I don’t really get Jessica. I mean, I understood her at the start of the show; she was the archetypal crush a kid like Morty always has in shows and movies, the unattainable hottie who barely knows his name and wears absurdly short skirts to class. Rick And Morty is a show that doesn’t really do character development for anyone outside of Rick, Morty, Summer, Beth, and Jerry—recurring ensemble members usually just pop in for a quick gag when the show needs to pretend that it exists in a persistent world where, say, Morty is still going to high school. But every time Jessica pops up, it’s this weird bit of stupidity that I can’t quite wrap my head around. She behaves like she belongs in one of those The Game-style “how to get laid” books for insecure lonely dudes who want to believe getting to know a woman is like romancing a character in Mass Effect. In tonight’s episode, she ignores Morty when he says hello, and then acts super into him the second he pretends like he doesn’t really care about her. It’s dumb, and for a long time I’ve been telling myself that stupidity is part of the gag, and I think it is, but that also doesn’t make it less dumb in the long run, y’know? Like the Bechdel Test gag from a couple of weeks ago. Lampshading this shit isn’t a long term solution.
“The Vat Of Acid Episode” is another high concept single storyline entry, with most of its running time taken up by an elaborate “prank” Rick pulls on Morty because Morty had the temerity to make fun of one of his schemes. It’s funny, and I enjoyed it for the most part. There’s going to be criticism in this review, but it’s going to be that super-annoying kind of criticism where I keep saying “but I really did like it!” Also, I’m going to give it, like, an A- or something, even though I have reservations, unless I somehow manage to talk myself out of that. There are two kinds of criticism that you do when you review a show—there’s reviewing something for how well it achieves its intended aims, and then there’s reviewing whether or not those aims were worth achieving. The second bit is where things get tricky. I’ll try to keep this short.
“Acid” is another entry in the Rick-pulls-the-football-away-from-Morty canon; the most recent one of these I can remember was “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Nest,” where Rick went to epic, planet-destroying lengths to kill Morty’s love of heist stories and stymie his career at Netflix. It’s not exactly the same—in that episode, Morty never realized he was being manipulated, and in this one, he very much does, albeit far too late to do anything about it—but the abusive nature of the relationship is one the show gets a lot of story material out of, in a way that seems like it can’t possibly be sustainable, but still basically works. I got so caught up in what seemed to be the main storyline that I didn’t see the vat of acid at the episode’s end until a half second or so before it arrived; in retrospect, it should’ve been obvious, but Rick And Morty has a knack for tricking me with this sort of thing. (Much like The Prestige.)
That said, it was obvious that something was up with the place-saving device Morty argues Rick into making for him. For one thing, the set-up was not conducive to a non-monkey’s paw scenario; the whole thing kicks off when Morty has the temerity to point out that Rick’s “we’ll jump into a fake vat of acid and pretend we’re dead” solution to a problem was, well, stupid. The two of them fight, Rick insists “There’s no such thing as a bad idea, Morty. It’s about execution.” Then Morty gets pissed about how Rick always refuses to go along with his ideas, mentions the place-saving device (the idea being to save your place like in a video game so you can do dumb shit, see what happens, and restore to the save point and undo the damage) that Rick had apparently nixed before; and when Rick still insists it’s a dumb idea, Morty accuses him of not being able to actually build it, which pisses Rick off so much that he does.
Speaking of execution, this is all very well done; I started with the bit about not understanding what Jessica was supposed to be because her behavior here, and the way Morty manages to turn opening a door for a woman into the most meaningful relationship of his life, because it’s my only real criticism of how this episode was put together. The thing with Jessica was a joke, sure, but, well, I already said why I thought it was bad. And while I think most everything that happens between Morty and the Love of His Life after that coffee shop date is well done, the idea that a woman would be so grateful to a guy for opening a door for her that she’d touch him on the shoulder is… well, it doesn’t scan. It’s not a huge deal, but the show prides itself on being so sharp and cutting about human behavior that it’s weird when it has the insight of a Saved By The Bell episode.
Putting that aside, this is well-paced, and does a great job of playing Morty’s situation just seriously enough that when the punchline lands, it lands hard. The whole time Morty is building a relationship with his new girlfriend, you know that he’s eventually going to reset everything. Somehow, this isn’t going to work out, and the show knows you know, so it keeps offering up ways things could fall apart. They have relationship troubles, but then Morty makes it work. They’re in a plane crash, eating corpses and dying of frostbite, but help comes just in time. And then, just when everything is back to normal, Jerry sees the place-saving device and treats it like a TV remote, undoing everything.
It’s a good gag, and the extremely painful slapstick as Morty tries and completely fails to repeat his past success is also funny (this whole extended montage, which goes from Clapton’s “It’s In The Way That You Use It” to an emotional instrumental piece but has no actual dialogue, is well done). But the real punchline comes when Morty goes to tell Rick he’s learned his lesson, and Rick explains that, no, the actual lesson is that Rick doesn’t do time travel; everything Morty did and then “undid” actually happened; and it was all parallel universes where he killed another Morty every time.
Actually, that’s not even the real punchline; the real real punchline is when Morty takes on all his past “lives” at once, a massive force of people arrive to have their revenge on him, and Rick offers him a way out: a vat of “acid.” The pay-off is so lame it’s almost profound; after all Morty went through, in the end, it was just another way to remind him that Rick is always right, and you don’t fuck with Rick, because when you fuck with Rick, you’re fucking with the best.
This is a good entry in the Don’t Fuck With Rick canon, although I imagine just how good it is will vary from person to person. I got so caught up in the moment with what was happening that I didn’t put too much thought into where it was all ultimately going, but the problem with this kind of episode (and here we’re getting to that other kind of criticism) is that it’s inherently predictable. That can be a benefit in some circumstances—Road Runner cartoons are funny in part because we know each time that the coyote is going to get screwed, the joy is in seeing how. Or, hell, there are dozens of great Peanuts strips about Lucy pulling away that football at the last minute. You keep doing the bit enough times, the audience’s awareness of the structure is what keeps them laughing, the way some stand-ups can work a crowd just by delivering non-jokes in a certain rhythm.
