock). Here, Morty and Summer really had nothing to do with it.
I think I may like the awful dragon episode slightly more than whatever this was.
I still think the past couple of episodes have been funnier than mid-4th season Rick and Morty. But much dumber.
At least the dragon episode had the cat and Jerry B story and started off with an interesting premise. Honestly the biggest annoyance of that episode for me is how many times it seems like there’s going to be a fun idea explored only for it to go middle-of-the-road.
I can’t call this one awful because the dragon sex episode still exists. Until they can find a way to remove that from the timeline, it will always be the gold standard of awful Rick & Morty.At least that episode has a good B story. This killer sperm one doesn’t…
The only things I can think of, is either the pandemic has really taken its toll on production, or Dan Harmon has lost all creative interest in the show and is just coasting until his contract is up or the show is canceled.
Whoa I did not expect this type of reaction. I thought it had some great laughs and was just the right amount of stupid and fun.
People like Rick and Morty to make them feel good about their intellect so when an episode is “dumb” they take it as an affront to their perceived levels of intelligence.
Yah, it was fine. I enjoyed it well enough. I guess if you’re looking for everything to be a masterpiece, you’re gonna be let down. But there wasn’t anything that made me cringe or question why am I wasting time on this.
The humor just wasn’t there for me, was less funny then that terrible dragon episode last season.
My problem was that this was the rare one where it was just too stupid and gross and not fun enough. But, even though I agree with the consensus about this ep, I have some sympathy for what you’re saying. It was a subpar episode but it wasn’t that subpar. There will still some good jokes and moments. I think people are making too much of it
This seemed like a Drawn Together episode, not goddamn Rick & Morty
The most damning but truthful critique.
daaaaamn
This guy gets it!
Let’s not get crazy!
I was not into this episode at all; you nailed it right there.
Nail on the head.
Now that you mention it, Drawn Together had an episode about giant sperm, too. If you’re going to steal, steal from the worst!
Bagina?
In a sense of grossness definitely, also they literally did a giant incest baby episode once. I do wonder what Drawn Together would’ve done with shows like Hoarders, Honey Boo Boo, Jersey Shore and 600 lb life. But some things should stay in 2006.
I haven’t thought about that show in years but this is dead on.
I think it feels like early South Park. And I’m ok with that.
If Drawn Together had a budget. Or at least one that didn’t all go to hookers and blow.
Why is a 2001 reference inherently a bad sign though? It’s a sci-fi show, referencing one of the most iconic and beloved sci-fi movies of all time is hardly something to scoff at, not in and of itself at least.
I didnt think it was a bad sign, but that particular joke did fall flet just becaue you knew a space odyssey reference was coming, and the giant baby being a symbol of an astronaut’s regret then eating him… just didnt work for me.
This is also heavily, heavily mined territory. I can recall which episdoe, but I remember a “Bart Simpson” as the space baby clip. Granted, this is an example of “Simpsons did it” but i feel that particular scene has been parodied in like every cartoon and some live shows.
(Also- I never really got the original from the movie. Space Odyssesy seems to be about this ship thats going to Mars to research some obelisks, and the AI thats in charge of the mission decides its humans are detriments to the mission. I have seen the movie and am aware of the space baby at the end, but I have no idea what’s going on there, how it connects to the rest of the movie, or what it’s supposed to symbolize. While of course I could look it up, this being the AV club, could someone finally explain to me what that was all about?)
This is also heavily, heavily mined territory. I can recall which episdoe, but I remember a “Bart Simpson” as the space baby clip. Granted, this is an example of “Simpsons did it” but i feel that particular scene has been parodied in like every cartoon and some live shows.
“Deep Space Homer”. Bart writes “Hero” on the back of Homer’s head, then throws his Sharpie in the air like the caveman from 2001. The camera follows the Sharpie up, once it space it becomes the Fox satellite which comes back down and hits Star Child Homer on the head.
Written by the great David Mirkin himself, The Simpsons’ best showrunner ever.
You’ve seen 2001: Space Odyssey? Nawp, not buying that. At NO point in that movie do they go to or have anything to do with Mars so maybe you go back and rewatch and we all can talk later.
Sure. The point of the whole thing with HAL is that he’s as close as humans could come to creating a new type of sentient life and we dramatically screwed it up. The monoliths are tools from some unknown source that, at the beginning and the end, push humanity into new stages of evolution (the space baby is Dave as a new form of human life). It’s essentially an argument that humans should have a greater sense of humility in our sense of our place in the universe. (Incidentally, it’s Jupiter, not Mars.)
The monoliths appear at key points in man’s evolution (there’s some debate about them being the ones guiding man’s evolution, but I don’t buy that). HAL kills the crew because he was the only one who knew the true scope of the mission and had to lie to the crew to cover for it. He didn’t like lying to the crew and thought the best way to NOT lie to them would be to get rid of them. Bowman disconnects HAL, and in exploring the area around Jupiter, stumbles upon another monolith. This monolith it the doorway to man’s next evolutionary state. Wakes up in a luxury hotel room where time makes no sense (because it’s all happening at the same time), and eventually is reborn as “the starchild” to usher in a new age of man.
