Jerry goes to Hell on an entertaining Rick And Morty
Summer and Morty's attempts to impress the new kid at school end with a body count
TV Reviews Rick and Morty
Okay, good news: this episode is definitely better than “Rickdependence Spray.” The show hasn’t completely lost its brain, and at no point in “Amortycan Grickfitti” did I start wondering if the creative team was expressing obvious contempt for its audience. This isn’t an amazing half hour, but it’s pretty good. One of the big problems about last week’s entry (which I definitely overgraded, if that makes you feel better) was the way it suggested a potential end game for the series as a whole. Rick And Morty isn’t going to be sustainable for ever, at least not creatively, because no show ever really is; but because it’s going to stay profitable long after it loses the spark that drove it, we’re eventually going to find ourselves stuck going through the motions, watching familiar set-ups that only inspire the memory of laughter, not the thing itself. “Rickdependence Spray” offered the horrible possibility that those latter days were already here. You thought late seasons Simpsons was bad? Abandon all hope, folks.
Thankfully, that looks to be an outlier. Five episodes into the season and we’ve had one stone cold classic (“Mortyplicity” ranks up with the show’s all time best), two pretty good episodes, one trying-but-not-quite-making-it episode, and one dud. That’s not amazing math, but “pretty good” is better than “oh god my eyes,” and I’ll happily take something like “Amortycan,” which has a lot of good character work and some solid jokes, even if its twin storylines aren’t quite as sharp or inventive as they could’ve been. It’s the kind of episode that can be tricky to talk about as a reviewer, because I’m going to largely focus on what I consider to be the flaws, but that doesn’t mean those flaws were dominant or even, in the grand scheme of things, all that important. It’s easy for a show to hit the occasional home run; what you want is something that can still manage doubles or triples on a weekly basis.
We get two storylines here, the set up being that Rick and Jerry are having a “guy’s night,” while Morty and Summer are entertaining a guest at home, the new kid at school; Beth is at the horse hospital (someone played Barry White at the race track and she has to deliver seven horse babies), but she shows up in Rick and Jerry’s plot after the first five minutes or so. Of the two plots, I think the former probably works slightly better, but both get the job done, leaning heavily into our understanding of these relationships and striking a nice balance between cynicism and unexpected sweetness.
In the Rick and Jerry (and eventually Beth) plot, we learn that Rick screwed over some hell-demons (they’re cenobites from Hellraiser) by selling them faulty skin hooks, and in order to pay them back, he’s letting them enjoy Jerry’s general… Jerry-ness. The premise of Hellraiser is that at the extreme point of sensation, there’s no difference between pleasure and pain—if you push things far enough, the heights of ecstasy will be the same as the depths of agony, and vice versa. It was the ‘80s, and Clive Barker could pretty much sell anything because he had a British accent and he actually talked about sex in horror stories, as opposed to just using a lot of awkward metaphors.
Regardless, that’s not really what “Amortycan” is working with. Like a lot of the show’s piss-takes on genre conventions, the episode presents the most boiled down simplified version of a concept and just rams it into the ground. Which is satire of a sort (it wouldn’t be Ricky And Morty if it wasn’t sneering just a little), but there’s something a bit disappointing about how quickly the story slots the cenobite concept into “opposite day.” The hell-demons like hanging out with Jerry because his pathetic, awful sense of humor and lack of awareness makes anyone who spends time with him miserable—which, to the hell-demons, translates into pleasure. That’s… basically the joke for the rest of our time with them. Something is bad, but that makes it good. It’s decently funny, and I appreciate the commitment to the bit, but there’s a certain predictability to it that wears thin after a while.
What works better is how this all ends up playing into Rick and Jerry’s relationship, with Rick actually, and kind of shockingly, being forced into a situation where he has to sincerely admit that he loves (or that he should love) Jerry. It’s not a hugely emotional moment or anything like that (I can’t really imagine a situation with Jerry that would be hugely emotional), but it’s always gratifying to see the show leaning into its characters for humor instead of leaning on sci-fi high concept goofs to carry them across. The best episodes are the ones that manage to balance the high concept with the family drama in illuminating, funny, and satisfying ways, and while “Amortycan” doesn’t reach those heights, the interplay between Rick, Jerry, and Beth all feels pretty much on point.