It’s just, the nature of Rick And Morty is that it’s supposed to be subversive and surprising. One of the reasons the show became as popular as it did is because of how it takes a lot of old ideas (crazy science shit, jaunting through space having adventures, an acerbic genius dragging around a regular old human being) and points out the absurdity in them. It’s satire, but it’s satire that also generally delivers the very thing it’s lampooning, and it’s best, the show can be hilariously funny, deeply cutting and cynical, and also cathartic. Everything is bullshit, even to the farthest reaches of the universe, but it’s often wildly entertaining bullshit, and even when it isn’t, we have to get through this somehow. Come watch TV.
It’s bleak, but there’s relief in having someone tell a kind of truth, however brutal. The problem is, the more Rick And Morty tells the sort of story it tells in “Acid,” a story that requires Rick to be the smartest person in any room and Morty to only be clever enough to make things that much worse for himself, the older it gets; the more it starts to feel like the same stale cliches the show was so good at deconstructing. We aren’t quite to that point yet, but a certain exhaustion is setting in with this format. The closest this episode gets to a new perspective is that Rick’s vat of acid solution is lame. Given that he still ends up “winning,” that’s not a whole lot, but it’s something. Just have to wait and see if it’s ever going to be anything more than that.
Stray observations
- This review ended on a mild bummer, but (I told you I’d say this) I really did enjoy the episode. The convolutions with that fake vat of acid at the beginning were a thing of joy. (And, in their small way, proof that Rick is actually not as smart as he thinks he is. He’s just usually smarter than Morty.)
- “I don’t pay for your friendship, Heroin Keith!”
- You’d think Morty would be a little more insistent on making Rick explain things at this point. Out of all the lessons, you’d think “Don’t assume astonishing technology doesn’t have a downside” would be, like, underlined in his brain somewhere.
- Watching these live has meant seeing the animated Rick And Morty ads during the show, and man, I don’t begrudge them for wanting to make some money, and the ads are clever enough, but it’s super strange watching them during an actual episode.
- Don’t worry about continuity, the bulk of the episode takes place in a universe where Johnny Carson is still on the air, dipping fools into vats of acid on The Tonight Show.
176 Comments
Is it just me or have a lot of the episodes this season had a theme of Morty trying to gain some agency in his relationship with Rick and Rick vindictively punishing him for it? Even for a show as dark and cynical as this so often is, it’s starting to feel a little mean-spirited.
Well, that’s always been part of the show. Rick always tries to temper Morty’s personality, because a cocky Morty who does what he wants is dangerous, as you can see in Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind and in Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat.
Yes, that’s absolutely always been a part of the show, but this season just feels like there’s a bit more heat behind it. More vindictiveness and punishing for the sake of punishing. It feels more angry somehow and less playful about its inherent meanness.
I actually give the show points for that since it seems to understand the character and how Rick’s path doesn’t lead to a good end. The negging of Jessica seemed like the show being self aware of how much of a prick Rick has always been, and a commentary on the audience’s attraction to him. We’re attracted to him because of the narrative drift of Rick being the protagonist, and him being an aloof “bad ass,” but objectively Rick is and has always been a toxic presence in Morty’s life.Toxic relationships don’t get better over time. They deteriorate and get worse and worse.
It almost feels like an overcompensation. Like when Dad catches you smoking and forces you to smoke a whole carton to make you hate it. It’s like the show is saying “oh, you like Rick being an asshole do you? Well here you go, motherfucker! We cranked his asshole dial up to 87! Still like it? Still think it’s funny? Well fuck you then!”I might be projecting a bit.
No, I think you’re on to something. Be careful what you wish for, just like the reset button.
Which was suppossed to be the point of the dragon episode, though it wasn’t executed terribly well.
“Smoke em up Johnny!!!”
Off topic, but reading your comment something just occurred to me. Do toxic relationships ever get better? Like, you would think that at least once in a blue moon, they would. But does that actually happen?
Story Lord said as much in the last episode as it supposed to be seen as playful and meta.
As I said in my own comment, Rick has always been a petty, vindictive asshole that the show plays for laughs and the toxic fandom takes too seriously. This season is just where they went fully meta with it and tossed out continuity in exchange. It hasn’t been any worse than previous seasons.
I have been attributing it to a seasonal arc (forgotten by the break in episodes & world events) in which Rick is STILL angry and chafing at the familial agreement that Rick treat Morty with more consideration, instilling an urge w/in Rick to lash out at his own grandson. They touched on it during the S04 fist episode.
More vindictiveness and punishing for the sake of punishing. It feels more angry somehow and less playful about its inherent meanness.Harmon must have been ditched by his therapist. Again.
Given the way Morty is treated (and Mortys generally), Cocky Morty is likely a product of such abuse.
feels like this is the actual darkest season we were promised S3 would be
Crew Over the Cuckoo’s NestMorty’s Mind BlowersEnd of the Claw and Hoarder where Rick flushes Jerry’s memories yet agaiRick punching out Morty – in complete frustration – at the End of the Rattlestar Ricklactica.Rick literally runs his own family members through mental hellscapes and then often wipes their memories when he doesn’t like unexpected results.
Which makes his resistance to Morty’s checkpoint idea amusingly hypocritical.
Did Rick ever do to Summer something akin to what he routinely does to Morty? At some point in the earlier seasons, I was kind of having the impression Rick actually liked Summer better (there was a moment, I believe around season two, when the show almost looked like “Rick and Morty and Summer”).
I would like more Summer
It all also seems like it’s crescendoing to something, maybe a tease into the family starting to realize the completely f-up’ed way Rick manipulates them into never defying him. It does seem like a recurring theme, and we’ve already had Jerry defying him with the Christmas episode and now Morty.
Yeah, but that feels like the logical progression from season 3. Rick took a major loss in his power dynamic with the family, and he’s not exactly a graceful loser.
Well as Zack himself pointed out in the review this has a very similar theme to the heist episode, which was only three or four episodes ago, even though it seems like it was much longer ago due to the season being split in two. And I agree it seems a little too dark even for this show
We’re talking about a show where in the first season they abandoned their original reality where they Croenenberg’d it and replaced themselves by burying their own fresh corpses
That was dark but it was different. R and M did that together as a way to get out of the Cronenberged reality because they literally had no other option. This was just Rick being gratuitously extremely cruel to Morty which, yes, happens sometimes, but usually not to this extent
It’s not fun anymore. These guy are just phoning it in and even then just doing it as seldom as they think they can get away with it. Well, it had a couple of good seasons and I’d rather rewatch them than any of the new ‘stuff’.