“I have seen the movie and am aware of the space baby at the end, but I have no idea what’s going on there, how it connects to the rest of the movie, or what it’s supposed to symbolize.”
It was actually a teaser for a then-upcoming Marvel project.
Just kidding. (Kind of.)
Well, it’s been done to death. And it’s such an iconic movie that it’s nigh impossible to make a 2001 reference that doesn’t seem lazy.
I will agree that many times this has been done were lazy and pointless. And I actually do agree that in this episode, it did not work very well at all.However, I completely disagree with the notion that laziness is inherent to any 2001 references. If it’s inspired, it’s inspired. There is no limit on that. The works of Shakespeare are still being referenced all the time, aren’t they? More than anything else, actually. And sometimes, those references can still be poignant and/or enlightening. Other times, not so much. It really depends.
Sure, but Shakespeare’s works are so expansive, the range of potential references is big and thus stays fresh longer. And even then, if you’re going to make a “wherefore art thou, Romeo?” joke, it’s going to be hard to make it land.
visual shortcuts aren’t lazy. One cultural touchstone visual conveys a shared experience or meaning that can forego dialogue and exposition. Even Derpa, who evidently doesn’t know shit about Space Odyssey, got a semblance of the reference. Lazy or just helping the LoFi mouth breathing viewers feel included?
Hey, 2001 was 20 years ago now! And still no giant space baby?
It’s just been done So. Many. Times. In any vaguely space-related context, 2001 is the most irritatingly obvious thing to reference. Yes, we get it. You’re making a thing about space and you’re referencing a famous movie about space that had the word “space” in the title. That movie came out 52 years ago. Referencing it stopped being clever or original a long time ago.Forgive my snark – I have a migraine today – but at this point, it actually seems more unexpected and subversive to deliberately not do a 2001 reference when you have the obvious opportunity to do one.
Reads review, see’s B- score. Scratches head in confusion.
This was a bad episode, no laugh out loud moments outside of the cold open (which was already spoiled in the ads at that). I wouldn’t be surprised if the same writer(s) behind last season’s dragon episode was behind this episode. It had the same awful pacing issues, the feeling of someone that doesn’t quite understand the series but thinks that they totally get it, behind the humor, and what felt like all around dumbed down 1-note characters. If it is the same writer as that other terrible episode, fire them already. Episodes like this drag the series down, this may indeed now be what I consider to be the worst episode of the season yet.
This episode was written by Nick Rutherford, who hasn’t written any other episodes so far.The dragon episode was written by Jeff Loveness, who also wrote the Story Train episode, the Glorzo facehugger episode, the Mr. Nimbus episode that opened this season, and co-wrote the Vat of Acid episode.
I’m shocked to learn Jeff was behind some of the best episodes and that awful awful dragon episode. This guy though, never let him write another episode, he blew it.
Hi, so television episodes are usually written by committee in a writer’s room. The people who get credited on individual episodes aren’t always to blame for the episode’s most controversial moments or even its story. It’s honestly kind of a crap shoot. It could very well be that someone, Harmon or Rutherford or Roiland or whoever, had an idea for dragon soul orgies and the whole group decided to write an episode around it, and Jeff Loveness wrote 51% of the script based off someone else’s outline. Similarly, Nick Rutherford isn’t to blame for every line, or even the general story premise of this episode. Odds are a bunch of people pitched ideas, this one got chosen by Harmon and his top writing staff, and Rutherford and a few others got assigned to complete the script, and so Rutherford got the credit.
Yes I understand how a writer’s room works. Rutherford takes the bulk of the blame as he likely wrote the initial script and then the writer’s room punched it up. So again, I say, drop him, or at least never let him take the lead on a script again. He is terrible.
Meant to say worst of the series yet.
I do agree that this episode was dumb. Really, really fucking dumb.
But ya know what? This might be my favorite episode of the season yet. I actually laughed at a bunch of the jokes, though I don’t quite understand how one of Morty’s sperm turned female.
That being said, I do agree that the jokes about the men ignoring Summer and Beth felt out of place, despite this being an entire episode dedicated to hunting mutant giant sperm.
R &m seems like an incredibly divisive show. People’s reactions to new episodes seem to vary greatly. For me this was kind of meh, but occassionally funny although the weakest episode of the season. The only thing everyone seems to agree on was that the Dragon episode sucked.
There’s also a product of incresasing expectations. Take a first season “classic” episode like “LawnMower Dog” I rewatched that the other day, and I get the feeling that if that had aired as a new episode, people here would say it was Rick and Morty jumping the shark or whatever.
People with a critical mindset are often looking for a show that has impressed them to not only be as good, but to perpetually raise the bar.
When you think about ut, that’s very few shows that have come close to this throughout their run.
The Sopranos is an example; probably Breaking Bad from what I’ve heardalthough I have only seen a few episodes.
As far as cartoons- maybe Home Movies?
Here to torpedo your theory I’ll say that I thought the dragon episode was funny, if somehow even more over-the-top than usual for this show.