Same with Morty and Summer and their storyline, which depends largely on one of those ultra-Darwinian readings of high school that always baffle me in media. See, Morty has scored a hang-out with Bruce Chutback, the new kind in school; and because no one knows anything about Bruce or his past, he represents unlimited potential for coolness points. Summer immediately wants in, and the two are so desperate to impress him that they steal Rick’s ship. Only, Rick’s ship has a security system, and it’s clever enough to blackmail them and then drag them along to do what it wants to do.
I’ll admit to not really getting the whole Bruce situation, as my experiences in high school, while often miserable, were rarely if ever this hyper fixated on my standing and the standing of those around me. There were cool kids, and I wasn’t one of them, but the cool kids were never that cool, and they didn’t even hang out with anyone I knew, and it wasn’t like someone was keeping track of any of this shit. The rigidity of this conceit always rings as false when it pops up in fiction, as though someone decided at some point that all high school stories had to be modernized versions of Victorian-era social drama, everyone locked into inescapable tiers of misery and struggling to betray one another to claw their way up a level or two before college. It fits a little better on this show, given how ruthless Rick And Morty is about basically everything, but it’s still an awkward, curiously artificial way to kick off a plot.
Thankfully it’s not hugely important to what happens next, and I was surprised to see Bruce actually survive through the end credits, even if he does end up humiliated because he can’t afford to buy more than one pair of pants. Mostly the storyline is about the defense system on Rick’s ship getting up to shenanigans, which include catching and killing a Galactus lookalike (and then being disappointed it’s too small,) before trying and failing to lose its virginity to a… sigh… “Changeformer.”
It’s, again, fine, and moves at a good clip, and ends more or less as you’d expect, with Bruce saying he had a good time but then turning out to be kind of a dick. There’s a certain Mad-Libs quality to some Rick And Morty plots, and the “Changeformer” thing leans into that especially hard, but given how fast it goes by, it’s hard to be too bothered by it. (And it’s not like Transformers actually deserve a more thoughtful and rigorous critique.) We get some fun Morty and Summer back and forth bickering, there’s a bit where they do a fly-by on a planet where everyone’s a walking mailbox, and it all works out okay in the end. Except for Bruce and the whole “one pair of pants thing,” but fuck that guy, right?
Stray observations
- It’s impressive how endearing Jerry is at this point without ever really losing his Jerry-ness.
- “Dude, this bitch plays it close to the vest.” -Summer. (Regardless of whether or not the whole “we’re obsessed with our social standing” plays, Summer and Morty’s increased nervousness on not getting a good read on Bruce is very funny.)
- “You never follow a demon to a second location. It’s always Hell.” -Rick. I’m torn on this one, because the “It’s always Hell” is a good joke, but I’m not sure it was worth ripping off a classic 30 Rock line.
- “Could this be the end of Mousetrap Nipples?”
101 Comments
I don’t know if this is a good show anymore.This episode was kinda cringe.
It was slightly better than last week’s. Still, the worst is either the heist one or the dragon one, both from last season.
It feels like The Rise of Skywalker in the sense that they looked at the criticisms of Season 3 and the criticisms of Season 4 then just said “Fuck it” and decided to do a “Best of…” season that retreads things they’ve done before. Seriously, this episode was just taking the “A Nightmare on Elm Street is kind of ridiculous” joke of “Lawnmower Dog” and applying it to Hellraiser.
The joke of… parodying a movie? I didn’t know that was so unique to Lawnmower Dog.
I know, they’ve done parodies of The Purge, Fantastic Voyage/Innerspace, Needful Things, the Mad Max movies, plus the show itself is a parody of Back to the Future, so movie parodies are kind of what the show does.
And yet here we have another B for another stinker
I don’t know if it’s the show or it’s me, but I’m just not feeling it anymore.It seems like the show is just going in circles without any growth or forward movement. It’s all episodic. There’s no more story arcs, just a bunch of bits strung together.
I think we’ve seen some growth.For me it’s starting to lack the structure that was Rick and Morty’s secret weapon. Planetina, Space Sperm and this one were all really unstructured.
I heavily agree with this. If they do one or two ‘lore’ episodes every season, that would keep me happy. This just feels like the writing isn’t as tight anymore. Both Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland are also working on other projects so this show is definitely on auto pilot right now. Hopefully this is just an awkward lull in there 70+ episode order where the creators were pulled a few too many directions.