I thought the first half of the episode fared better than the second half. I know the show is all about storyline bait-and-switches, but seeing Rick and Morty on their adventures and shooting shit with each other is almost always enjoyable for me. Morty’s apathy to Rick’s autopark, the entire acid vat scene, and their bickering in the garage was seriously some of the funniest stuff I’ve seen all season.
The tangent with Morty’s girlfriend was pretty haunting, but in the end it’s really nothing more than that… a tangent. Just sort of killed time leading up to the climax, which I guess really was supposed to be the point in the end. Yeah, I don’t envy you having to review this show Zack lol
I think and maybe I’m overly hopeful, that the “Morty’s Dream Girl Sequence” (Rick and Morty’s riff on the opening of Up?) is more than a tangent. The whole point of the sequence is that it all happened naturally. Morty is setting a save at the porn theater (and apparently he has killed untold Morty’s repeating jackoff sessions, I think), when he sees his dream girl and just acts with his best intentions.We’ve seen, especially with Jessica, that Morty is usually his worse enemy when he cares about someone, over thinking everything. Jessica has shown some interest in Morty, but usually Morty gets in the way of her getting any closer.With dream girl, he never has a chance to get in the way. The Morty of this season is much more cynical than that of the first season, but he is still, at his core, a good person who wants to do what’s best. And, tellingly, he never resets, even when things get bad (although that choice is taken out of his hands in the plane crash, although in the end, he chooses not to reset). When he is just himself, good things happen. Compare this to Morty wanting to control every thing in the death crystal’s episode. If he took this to heart, and given the price he paid, and the reward he had, I think he might, and the gang let’s this be cannon, Morty could come out a lot stronger after this. It will be interesting to see if they allow for this growth.
It bothers me that you’re calling her Morty’s dream girl. Jessica is Morty’s dream girl. But that whole relationship was real, which was the point—and the opportunity for cruelty.
I think the relationship was real and the most tragic part is that shes in the crowd at the end to reconnect with Morty, but leaves heart broken when he fakes his death.
Dream girl means “ideal,” not “imaginary.” And, yes, the point is that it was real, and Morty for once didn’t get in his own way, and had it stripped away by Rick.
I really like that – Morty now has that experience along with allllll the other experiences inside of him, what kind of Morty are we going to get from this?
Perhaps that is why he is The One True Morty?
We learned, last week, rite?, that Morty is still 14 years old. That relationship was bullshit. The story makes no sense. It’s gotta be, in “cannon” one of Rick’s head jobs.
Compare Morty now to Morty in Season 1. Sure, he hasn’t aged, but how could you not mature after everything he has been through with Rick.Plus, I figure he is a Dr. Who. 14. Compare to his home world, he is 14 but with all his dimensional travel, he has actually lived much longer.
I don’t think it was just a tangent. I think it was meant to be a riff and/or parody of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind only to be fucked up by both Jerry and Morty himself by not creating a save point after leaving the Hospital.
This episode was hilarious, and I should have known there was something up when Morty is in mortal danger and Rick is nowhere to be found LOLI found it interesting that Rick also setup Morty in a way that basically parallels his own life, with countless individuals who want to go after him across dimensions but never has to face them because of his portal gun that lets him avoid the consequences. Obviously he doesn’t like to be questioned, but I get the feeling he may be training Morty for something much larger in the future by making his methods unquestionable and bringing him into the darker inner workings of his mind.
i’ve hit a wall with rick and morty. i love the rick parts of it but i seriously can’t tolerate morty’s nervous whiny bitch-ass bullshit at all anymore. there’s been three seasons of rick basically playing god, getting into some shit, and then returning everything back to relatively normal every single god damn time and morty being a little bitch about it the entire time. if the writers plan to keep the same dynamic then i guess i’ve already watched every rick and morty episode that will ever be made three seasons ago,
It reminded me of the Tales from The Loop episode where they froze time.
I did like how the title card (“The Acid Vat episode” or something like that) set up the expectation that the whole thing would just be some bottle episode with them stuck in the fake acid the entire time. I would have been down for that, but I’m still basically happy with what we got instead.
There’s going to be criticism in this review, but it’s going to be that super-annoying kind of criticism where I keep saying “but I really did like it!” Also, I’m going to give it, like, an A- or something, even though I have reservations, unless I somehow manage to talk myself out of that. I can’t be the only one who read this with Rick’s voice.
Ironically the critic would hate that.
I’m reading it back now and it works in most of the characters’ voices XD
This was a valuable exercise and a good use of like 2 minutes of my time, and I thank you.My favorites were probably Jerry and Summer.
i think it was deliberately written in that tone.
The Jessica stuff was jarring, but you have to remember that Morty and Jessica are still high schoolers. Attraction to an apathetic attitude is pretty common at that age. Plus, dating a douchebag tracks with her character (remember Brad? No?)
Teenagers acting like teenagers, how is that jarring.
You want a guy who says words good? Date a languager.
It seems like most people missed the joke that this was satizing that concept by showing it work to a hyperbolic extent.
These are some very odd complaints. I mean the Jessica bit was what, a minute of the episode if that? Anyways, I really enjoyed this episode. 2nd half of this season has been an improvement on the 1st half.
Odd? They were straight forward and tempered by the warning he gave before giving them.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from reading way too many of Zack’s reviews, is that there’s no silly little joke he isn’t capable of over-analyzing and being troubled by far more than it deserves.
That’s nothing. Read a SnL A.V. club review if you really want to roll your eyes
Almost everything on this site now has to have a “how does this relate to gender and race” portion in every article.
kill yourself
Also, we weren’t meant to think that the Love of Morty’s Life fell in love with him because he opened the door for her. That was just how they met.
