I’ve been critical of the second half of Rick And Morty’s fourth season, because I’m a small-minded, spiteful man who wouldn’t know a good joke if it crawled up his pants leg and bit him on the—wait, hold on, got my note cards shuffled wrong.
Ahem. I’ve been critical of the second half of Rick And Morty’s fourth season because, well, that’s my job, but taken as a whole, the four episodes we’ve seen so far are a substantial improvement over the season’s first half. Snake planet episode aside, the first half of season four struggled to find the show’s voice in a sustainable way, leaning too much into unpromising ideas, or else retreading emotional ground without finding anything new or particularly funny to say about it. But since Rick And Morty returned at the start of May, the series seems to be back where it needs to be in terms of ambition; not everything landed for me, and there’s still a certain amount of diminishing returns that’s probably inevitable in something that leans so much into high concept, but it at least feels sustainable again, and not on the verge of burning out before season five.
“Childrick of Mort” is as good a proof as any, because it’s not a great half hour of television. It’s not an instant classic, and I don’t think it’s trying to be; it feels like a median entry, the basic level of quality an audience should be expecting when they turn in, and if that sounds like damning with faint praise, well, maybe it is. The first five minutes or so are a bit rough. Jerry is determined to take everyone camping, because that’s about as Jerry as activities get, and Rick gets a call from a planet he’s been fucking. It turns out the planet is pregnant, and “she” thinks the kids are Rick’s. Rick tries to dodge the call, Beth (not knowing about the whole “planet” thing) goes off on her own abandonment trauma and demands he do his fatherly duty, and thus we have a plot.
The idea of Rick fucking a planet is one of those jokes that you’re only supposed to think about enough to make the story work. It’s a funny reveal before the opening credits, and then Gaia starts giving birth to an endless font of weird, clay-y looking creatures, aaaaand we just sort of elide how any of this is possible. Which is fine, really, 9/10s of the show’s technology is just magic with the serial numbers filed off. It does harken back a little to “Auto Erotic Assimilation,” which introduced Rick’s ex-girlfriend Unity, a hivemind that controlled an entire population ala the Borg—that episode actually spent some time underlining the appeal of the fantasy and how it might actually work, and while it wasn’t exactly a complex and nuanced take on romance, it at least felt more complicated than the sight gag we get here.
But, like I said, it’s fine, because “Childrick of Mort” isn’t about Rick’s relationship with Gaia. Gaia isn’t a character, really. The episode is more concerned with Rick and Beth bonding over being really smart and kind of shitty (even as Beth works very hard not to be); Jerry’s patheticness making him a leader (while still being extremely pathetic); and Summer and Morty hating camping and trying to prove some kind of point about video games and getting high. Honestly, I’m not sure there’s much thematic point to any of this, apart from the reminder that Rick is a fairly shitty human being and families are kind of fucked up. Also, don’t huff brake fluid, although if you do, apparently there’s a chance you’ll kill God. Well, a god. Reggie was just a Zeus, it’s not that big of a deal.
It’s all pretty shallow stuff that goes for the most obvious jokes throughout, but it moves at a good pace, there’s energy and spark to most of it, and “obvious” doesn’t always mean less funny. Beth guilting Rick into helping her build a massive system to guide his “children” into a space-faring civilization was fun to watch, and Jerry ruling over the “Unproductives” with the power of making s’mores and starting campfires and was both inevitable and entertaining. (The secret to most Jerry stories seems to be having him stumble into power in a way that just underlines how much of a nothing of a person he is.) And I always get a kick out of Summer and Morty teaming up, if only because it reminds me what it’s like to hang out with your sibling and complain about your parents.
The biggest problem is that all of these ideas would work well enough as the starting point of an episode, but none of them ever really get past that. There are hints at what might have been more complex ideas, like the fact that Rick and Beth’s massive training system is less about advancing and guiding a culture than it is about dictating their roles and telling them what to think; Jerry’s group turning on the more science-based group hints at a darkness that never really arrives; and… well, okay, “Mort and Summer try to fly a space ship because video games” is as weak as the episode gets and I’m not sure it could’ve been that much improved by more time. But this is mostly just about delivering a bunch of quick gags, taking a few shots at Jerry and the family’s deep dysfunction, and then moving on.
After the reveal that Rick fucked a planet, the only major twist in the half hour is the discovery that Gaia also had a relationship with a Zeus named Reggie, a godlike being who shows up in a cloud, tries to get Rick and the rest of leave, and then gets killed when Morty and Summer crash the ship into his head. Like the rest of the half hour, Reggie is a clever starting point that never really gets beyond that, and the surprisingly long fist fight between him and Rick in space is weirdly bereft of invention for the show. I get that the point is supposed to be the surprise when Reggie a ship in the skull, but the punching/kicking/punching goes on for enough time to be tedious, but not enough for it to come around to being funny again.