This comment will disappear thanks to Kinja:I get that there are deadlines, but what happened to reviewing any misspellings, grammar, or punctuation errors and correcting them? I read the recap to Kevin Can F**k himself and found a couple of errors.Sure, I’m not perfect either,
what happened to reviewing any misspellings, grammar, or punctuation errors and correcting them?
The A. V. Club hasn’t done that in years.
You have a point there. There would be an error here or there that I would ignore, but Sunday’s errors just stuck out to me. I probably wasn’t tired and/or drunk enough when reading them.
Everything’s an upgrade from last week.Also: Tuca and Bertie had another good episode … and … I watched Birdgirl for the first time and that was pretty good too. Birdgirl’s physical mannerisms are funny. The animation is close to Venture Brothers standards. I’m hopeful that the vibe at [as] is starting to smell a little less like a 19-year-old boys’ dorm weeks-old dirty laundry pile and more like a 27-year-old woman’s (slightly less smelly) two-day-old laundry pile.* I hope the trend lasts.*last week’s R&M notwithstanding
is birdgirl supposed to be 27? I had a mid 30s feel but I guess that’s academic
Love the laundry reference. Shit! I got to do laundry.I started watching Tuca & Bertie about a week and a half ago. Someone here recommended the episode where Tuca has problems sleeping, which I can relate to. I had a hard time getting into it when it was on Netflix, but will revisit the first season. I think spacing out the episodes vs watching the entire thing at once helps.My dumb ass was laughing at Speckle freaking out about the doorbells.I started watching Birdgirl last week, when they showed the first episode. The only episode I watched before that was when her assistant pretended to be her second assistant. I like it so far.
Tuca and Bertie had another good episodeI was upset at the end by something I’m not sure I got right. Did Speckle break up with Bertie and left town? The whole thing about the doorknob “only available from a store really far away” felt clearly as if he was lying, and just found an excuse to leave. We cut later to their house in disrepair and Bertie sighing.
Good write-up, but I think you are being too generous. I definitely chuckled during this but, it all felt a bit dumb. The show has lost me at this point. There doesn’t seem to be any real life behind the episodes. The concepts feel shallow, the plots feel rushed. I feel like there’s a greater reliance on gratuitous action than there were in early seasons – and the animation in this show is not strong enough to carry itself on that alone. It even seems like the voice actors are checked out…lines delivered are just really flat. (You’ve stated that there was character work here but…not sure Jerry and Rick going through the motions with no real dialogue besides ‘sorry I was a jerk’ really cuts it.)And is continuity even a thing anymore? I don’t wanna be one of those guys but…without a continuity, nothing feels like it has stakes or really matters. It doesn’t just mean that character beats feel empty, it makes action sequences dull. When Morty and Summer are flying through space and I know they won’t die or really pay any price ..it just makes the adventures feel like filler or fluff. And with no tension in the action, it means the jokes have less tension to play off of.I don’t blame Harmon or Roiland – they are cashing out and seasons 1-3 were strong enough. Just disappointed; and frankly a little bitter that Venture Bros – a sci-fi comedy that loved and respected it’s audience to its grave – died prematurely while this cynical grab lumbers on. No disrespect to anyone who is still enjoying this of course, but count me out. I’ve seen enough.
I loved the Venture Bros, and I still want to see what they had sketched out for the last season (which I hope is addressed in the movie), but cmon it did not die prematurely. It started in like 2004 and was just cancelled last year. It had a great run.
It started in like 2004 and was just cancelled last year. It had a great run.Yeah but it had what, three six-episode seasons over that span?
I kid, but not much.
New season every 3.5 yrs!
Yeah and every episode they released was on point. Quality takes time.
– Everybody has at least one moment where they mutter “Fucking Jerry!” at the TV. It took a while for me, but it finally hit when he instantly decided to develop Glutie’s app as soon as Rick left despite the tattoo on the alien intern’s head and the explicit instructions from Rick not to do exactly that. I’m probably more pro-Jerry than most, but tonight offered my second “Fucking Jerry!” moment with his glee at the karaoke bar having Smash Mouth’s entire catalog.- Summer: *farts*
Morty: Gross!
Summer: YOU HAVE TO LIKE IT OR YOU’RE A SEXIST!