Agree with your “Rick’s always right” point. So not going to argue with the grade. Still have a few observations:1) The use of shifting dimensions instead of time travel (“If Ant Man and The Wasp can do it….”) was a brilliant angle on what could have been an obvious take. Making it funnier that there were consequences (“Jesus, Morty! The AARP?”)2) How can you argue with “Bugs Bunny invented it”?3) One thing I do understand is how Morty can’t stop trying to prove Rick wrong. I mean, have you ever had to deal with someone who always thinks he/she is right? It can get under your skin.4) You are right about the commercials during the show. I understand why they are placed there (Though nothing R&M related will ever get me to buy Pringles), but it is annoying.5) Your obsessive point about Jessica shows a lack of understanding teenage boys who have crushes on the “hot” chick in high school. Most cases the girl will almost universally ignore the nice/smart/shy/etc. guy for the popular asshat. And nearly every one of us were told to “treat her like crap, and she’ll love you.” It’s not an overused joke, just reality.6) Yeah, you review shows. It’s your point-of-view. You shouldn’t care what others say in the Discussion section. Because there will always be people who will disagree. So if you’re too sensitive to take the heat, try writing about something else.
1)Rick literally told Morty two sentences later that he was referencing The Prestige, it wasn’t any more original than time travel. Also without time travel there’s a huge plot hole about why nobody reacts to Morty horrifically dissolving then popping back into existence.5) The entire time the bit with Jessica was going on I was saying “If this is not a joke and you are unironically saying this is how teenage boys get teenage girls to fall for them then you are part of the problem.” Thank you for confirming what I thought. 6) Stop projecting your oversensitivity onto the reviewer.
WOAH there spanky — #5 and #6 are pretty ridiculous responses.
Loved the quiet moment of Morty sobbing before the mountaintop fire because he was starving and couldn’t eat the shoe, . . because it was Vegan.
I get that some people enjoy them, but personally, it always irritates me a little when articles/reviews are written like a stream of consciousness. I get why someone would want to set expectations for what’s coming, qualifying something before saying it, but there are other ways to do that.Also, sorry, but while I’m nitpicking, it’s a little odd to slam something for being predictable when you didn’t predict it. It’s dumb and, in a way, obvious, which is pretty much exactly how Morty reacted to it in the episode, but I didn’t really see it coming either. I gave them a lot of credit for it, structuring it with the big unrelated reveal followed by the mob unexpectedly showing up, then straight back to the vat of fake acid before you can really have the time to properly see it coming. Great sleight of hand; it fooled me; and I guess it fooled you too. Or maybe we’re idiots, and just it’s a dumb obvious gag. I don’t really know, maybe every other person who watched the episode saw it coming a mile away, but it’s weird to assume that.
So that’s two out of three women Supreme Court justices this season so far. Maybe Kazan will show up too later this season. I also called it too soon as far as Jerry fucking things up. Rick despite being the smartest man alive and in the universe is also a pettty asshole who is willing to kill hundreds of Morty’s just to win a stupid and pointless argument, with the moral and takeaway of: “Rick is always right, don’t fuck with Rick”, something that has never been challenged throughout the entire show, and appeals to those who wish they had the capability to do the shit Rick does, and not good as far as the toxic fans who worship him. This second half of the season is so much better than the first. Liked the blink and you’ll miss it Futurama, South Park, and Simpsons referrences.
I agree with the criticism of Jessica, but other than that, I thought this was one of the strongest of the season.
The joke as I got it was supposed to be on those formulastic pick up guy takes of how easy it supposedly is to manipulate women into being attracted to you. Like, the exagerration of it highlights how absurd it is and how those types of people take things that have grains of psychological truth and exaggerate and sell them to desperate men as being like a how to assemble manual.
Rick is what Elon Musk would be like if Elon was actually smart.
“the moral and takeaway of: “Rick is always right, don’t fuck with Rick”, something that has never been challenged throughout the entire show,”Wasn’t that the entire premise of the ending of Season 3? The whole family – including Jerry – banding together to categorically tell him they were tired of his shit? What worries me a bit is that it seems to have been cast aside, other than a couple of fleeting references to it at the start of S4. It was a potentially interesting direction for the show to take, and it’s been reduced to a couple of throwaway “Dad, you said you would do (x), remember?” lines here and there.
“something that has never been challenged throughout the entire show”Did you miss season 3?
“Kagan”, by the way.
I did notice the Stan hat and Moe’s facade
And Morty was wearing Kenny’s parka.
B+ For one of the funniest episodes of the season? With a better setup than the Summer joke from last week?Um…That Jessica gag really hurt you. 😕
Eh, sometimes a bit or gag can just really rub you the wrong way. It is what it is.
Zack is quite apt at over-analyzing silly gags and getting hurt by them. It is pretty much his schtick at this point.
It’s just that I feel for him, I’m not disappointed just sad that such a funny episode went by and he couldn’t get into it.
I’ve been there, when something bothers you so much you can barely taste the $10 burger you ordered.
I don’t want to judge his opinion, i just want him to smile, lol
Morty accidentally setting the save point to right when he was getting pepper sprayed was both a hilarious visual gag and a chilling reminder of a terrible thing that used to happen in video games.
I remember playing SimCity 2000 and save scumming before using the cheat that either gives you $2500 or starts a firestorm in the middle of your city. Between constantly loading after unsuccessful attempts and saving after every few successful attempts, I’d occasionally save instead of loading after a firestorm erupted in the middle of my city.
I saved sim city and the very next thing that happened was a melt down. It would happen immediately on loading the save. Had to pause and demo the power plant on load to avoid it.
I had a game autosave just as I got killed by a grenade. Had to restart the entire mission. It was on hard mode. Took two hours to get to that point.
Still does. Goddamn Evil Within saved me before a boss fight on a sliver of health.
Here’s a story. I just started playing Metal Gear Solid 5 yesterday and after an ass long tutorial scene of Ahab crawling at a snail’s pace up to getting my first gun, I picked up another gun from a dead enemy not knowing that the clip was empty. So when the next scene start and I really need to shoot people, I was screwed with no way to reclaim the other gun. After several attempts at restarting at the checkpoint and finding out that there is really no way you can survive with an empty clip, yeah that’s right I had to restart the whole frickin’ prologue.