Apart from that misstep, and the way that thinking about this episode too much makes it less and less fun (Why would Morty, who’s lived countless lives at this point and been in presumably hundreds of spaceships, keep talking about how he was going to fly the crashed ship because of what he learned playing video games? Why didn’t Gaia have a personality? And why would fucking a planet give birth to an endless stream of doughy buffoons?), “Childrick” was decent enough. If the show can turn out an enjoyable half hour even when it isn’t firing on all cylinders, that’s cause for optimism about the seasons to come.
Stray observations
- Speaking of, season four finale next week. These half and half seasons go by super quick.
- Summer verbally tearing Jerry to shreds actually made me feel sorry for him. I’m glad the episode pulled back from total bleakness and just devolved into a silly romp.
- The “Rick fucked a planet” gag wasn’t really funny until the post-credits scene, which is mostly an ad for a planets-only dating site. I just needed that extra turn of absurdity: “Young, dumb, and orbiting the sun.”
111 Comments
I really liked how small and petty the fight was, just the set up of ‘Rick fights God’ and then it’s basically one step above slap fighting.
“What in the Disney Channel fuck is that” will be incorporated in my daily conversation
Disagree. I thought the whole episode was hillarious. The joke about the fight was that you have a showdown between these two superpowerful beings, Rick and a literal God, and it’s just them punching each other.
There was quite a bit of gnostic and biblical allusions going on as well, but asburd and ridiculous and subtle enough not to make them pretentious.
The getting high and playing video games thing was hillarious as it was it was the opposite of “message” tv- Here you have Rick directly speaking to the “children”, telling them getting high and playing video games is the way to go, and fuck your parents if they disagree. Probably also an inside joke as they imagined all the parents who apparently watch wth their kids to bond with them.
The one episode a month plan sounds promising. Hope Adult Swim lets them do it.And I agree with the review. It was middling. Which happens from time to time. Rick and Morty’s always been somewhat uneven, but especially in these past two seasons. As long as we keep getting ones like last week’s and the snake planet one from the first half, I’m fine with an episode like this.
I know that Jerry being pathetic is a running joke throughout the show, but Summer’s line to him at the campfire went so far that it wasn’t even funny in a “ha ha ha, they’re being overly cruel to Jerry” kind of way. Sure, Morty lampshades it right afterwards, and the equilibrium is (sort of) restored at the end, but yeah… that was too much for me.
It feels like these past couple episodes have become much more mean-spirited than usual.
Absolutely agreed.
Its more like Rick has become more and more of a petty, thin-skinned, self-righteous asshole thats willing to destroy and kill just to prove that and its influencing Beth and Summer. Makes me wonder if this is intentional to make him unattractive to the toxic fandom that worships him. It would be naive of them to think that it would.
It was sweet of Beth to acknowledge that, unlike her deadbeat dad, Jerry was there for her at the end when she needed him.Especially since she’s been crapping on him the whole episode.
I agree with you. Mostly because even when Beth and Rick were bonding over being “good parents” to the clay people, they were so incredibly dismissive and just assholes about it- hanging out in a tower pulling levers, pushing buttons and never talking to them, like that’s what children need. It made Beth feel good about herself to do that to the clay people until Rick starts berating her for no reason in the car, proving that he’s raised her with the same warmth and emotional availability like they raised clay people.Jerry, for all his stupidity and incompetence, is always trying to bond with his family emotionally, which makes him a kinder man and father than Rick.
I said “Jesus Christ, Summer” out loud literally 2 seconds before Morty did so they knew exactly what they were doing.
I can’t tell but maybe Summer is getting darker all the time, it could be culminating for overall plot purposes. Or not, this show keeps building up character growth and setting it aside.
bs
That was brutal and not particularly witty. I think they wanted us to feel bad for Jerry, maybe to justify him becoming the cult leader of the improductives and starting a war against his own spouse latter in the episode.
Sure, I could potentially see that. But I still don’t think it worked. At least it didn’t for me! 🙂 Anyway, I agree generally with the people who thought it was a middling episode. I didn’t hate it – a middling episode of this is still pretty good! – but it didn’t do much for me either.
I couldn’t even laugh at it. It flashed me back to middle school and being too timid to speak up for a learning disabled kid who was getting torn down by the cool kids. That kid left the bus crying and didn’t come back to school for two weeks. It was the shittiest I’ve ever felt as a human being.
I had a similar situation when I was in middle school. There was an older guy, maybe in his late teens or early 20s, who was obviously disabled and who would ride the city bus home at the same time as us. And I saw a bunch of kids my age picking on him and trying to steal his backpack, so he ran off the bus at a stop that wasn’t his just to get away from them. I didn’t do anything to help him either.Want to know the saddest part of your story, though? I guarantee you that you feel worse about this now than any of the ones who were actually picking on that kid. I bet you they wouldn’t even remember doing it if you brought it up.
