Rick and Morty has gotten increasingly better animated over the years (and it started off fairly strong, if I remember right), and there were sequences in tonight’s episode that have to rank up with the best stuff the show has done yet; not as wildly creative as the never-ending cavalcade of guest stars from last week’s episode or “Total Rickall,” but in terms of just making action look cool? It’s top notch shit. And it’s not just an excuse to show off, either. The joke when Rick and Morty are escaping Glorzo land and just murdering the hell out of everyone is that, since it’s a guilt-free slaughter (just like Star Wars), they can have a fun time shooting anything that moves. And we can have a fun time watching it. “Promortyus” is an episode in which characters shitting themselves to death onscreen (in order to lay “wet” eggs, and perpetuate the Glorzo circle of life), but it’s never less than a pleasure to watch. The show’s sharp writing tends to get the lion’s share of the credit, but the visuals have always been a big part of its success; that ability to balance the grotesque (which is often a requirement of the humor) without making it overtly horrific or gut-churning, is an impressive bar to hit.
I liked this one better than last week’s. It’s more conventional, but in the best possible way; “Never Ricking Morty” ultimately felt more invested in showing off its own cleverness than in telling a story, and that’s fine as far as it goes, but I’m always going to prefer something that doesn’t work quite so hard to remind us how sharp the writers are. There’s no deep message or theme, apart from reaffirming the essential Rick-and-Morty bond and reminding us that our heroes are kind of shitty, but also kind of defensible, and not really that much worse than we’d be under similar circumstances, provided we just didn’t get instantly killed. But it’s solid in a way I appreciate. There’s at least one terrific surprise, and the central conceit—a culture of face-hugging aliens who, on Summer’s advice, decide to expand their horizons—is a good one. The show has done “alien that takes over other people’s bodies” stories before (well, one at least), but this one distinguishes itself enough to avoid feeling like a retread.
The in media res opening doesn’t hurt. The problem most shows have with over using the “start in the middle of the action, and then flashback later to show how it went down” trick is most times, there’s no effort made to justify its use beyond the obvious meta reason; if you start when everything’s exciting, it’s easier to hook viewers in. But in “Promortyus,” we start with Rick and Morty already taken over because the structure mimics their disorientation. When they get free, they don’t remember anything beyond seeing the egg, and so we learn about the Glorzo situation along with them, including the fact that Morty’s face-hugger was apparently a genius, and Rick’s led him into being a kind of pseudo-Alex Jones type. (Albeit one who is later revealed to… well, not have a point, exactly, but at least be describing an actual reality. Also, he’s motivated by love.)
When our heroes escape, we get to enjoy their killspree with a guiltless conscience, right up to and including the Pearl Harbor bit. But it’s okay, they don’t do a 9/11, because it’s still too soon. (The reveal of the “twin towers” in the alien city just after Morty and Rick finish talking about how much of a blast they’re having is one of the episode’s best jokes.) And honestly, even in the latter half, when they come back and murder everyone again but we’re maybe supposed to feel a little bad about it, I didn’t. I mean, I did wonder why Rick hadn’t figured out a way to knock the face-huggers off and free the people wearing them, but since nobody else was going to bring that up, I decided to just not think about it. This is not a show for anyone who gets upset about fictional collateral damage. (It helps that the rampant death always feels like it’s part of the gag, even if it isn’t specifically acknowledged.)
The other reason the in media res opening works is that it allows for the episode’s greatest joke, when Rick and Morty are having pancake breakfast and talking about their adventures, and Beth asks where Summer is. This is the best kind of twist, because while there are no clues that it’s going to happen leading up to the reveal, it also makes perfect sense; it’s one of those hiding-in-plain-sight bits, and while I’m sure there are people watching this who saw it coming, I absolutely didn’t. I laughed very, very hard.