I honestly thought it was one of the funniest episodes of the show.My theory is that the cable TV censorship harmed the reception of the episode. I saw the uncensored version and loved it, but I saw clips of the uncensored version and thought it was obnoxious. Contrary to what some people claim, it’s not always funnier to bleep things, especially when half the dialogue is bleeped.Also, I have observed that a lot of people (Americans, probably) have a knee-jerk aversion to any kind of sex-based humor. Whenever R&M (or any show) has a substantial amount of sex humor, a ton of people crawl out of the woodwork to tell you how crude, disgusting, and dumb it is. Yet I never see anybody criticize the copious amounts of humor centered around violence, even though it can also be crude, disgusting, and dumb. Like, how often do they go back to the “character is suddenly killed in over the top manner” well?
Could be. I also only saw the uncensored version, so that tracks.
my wife loves fantasy books where people soul bond with dragons and stuff, and i thought the dragon episode was funny because it was making fun of something she loves.
your words say “F” , your score say “B-”
have the courage of your convictions, dude
He literally had nothing positive to say about it, and spent like 1000 words bashing it…..for a B-.
The way these things work it’ll probably be one of my favorite episodes.
“I give it my lowest rating ever… 7 thumbs up.” (I get that the letter grades are pretty arbitrary but I couldn’t resist this joke. This is a good review of a very.. meh episode.)
Duke Phillips: “Your job is to rate movies on a scale from ‘Good’ to ‘Excellent’.”Jay Sherman: “What if I don’t like them?”Duke Phillips: “That’s what ‘Good’ is for.”
Zack Handlen gave this episode his “Seal of Approval.” Arf arf!
On a scale of one to Mrs. Pell’s* Fish Sticks, where would this land? *Mrs. Pell’s Fish Sticks: They’re even better raw!
Those pair well with Blotto Brothers Wine, sensibly priced at a dollar a jug.
What luck! As I read this comment, I’ve noticed a French Fry stuck in my beard!
They’re full of country goodness and green peaness!
Yeah, this was pretty dumb. I liked it better then the dragon epiosde, at least it was occassionally funny.
Not sure but I think Christina Ricci played the CHUD princess.
Really can’t overstate how bad that post-credits gag was. Just really unfunny and indifferent.If you’re talking about how the baby just floats over the spaceship and grabs the astronaut and just lightly shakes him, that’s exactly what babies do and it’s hilarious.
Haven’t seen this episode or anything but the premiere yet, but I’ve been expecting a dip in quality ever since Adult Swim ordered 70 episodes (specifically so they could hit that all important 100ep count to sell the show to syndication) and they decided to air the show in 5-episode half seasons every six months instead of the normal 10 episode full seasons every 2 years.
Double the output in half the time is never good for the quality of anything, and I’m willing to bet the show ends as soon as they’ve fulfilled that 70ep commitment.
Aqua Teen Hunger Force has a great 100th episode parodying this precise syndication cash grab.
I thought the premiere was good and the second episode was an all-timer. The third wasn’t great but I liked it more than the consensus. This one was the first one I’d say was outright bad
I wasn’t a fan. There were some funny moments, sure, but overall the episode was gross and weird and not enjoyable.
I kept thinking that at the end it will turn out that the whole situation was meant to let Rick give Morty shit about jizzing in the horse machine, but Morty gave it away before the climactic of the battle.
I keep going back to AV Club, hoping for those glory days.What a garbage site this is now. what a great site it once was.Fuck A.V. club.
I feel like Dan Harmon is tired, and that’s been reflected in the show. Every episode goes through the motions of “lol Rick is an asshole and Morty is awkward” without any payoff. Maybe because they’ve separated the titular characters this season? I dunno, I’ve noticed that a lot of plot threads or jokes this season kow-tow to the neckbeard crowd that unironically worship this show without bothering to go the extra mile to make said crowd’s mindset abhorrent in the context of the universe.
There is a certain level of impaired grossness that some writers and comedians wallow in where you’re like…at some point fondling yourself in public is illegal for a reason. Last week having a grandpa/granddaughter orgyfest, and this week with a 14 year-old’s sperm, as I said the first episode of this show has a giant seed shoved up said 14 year’s old’s patoot so I suppose they set the bar, but it’s still kind of dispiriting if you don’t find gross incestuous things funny. I started watching “I Think You Should Leave” season 2, and while the one in the foam costume was pretty great, I had to turn it off when we got to the haunted house and the guy said “We can say whatever the HELL we want” and Tim says “Jizz.” It just strikes me as lazy? And Rick and Morty wearing “Pu**y Pounders” shirts isn’t funny, it wouldn’t be funny if it were ANYBODY wearing those shirts…I mean the decoy family episode was so good and in such short time I’m kind of depressed about what’s coming. How many “Rick fucks something and Morty fucks something and Summer fucks something” episodes are we going to have?