Yeah man you can’t be that much of a dick to someone on TV and then have the episode justify it. It’s kind of ducked up, and not in the good way like the show usually does.
I agree. Much like Rick’s behavior at the end of the previous “Vat of Acid” episode I thought Summer’s verbal assault of her father here was just too dark and mean spirited even by the standards of the show. Thankfully the episode sort of settled down after that and didn’t continue in that tone as opposed to “Vat of Acid” where the mean spiritedness was the whole point
I will never feel sorry for Jerry because as was proven before AND in this episode, that’s his ploy (remember the chastising he got from Rick while being eaten by the snake?).The clay people were actually evolving on their own and built a house, and he smashed it down because it wouldn’t be camping i.e. worshipping him anymore. So when the clay person was shocked that he had the power to make fire and not share it: Of course not because that’s how much of a piece of shit he is 😆
I tend toward really liking Summer and am annoyed when episodes carve out whole chunks devoted to Rick and Morty yelling at her, but during that harangue, I could not help but think, ‘Man, the acorn doesn’t fall too far from the bitch, does it?’.
I did laugh when Morty said “wow been hanging out with Rick too much?” as though he hasnt been lock and step with him this season, with exception of the acid episode.
If its Jerry and Beth at Doctor Wong’s next week, I’m hoping that the episode will be a deconstruction on Jerry’s treatment throughout the series and that really, Jerry is the much better parent compared to Beth.
I don’t know how that could possibly be in doubt at this point. Yes, Jerry is a bit spineless and weak, but those are normal human problems. He loves his kids and wants to do better by them, while Rick (and Beth, to a lesser extent) do not appear to give a single shit about them. I think his whole character is an illustration of what it must be like to just be a regular dude in a world that includes Zeus-killer (with an assist) Rick Sanchez. In this world Jerry is pathetic, but in any normal one he’d be just fine.
just remember: jerry could be emperor of the earth or a big movie star with just the wrong kind of encouragement
The more I watch this show, the more I realize how insidious and dangerous a character Jerry is.
I think they are setting up something for Jerry. This season has been soley about shitting on him story wise so i believe they are setting up something for him in the finally or in the next season.
I’ve never understood or found those jokes funny. I may be a Jerry because the author of this review seems to get it noticing how Jerry is once again revealed to be a nothing person but it doesn’t make any sense to me that Jerry’s still around when everyone including the writers hate him. As a role playing game writer I can’t think of an NPC I didn’t like in some way. I’d never make a character for the PCs to just dump on constantly. I don’t get the mindset.
I agree about Summer tearing into him. That didn’t feel like her checking him, it was just mean.
Summer eminded me of the stand up comic that had a routine about every kid’s group has a psycho that goes too far.A group of kids is teasing one of their own for being stood up by his girlfriend.Kid 1: “Hey Joey, bad day, hah? Seems like you are not too good with the girls.”Psycho Kid: “Yeah, Joey. You should take a gun, stick it in your mouth and kill yourself.”Kid1: “Wait. What? WTF!”Psycho Kid: “What? I thought we were teasing Joey.”
I always disliked their characterisation of Jerry. For a show that seems to take pride in deconstructing tropes, Jerry’s character is awfully stock – just the usual useless, uncool dad, beyond help. Even without being compared to Beth – which the show loves to do – I don’t think he’s had any sort of notable success or high points, and if he gets close, he always get smashed down faster than any other character. And it always feels like they make it clear that it’s Jerry’s fault, and Jerry’s fault alone: not the fact that he’s in a supremely fucked-up family. He feels like he’s from a different show altogether.
Agreed. Summer really needs a good slap at this point.
Summer does have some massive anger issues towards her dad, and not unjustifiably, but yeah that was brutal.
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kinja
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We all float down here.
This was a solid B+ for me.I think Childrick stands out in the run of the show in that it so willingly and directly lets the audience see just how pathetic and human Rick actually is. We’ve seen it before – hell, the entire point if Season 4 seems to be an exercise in dismantling the worship/lionization of Rick – but this is an aggressive and ruthless humbling beyond the ending of ‘Old Man’ or even the monologue at the end of Pickle Rick last season.He can’t form genuine connections to people, and as a consequence he’s indulged himself to the point that he only seems to be satisfied by sex/relationships on a planetary scale. At this point, his sex partners no longer even remotely resemble anything humanoid. There’s no emotional attachment.He fancies himself a God, but he’s not, and this episode goes out of its way to demonstrate it. He might play at their level, but he gets his ass handed right back to him in stone cold silence. There’s no epic clash of the gods, despite the epic build-up. It’s an ugly fist fight. He’s human, with all the limitations that implies, fighting an actual God who had to shrink himself just to even the odds a little bit. He can still die. He nearly does.But it also means, when it’s clear that he’s lost, he sells out everything else but he still makes a plea for Beth’s city because of what it means to her. He is rewarded for this moment of humanity with a Machine in a God, and an opportunity to appear to Beth as the God-Slayer she thinks he is. Except, he’s also stupidly petty, so as soon as he comes under fire he sells out the kids and sort of gives it away that he didn’t actually kill Reggie the Zeus. He can’t even take his mulligan with grace, he’s that shitty of a person.