The rest of the episode has Rick and Morty returning to the Glorzo home… huh, is it an asteroid? I’m not sure it’s a planet. But whatever, they go back to rescue Summer, and find out she’s face-hugger free and being worshipped as a goddess. We learn via flashback how all this went down (and, cleverly, Summer’s the one who tells the story because she’s the only one who remembers all of it): how Summer’s toothpick affectation protected her from face-hugging long enough to point out to a few of the aliens how their “live 30 minutes, shit out an egg from your host and die” cycle kind of sucked. The aliens decided she was right, and managed to build a civilization in a week or two. Maybe a couple of hours? Time is funny.
The only other new info we learn here is that the reason Morty and Rick got free at the start of the episode was that their face-huggers were actually in love with each other, and wanted to go off and start a family together. There’s a scene where face-hugged-Morty and face-hugged-Rick (Steve and Bruce) make out, and it’s the kind of super uncomfortable vague incest-adjacent (without being actually incest) humor that the show likes to work with from time to time. It works here, stopping just before it gets outright horrible, and also making the beginning, where Rick and Morty wear Steve and Bruce’s corpses around as a disguise, that much funnier in retrospect.
After that, it’s just another escape, this time via a harmonica song that forces the face-huggers to submit to their biological imperatives, a conversation about whether or not our heroes learned anything (I feel like the show has done this bit in the past? It’s come up on The Simpsons before. I think we’ve gotten past the point where characters have to lampshade a lack of lesson in a half-hour comedy script), and a great final joke where Rick and Morty are convinced they’re going to die, but just end up shitting on the rug. Character-wise, this has some nice stuff about the show’s titular characters squabbling all the time but still basically caring about each other, but it’s probably a mistake to take anything that ends in “fart noise” too seriously. But hey, if you want theme, it’s there. And if you don’t, glory to Glorzo, I guess.
Stray observations:
- The runner about our heroes almost getting away with an incredibly stupid plan, only to have one of the face-hugger aliens pop up and point out how dumb it is, really worked for me. It’s a kind of self-awareness that mocks convention in order to raise stakes.
- Jerry is into bee-keeping now. One of Summer’s friends is into it, for some reason. I really hope this is a one-off, and not them setting up Jerry having to fend off the advances of a teenager.
- Morty is getting a little too confident talking about his masturbation routines, although hey, at least he’s standing up for himself.
- “Shitting the bed isn’t better than not shitting the bed!”
- “No bad story ends with a cape.”
97 Comments
I think overall, season 4 hasn’t been as strong as 3 but that’s mainly because 3 was nigh-on perfection in my eyes. This episode though was a return to the absolute best. Incredibly funny, tightly paced and with some pretty solid action to boot. Also the idea of building a civilization in an episode length, destroy it and never want to return feels like a fun meta gag. Really good R+M! I do wish incest was more socially acceptable though.
Morty is getting a little too confident talking about his masturbation
routines, although hey, at least he’s standing up for himself.
Are we not doing phrasing anymore?
I would pay good money for an Archer/R&M crossover. Especially with the craziness from the last season of Archer. I’m a middle-aged (barely) white male and I find it hilarious that some of my favorite shows are “adult” cartoons. I grew up on Saturday morning cartoons, but my favorite part of the morning was Three Stoodges, Laural & Hardy, and Abbot & Costello shorts that would air on random networks before the cartoons started. That and the weekly monster movie on WUAB (“Cleveland/Lorraine County”) at noon, which was a good primer for me before MST3K started. I think that cartoons for me, as I get older, are kind of a comfort food.
Shout out to Super Host!
Sup’s On!! I cannot say how much I miss those noon times on Saturday when I would automatically just switch over to channel 43. “You are so…beautiful…to me…” with the monster walking towards you, pure kid humor. I still believe I’ve watched every Godzilla movie ever made thanks to that show. ETA: I just looked him up. He passed away last February at age 87.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperhostDying is W.V. is a disgrace. He deserved better.
I feel the same, sitcoms bore me and I only like a few dramas, mostly on HBO, CBS or Netflix. Adult cartoons like R&M or Robot Chicken are great quick escapes.
I think Summer’s friend is just part of the series running that the teenaged girls in Rick and Morty have some weird kinks. Tammy and her romance with Bird Person (admittedly she was a double agent), Jessica with her fantasy of watching old people die, and now Summer’s friend discovering she has a thing for beekeepers.