I agree with all of your points about Rick and Morty, but would argue you somewhat missed the point of the I Think You Should Leave sketch, where the joke is that Tim’s character is incredibly socially awkward and lonely and just trying to connect with new friends in a strange and misguided way
I didn’t miss the point, I didn’t finish watching the sketch. I’m sure I’ll go back to it eventually. You know how Criminal Minds and SVU have a room full of writers with a big white board of every sick friggin thing a body can do to another body? I feel like some comedy shows just go back to that but with pervy stuff. Robinson generally comes very close to this edge (mudpies) but like you note, the fact that his sketches actually cohere mostly keeps him out of the depths. Being disturbing, weird, and gross can be an easy crutch.
Yeah, the joke of that sketch is that his dumb character keeps referencing jizz and stuff because it’s an “adult tour” and “you’re allowed to swear” but the other people in the tour group kick him off the tour for being annoying, you’re supposed to be laughing *at* him for being stupid/annoying, not *with* him.Basically the whole point of that sketch is that just saying the filthiest thing you can think of *isn’t* clever or funny, it’s just obnoxious and irritating to everyone you’re subjecting it to.
But he didn’t deserve to be dressed down! You can’t just change the rules because you don’t like the way he’s doing it!
How many “Rick fucks something and Morty fucks something and Summer fucks something” episodes are we going to have?THIS.
fondling yourself in public is illegal for a reason.Wait- what? It is?
Not in the universe where they have a Ball Fondlers movie. But you get the giant spiders, so …
Ask Pee-Wee Herman.
It genuinely didn’t even strike me that the Pu**y Pounders shirts were supposed to be funny. I mean in retrospect, holy shit they were supposed to be funny, but at the time I just thought they were ultimately a plot device to reveal what Rick and Morty’s plan they were preparing for without outright stating it when Rick turned it into a plan for him and Summer instead. I dunno, Ididn’t mind last week’s episode, it wasn’t hilarious, but the plot was alright I thought. Last night it had nothing though, the plot wasn’t there, and the humor absolutely wasn’t there.
Just pointing out that it looks like there is only one woman in the writer’s room this season…
Yeah, wouldn’t be surprised if junk like pu**y pounders and some of the jokes in this episode came from a woman who thinks they understand what men find funny and is aiming for that. The humor just reeks of that kind of writing. Though I know Nick Rutherford is credited as the writer of this episode, and he hasn’t written another episode before either. So if he’s to blame for the bulk of this episode, I say get rid of him, he clearly does not understand what makes this series great when it is great.
the pu**y pounders shirts feel more to me like the Joe Rogan school of “what? it’s a joke! don’t be PC!” when the joke isn’t funny. We all fantasize about dorklords like Joss Whedon or Dan Harmon being shoegaze Belle and Sebastian fans, but a lot of the time they’re rich dick bros. I remember when Michael Cera said that in real life he’d probably beat George Michael up, I was never a huge AD fan but that comment didn’t exactly endear him to me (for the record, Woody Allen was considered kind of a jock growing up). Adult Swim has had issues in this area before. If there isn’t input from a woman in the room, all of the “Summer fucks everybody” stories get about 100x more gross.Btw, there’s a writer on staff with two episode credits: Vat of Acid and Mortyplicity (the decoy family). That guy gets a contract.
Yeah Vat of Acid and Mortyplicity were solid, definitely keep that guy around. I highly doubt Harmon or Roiland are too blame for these worst episodes, the first 2 seasons were nearly flawless and they didn’t even have a female on the writing staff back then, so I’m not inclined to think that because it’s a sausage fest that we get episodes like this, I’m more inclined to think it just comes down to individual bad writers that just don’t quite understand what makes the show great. Episodes like this just feel like a bad fanfic.
I think I’d be very surprised. This comment is very neckbeard.
“How many ‘… Summer fucks something’ episodes are we going to have?”Have we had even one of those? *edit* forgot about last week’s, but even then they never show her doing anything or say what she does the way they do with rick and morty. the stuff she does just doesn’t track nearly as gross, perverted, or explicit as what the guys do, to me anyway
I think I saw a different episode. The one I saw on demand was about Gobots and was a Goodfellas/Scarface parody. The giant incest baby was in it, but it was completely different.
This episode was equally as bad as the dragon one from last season. Both episodes rely of overtly crude sexual humor, not a coincidence in my opinion…At least the dragon episode at a good B story with Jerry and the talking cat, this one is just bad from start to finish…
This was maybe not just the dumbest episode of Rick and Morty but I think the dumbest episode of TV I’ve ever watched other than maybe like… The Big Bang Theory. At least I actually laughed at this though xD
Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and
Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way, but the joke never really
lands or matters.