I do think it’s impressive that there are a lot of levels to this episodes, and people takeaway different things from them. In terms of your “dismantling Rick thesis”, I saw a youtube video explaining that this was a unifying them for this season as a reaction to the toxic fans. The explanation and examples they gave made for a compelling argument.
I mean Rick could’ve probably taken Reggie out in an instant if all it took to kill him was a speaceship to the head. I got the impression that Rick just wanted to have a fist fight.
I’ve actually been feeling the opposite, in terms of season 4’s thesis being ‘Rick is actually kind of pathetic’. No episode has hit the same level of self-critique for me as ‘Pickle Rick’ or ‘Vindicators 3′.Those two episodes from season 3 were perfect at dismantling the mythos of Rick because they make his problems the ‘antagonists’ of each episode. The former revolves around a life-threatening crisis that only exists because Rick tried to weasel out of therapy, and the latter has Rick literally stuck in a deathtrap created by him at his most bitter and drunk. When the therapist and Morty call him out in those episodes, there’s no real counterargument. He did it to himself and that’s what really hurts.In contrast, this season is mostly focused on Morty screwing up or getting screwed over. Morty gets his grandpa killed and nearly becomes an unstoppable monster because he’s horny for Jessica. Morty gets out of the car and causes a temporal snake apocalypse. Morty wants a dragon, and ends up in a horrifying parasexual incestuous mindbond. The season’s shown Rick to be petty, manipulative and abusive, but almost none of it backfires on him in any way. The worst thing that’s happened to him because of his actions is that he lost a friend in ‘The Old Man and the Seat’, and that dude getting himself killed wasn’t even directly his fault. When Morty goes off on Rick in ‘Vindicators 3′, Morty wins. When Morty goes off on Rick in ‘Vat of Acid’, he gets tricked into public humiliation.I think this episode was a solid B, but I’m happy because it actually shows Rick getting the slightest amount of comeuppance.
I agree that this season hasn’t produced any single episode that delivers as sharp a critique as the two mentioned, but it’s definitely still there. “Old Man and the Seat” comes closest. It ends with an enormous backfire – Tony’s death being outside of his control robs Rick of the only real power he had over the man. For all his abilities and technologies, he ends the episode completely alone with his pants down, wearing a crown that says ‘King of Shit’, listening to a thousand holograms of himself yelling about what a lonely piece of trash he is. It’s beautiful. Everything he yells at himself was already true at the start of the episode, but now he understands it so much more deeply. And it was all meant for Tony. Projection by his literal projections!Besides that… for all his power and Godliness, he struggles having to defer to Beth in regards to his relationship with Morty in several episodes. He considers his position lower-status than he deserves and chafes at it, even though it’s his fault after last season.He’s enacted plans that destroyed dimensions, planets, careers, and lives twice this season – First to punish Morty for succeeding, without him, at something he hates. And again for Morty’s refusal to validate what ultimately turns out to be an unnecessarily complex plan that backfires both times. He’s displaying pettiness and disregard for life on a cosmic scale, and it would’ve all been preventable if he were emotionally mature enough to let Morty be his own person even a little bit. Instead – humiliation and defeat for the grandson he ostensibly loves.He mocks Morty for the dragon, but spends so much time with it/him that they end up metaphorically cheating on Morty together. He underestimates, then later overestimates the power of Magic, and both times is physically punished for it – which happens again in Childrick when he underestimates Reggie.When possessed by a Glorzo – as a consequence of his arrogance – he spews Alex Jones rants on GlorzoTube and later finds himself disgusted with himself for saying them. It plays like the spiritual successor to his ‘Israel’ rant in Vindicators.
Someone pointed out last week that Morty seems to be trying to gain some agency (emboldened perhaps by season 3’s events), and when he doesn’t get in his own way he’s sabotaged by Rick. Feels like a logical progression from Season 3.