Jessica wasn’t watching old people die as some sort of sexual kink. The idea was that she would stay at the side of a dying patient with no friends or family and comfort them until they passed on. It’s a good deed but, “I’m the last thing they see before they die’” Tells you she’s doing it for a completely self-absorbed reason.
That “ask the Saudis” line made me laugh so loud I was worried I’d woken up my neighbors for a minute. God, I’m chuckling just remembering.
This is your regular reminder that Summer is the best. Thank you for your time.
I just want to see Summer travel with them more. That’s all. That’s it.
I think that would be great. The two dudes hack on her a lot, and some of it is deserved, but she’s good for the dynamic, especially now that Rick and Morty have settled into a partnership rhythm that takes away from the neophyte shocks of the first couple of seasons.
Also because her role in this plot gives a really interesting post-hoc women’s rights angle to the earlier action that Rick and Morty alone wouldn’t be able to carry. Summer is the one person in the trio that calls out the aliens for making their whole lives about reproduction, and alien Steve gets grumpy about it because the liberation of their species interferes with his romantic desires. There’s some nice stuff to unpack there and it’s only there because of Summer.
Also because her role in this plot gives a really interesting post-hoc women’s rights angle to the earlier action that Rick and Morty alone wouldn’t be able to carry. Summer is the one person in the trio that calls out the aliens for making their whole lives about reproduction, and alien
Steve gets grumpy about it because the liberation of their species
interferes with his romantic desires. There’s some nice stuff to unpack
there and it’s only there because of Summer.
Keep. Summer. Safe.
Summer fits in so well to Harmon’s contradictory character designs:
She plays the self conscious teen role, but is so engaged in typical teen goals and aspirations that she keeps a clear mind during all the wacky adventures and mishaps of the guys. Just a great gag.
I think the after-credit stinger was a reference to American Beauty, but don’t remember enough about American Beauty to be 100% certain about that.
I know they were largely playing it up for laughs but it was nice seeing Rick getting along better with Morty. It came as a welcome reprieve from season 3 where it was getting to the point were Rick seemed to outright loathe Morty half the time. In a way they were right, season 4 has been like season 1 but more refined.
I thought the endgame indigestion was gonna have something to do with Jerry making bad honey. Feels like a missed riff. Otherwise, I thought this ep was mediocre, definitely a step back from last week (although I agree the Saudis joke + “I’m political now” were fantastic).
If Summer really tried, she could conquer the universe. What’s stopping her?I hope they do more with Jerry and get him out of the Flanderized pigeon-hole they stuck him in as a punching bag.
What? New Rick and Morty episodes? How the *!#@ didn’t I know that?
We all had a vote and decided we weren’t going to tell you
That’s not very nice. But I forgive you
I voted by mail. So mine didn’t count…but it was totally a vote to hide it from you.
I think Trump cancelled this vote
Did the Morty-facehugger basically decide to commit suicide at the last second? Is that the implication, that it thought about what running away with the Rick-facehugger would mean, it became too much, and it grabbed on to the cave, giving Morty just enough freedom to get control back. Or did it just get caughtby accident and bad luck ensued?I loved how the stories of the Rick and Morty facehuggers paralleled Rick and Morty in how they both went from bickering to realizing how much they liked being together, with one partner wanting more intimacy (sexual for the Rick-facehugger, and familial for Morty).The Jerry bee thing seemed, I don’t know, more ominous and depressing than setting up him screwing around with his daughter’s hot friend.
This one didn’t land with me. Maybe it needs a second watch (and I’ll get around to that at some point after the season ends) but it felt a bit like it hinted at much more fun storylines and fell away. A lot felt like rehash – there were elements of the Purge fight sequence, elements of the Unity planet-mind, etc, even a bit of Gazorpazorp female-ruler stuff.Summer’s plot was definitely the most interesting bit of the show, and I think some more about her playing ruler and guiding the lifeforms’ development would have been a better use of time than yet another over-long gratuitous violence sequence.Rick not giving a fuck about the innocents is in character, but I’m surprised Morty just went full-blown wanton slaughter considering he’d been freed from enslavement. Maybe his experience with the Unity people’s nipple-based race war has altered his moral stance a bit.It wasn’t a terrible episode, but it was definitely a C+/B- sort of one for me. It was there, it was competent, but it didn’t feel like it shone. Other than the 9/11 joke, and the “where’s Summer?” reveal, which were admittedly funny as hell.