I know why. It’s because jokes like this always feel like they were written from the perspective of men who want to assure you that yes, they know all about sexism, but sometimes it’s like, really fun to be sexist, you know?It’s that brand of “have your cake and eat it too” kind of humor that this show does all the time and Community would do only at its very worst.
another horrendous take by the AV Club, once again ignoring the most brilliant points of the show and failing to represent Roiland’s stated intention to get back to some classic rick and morty adventures. There’s nothing about this episode that’s anymore gross, “out there,” inane, or “resting on its laurels” than Anatomy Park or Lawnmower Dog. Ya know, two of the very first episodes of the show that made everyone fall in love with it so much.This is the first episode of s5 that lightens up on the significant character building and gives the audience exactly what they’ve been complaining has been missing from much of s4— fun adventures without too much political bs or character drama. Remember how fans complained that s3 and 4 were sooooo different from s1 and 2? Maybe AV Club doesn’t, but I do. This episode is the closest to season 1 they’ve written so far. In the first three episodes of this season, we’ve dealt with a lot of intense character development for Morty and Beth (and even a little Jerry). This episode is a bit of a break from that character growth and dives into some whimsical fun. And as the author points out here, they’re very self-aware that what they’re doing is stupid. They make an explicit joke about it, and the running joke of the episode is “what do we even call these things, anyways?” (a hilarious nod to the writer’s room conundrum of….. what the heck to call a sperm monster, lol). It’s actually classic Rick & Morty. I thought it was gross and dumb too. Just like Anatomy Park. And I laughed just as much.Btw, “only the 44th episode of the run?” No statement in this article is more telling than this one. You need a hundred episodes of a show before a producer has proved himself and “deserves a break” or whatever? Lol. What a trash take. Some of the more phenomenal shows on television in the last two decades only ran for 50-60 episodes. That would put 44 at “most of the show.” But who’s counting, right? Oh yeah, Mr. Handlen sure is 😉
So did they just leak the #7 GoTron episode because these last ones have been so effing horrible or what?!?
I have never been able to shake the feeling that the writers of this show just straight up hate women, sounds like this episodes continues that trend.
This was by far the worst episode. Like they had this joke but couldn’t find anything to build around it.
In the after credits interview, Harmon literally says something like “we had this funny idea of characters riding giant sperm, but then we had to figure out how we were going to do that.”
“we had this funny idea of characters riding giant sperm, but then we had to figure out how we were going to do that.”And in the end, they just gave up and submitted a script that was composed mostly by sperm doodles.
I wonder where he came up with that idea!
You still have Zoidberg.You ALL have Zoidberg!
Imagine thinking this show was ever anything but stupid.
The dragon episode was worse but this wasn’t good.
Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and
Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way, but the joke never really
lands or matters.
Fuck me, you’re a dude. This was an episode about sperm. The men all think they can handle sperm gone wild because they are the largest producers. Women have the biggest consequence to contend with if sperm goes awry – babies to grow and raise. All matters of birth control save barriers (condoms, sponges, diaphrams) are on women to worry about, most men aren’t expected to think much about it beyond “please oh please let her be on something”. So of course they ignore the women (never mind one being an actual vet surgeon with general experience in biology) and go for the “well sperm just want to get in a crevice” aspect while trying to dude all over its elimination. Summer’s idea was pointing out the real nature of sperm/ the one thing women and ova/uterus-havers worry about: getting pregnant. We know sperms’ entire purpose, even if super smart enough to build trebuchets, is to fertilize – even the sperm queen got sucked in (her existence made sense, one X has to come from somewhere, that one was just smart enough to get an exo-suit) and Sticky wasn’t immuned either. So of course Summer and Beth would be more competent in ridding the sperm even compared to Super Masculine Ejaculators. And Summer, despite it being HER egg that got fertilized with what she found out was HER brother’s sperm, wanted to ‘abort’ but the male politician nixed it as “it was an election year” (despite this being the incest exemption allowed in most anti-abortion arguments).
It sort of worked for me: Morty has learned enough not to stick his dick in weird space stuff associated with Rick/Rick adventures, but he’s still a gross kid who’d stick his dick in weird stuff to get off. He thought he was safe (gross, yes, but safe) because it was a normal piece of equipment not from a world that’d have creche machines for psychotic children. But he didn’t factor in Rick having a side hustle in CHUD biological warfare (that he had gotten a CHUD princess impregnated and bounced when he realized that while there was a kid, but being a horse they’re rather independent from jump so he didn’t need to bother with caring {even though he was willing to try despite loads of Beth and non-Beth Rick kids he noped out on, growth!} fit in nicely too) that would merit use of horse semen. It’s bad enough Morty fucked the machine, but to do that AND be confronted with his part in an Earth-destroying fuck-up (outsized because Rick was actually willing to do some scientific due diligence of incremental testing, but Morty rushed him lest Rick did any tests on the specimen)… was worthy of a good chuckle as he tried to tap dance away from it and let Rick fall on the sword mostly meant for him. At least with the sex bot it was blatantly a humanoid/feminine shaped apparatus for sex, but this was an innocent horse jacker he defiled.
Morty has not learned that lesson. He will fuck inappropriate people, creatures, and things as long as he is a teen and this show continues.
Great analysis.
“All matters of birth control save barriers (condoms, sponges, diaphrams) are on women to worry about”And birth control for women can be SOOOO much fun! “Take this pill/patch, but be careful! It may cause blood clots!”“Put this device in you, but be careful! It may be very painful!”“Put this goddamn chip in you arm!”And then some men whine about putting a condom on. Granted, vasectomies aren’t a picnic (and can have lasting side effects), but even that procedure is less invasive than a woman getting tubal ligation!Even with animals, it can suck for females more than males. A female cat being spayed goes through a more intense form of surgery than a male cat being neutered.