I had to abandon my first Fallout 3 playthrough and start over because I stupidly replaced my good save with one where a very underpowered and out-of-ammo me wandered into a building and got stuck in a basement with two supermutants and a deathclaw. Good times.
Morty even used his universal save game device playing a video game.
I laughed when Morty used the reset device on an ACTUAL video game.
First Skyrim playthrough, first Hagraven encounter outside Helgen, I was way underpowered. Chipped away at it’s health whilst quicksaving and quickloading. Managed to quicksave before being insta-killed by a fireball. Hadn’t properly saved in ages. Had to redo 3+ hours of progress 🙁
THAT was the big Futurama rip-off (specifically the series finale).
Did anyone else notice what looked like Moe’s bar in the background of one scene? And the fact that the characters in the plane crash were all wearing clothes similar to the main characters of South Park?
Rick is a such a prick. I wonder if the Jessica negging is a subtle commentary on how the audience is attracted to an asshole of a character because he’s so “bad ass.”I know the first episode of the second half (i.e., the story train) seems to indicate that Roiland and Harmon aren’t interested in a series long story arc, but I’ve always thought the most interesting implication of the “Evil Morty” storyline would be that he isn’t evil, but trying to save the universe from Rick C-137.
My read of this episode is that it’s dan Harmon responding to the fans (a theme in the latter half of this season). Everyone is feeding him theories and ideas, which were never important to Rick and Morty in the first place—it was always about execution. Time travel stands out as something the show has tried to deconstruct and show is stupid repeatedly, but fans keep coming with those same ideas, despite the fact that the show does the most with executing a bad idea really well (ie mr poopy butthole, the pickle Rick episode etc). On the one hand the episode is critical of fans (morty) for trying to shoehorn in ideas that would basically make the show a sci-fi saved by the bell, while on the other, it’s critical of dan Harmon (Rick), who is actually better at showing the morty-fans how stupid their ideas are (time travel, eyepatch morty, etc) than he is at coming up with something smart (a fake vat of acid).
“…getting to know a woman is like romancing a character in Mass Effect.”i’ve watched this scene IRLhe looked like he didn’t know whether to hit X or Y…hilarious
There is NO CONTINUTIYthat bullshit is for comics books and star wars …yeah, RIGHT.
The implication that Morty was doing things so heinous he managed to piss off MeToo AND GG AND did blackface simultaneously is somehow the funniest thing about this entire episode. (Close second is how Jerry just casually screws his son over without even realizing it. I knew the redo would happen, I just didn’t know in what way)
Honestly, that’s one of the problems I’m starting to have with this season: the show seems like it’s not willing to piss off its horribly toxic fanbase, and is retreating to South Park-style “We offend EVERYONE” both sides-ism, which is in fact taking the side of reactionary assholes. You can tell the show is aware of how problematic it is because they keep hedging their bets (like Rick becoming an Alex Jones type for an alien society last week: you can interpret that many different ways but it ultimately isn’t much of a slam on Jones and his cohort). And I acknowledge that it would be betraying the whole point of the show to have Rick turn to the camera and say “I am an asshole and the things I am doing are bad” but this show feels like its starting to focus most of its attention, not on saying anything specific, but on not being pinned down.
Conspiracy theorist Rick was very, very clearly depicted as a total loser, considered an idiot by everyone including Rick himself, and you have to be extremely dense or just desperate to find things to complain about if you didn’t get that.
Yeah it was a great misdirection. I was thinking it would build to a point where Morty would have to push the button to save them from the plane crash and the rest of the episode would be centered on him making that choice
I honestly thought he was going to grow old with her Picard-style, but this was a much better.
Blackface? Did I miss something?
i don’t think they showed him doing whatever pissed off the NAACP. i’m rewatching to figure out if the lady who laments “we’re to blame” at the end was featured – i dont’ remember her.
One of the signs the protesters was holding at the end was cut off before reading “> Blackface,” implying Morty did something the sign holder though was worse than blackface.
Heroin Steve or whatever was holding a sign at the end that said something like “My Face>Black Face”
i’m more surprised that Morty didn’t create a save point in between meeting this awesome girl an the plane crash.
That’s actually sort of a plot hole. In video games (and Morty knows video games, and this was his idea), you save your position right before a dangerous point, and then again once that point is successfully passed.
I didn’t understand where those protestors came from. Were they teleported in from all the alternate realities? Was the idea that when Morty absorbed all the other lives, the reality also accommodated all the things he had done?That whole bit was just really confusing to me.
No, Rick collapsed all those universes with dead Mortys into the current one for the sake of Morty’s conscience, so he had to either confront them all or get in the vat. That was Rick’s plan all along.
Did Morty push Moe Szyslak out of a wheel chair?
I noticed that looked like Moes bar. Simpson’s did it?
Yeah, I noticed that resemblance too.
that’s Moe’s Tavern*I’ll show myself out….
Something tells me that poor Zack stopped laughing right around the Jessica joke, which is unfortunate, and also kind of hilarious. Everything else reads like a reads like a bitter projection of those emotions. Also, the Moe’s Tavern Easter egg in background of the street corner scene. Morty dress as Kenny during the plane crash, along with the Stan and Kyle hats on two other survivors. Referenced Futurama. Are there any others?
The entire plane bit was a riff on Alive.
Watched it in the 8th grade in the theaters. Laughed my ass off at the guy who kept pining, “We have to get the radio from the back of the plane!” Laughed til the moment he froze to death. Fuck.
I prefer the Simpson’s version. Thanks to the plane… most of us are still alive!
Pass me another chunk of co pilot.
Long story starts to the tune of an old song, story resets abruptly in a ZAP to the beginning point when the tune is playing again. Rickssian Doll. Thank you🕴🏻
“treat them mean keep them keen” isn’t something PUAs or men invented it’s a well known thing both men and women fall for.
Rick’s solutions so often go awry as it did with the acid vat gambit. It’s morbidly funny that he thinks everything is going to go exactly to plan, and then it inevitably doesn’t, Morty suffers and others (sometimes deserving?) die.The thought of save scumming to get through life, and the benefits of it and the horrors alike were well done. I was in stitches when Morty used the device while playing a video game just to get through a level, instead of doing it in the game. I was also yelling at my TV when he wasn’t saving throughout his heartfelt relationship. If you ever needed a more necessary do-over, that is life’s top non-life threatening situation. Come on Morty!I knew as soon as Morty blew off Rick asking if he wanted it scientifically explained, that the fall was coming.