it occurred to me that i’d like to see an episode where rick is confronted by someone like him but with a moral compass. maybe a quasi religious thing, but something that makes one person want to undo his messes in his wake and actually poses a challenge to his selfish nihilism via the access point of being equally smart/gifted/etc with the added filigree of rectitude.i realize maybe i’m sort of describing morty’s eventual arc?
It’d be interesting if one of the infinite Ricks were like that.
and they don’t talk about him. “ugh, Nice Rick”. “He goes by Richard.” “What a cock.”or…get this, maybe “Rick” are really the odd ones, the marginal, misfit error-copies of someone whose pan-universal signature typically leans more moral…DOC BROWN
Oh if he went by Richard…that’d be amazing.Of course they’d call him “Dick.”Why haven’t we been hired for this yet?
and “Clean Sanchez”
“Dufus Rick” was nice but of course lacked Rick’s cognitive/intellectual abilities
Like when Ron met the other Ron on Parks and Rec?
idk, we sorta got that with wasp-Rick but they got along fine.Besides, having some kind of anti-Rick as a foil would undermine the excellent gag of him being the median Rick.
i mean Colbert’s guy was almost like it but he wasn’t more moral, he just managed to put Rick’s ethics in check. and uh…Rick put his whole society back into slavery. checkmate?
There’s a theory that Rick is a time-traveled Morty.
I think it’s quite clear that “our” Rick would hate a person like that and be their enemy
Maybe it’s his wife?
Rick is so indifferent to any of the consequences of his life that he invites his mortal enemies to parties, but so far this the only person that he cannot stand to be around in any capacity.
The ying to his yang, and maybe that’s why he can’t stand to even mentioning her, because she was the order to his chaos?
actually yeah it is a bit odd that a show that goes so deep on its own canon keeps her totally blank. and rick’s general omnipotence suggest that her absence might not be a problem he can fix with science.
I think what’s going to win out there is asking what’s going to be funnier:
Revealing the ex wife or keeping her unmentioned and pointing out how dead/non-existent characters that are supposed to be important to the premise of the show are never actually necessary beyond plot (like in Full House).
this is starting to bug me. how did this show already jump to meta-mode without covering its characters’ histories first?
Welcome to the world of Dan Harmon 🙂
And please don’t take that as a slight, it took me awhile to figure his style with Community and realized that he was just making fun of TV tropes (Like the flash back/slide episode, something reserved for the end of the 4th or final season of a series, and he had it on the 2nd episode of the 2nd season by using fake scenes lol)
Basically, the character history is less important than it is challenging their morals and putting them in questionable situations. But there is still character growth, because even with all the chaos and violence, this version of Morty is leagues more confident and self sufficient than previous seasons.
i don’t know if he ever made a proper declaration on what’s most important. i just feel like his own boredom / pessimism drives him to take brilliant characters and meta-ize them until they’re his playthings.it’s just like…idk that’s fine, really, but…simpsons waited until like season 8 to do poochie? they had dozens of ‘normal episodes’ under their belt, real groundwork and hundreds of chars covered. deeming your own show ‘so classic it can riff on itself’ after three (or honestly two) seasons though..?
Oh, you more than got it! Even Jerry’s annoyance has evolved, he doesn’t just annoy, his very stupidity can now lead to the end of human civilization. lol
The only thing i can really add is that Harmon is probably traumatized by 3rd seasons. Not just by his own experience of getting fired after putting out a great year, but the general consensus that any series hits its best moments by the 3rd.
Even with the whopping renewal of the show for plenty of seasons, he probably doesn’t trust TV execs that much (understandable) so he would prefer to start experimenting now to keep things fresh and unpredictable.
on community, abed acknowledged the post 6 boom as possible for great TV but on the condition that shows don’t ‘hemorrhage characters’. also jumping networks and shit hurts too.i feel like voice actors don’t leave shows nearly as often. hell sometimes it seems like sarah chalke doesn’t even know she’s in this show. they might be assembling her lines from old scrubs eps.