I think that was cancel culture summed up in about two seconds.- I wouldn’t say the social positioning is exclusive to high school, but I’ve definitely experienced both sides of the Bruce equation. From second grade until I moved to a new state for high school, I was extremely unpopular and bullied often. On my first day of middle school, I met a new kid who just moved from New Jersey and whose desk happened to be right next to mine. Like Morty and Summer, I made it my mission to essentially get the inside track on him and introduce myself before any of the other kids could fill him on all the cruel rumors about me and all the reasons I apparently sucked (including being poor and not having a heavy rotation of fashionable clothes). For me it wasn’t so much about being more popular, but just having a friend at all, but I definitely understood where they were coming from. Thankfully it worked out, and he and I are still close friends to this day, even though I haven’t seen him in almost 15 years and we live on different ends of the country, and we were only schoolmates for two years. Once we became friends I admitted what I did, and he understood. He didn’t care about what others said about me, because he knew the real me, but he understood the idea that if other people got to make the first impression about me before I got the chance, it might have changed the way he perceived me.- On the other side of things, when I got my first real job out of college, I moved to Connecticut with what I could fit in my car and about $200 in my pocket. I had one nice pair of pants, and I wore them every day (washing often) until I could afford new pants (and eventually I just started wearing jeans, because everyone else did, so who was I trying to impress?), but those first two weeks were enough to sour my reputation in the eyes of some of colleagues and supervisors. My eventual best friend and roommate let me know that they openly mocked me at lunch meetings because of my limited wardrobe. So yes, regardless of setting, it very much happens.- That said, I half wonder if it was meant to be ironic that Bruce got ostracized for wearing the same clothes, even though, as animated characters, everyone in the school wears the same outfit daily unless there’s a special, plot-related reason for them not to.- Also worth noting, I didn’t see Jessica in the cafeteria with the other cool kids. I so hope she’s on some kind of Time God adventure and we get to catch up with her before the season’s over.- Finally got an opening montage scene in the show with the mailbox people smashing! I had a feeling that would be the one, though the Voltron/Power Rangers-eque costumes/tubes thing looked like it had potential for the Planetina episode.- The car incinerating the “Changeformers” party is probably the closest we’ll ever get to Michael Bay facing justice.- Olympic Diving for Bad Swimmers will probably be more exciting than anything we end up seeing in Tokyo next week. Also, we need another Interdimensional Cable episode. There, I said it.- Why was Barry White the catalyst for the horse orgy? Ginuwine’s “Pony” was right there for the taking!- The car wants to lose its virginity? Please tell me there’s a spinoff called “Parky’s” in the works.- Sofa wine? Sofa wine.- You ever get that feeling where you’re so happy that you got a reference, but then get pissed because someone explains it and ruins your perceived exclusivity? Yeah, that was me with Rick’s Dennis Nedry security measure.
Interdimensional cable could really be its own show.
Actually, I think it would be hillarious if one season was just interdimensional cable without the smith family even appearing.
I wear the same pants everyday, but i have mutliple pairs of the same pants.
There’ve been two “Interdimensional Cable” episodes, and I’m sure that the subsequent references to it are meant to tease/threaten the idea of doing more.
Sure, it could be it’s own show, but so too could Itchy and Scratchy. I think having it as the default thing that can be shown on the TV in any given episode is kinda the perfect place for it to exist though.
Or maybe not, because there was exactly half a great episode of Interdimensional Cable, and a full outright awful one.
As with so much of the show, I suspect that there’s a “meta” element to the weird obsession with high school popularity politics — That it’s not meant to be so much realistic or relatable, but rather a winking riff on cinematic high school tropes, and following them to their logical conclusion.
When I found out that I got a job at the current company I worked for (over six years now), I did buy nice clothes that I rotated with the nicer Old Navy clothes and numerous cardigans I already had: two pairs of Michael Kors pants and four Calvin Klein tops. I would immediately take the “nice clothes” off when I got home because my cat would easily ruin them. I started wearing my less nice clothes when I got comfortable.Parky’s. That’s hilarious. I would watch Olympic Diving for Bad Swimmers. They are probably sick and tired of fans asking for another Interdimetional Cable episode, but last season’s train episode was meh.