Lord that reminds me of playing Alien Isolation on the hardest difficulty and not saving for a while. Its asking for trouble.
I thought the lack of saving through the relationship was BEAUTIFULLY cynical. Because that’d be committing to it! Otherwise how could he get a total do-over on the whole thing? What a total ashhole 🙂 Sigh
The relationship was the last time he used it, and that sequence was supposed to show he was learning about the value of not doing it.
Rick and Morty finally kind of confirmed my theory (for me, anyway) that one of the “real world” reasons Rick hates time travel stories and won’t do them is Futurama’s incredible run of time travel stories. Hell, Futurama even won its two Emmys for time travel episodes, “Roswell That Ends Well” and “The Late Philip J. Fry.” Rick straight up tells Morty that his idea wasn’t even “his” idea, and he’s right. Its almost the same device Fry uses in “Meanwhile.”
One thing I love about R&M is how much the characters’ dialogue may as well be a writer’s room session. I can see the writers trying to come up with time-travel idea and basically just deciding that they are never going to beat Futurama at this game so they need to figure out a different angle.
As a listener of Harmontown, I really appreciated the use of “It’s in the Way that You Use It” and couldn’t help but hearing Dan sing it.
Its return after Jerry brings Morty back to the strip club was perfect…
CORRECTION: porn theater…
“Gotta get up, gotta get out”
also, Harmon’s line reading of the “acid proof guy” was KILLER. the way he emphasizes the words in “Fuck ALL of you. Here’s my ASS. Take a good LOOK” makes me laugh out loud until i can’t breathe. i rewound it so many times.
“The convolutions with that fake vat of acid at the beginning were a thing of joy.” I honestly thought this was going to be like a bottle episode with them stuck down there the whole time, having to deal with new problems piling up (Rick carving tiny rat bones out of human-sized bones was my favorite part of that bit).
Particularly as the episode title was prominently displayed, I think they wanted you to think as a fakeout.
I love how the Supreme Court keeps randomly showing up. First it was RBG now its Sotomayor. So who’s next? Does Kavanaugh get his dick bit off?
Sonia Sotomayor gave the commencement speech when I graduated college(University of Rhode Island/2016). At one point, she got the name of the school wrong.
Oh that has to hurt.
She should have had the name written on a piece of tape on the back of her gavel: “This morning I was driving down… route 401 . And I thought they could rock at the University of Connecticut. But nobody rocks like… [looks at back of gavel] the University of Rhode Island!”
I think she either made a typo in her notes or maybe has bad handwriting. She called the school “UPI.”
I thought this was one of the best episodes in a long time. Really enjoyed it. Much, more than last week’s, certainly, and significantly more than the story train ep.Felt like it did what the show does best – take a complex concept and make it simple and twisted.The life with the girl felt like an extended “Roy” segment, in the best ways.
One thing I saw people talking about is that the reason Jessica acts differently is because it’s two different Jessicas, from two different timelines. Given the whole point of the way the device worked. Granted, that seems to be the ONLY difference we saw, so maybe not.
Also, you want to try to tell me that once Morty starts seeing the other girl whose name I don’t know we ever caught, he never ONCE used the device to set a newer save point? Not to hedge his bets against her not wanting to go further in their relationship? Or to make sure he picks the perfect gift? Or to peek on her in the shower? I call shenanigans.
It’s because when he met her, he realized the lesson that life is only meaningful because of consequences. So he didn’t want to use it at it would cheapen the magical experience of falling in love with a real person (and not the fantasy that Jessica is). So it was really poignant that he didn’t use it even when things got real hard and worked as a great setup for the twist at the end.
He was supposed to be maturing and commiting to it.
I enjoyed this episode a lot. I enjoyed seeing Morty grow, and I felt for him in how cruel it was what Rick did. But I also found it really funny. In the end, my one wish for this show—(I’ll even accept it as the last second of the last episode)—is for Morty to one day put Rick out of his misery There Will Be Blood-style. Or maybe just find another karmic-ly neutral way for him to escape Rick. I don’t know.
With all the other pop cultural references, this would have been a perfect opportunity for Morty to be smugly told he’d been Rick-rolled about his idea being feasible.
I wonder if Heroin Keith is a shout out to the It’s All Bad podcast
This is a reminder of what I find amazing about this show even as it’s deeply frustrating: it’s about a guy who’s so terrified of making himself vulnerable that he builds insanely elaborate Rube Goldberg-style schemes just so he can undermine criticism. Not only does he need to get back at Morty for pointing out how lame he is, he needs to do it in the most needlessly complex way possible.The logical ending for this show would be Rick admitting that he’s wrong about something and that he genuinely, sincerely needs Morty (and the rest of the family), but since that literally could never happen until they’re willing to burn that bridge—the closest they can ever come is something like the therapy session in Pickle Rick—we’re going to be stuck on this exact “pulling the football away” formula until then. Which makes the very lameness part of the point, TBH.
I can see the show undermining Rick more and more as his schemes get dumber and pettier, but that also suggests an eventual endpoint, so who knows.
It’s definitely what I both love and hate about Rick, as I know so many people who are like that, they think they’re right and know more than most people about anything, and it doesn’t matter what level of intelligence they are, they will always sabotage themselves and make something a huge waste of their time just to prove a point, and normally it’s over something impossibly mundane.
Oh yes. I’ve known (and occasionally been) people who will go SUPER FUCKING HARD in the paint over shit that absolutely could not matter less if it tried, because there’s an ARGUMENT to be “won,” damn it!
Yeah, Morty is 14. He is underdeveloped physically, living at that strange pubescent age when one doesn’t feel like one is really “a high schooler” and still mostly identifies as a little kid, having survived the trauma that is middle school only to discover that just being in high school doesn’t make him an adult or any more respected by his peers.I point this out just because it is such an important time in a person’s life; he’s still a child in many ways, but with every decision he makes, he takes a step toward adulthood.That is why Morty is written to be that age, and 50% of why the show works so well. He’s not an innocent little kid, but he is far from being any sort of adult, and each of his life choices that we see on the show indicate what kind of person he will develop into being, choice by choice, episode by episode.