It did that within the first few epsiodes with the Mr. Meseeks plot line about Morty gettng to pick the adventure.
it occurred to me that i’d like to see an episode where rick is confronted by someone like him but with a moral compass
It happened in the previous episode. Jesus.
He’ll be back.
So, The Doctor from Doctor Who?
idk what that is. is it similar to Inspector Spacetime?
It’s the Oreo to Inspector Spacetime’s Hydrox.
He’ll be brainwashed & used to make cookies.
Jerry doing something productive with his life and not having it undone, fucking it up, being mocked by the rest of the family, and constantly needing people’s approval for it was a major shift for him and the show. I just hope that they don’t go American Beauty and have him hook up with Summer’s friend.
I totally hope they go that way, but in an even more fucked up Rick and Morty way.
Most likely outcome: Summer’s friend tries to to “American Beauty” Jerry and he both mistakes her intentions and1) she ends up being stung to death by the bees in a pique of jealousy2) stung en masse and turned into mutant bee girl due to Rick’s meddling3) She tries to jump him, gets interrupted and nobody believes she was attracted to him. .
reverse wicker man also seems plausible.
Well, Summer woudl believe her.
Remember this was the girl that “stole” Summer’s boyfriend.
And, yet, they still hang out. Teenagers are weird.
Regarding the incest joke, it’s a callback to the season premiere when Summer was mocking Rick and Morty about sucking each other off. Just another thing that pulls the joke back onto the “okay I guess I can laugh at this”-side of the line, because Summer is telling the story and is clearly making that part up (which is explicitly called out by Morty).
Damn. You’re right. She’s an unreliable narrator. Good eye
The joke will be on her when that Morty who wished incest porn had a more mainstream appeal will return and be dating his Summer!
Don’t forget dream Summer from season 1 and the “intergenerational sandwich”.
I didn’t like this one. It seemed so low-concept. I know people don’t always like when this show takes big swings, but even its minor episodes have more going on than this.
yeah i was kind of shocked this was reviewed so highly and most of the comments are positive. to me it just felt like a boilerplate, almost boring episode. not necessarily bad, but felt a little phoned in for this show.
Just like I wondered in this comment section, last week’s “Never Ricking Morty” came off much better once it was broken down, and thought about, with it’s very dense plotting and structure.This week’s episode is an illustration of the alternative. Rick and Morty can do straight forward, referential comedy, with the best of them as well. It never gets old seeing them both come to grips with all the death and destruction their adventuring does to others, and meeting it with equal parts regret and a shrug.Besides the hilarious jokes, it was entertaining to see midway through the episode how they got to the Glorzo home world, and of course what became of the always awesome Summer.See you choads next episode.
Yeah, per your comment in the last EP discussion, this one didn’t need all the extra unpacking, re-watches just to sort out of the plot complexities, it was just totally hysterical in the moment – and like Zack pointed out – fantastic to look at (I’ve always been a big fan of their design/visual style anyway).
That post credits stinger and summers reaction was gold lmao
I always forget about the post credits scenes and turn it off as soon as the theme starts.
I watched R&M years after it’s premiere so I never forget them lol
The Alzheimer’s joke killed me. And this is from someone whose grandma with Alzheimer’s died this week. I was rolling.
Okay that may have been one of the best 9/11 jokes I’ve seen in a while. Also Jerry saying I didn’t 9/11 Pearl Harbor today may be the weirdest out of context statement that I might totally say to a friend. Good episode. PS the Alzhimer gag at the end was top notch.
Tbf, I forgot about the Alzheimer’s joke. That had me dead. Maybe this episode wasn’t as bad as I had been thinking.
I forgot about the Alzheimer’s joke.I just can’t even …:D
Damn, I set myself up for that one.