Whatever the case the number of words Zack devoted to saying he doesn’t quite get these sorts of high school social scene plots because he had an atypical high school experience is ridiculous. It takes up a significant portion of what’s supposed to be a review/recap of the episode itself. I could see maybe mentioning it in passing, but honestly if these things had an editor (which unfortunately they don’t) that part shouldn’t be there at all.Aside from the fact that what Zack’s saying is ridiculous. It’s a work of fiction (and satire at that) so of course it’s exaggerated but Zack seems to be saying he doesn’t buy the idea of cliques and social hierarchy in high school at all. The idea that someone could be bullied for some random trivial reason rings very true to any school setting I’ve ever been in. No no one is officially keeping track of these things but I remember spending hours thinking about everyone’s social standing, who was most popular, what the most powerful clique was etc. It’s really stupid but it happens
– Finally got an opening montage scene in the show with the mailbox people smashing! I had a feeling that would be the one, though the Voltron/Power Rangers-eque costumes/tubes thing looked like it had potential for the Planetina episode.Based on this episode’s post-credit scene I think the Voltron/Power Rangers-esque thing will be in the next episode.
This is a great response and your story makes me wish this episode had played more into Morty’s desperation to make a friend, since he conceivably doesn’t actually have any. That might have been too close to the show feeling genuine emotions again instead of bombarding us with scifi concepts and genocide though….
Just here to say that a Karaoke version of Yello’s Oh Yeah is a phenomenally horrible idea and Parnell SELLS it. (“It” being what a bad idea it is.)
Probably best part of the episode.
I kind of get what Beth sees in him from that – like, he’s just sooo confident in his horrible ideas it can be kind of sexy as in a way where you want to be in a position of power over him in order to keep him from fucking up.
That’s an interesting take on a Dom relationship. Domination based on the sub being socially awkward
day bow bow
was that supposed to be a Ferris Bueller reference with them intercutting the song with the three kids taking a joyride in the ship?
Absolutely. Also, “what’s love Dr Doo, Dr Dolittle” was fucking perfect…
Probably
I was almost rolling around the ground at this point. “Ohhhh Yeaahhhh!!”
I was cracking up pretty hard at the Hell-demons getting off on Jerry sucking. That was great – maybe it was just in the line delivery of them turning purple and laughing at his stuff.
The Morty and Summer was funny too, although not as funny. I love the idea that they’re such weirdo losers at schools that they’re desperate to impress a random new kid who seems totally banal (especially “shampoos her pubes” Summer given the kid is Morty’s age), and that it ultimately ends in a “meh” on their part.
It’s got the same problem as the previous episode, where the Third Act isn’t as funny or tight as the first two. But it’s less of a problem in this one since the episode is funnier overall.
(“Mortyplicity” ranks up with the show’s all time best)
It’s incredibly rewatchable as well. Just a great, incredibly tight, well-paced episode with fantastic comic timing.
The AV Club
I was pretty hard at the Hell-demons getting off on Jerry
you forgot “sucking”
I always thought Summer WAS a cool kid. She threw the coolest party in history at the end of season 1 (or 2) right? Shampooing ones pubes hardly seems as bad as some of the social awkwardness Morty has to deal with.
Not anymore!
its kind of hard to pin down their social status, but it seems like one of those things that dependent on the plot, like How jessica reacts to Morty like Mr Burns reacts to Homer Simpson
Nah, no one liked her picking on that one nerdy girl with the glasses that she sent on a possible suicide mission.
I don’t shampoo my pubes but that doesn’t seem bad at all to me (unless it’s complete lack of notability is the joke?)
I’d think that the only place where shampooed pubes would actually be appropriate would be porn, and even then in the relatively small amount of it where they’re not waxed off.
I think it’s the classic TV sitcom trope of “older sister is more popular than younger brother (but still nowhere near as popular as the rest of the kids at her school)“.
Man, kids will make fun of anybody for anything, even if everybody knows they do it. They just want a reaction and if you give it to them then your stuck.