Just to put an example here: we see that he’s still a little kid because he wants a dragon, but he is becoming an adult by trying to figure out girls, dating, romance, and specifically pursuing Jessica (who is physiologically much more developed than Morty is).Rick on the other hand is old. He is set in his ways. He is who he is, and the only significant character changes he undergoes are the results of external forces; he does not change due to internal growth. (You’re welcome to disagree with that analysis, but that’s my opinion, and you are welcome to your own.)I think that the joy of the show is seeing how Morty slowly becomes his own person over time. How much his personal character is influenced by Rick versus how much is influenced by his own ideas and decisions, whether or not he makes mistakes is integral to what makes the show work so well. Morty has an obligation to himself to disagree with Rick when he sees fit, causing conflict, and that is what drives the show. If Morty simply does whatever Rick says to do, his character has no agency and the show has no stakes. Morty has to make mistakes in order to grow into an adult, and Rick recognizes this and often much to his chagrin, he lets Morty make mistakes so that he can learn from them. It is from all of this that both the drama and the humor rises, making the show the hit that it is.
I’m going to make up a name for Coffee Shop Girl: Alice. Here’s my understanding of how things end for her. When Morty unites all the Morties and faces all the consequences of all the parallel people with whom he interacted, he unites all of the Alices. There’s the original Alice who lived and loved with Morty, the couple of Alices who pepper-sprayed him, and probably a bunch who never knew him. Right after Morty jumps into the fake acid to escape the consequences, the combined Alice approaches as though she remembers caring about Morty. However, she turns away at the evidence of his death.
She was the stripper that worked across the street.
Morty had been stalking her well enough to know her habits. Hence the chance meeting at the coffee shop.
How did nobody get that?
My favorite gag is that Morty uses his own save function instead of the game’s when he plays the video game.
The fake-acid plan doesn’t work any better at the end of the episode than at the beginning. First, Morty gets tired of waiting and just kills some people. Later, he misfires when targeting a ladle and triggers a series of events that end with a mentally ill man getting burned to death by acid on live TV. It’s just that Morty has learned to keep his criticisms of Rick to himself.
I also enjoyed this episode, but my criticisms of it are many. Actually, I just have a lot of plot nitpicks, which aren’t really “criticism” in the academic sense. Why wouldn’t Morty “save” his place after the first date and every so often after that during the relationship? In video games you save every time you do something even mildly significant. If he’d just saved before buying plane tickets, for example, the whole issue is skirted.Also, on a character level, why is Morty so horrified at “Prestiging” himself? He’s buried other versions of himself so often it shouldn’t be that shocking to him anymore. All the way back in the infamous “let’s watch TV” episode he seemed pretty inured to the whole thing.My actual criticisms are the same as yours, Zach. The show needs to figure out what to do with Jessica and it needs to have something to say beyond, “Rick is very smart.” I’d actually love an entire Jessica episode so she can be developed a little more, but that would, in general, require the show to be a little better with its female characters. It does okay with Beth and Summer from time to time, but every time it tries to address issues of gender it goes off in awkward directions as if the writers have no idea what they’re talking about.
Someone please answer me this: How does the merging of the various Morty saves into one Morty make sense? Like, I get all the times he did something bad, but what about all the times he died or committed suicide? I feel like those create a larger plot hole than anything time travel could inflict.
I’m fairly confident that I didn’t like this episode. I thought that was impossible before.Rick is so petty that he can’t handle that his stupid Acid Vat con was ….stupid that he tricks Morty into killing multiple versions of himself, through no fault of his own. Morty somehow, at 14, is allowed to foster a relationship with an older woman with no comment, fly off and crash land and almost die….while Rick apparently stays out of it? This comes after Rick and Morty, at least twice, having real bonding moments where they talk about how they really like and respect each other? Morty shows enough fortitude to recognize that he’d rather live out his pretty-much-doomed-to-die-in-the-snow life, rather than take back a great relationship, but still is considered the asshole? Random people show up to villify Morty, though none are represented in the story? SiI’ve seen five versions of the creators talking about how they had this idea about how their idea was stupid, and ran with it. I mean, these episodes are all random with no real logic…but this one just seemed mean-spirited. I mean I’m still all-in on the show, but Rick is a HUGE piece of shit for killing DOZENS of people just cuz he looked stupid for a moment.
You do realize that Rick forced Morty to insert huge poisonous seeds into Morty’s anus in episode 1?
I dont think she was supposed to be much older. Women ofter mature faster then men physically.
I found it just plain mean. And cruel. And far up it’s own butt with how clever it was with where it was taking the concept. Not clever at all. Just one character treating another character like dog meat, for the 100th time. It’s a nah for me.
Although, I did like the Silver Sphere from Phantasm making an appearance on Rick’s workbench.
The crudely drawn “IN CASE OF LADLE” sign over the gun in Morty’s vat made me fucking howl!
Yeah the entire time the bit with Jessica was going on I was like, “If this is not a joke and you are unironically saying that this is how teenage boys get teenage girls to fall for them then you are part of the problem.”It’s also hard not to see Rick and Morty’s relationship in the show as paralleling Dan and Justin’s after Summer’s comment in Mindblowers. Especially since Harmon has a habit of oversharing in his work. The show is as smart and slick and funny as ever, but some little signs are making me worried for the future.
Just realized a huge plot hole. Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the device horrifically dissolve the probable Morty in the next reality before replacing him with our Morty? Wouldn’t somebody have been reacting to the dissolution when he popped in? Or at the very least not continue their sentence like nothing happened?
The show made a choice that Jessica sucks. It could’ve gone the other way and had Morty pining after somebody who was genuinely cool as well as pretty, but instead, Morty’s obsession is made all the more tragic by the fact that Jessica is a shallow proto-human (like most of us were at her age, to be fair) whose reactions to basic stimuli like reverse psychology, negging, feigned disinterest, etc. etc. are completely predictable.It’s not like it’s a particularly brave choice or anything, but it is a choice. It’s uncomfortable to think that some of the criticism aimed towards that choice is because… I dunno, girl characters always need to be fleshed out and complicated even if they’re one step above literal props as far as the series is concerned?It also sets up one of the lessons Morty learns, which was useful to this particular script. He needed to learn and grow and mature a whole bunch as a setup for Rick knocking him all the way down with the reveal, and, well, having the epiphany that manipulating the easily-manipulated is just shitty and wrong is a pretty good lesson to have on that pile.
this season kinda sucks.