I was trying to come up with something with a little more _zing_, but I just couldn’t stop laughing. I blame it on the booze …Funny enough, and hey, we deal with shit how we can, having dealt with parents with dementia, I still have a sense of humor about it – in fact, the wife and I have this pact, it’s a joke – I think – but if either of us start getting loopy, we’ve agreed to “pillow” that person.Sometimes, one of us will have a moment, “Hey, I can’t find my keys”, and I’ll turn around she’s creeping toward me with a pillow from the sofa, “I found them! Put that down!!” 😀
I enjoyed this one a lot more. We got an actual story, a good Summer plot, and Rick was on the backfoot for once.
9/11 joke: greatRest of episode: Meh
“Wet eggs” cracked me up every time, for whatever reason.
The silence of that Twin Towers gag was deafening…I lost my shit
Morty has been pretty comfortable with his… routines… from the start. Just off the top of my head, he addresses it in the Pluto episode (yells at his dad about knocking), banging the sex doll, and when summer catches him in the kitchen. He wasn’t shy in any of those situations. He owns it.
I believe Summer’s friend wanting to fuck Jerry is a subtle call back to the Pornhub joke.Check out Dan Harmon’s account, this and spit swapping are his two favorite kinks.
This show is so beautiful!! I can’t get over it.
That Summer reveal also left me doing a gut laugh. Not just the great set up, but how the guys reacted reminded me of all the times I forgot something I WASN’T MEANT TO FORGET BECAUSE IT WAS REALLY IMPORTANT lol. Kudos to them, the voice acting has to be superb to make you laugh that hard.
One of the funniest moments for me was when Rick & Morty jet off in their saucer leaving a massive hole through several buildings and the back-wash just obliterates the Glorzonians(?) and then cut to them having breakfast laughing about it. I think it was one of the best eps in this season so far.
This show has (on numerous occasions) read my mind. I was starting to think the show was getting a bit too preachy/up its own ass/too clever for its own good with the past couple of episodes (especially the train one which was fantastic). There hasn’t been an episode I haven’t enjoyed thoroughly but this season largely has made me sort of pine for s1 and s2 bottled adventures with no overarching arc or theme – this episode reminded me how fun those early ones were.
They even mentioned that during that crazy action sequence. Like they were WELL aware they had been a bit too conceptual and were equally happy to just have a fun light episode again.
Such a great show, and yes, Summer is absolutely the best character.
but it’s probably a mistake to take anything that ends in “fart noise” too seriously. But hey, if you want theme, it’s there. And if you don’t, glory to Glorzo, I guess.I think this, along with last week’s episode, makes certain that they’re gonna “Community Season 6″ this season up, which is not a bad thing—Season 6 of Community is one of the best seasons of Community.
I think Rick and Morty, like Community, started to come with a lot of baggage. This episode pretty much proves that R&M doesn’t need lore to be compelling or hilarious.
that end bit is a masterclass in what sexual attraction actually looks like.the first, catalyzing desire is so odd and small it’s almost embarrassing. he keeps bees. he has a hobby, it’s interesting, he’s good at it. what could that say about him? what conclusions draw themselves? try a few out.it’s verbal only in the sense that the words she says about him are the tip of a bottomless, potentially exciting subtext. what does keeping bees mean? he controls his fear? he controls pain? he is master of something. at the very least, his hobby. he takes pain and makes sweetness. it’s unassuming and genuine and it’s hard to do and he’s really good at it. i’d fuck him.
What about Cyril?
I like that they keep writing in “fuck you”s to the toxic fandom by teasing inter-dimensional cable.
I bet there are going to be face masks that look like the face huggers in this episode for sale very soon.
Is it me with quarantine brain or have these last 2 episodes just been outstanding!? Top 5 imo.
Morty, “It has an algorithm that finds what you’re into faster.”Rick, “All right goddammit I’m sold.”
Pretty sure that ending with Jerry and beekeeping is a send-up to American Beauty.
I came here to see if anyone else wondered what happened to Summer’s voice. I swear she got weirder and more of a parody of herself in this episode, but this is the third review (and comments!) I’ve checked and nobody else is saying it….*twilight zone theme* Berenstaaaaiiinnn!!!