Summer’s relative social status seems hard to pin down, but I took this episode as partial satire on those types of unrealistic high school plots. My guess is the origin of those is a lot of the creative types who winded up making those felt like outsiders/ were bullied and thus in their memory its even worse then it was which they then exaggerate. but this episode nailed how unrealistic and ridiculous those sorts of tropes are
They had a similar conceit on “The Good Place” where the demons liked stuff that sucked, but they didn’t keep it up as consistently as it was done here
Jerry’s deadpan recitation of “Oh Yeah” is probably my favorite part of the episode.
the moon…..the sun
This is actually the first episode this season I’ve genuinely enjoyed all the way through. I was hesitant about the Rick & Jerry plot line at first because I think the show has mocked him far more than necessary, but it did find a way to prop him up, even a little bit, at Rick’s expense, which was amusing. Never seen Hellraiser, so all the references were lost on me, but I liked the final bit. As for Morty and Summer’s plot, I loved that Bruce was introduced with all those fourth wall breaking signs and narration. It’s a really old gag, but it always works for me. Likewise, the “smart-ass AI in a vehicle” gag is an easy way to make me laugh. Rick’s ship reminded me a bit of Bender from Futurama. I also laughed at “Oh, the Changality!”
There are always similarities between the two shows but the Morty and Summer story on this one really reminded me of Futurama
I didn’t hate last week’s episode, but it definitely felt like treading water. This is the most purely entertaining episode of the season, even if it’s not as ambitious as the first three (seriously, that Captain Planet riff is my jam). All the hell stuff is great. Jerryoke is hilarious. Both Bruce Chutback songs rule. The public defender puppet thing is the perfect blend of morbid and hilarious. There’s a lot to love about this episode, and it all coalesces perfectly.
I was disappointed more people didn’t think grown up versions of the planeteers was funnier. I REALLY liked it, but I was the age where my saturday mornings were filled with awful shit like Captain Planet, Ninja Turtles, Street Cats or whatever, Biker Mice from Mars, you get it.
You thought late seasons Simpsons was bad?Yeah, I can definitely see that happening on R&M in real time.
“an entertaining Rick and Morty” : B“Stupidest Rick and Morty episode ever?”: B-(edit: I see he addressed that in this now)
Can he change the review retroactively?
The thing abut never going to a second location dates back to before 30 Rock. In the 80s, self-defense experts would tell people not to go to a second location with an attacker and stand your ground where you are. The idea was that anywhere they are taking you will put them at an advantage and you at a disadvantage. Both the 30 Rock joke and the Rick and Morty joke play off that concept.
If Rick really wanted to repay his debts to the Cenobites, he should have just taken them to see SpaceJam 2. Talk about PAIN!!!
I’m pretty much always on board for Rick’s ship acting bitchy toward Summer, so the episode worked for me.
THIS!
Given how amazing the first episode where the ship talked was I’m surprised it took them this long to bring her back.
I loved the ship ripping the piss out of how Summer talks.
Yeah I wanted more of that instead of Chad Chutback or whatever his name is.
I think this is what we get when the creators take less than 2 years to develop a season. Nothing so far is as overworked as that story train mess from last season, but a lot of ideas are underdeveloped. I mean, Morty keeps just having kids from school over to his house. Is this Growing Pains all of a sudden? And did we need to revisit the security system from Rick’s car? No, we did not.I also wonder how much the 70-episode order and/or Harmon sobering up have contributed to the change in quality. I obviously want everyone working on the show to be happy and healthy, but maybe Harmon works best when he’s the over-compensating underdog. The success of R&M may be the thing that kills it creatively.
New episodes every two years may produce better episodes, but it is not a sustainable entertainment model.
I’m not super down on the season, but I have noticed in the behind the episode things that Justin Roiland seems less involved. Could just be a coincidence, but he certainly has more on his plate now.
Also as it must be pointed out again, Solar Opposites is far superior to the last two seasons of R&M
Has Harmon sobered up? Is that canonical?
I think they are playing up the “social jungle school hierarchy” thing because it fits with the theme of the episode.It isn’t cool to “dunk on” lame sincere people like Jerry and it is pretty lame to revere someone you perceive as “cool” because it’s just a projection of your own insecurities.
Great review, fully agree. On the high-school social class standing thing: I do think it was definitely present where I lived (which is no special place whatsoever), maybe not to the extent as fiction portrays it but there was definitely a whole lot insecurity around in classes in general which usually translated into people trying to be cool (and of course usually failing in the process because trying to be cool never really works which is also what this episode tackled in a funny way).Glad to see the season back on track. The 7th episode is leaked but I’m gonna hang on until it airs, curious what else they got in store this season.