I don’t know that there’s much to “get” with Jessica. She likes Morty but she’s not really interested when he’s clingy and constantly trying to get her attention. As soon as he seems confident enough to be fine without her she finds him more attractive. It’s a pretty common trait in people (liking self-confidence rather than aggressive affection), here played up for a comedic value because it’s considered stereotypical for teenage girls to respond more to “jerky” behavior.
I think the joke with Jessica is that she is more or less a blank slate and is whatever a particular episode needs her to be. It’s a bit of a meta-joke on the idea that there isn’t any more substance to her then being “Morty’s Crush”.
I was particularly amused that he used the device while actually playing a video game (rather than just using a save point in the game).
I had to go back and re-watch the episode just to make sure I was clear on something. We know how Rick’s gadget works. But who’s the first person to use the device and “save his game”? Rick does. He saves his place, shoots Morty, and then undoes it. But it has to work for Rick the same way it does for Morty which means…Rick literally killed himself to get back at Morty.And I think that makes this episode way more interesting than it might first appear.
I don’t even know why I bother with A.V. club reviews. You just went on a treasure hunt to nitpick this episode apart. We are 4 seasons deep into rick and Morty. You shouldn’t be reviewing if these minor things bother you. This episode was pure gold, flaws and all. Ricks ending speech was golden. I loved the episode.
Thank you man, honestly I thought this was one of their best episodes (some bias on my part since the prestige is my favorite movie). Everything in this episode just worked. Yes it was a call back to the Rick proves a point type, but that’s not a bad thing. I relate this episode to the solar opposites episode when they do the episode in the kids wall. Had some depth to it, went really dark at the end, but then the conclusion just shows the insignificance of it all compared to the bigger picture when we see the family just fucking around while these mini characters had a very traumatic and life changing event. This is true for Morty in this episode, yes he did do a lot of fucked up stuff, but he came out the other side with a different perspective. Obviously with all things Rick and Morty, it probably won’t amount to much in terms of character development, but even the tiniest hint of progression is incredible. Side note, I love the Kenny South Park reference with him in an orange jacket, and after he gets reset, he begins killing himself and dying in every scene, as is tradition Kenny.
I loved that episode! Solar opposites was amazing
Why DO you read reviews with opinions you don’t agree with then? You admit to it having flaws, and Zach admits to liking the episode despite his opinion of what bothered him. If this is your reaction, maybe just check the grade reflects your opinion before reading further?
Rick always wins and its getting cliche? Did you even WATCH season 3, Zack? The whole point was Rick getting his way, things going way off the rails, and in the end, he DOES NOT WIN. He has a forced retreat to a sort-of reset. Of course this season (unevenly, imho) is about him trying to get back on top. There is no inevitability to him “always winning.” At the point of the Prestige reveal (had no idea what that means, so another film to read the summary of), I had a feeling that this might be really the Evil Morty origin story. That made the vat MUCH funnier and Morty’s reaction to it more so.Go back to Pickle Rick. For all of the insanity of that episode, the best part for me was Dr. Wong’s (“racist name by the way”) complete evisceration of Rick at the end of the session. She completely demolished his smartest guy in the universe schtick and left him speechless. That was genius. So no, Rick does not always win, and while he usually does, those moments when he doesn’t keep the show compelling.I see no problem with Jessica. She is (as some people are) fairly shallow, and even in the toxic episode, Morty realizes that and is fine with it. Meh.
Did anyone catch that we ended the episode with a different Morty? The morty we started with was killed by Rick. Rick then jumped time lines, killing Rick 2 and giving Morty 2 the device. When they return to the original timeline, it is Rick 1 and Morty 2.
Zack, it seems like the whole thing about Jessica really annoyed you, but I think you misunderstood what was going on there. It seems weird on first watch, but when you know the twist that Morty was really dimension-hopping each time he reset, it makes sense: it wasn’t the “same” Jessica reacting all those different ways to Morty. The first time he talked to Jessica, he’d already reset at least once (after pulling Goldenfold’s pants down) and was probably in a dimension where Jessica didn’t know/like him all that well. The second time, he’s in one where they’ve interacted a lot, and she secretly likes him. And notice that, the third time he talks her and apologizes for his behavior from the second time, she says she doesn’t know what he’s talking about, because it’s not the same Jessica. You were really bothered about this, but actually, I think it’s one of the best bits of foreshadowing in the episode that Morty’s jumping between various dimensions.
An interesting detail I noticed by accident while rewinding to listen to a piece of dialog I spaced out on: Rick lets Morty kill himself in all the incidents, but when testing the machine and shooting Morty, you can clearly see Morty still breathing after being shot. Rick must have set his gun on stun to not kill (a) Morty himself?
What happens when Rick uses the device after shooting Morty? Because we see the purple dissolve effect on Morty while Rick just snaps into place in the chair. Which would mean that that Rick, before the merge, was living in a universe with a dead Morty?
This might be mentioned, but there was a Rick and Morty comic where Rick used the same device, albeit for an entirely different purpose, with a similar reveal to a horrified Morty. It was a “boilerhouse” interdimensional stock thing, and the trick was he would destroy all the universes where he didn’t make the right picks.
First thing I thought of after the great technology Rick-veal was this short film. Great and horrifying.
Maybe I’m reading too much into it, and he obviously never said as much, but i got the feeling that Rick knew that the Vat of Acid scheme was a dud. It was being called out on it by Morty that ticked him off.
What the heck did Morty do to the whales?
I thought it was gonna be real acid at the end. Knowing Rick, who doesn’t give a fuck about anything. He’d just pick another Morty from another doomed dimension in his place.
Stray observation: Morty has a map detailing the route to the tail section the location of he couldn’t possibly know about. Love how unashamedly lazy this show is sometimes.