I guess I spoke way too soon about Jerry and him changing this season with the beekeeping. Summer’s rant towards him was pretty savage. I genuinely felt bad for him. Yes, Jerry is a loser, but wow, that was messed up and unecessary. I thought this was a great episode that aired some philosophies and conflicts: Science vs Religion, Technology vs Nature, Rick the God vs an actual God (and he basicially lost), Beth and Rick vs Jerry, and how Beth really looks up to Rick as a father figure (and how him leaving when she was young really hurt her), and how Beth and Summer are sounding and becoming more and more like Rick, especially how they view Jerry. At the end of the day despite all of that, Rick still throws Summer and Morty under the bus because he’s still a petty, thin skinned, asshole. The Disney Channel movie/70-80 cartoons/family cartoons riff was pretty clever and hilarious.Susan Sarandon back as that shrink again?!? next episode to close out a really solid second-half season.
What makes me laugh is how everyone had some conception of parenting, and it all went to shit. Which goes back to the old expression of parenting: Nobody knows what the hell they’re doing. The clay people were more than just a plot device, everything that happened to them and being put through was so damn funny and thoughtful. When they needed more drama majors so they made sure to spank them before entering was my funny shock moment of the episode😂
i think jerry might be the most dangerous character on the showbecause he has the most POTENTIALthis might be why rick is keeping his self esteem lowso he doesn’t kill them ALL
It’s interesting how in the battle between Faith and Science (essentially between the Jerrys and Ricks of the world), it was Faith that won hands down. Zeus beat up Rick, and Jerry got Beth to take his side. Rick was only saved by dumb luck (which he hates), in the form of a literal machine in the god resolution by Morty/Summer.
If Ms. Sarandon is back, then the show has to be paying off Summer’s friend’s promise to boff Jerry. This will lead to a cliffhanger involving Summer acting rashly…May I also predict Tammy Guterman’s re-entry into the series?
This episode was so much weaker than last week’s, which is probably why you shouldn’t deduct half-points just because of one minor joke that you didn’t like and/or get
Why do you care?
haha loser alert!
The “God” character kept being compared to Zeus, but considering his coupling with that planet’s version of Gaia, he seemed a lot closer to Uranus.
Heheheh.
Fry: Oh, man, this is great! Hey, as long as you don’t make me smell Uranus.
[He laughs.]
Leela: I don’t get it.
Farnsworth: I’m sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all..
Fry: Oh. What’s it called now?
Farnsworth: Urectum.
I thought too. A sky god that inseminate Gaïa? Check. That gives birth to a bunch of weird proto-humans? Check. He is a shitty dad and kind of hates them? Check check check.
For an episode that constantly picked the obvious angle it’s suprising they didn’t called him Ouranos and inserted a thousand “your anus” jokes.
Uranus is Zeus’ grandfather. So maybe the Zeus was pretending to be Uranus out of some sort of Oedipus complex or competition with Grandpa? Iirc, Zeus’ father ate most of his children? Ok, creeped out by implications…
just wait till Ubbo Sathla hears about this
https://lovecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Ubbo-Sathla
Honestly, I kept thinking about one of Original Recipe Star Trek’s petty “space God” episodes, especially “Who Mourns for Adonis?”, in which an alien believes itself to be Apollo:Of course, Futurama has already done the ultimate parody/homage of this type of Star Trek episode, but “space Zeus as a dickish, alpha-dudebro deadbeat dad” is a pretty good angle, which ultimately this overstuffed episode doesn’t really explore in any depth.
That “alien” WAS Apollo. I mean, in-show.
Why . . .would . . .God!…need…a..starship!?
That is NOT how you make babies.
Considering he’s “a” Zeus, I think the implication is that Ouranos and Kronos and Zeus all act the same (big honchos who hate their kids) because they’re the same species, and Reggie (or Regi?) is another member of that species.
Absolutely. Uranus was known to treat Gaia badly, so she asked her son Cronos to kill him. The Greeks invented film noir and soap operas 3,000 years ago.That fact that the Roman version of Uranus was Caelos and that word is used in Italian and Spanish to mean sky is why Uranus is the only planet with a Greek and not a Roman name. Cronos is, of course, Saturn in Roman mythology.
That fact that the Roman version of Uranus was Caelos and that word is used in Italian and Spanish to mean sky is
hold a second. Those are two facts.
[…are] why Uranus is the only planet with a Greek and not a Roman name.
Nah, it’s because from the late 18th century till WW2 or so, scientists were shitty at naming things. I mean, “television” is so fucking amateur. Mixing languages? That’s maldone. And look at half the plants they named in their colonies. “Malabar spinach”, “Chinese gooseberry”, “Indian lilac”, it’s one failure after another.
I also blame a kind of nervousness. They discover Uranus in 1780 or so, it’s the first planet they’ve ever gotten to name, ever (because the previous planets were not named after Gods, but rather, the identity of the Gods calved away from their original planetary identity. So, in a sense, they weren’t naming the planet, they were identifying the Deity whose body is the planet. Not easy, and possibly tremendously smiteful consequences.