I thought the whole “high school is vicious social standing” was so over the top it was an intentional parody of how ridiculous those types of high school genre conventions are. I think this was really highlighted by the end where he becomes loser because he wore the same pants two days in a row. Generally when you see genre conventions in Rick and Morty, they are parodies/satire because thats basically what the show does.
And the “opposite” stuff worked for me.
A general thought with this criticism here- of course AV club is going to be hypercritical. But I think people sort of expect too much of this show. Like, I think there is this whole thing where the show blew up in a way where early on it exceeded expectations in certain ways, and people expect it to be brilliant.
Going back to even the first season- it was a funny show, but it was never quite what the uber fans or the critics seem to think it was. I enjoy it, but I feel like a lot of the criticism here is based on expecting it to be like a modern day Simpsons at its peak in the 90s. I think the Simpsons is actually an interesting comparison. That was a show that had to perpetually up the ante to keep people impressed- and amazingly it was able to do that for maybe ten seasons or so. Of course one cant pull that off forever (and the classic Simpsons Poochie episode acknowledged this, “there’s nothing wrong with the show per ce, it’s just the same characters and situations that people have seen over and over again for years, at some point it loses its novelty” paraphrasing Lisa Simspon.
I think the thing with Rick and Morty was in its first two seasons it sort of seemed to almost get progressively better with every episode. That sort of thing isnt sustainable, at some point its going to be what it is, and either you like it or you dont. But studies in psychology basically show us that this is the way we judge and evaluate expereince-not on the total quality of the experience but if the experience seems to be getting better over time “Kahneman and Tversky”
Although the Simspons for example has obviously lost its luster, I still find it occassionally entertatining because I’m notr expecting to be wowed. I think when it comes to enjoying this kind of stuff, to some extent what you experience is based on your expectations.
After last week, it’s great to get a simple and humorous episode like last night’s.Also, I really love how interdimensional cable seems to be treated now. Maybe we won’t ever get another full episode of it (though who knows maybe we will), but just seeing a single clip of something on the cable seemingly within every other episode now is a great way to keep the great premise of interdimensional cable ongoing in the series.
So, my main concern, is Rick back to acting like Rick? Because that last episode…that wasn’t Rick.
Meh, i thought last weeks episode was better. This week was boring: all the jokes are spun out too long.
I honestly thought this one was a lot of fun. Some of Harmon’s best stuff on R&M (and Community for that matter) comes from not making everyone say dickish things just for the sake of being dickish.
I think the “high school hierarchy” trope stemmed from the whole thing being a riff on ‘80s teen movies, where that trope played very heavily.
Exactly, and with the Transformers being like the villain rich asshole snow skiing teens
I think the “high school hierarchy” trope stemmed from the whole thing being a riff on ‘80s teen movies, where that trope played very heavily.It’s been played that heavily or worse in the Nineties (e.g. Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, Clueless, The Craft), in the Noughties (e.g. Mean Girls, Brick), and in the 2010s (e.g. Easy A, Booksmart), not to mention how Dear White People relocated the same trope to college. It’s never gone away and it’s never going away.
One thing that American Vandal absolutely nailed was a realistic take on high school social systems. Smart kids are aware of the dumb kids, the cool kids are aware of the less cool kids – although “cool” is relative, not absolute – unlike Hollywood movies where the slightly dorky kid would never, ever, EVER dare to let his presence be known in the presence of a jock. It’s not a rigid caste structure like fuckin’ India or mediaeval Europe.
*long thesis on how John Hughes wanted to portray class struggle through the lens of high school*
I think this episode felt like two episodes that couldn’t quite sustain themselves so they stuck them together. I don’t know if that was fully successful.
What’s wrong with shampooing your pubes?
I don’t think I laughed once this episode, and maybe only laughed a couple of times the last couple. I think the golden age is over, and this show is running on fumes like The Simpsons and Family Guy. They had a good run, I guess!
Okay, good news: this episode is definitely better than “Rickdependence Spray.”If you mean by less cringing than “Rickdependence Spray,” they pretty much succeeded on that front. Other than that, this episode didn’t registers as much laughters as I had from the previous cringing one. It’s too bad, the writers clearly had a ball writing this one, but it isn’t among their best, nor the worst. At least I enjoyed some ample amount of developments for Jerry, Beth, Summer, and Rick’s Car.I gotta say, the actual honestly funnest bit of episode has to go to end-credit segment where Chut got beat down by group of sapient mailboxes. Great payoff there.