Pretty much. I recall a discussion on male medical contraception and some rather interesting stuff came out about possibly injecting a gel in the vas deferens that’d block sperm and act like a temp vasectomy… but would involve a shot in the general area…. so… that’s gone nowhere.
Well, I can’t blame them for wanting to nope the hell out of that…
An IUD involves speculum, numbing the cervix, taking another tiny speculum to open up the cervix, and deploying the device (fingers cross you don’t have a ridic tiny uterus and it’s too big). Worth it for 3-10 years of not having to think too hard about it (again: if not too big). Shot in the ‘scrot that last as long seems fair.
i agree with you, but my broken mind makes me reply to this:
“All matters of birth control save barriers (condoms, sponges, diaphrams) are on women…”
…because vasectomy.
Uh, it was better than last week’s.
I don’t blame any of you for not sticking around for the post-show interview snippets, but uh… wow. Everybody knew this was a bad episode. Everybody.They weren’t even trying to hide it. I think there was one guy, out of the four we saw in the snippets (including Dan Harmon himself,) who wasn’t just trashing the thing right out of the gate.I think the horse-extractor and Rick rolling up the barrel of horse semen to the garage could’ve served as a fine disconnected cold open. That’s similar to what we were saying about the whole “fuck you parents!” thing last week, where a better episode would’ve been to follow Beth and Jerry in the aftermath of having their parenting so forcefully rejected. This time, though, I don’t see the better episode at the periphery. Maybe something that focused exclusively on Morty’s sex drive and Rick’s alcoholism being similar? I think that’s something worth mining, but I wouldn’t have dug too deeply in this exact spot.
I liked the initial setup for this episode, Morty discovering and using the device that collects horse sperm. That’s a funny start to an episode, but literally everything after that completely misses the mark, and loses any laugh out loud moments from then on. And I think it’s cuz the took the premise in a completely wrong direction.Here’s where I think the episode should have gone: Morty’s mom catches him with the machine, and feeling incredible shame, Morty runs to Rick’s lab, finds a device he hopes he can use to take away his shame and from there he loses control in one way or another. Maybe he tries to erase his mom’s memory but accidentally erases her whole mind, maybe he tries to just bail on this universe alone and replace Morty in another one, but gets lost in the multiverse and loses Rick’s portal gun in the process. I dunno, but it isn’t hard to see where you can take this kind of setup into far more interesting scenarios than whatever this was.
In my opinion, the last two episodes have been the worst episodes of the series. I hope the rest of the season is better.
If it keeps getting worse from there, it might circle back to interesting.
Greatest R&M episode of all-time. A+
For me, this was first genuinely bad episode of the show, which has never been about “gross out” humor. Incidental gross stuff? Toilet jokes, including an episode built around a literal toilet? Sure, and we even had one already about Morty siring an illegitimate baby. But by the time the giant incest baby was re-enacting the end of “2001″ I felt like I’d been pranked. Nick Rutherford, who I mostly knew from “Dream Corp LLC,” had never written a R&M before this one, so I hope – nothing against the guy! – this was a fluke. Not to fixate on the incest baby, but it was so sloppily done (why use one of the two women on earth whose egg should not be fertilized by Morty?) that it felt cheap and stupid, and the a-plot was just a weaker take on material explored by, yes, another AS show – “Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories,” the one with the septic tank.
They can’t all be winners but this was awful, like current-season-of-Simpsons awful.
I got a phone call from my brother on the East Coast around 9:00pm telling me that no matter what I needed to see last night’s R&M to believe it. He would not tell me if it was going to be good or bad just that I had to see it and avoid the internet until I watched. After seeing it last night’s episode was the equivalent of walking in on a key party and the only people in attendance are your grandparents and your parents. I’m not sure if the writers are trolling the audience to see how far they can take the show before its audience gives up on it but if last night was an indicator on where the show is headed then like with Community I’m going to have to bail early. Last night’s ep was an F…Minus and was just crude due to any lack of ideas on what they were trying to say.
“Spray” kind of reminded me of the SouthPark Bono/turd episode where it seemed they were mocking the Emmys and Comedy Central for paying them to push whatever boundaries of bad taste they thought they were breaking. This was a Grade “C” effort at best
Why are you afraid to grade the worst episodes lower than a B? Coward.
I’m pretty sure this whole episode was written so they could make the Handjob Solo joke. And I am okay with it.
This is the first episode of Rick and Morty that I did not watch all the way to the end. This whole season has been weak, but this really takes the sperm icing on the shit cake.
Interesting that you bring up another [as] show with an 11-minute run time — at its most mediocre, I often find myself wondering how many of these Rick & Morty scripts really need a full half hour. Many of them start out promising and move along well, only to wind up either spinning their wheels with a bunch of asides that basically exist just so Harmon/Roiland as Rick can bitch about some cultural trope, or pile on escalation after escalation until any spark of novelty is lost in a fugue of snake jazz.Personally, I’ve always found this to be a kind of uneven show, so an episode that doesn’t grab me isn’t an indication that there won’t be better times up ahead. But the more I think about the ones I don’t like, the more I come to the conclusion that most of them aren’t bad as much as they are just exhausting. Cut the runtime in half so you don’t have as many “and then what?” moments, and maybe you get a stronger show out of it.