Both Promortyus (probably my fav) and The Vat of acid were better and funnier, but this was very enjoyable.I liked that the end clearly highlights Rick’s hypocrisy in a way that wouldn’t get past the more militant fanboys. Ratting Summer and Morty to their parents is a petty sin that illustrates his flaws more effectively than being a shitty dad or a murderer.
I wouldn’t even give this episode a B.
I just kept waiting for some sort of punchline to land. The show is usually more self aware than this and I thought there’d be a twist on the hoary old trope of discordant family vacation. Like, making Summer and Morty one-dimensionaly obsessed with drugs and vidogames, out of nowhere, for the point of the plot – that felt like something the show would normally be parodying as a lazy sitcom type trope. R&M usually calls 0out and pops those bubbles as soon as they appear. Am I missing some subtlety here?Aside from the lack of self-awareness, I don’t really see the point in a story focused on the family and their characters where we get zero new information about them or and character development. By season 4 we’re already well aware that Jerry is an insecure nonentity, Beth is like her father and has abandonment issues, and Summer and Morty are…well whatever. I didn’t think we needed a refresher on the basics of the family. Was this a leftover episode written for the first series or something? And now I think about it, it didn’t even make much sense within the continuity of the show to have Summer and Morty pick up the idiot ball at this point. They’ve been travelling the galaxy having adventures for 4 seasons now. A couple of weeks ago we literally saw Summer survive by singlehandedly becoming the leader of a facehugger society. Now she’s scared straight by crashing a spaceship? Huh?
I agree with some of your criticisms but not the ones about Summer and Morty’s characterizations. I think it’s been referenced that Morty is really into video games before, or at least as into them as the next 14 year old. The main running gag is about his constant horniness/masturbation but I feel like video games have been referenced before. And it’s always been sort of a running gag that Summer is really into teenage hedonism and her parents seem bizarrely not to care to much about it. Teenagers are mercurial and I could see Summer being fixated on missing this one particular party all of a sudden.
it’s been referenced that Morty is really into video games beforeThe issue here wasn’t “Morty is really into video games” as much as it was “Morty has suddenly forgotten the previous two hundred times he’s been on a space ship and didn’t think to use video game skills to pilot it”.
the space fight seemed a bit pointless
Well, they were using Morty and Summer to poke fun at the whole “Last Starfighter”/”Galaxy Quest” trope where your seemingly useless obsession (video games, getting stoned) allows you to be awesome at some sci-fi thing and save the day in the end. They set up the trope and then blew it up with,“WHY DID WE THINK THIS WOULD WORK!?!”
Guess I need to watch it again. I failed to make that connection.
That’s funny, I almost didn’t bring it up because it seemed obvious, to me. Morty saying something like, “Hey, it’s laid out exactly like my video game controller” and Summer saying, “This looks just like my friend (Heather’s?) Bong.” And then jumping to the absurd conclusions that she can absorb all the alien knowledge by sucking on the smoke, or just because the controls look kinda like his video game Morty will know how to fly the ship.
It works because the fantasy that your weird, useless thing can be, under the right circumstances, THE key to saving the day is incredibly common and appealing. It’s the entire premise of “Ready Player One” (not to mention Ernest Cline’s other book), is played for a gag at the end of “Red Hot American Summer” where rolling a 20 sided die saves the camp, and in the real world whenever some idiot claims the Marines are going to let him skip boot camp because of how awesome he is at Call of Duty.
In this case, of course, they explode the shit out of that bullshit fantasy, while Jerry’s “make fire, build a tent” shit that Summer absolutely eviscerates him for were actually, ya know, useful skills to have.
I guess. It was pretty freaking thin and unsupported IMO.