Just because your high school experience wasn’t like you’ve mentioned doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
I’ll admit to not really getting the whole Bruce situation, as my experiences in high school, while often miserable, were rarely if ever this hyper fixated on my standing and the standing of those around me. There were cool kids, and I wasn’t one of them, but the cool kids were never that cool, and they didn’t even hang out with anyone I knew, and it wasn’t like someone was keeping track of any of this shit. The rigidity of this conceit always rings as false when it pops up in fiction, as though someone decided at some point that all high school stories had to be modernized versions of Victorian-era social drama, everyone locked into inescapable tiers of misery and struggling to betray one another to claw their way up a level or two before college. It fits a little better on this show, given how ruthless Rick And Morty is about basically everything, but it’s still an awkward, curiously artificial way to kick off a plot.Or it’s actually a good, appropriate way to kick off the plot, because that’s the experience of the vast majority of high school kids, at least in America; you may have been immune to the bullshit or simply went to a school that had a different social structure. I’ve recently started watching My Friend Dahmer, the adaptation of the Derf Backderf graphic novel (nonfiction; Derf actually went to high school with Dahmer), and it is shockingly astute about its portrayal of high school, much more so than anything that John Hughes ever did. I don’t know yet whether or not this made it to the film, but in the graphic novel Derf observes that Dahmer–much larger than the average kid, and taking to lifting weights part-way through high school–could have easily beaten the bullies who picked on him, but didn’t. (As the story ceaselessly reminds us, he had other things on his mind.) Cliches aren’t necessarily cliches because the storyteller isn’t original; sometimes they’re cliches because they’re true and don’t stop being true because you’ve read/heard/seen them before.
i’m sorry but Bruce looks like jerry in a wig. i kinda thought he was since i saw the promo pic for this review before i watched the episode.
i’m sorry but Bruce looks like jerry in a wig. i kinda thought he was since i saw the promo pic for this review before i watched the episode.
they missed a big opportunity to have Jerry try to be uncringe or cool or whatever by emulating rick and one of his greatest accomplishments. imagine jerry declaring to everyone he’s pickle riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick!
One thing I’m wondering is if or when we’re getting ‘I’m a god, I have a contingency for everything’ Rick back, or whether him actually accepting and paying back debt, getting fucked over by people, or seemingly genuinely fearing old enemies is seen as long standing character progression.I have enjoyed this season enough so far, in a ‘I’m just happy it exists’ kind of way, but I also think they haven’t got quite enough juice in the tank to sustain the self contained adventures thing. They always felt above archs and following through on things in the face of their unbridled creativity, but I think its a well they could now reconsider tapping. Ridley was always great for that stuff so it’s a shame he’s not in the writers room (at least for this season, not sure about those following) A lot of my friends saw the story train episode last season as a slap in the face for not giving us things fans want. I didn’t quite agree then, but now I wonder if it is time to explore second Beth, evil Morty, council of Rick’s etc when they’re this low on gas. But maybe it’s more that their rabid fan base was too impatient to wait for quality. This is what you get! I believe Harmon mentioned season 6 was written and they were working on 7, so I doubt they have time to even be reactionary anymore.
Ironically, I think my favorite joke was Rick’s marlin
ACTUALLY being through his chest (I assumed it was an arrow through the
head type thing, which I’m sure is what they were going for) but then
his chest still being open after they leave Hell. I was cackling through
the end credits at that.
I’ve always wondered how this really tired cool/athletic kids vs loser nerds in highschool trope was anything close to the reality of american highschools; or anywhere on earth; if someone has any insight on this. Seems like there is something very specifically US-centric in the relationship to sports (and cheerleaders and so one); but my experience of highschool in France has not a lot in common with this trope.
BOTH the Bruce songs were terrific, I’m finding it weird that nobody down here is mentioning that. Also, “what’s love Dr Doo, Dr Dolittle” – come on, people, that was gold!
But yeah, otherwise it was a bit meh…
The fact that the show’s portrayal of high school status and popularity is so cliched and simplistic is part of the joke, right? I’ve always thought it was part of the joke.