I agree that a ton of their concepts could be 15 minutes and not lose a beat
i’m not looking forward to rewatching this one with my son when he gets back from grandma’s house. 🙁
It was funny until the whole “kill the sperm before they can fertilize the giant egg” sequence. Then it just became kind of gross but not particularly funny, and that ending gag with Rick’s CHUD baby and the princess just fucking off was pretty meh as well.Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way, but the joke never really lands or mattersThe dialogue and timing on it was pretty half-assed. Like you, it kills me that this was made in the same season at “Mortyplicity”, which was tight as hell with immaculate comic timing.
I dunno. I liked it more than the copies episode-I didn’t think that many Ricks, even copies would give up so fast.Think of this as a super-size “Raising Gazorpazorp”.
Did not make it far into the episode, so not sure if I’m wholly qualified to give my 2cents here, but what I saw left me disheartened. Like the last episode, they register more like Rick and Morty writers “trying to write” Rick and Morty themed episodes and going through the motion than actually inspired and enthusiastic story delivery (which to an extent was always the heart of the show, I’d argue, even with all the sci-fi elements and zaniness poured on top). Hope the season recovers, really liked the first two episodes but these last two were just bummers. (Also, I might be in the minority but I thought the Dragon episode wasn’t that bad at all, and I’d rate the last two entries below that).
To me it felt like a late-Season episode of “South Park” that was written by A.I.
Yeah it was pretty bad, but I can’t get mad to anything that gives me the gift of Keith David’s voice.Rick’s CHUD girlfriend gave me a chuckle as a spanish native speaker, her name was “Poñeta”, as in “puñeta” (castillian spanish for “jerk off”). To keep consistent to the theme.
There is no such thing as Castilian Spanish. There’s Spanish Spanish, Mexican Spanish (the most common by far, even more so if we include Chicano Spanish), Colombian Spanish, Argentinian Spanish, Cuban Spanish (if you can call THAT Spanish), Peruvian Spanish, Chilean Spanish… etc. Spain is actually the fourth or fifth country with the most native Spanish speakers, after Mexico, the US, Colombia and Argentina (there’s a tie for fourth).
are you familiar with the proto Rick and Morty, Doc and Mharty? Because that was truly inanely filthy and this episode seemed like Rick and Morty returning to their disgusting roots
Did people really find this episode filthy? Apart from the off-screen horse machine fucking it was basically high school biology sperm drawings.
That should had been an F minus
I’d honestly be less embarrassed getting caught fucking a horse fleshlight than being responsible for this episode.
when i first saw there was a new season after a only a year I wasn’t expecting much, but the first two episodes raised my expectations, before the last two dashed them expertly.
I was more entertained by this episode than last week’s but it does feel like the show has lost a step this season. Rick and Morty, at its best, can be a really, really good, smart show and it should be held at a higher standard because of that. This episode is a C, at best.
I don’t know what world Zack lives in that this is considered coasting. I could not believe the cold open. The machine and the ending(the baby) are such insane things to depict in a cable tv show. Fucking wow.
This is the 44th episode of “Rick and Morty”. The 44th episode of “The Simpsons” was “Saturdays of Thunder” in S3. Pretty much every classic “Simpsons’ episode was ahead of us. I think it’s relatively clear we can’t say the same for “Rick and Morty.” Comedy’s hard.
The Simpsons wasn’t nearly as high concept, though.
It’s stupid and it’s hilariously gloriously so.The score is well deserved as there’s some cringe-worthy stuffs in it, but damn if it didn’t make me laugh loads of time. That’s all I want from Rick & Morty and I say this episode pulled it off well.
In the “behind the scenes” videos they do, Dan Harmon basically tells you he just wanted to do a dumb episode about giant sperm. They succeeded. They got a dumb episode about giant sperm. A really dumb episode. A kinda crappy, not very good but not totally bad episode, but at least he achieved his goal I guess.
They also interview the hapless young director of the episode who seemed to almost be smiling behind tears that she had to direct this one.
His logic probably is ‘I’ve got 70 episodes to burn through, why the hell not?’
This show has become for me what my wife has finally admitted The Bachelor is to her…Haven’t even really liked it for a while now, but still watch out of some weird sense of duty.Ever been around a co-worker who was trying to get fired? That’s the vibe I’m getting from Rick and Morty right now.
Yes.
I know it’s probably logistically impossible, but didn’t this episode have a The Tomorrow War parody feel to it? Maybe it’s because I just saw the movie, and both sucked.
Or the episode parodied several alien invasion action films, of which The Tomorrow War is heavily derivative.
For sure, but it felt like a parody of how The Tomorrow War was derivative.
I think what most spelled The Tomorrow War to me was the queen being different from the males, and the males swarming to save her and being mowed down by the humans, to no avail.