The “Rick fucked a planet” gag wasn’t really funny until the post-credits scene, which is mostly an ad for a planets-only dating site. I just needed that extra turn of absurdity: “Young, dumb, and orbiting the sun.”I’m not saying that I’m some kind of supersmart writer-guy, but as the credits rolled, I had a feeling that they were going to go for a planet-dating-site gag. In my head, it was going to be a parody of Tinder (Cinder? Maybe?), but this turned out so, so much better.I did like the episode and this is miles better than the “We get it…you think heist movies are contrived and similar” episode from the first half of the season. However, I do agree with Zack that this three-way-split plotting meant that none of the plots really got fully developed, even if they all converge at the end…in the laziest possible way.I know it’s pretty standard for the show’s current state to just toss off high-concept stuff like this—stuff other shows might devote entire SEASONS or even the FULL SERIES RUN to—because it assumes its audience is smart, genre-savvy, and internet-adjacent enough that they don’t need to hold their hands throughout….which is fine, but when you end up shorting emotional stakes, you’ve just got a clever premise and little else. Beth and Rick’s story was probably the best developed and it was still pretty damn thin, saved only by Sarah Chalke’s performance and a few grace notes in the animation.The “Rick vs. God…well, a Zeus, anyway” fight was pretty lackluster (“thinking too much about it” nitpick: how would a near-zero gravity, frictionless fight even work? Everytime you hit the other person, it would push you off in the opposite direction, too, right?), but I think that might’ve been the point. Rick has shit on the notion of divinity and organized religion for a long time, so, of course, when a God actually comes to challenge him, the fight would play out as a kind of alpha-bro throwdown, not as a superscience vs. divine magic title card fight. But that doesn’t make it any more interesting to see it play out, even in a conceptual way. It’s also possible that they just didn’t have time, that this too was another victim of an undercooked, overstuffed script.I’ll maybe echo other commentariat here in agreeing that her brutal eviseration of Jerry was a bit too much, even if it was needed to push the plot forward (though I’m not sure it ever pays off in a satisfying way). That said, I’ve really been a fan of how well they’ve been fleshing her out this season (Still my favorite line: “Nobody chokes me without my permission”).
I had pretty much the same feelings as everyone else. The three plot were all weak, but Sarah Chalke’s Beth makes the A plot the best. It’s actually sort of an interesting show, a Father/ Daughter team up. Even if she is a clone.Summer just verbally MURDERING Jerry was harsh and startling. It’s even worse because Jerry really IS that pathetic. The man gets nothing. Even the bee thing was apparently a one-off for a weak tag ending joke. That he’s just resigned to getting kicked all the time takes away any humour in it.Summer and Morty’s plotline was really just nothing. I swear it was just a long set up for someone in the Writer’s Room having a reverse Deus Ex Machina joke. That’s right, Rick was saved by an unlikely Machine in the God.This was, like last week, deeply mean spirited. But, deep in the loam of meanness here was one bright spot. The moment when Rick asked to keep the towers because it was something he and his daughter built together was a rare familial moment for Rick.
that was actually TOO REALISTIC
i seem to recall spouting some similar crap at my parents ..still got it
maybe it’s me, but now seems like a bad time for stories about how society is being dragged down by inferiors and unproductives, not that there’s ever really a good time about it.
Note the heavy emphasis on middle management. Probably no telephone sanitizers this time, seeing as we do need them after all.
That played more to me like an allegory for shitty parenting.By contrasting Jerry against Rick (who’s motivation is trying to win back Beth’s admiration) and Zeus (who literally wants to be worshipped for doing nothing), the episode highlights his redeeming characteristic: he wants to be actively involved with his family. This dovetails pretty effectively with his adopting the “unproductives”, whom Rick and Beth had written off.It also sets up an amusing running gag wherein he’s the one holding them back.
this is one of those unpopular takes, but here goes, jerry is better than rick. he does household work that would normally put him in the “stay at home housewife” archetype of adult cartoons, but marge never got shit on like this. hell, lois never got this kind of crap.rick blames jerry for taking away beth’s options, but beth searched for other beths who never got married to jerry and the best she found was a version of herself that was a surgeon who dealt with her depression through alcohol and birds. Jerry’s not the problem here and it does seem very like rick to blame others for his messes.speaking of, while jerry isn’t that helpful, rick actively hurts beth and the family. After he orchestrated her divorce she fell into sculptures worthy of a serial killer, ramped up her idolization of rick to keep him from leaving and likely abandoned the family, leaving a clone behind. rick actively drags them down.
jerry’s my fave character on the show. he’s hilarious.
Did anybody else [at first glance of the episode’s teaser] have the impression that the design for ‘Rick kids’ was a bit of an homage to Matt Groening’ defunct comic strip, Life in Hell?
i thought it was a subtle simpsons reference, but i think that’s just our brains being broken
Everything about the clay people were hilarious. From claiming sentience from the moment they are born: “I am!”, to them rightfully questioning Jerry about him able to make fire and not sharing it 😆Speaking of a Prometheus reference, isn’t Zeus the worst absentee father in mythological history?
I liked the one that showed up to tell Jerry to “Use the S’Mores” to save Beth.
I was a little confused on that one because I didn’t get their concept of Smores: “Did Jerry not bother to explain what a rod is or he just told them everything he was doing is called making smores?” In which case, the answer is Yes 😆
goes on for enough time to be tedious, but not enough for it to come around to being funny again.
~ The AV Club
golf clap
Machina ex deus
Machina ex deo.Pedans sum.
Never took Latin. Coming back to bite me on the ass now.
I’m just happy that my lifetime of getting high+playing video games has been validated.
I’m just happy that my lifetime of getting high+playing video games has been validated.
I know dude-bro isn’t an original idea, but still Zeus gave me some real PFT as Santa vibes.
just remember: jerry could be emperor of the earth or a big movie star with just the wrong kind of encouragement remember how successful the app was? all the promotions he got when the federation ruled earth?i think jerry might be the most dangerous character on the showbecause he has the most POTENTIAL this might be why rick is keeping his self esteem lowso he doesn’t kill them ALL
all the promotions he got when the federation ruled earth? I was under the impression he got all those promotions because he sucked up to the Federation which is also why he remains unemployed long after it collapsed and left. Nobody wants to hire someone who prospered by collaborating with the aliens.
ah…correctbut he did kind of fall up, didn’t he?he reached his highest level of mediocrity the Peter Principle and we saw that in one universe he was a big time movie star, but STILL an idiot
This reviewer sucks the fun out of the episodes.
I poked fun at Zack a bit for his last review, but I think he was spot on with this one.
it was kind of weird to watch rick just let his daughter think there was a god and he was in a love triangle w/ a planet
Rick, of all people, has ZERO grounds for calling Jerry out on not curing cancer with his incredible abilities. Especially since it’s something he can so readily think of when the subject comes up.
“I’m not hydrostatically stable yet”.
I have a strong suspicion that the writers designed this episode partly to test its reaction and see if people are truly “getting” their humor or if it’s just a million Szechuan sauce bros.Jerry, who is PORTRAYED as incompetent throughout, has been surreptitiously shown over and over again that he is actually the one who IS competent. If you look at this season’s episodes from Jerry’s point of view (as opposed to Rick’s), Jerry is the one who can start a friction fire, raise bees, and survive on his own while Rick consistently screws things up (the facehugger, the acid vat prank, et al). Jerry is also the one who consistently shows love to his family, something Rick regularly fails to do.In this particular episode, Jerry is repeatedly shown as a master of “primitive” skills in complete contrast to Rick’s incredibly “advanced” skills. Jerry showed love not just to his biological family but to Gaia’s kids while Rick backstabbed his own biological children on the ride home. Furthermore, Jerry survived quite well amongst the “unproductive” Gaia children AND the outdoors on an alien planet while Rick (and his two grandkids that worship him) all came within an inch of getting killed.I think there’s a meta, uber joke buried in here which is that DESPITE Rick’s “godlike” powers, it’s actually Jerry who is healthy, humane, and whole – precisely because he DOESN’T have advanced powers (and specifically rejecting using Zeus’s magic staff) – in other words, there’s a through line of “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and “beware worshipping those who think they are gods.”Of course, I may be overthinking this 🙂
I want Jerry to win sometimes, even if it’s still in a “Jerry” way. Summer coming at him like that was too much.
The “Vat of Acid” episode was very much about how Rick is such a powerful evil(ish) genius that no one, not even Morty, better cross him. By contrast, this episode shows us a failing Rick. For starters, Rick has to go camping without tech. When he fails at that, Beth pressures him into visiting the planet to care for “his kids.” Work on that is going all right when the kids’ bio dad, a Zeus named Reggie, shows up to challenge Rick. Rick gets the snot kicked out of him and makes the final request that the god not destroy the city that Rick and Beth worked so hard on together. Reggie refuses, then dies (by utter accident, not by some grand design by Rick), and in his last act, posthumously destroys the city with his corpse fallen from on high. The planet gets mad and wipes out much of what remained of Rick and Beth’s accomplishment. The beings Rick saves will grow up to turn on him, so Rick will kill them. Rick’s bonding with Beth seems largely undone because Jerry, not Rick, is the one who saves Beth’s life. Deflecting, Rick breaks his word to his grandchildren and rats them out to their parents as the episode ends. Even the post-credits scene, by far the funniest part of the episode, comes somewhat at Rick’s expense as he defends his behavior from Summer. Rick doesn’t really get a win here.
“taken as a whole, the four episodes we’ve seen so far are a substantial improvement over the season’s first half” First half grades: A- (3.5), B+ (3), A- (3.5), B+
3.5, A (4) = Average
3.5 Second half grades: B+ (3), A- (3.5), B+ (3), B (3) = Average
3.125 What?
Eh, it was a nice simple Rick and Morty adventure except it involved the whole family and was largely Rick and Beth.
Man, remember when Rick and Morty would take a far-fetched sci-fi premise then deconstruct and analyze it in clever ways to make you see how silly it ultimately was? Compare to “Rick is exchanging fisticuffs with Zeus”. Also boopy doopy doop boop sex with a planet.This one really felt late-Simpsons. You’re late-Simpsons-ing this shit, Harmon! Be ashamed of yourself!
Jerry being shitted on by his entire family is getting old. I feel bad for him
Who voiced God/Reggie/a Zeus? I could have sworn it was Brian Stack who voices God for Stephen Colbert, but imdb is not being helpful.