The special effects in TTW were awful. An average video game has better CGI.
Is a “spetacle” similar to a spectacle?
Are balls stupid?I have SO many questions now.
There are jokes in here that Family Guy, at its absolute shittiest, wouldn’t touchNo way. Family Guy would not only touch but enlarge and extend the scrapings of the bottom of the already rotted barrel and then call back to them two episodes later thinking repetition = humour. This was light years from their level of chronic dog diarrhoea.
Not a great episode but still nowhere as bad as the Dragon one. I got a few laughs out of this but only 1 good one from the dragon episode. Still that B-…..
It was dumb as hell, but it also made me laugh a lot, so I can’t hate on this episode too much.
I also kept waiting for the twist with this one. It felt both way too long on a flimsy premise as well as almost too short to do all of the things it wanted to – It needed to either be an excuse to do something with the CHUDs or a treatise on how the men in power were ignoring Summer’s ideas or an Independence Day showdown. It being all three things meant that nothing really happened that was satisfying in any way. On rewatch, I’m actually really fond of the Planetina episode. It’s not perfect, but I think it was at least something different and could have led to some satisfying development of Morty. Instead, we get a complete reset where Morty goes from heartbreak over what seemed to be a first real love situation to…jacking off with a medical device? I know the creators aren’t looking for super heavy serialization or development, but a little growth can be good.
This was one hell of a sh*t episode, but we all know there’s another universe where it’s considered a masterpiece. Then again, maybe it’s just that Harmon was too coked up and drunk to write something decent.
The opening scene with Morty realizing what the semen collector was had me in tears. The rest of it was okay, but the cold open was superb.
As a stand-alone episode, this could have been better. Sperm doesn’t = funny, after all, and they relied on the inherent hilarity of spooge quite a lot.BUT if you look at the season as a whole (so far), it has a lot to say about Morty’s negative character traits: he takes Jessica for granted, he falls in love too impulsively, he’s kind of a perv.Granted, a lot of these things have to do with him (perpetually) being a 14-year-old boy. But it seems like Harmon and the writers are trying to give some weight and consequences to his sometimes poor decisions.Maybe this is the season that takes Morty down like we’ve seen Rick taken down in the past. It does make for a nice change of pace from “Rick is selfish and lonely.” Which for the record isn’t going to — and can’t — change, although Rick does seem to be more aware of his drinking problem at the moment.I have a feeling this arc might culminate in the return of Eyepatch Morty, but that’s just a wild guess.As for the necessity of pointing out Summer and Beth’s contributions to the action: there are still plenty of fans who couldn’t care less about those characters and can only see Rick and Morty. So I think that commentary was aimed at them.
Odd that some streaming services aired episode 7 by mistake, an episode that directly ties into this.
Finally. Someone not afraid to speak the truth…And Believe me it saddens me. This season of Rick and Morty is not Rick and Morty at all. Its terrible..And I loved Rick and Morty. But whatever this mess is they need to fix it and fast!
LOL! Thought this ep was actually a “return to form!” :::buuurrrp::: ha
I come from the future (aka the Canadian leak of Episode 7). I have a message for all Rick and Morty viewers of the past: don’t lose hope! Have faith in the giant space incest baby! It was significant all along!
Did you watch the Inside the Episode after? Because the people who made it absolutely agree with you.
Definitely among the stupidest plots for the show, but I still laughed. Of course I was also pretty stoned, thanks to my bootleg Rick and Morty grinder
This is two weeks in a row this author has clearly described a C- at best episode but for some reason seems too shy to dip anywhere below B territory.
Its clearly a D
“Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way”If it rubbed you the wrong way, then there are some women you need to go apologize to
I laughed too hard. I’ll watch anything
Yes
The overarching joke about Morty being completely ashamed to have fucked a horse-semen-collecting machine while Rick actually just went ahead and fucked an actual horse is reasonable.
this just in: reviewer of show doesn’t seem to like show or get show and misses the jokes and complains.
can’t just laugh and enjoy a episode about sperm while also noting how many women scientists/etc are overlooked and their credit taken by men.
-The Nora joke was good
-learn more about why some sperm have 2 tals and then maybe you might get why it sort of works
were the last 2 episodes a result of writing during covid, I hope so. Going from no bad episodes( pilots don’t count) and having these 2 come out back to back is not a good sign. I wonder is the challenges of making a good show during the virus is why south park cancelled it’s season after the special.
Waiting to hear about the latest episode and praying it is better, but just wanted to point out: Rick sounded nothing like Rick in this episode. It sounded like it was written by somebody who has never seen the show. I really just can’t believe they used this script. I get tired of Rick’s tics sometimes, but to have him be basically kind and supportive and then ready to raise a horse CHUD child, is just tin-eared. The only Rick line in the whole episode is where he makes himself fall so Morty isn’t in his sightline.
Also are we being told something by when Rick has the berry juice barf on his lips or not? He didn’t have it this episode
“Can’t quite figure out why the whole “asshole men ignoring Summer and Beth’s contributions” rubbed me the wrong way, but the joke never really lands or matters.” says the white dude. lol