I’ll admit, I was worried. Two years is a long time to wait between seasons, and Rick And Morty’s fourth season has been on the shaky side. The premiere was great, and I liked the thirty minute rant against heist movies, but when you’re only showing the first five episodes of a ten episode season, two eh entries aren’t really a great sign. Hell, the more I thought about the anti-heist episode, the more I wondered if I actually did like it. So I wasn’t sure what to expect tonight. It wasn’t going to be a season finale in any way, and while “mid-season finale” is a phrase that definitely exists, it’s not something I could imagine applying to this show. A few rare instances aside, Rick And Morty doesn’t do a lot of continuity-based suspense. And it’s not like there was any sort of through line leading up to this that needed paying off.
Really, I was worried that the show had lost its stride. The balance the best episodes strike is pretty tricky to pull off: making Rick an asshole but entertaining (and, for anyone who’s spent a lifetime watching sci-fi and fantasy, relatable) enough that you can enjoy his assholery; making Morty well-meaning and naive but not so intensely stupid that you stop giving a shit about what happens to him; doing the same for Jerry, only more so. I worried that something had gotten broken somewhere in season 3, and that the old tricks wouldn’t work anymore. Because to be honest, a lot of what made the show so affecting is the shock that it could actually be affecting. Now that we know there are going to be occasional bursts of sincerity, maybe it won’t work anymore.
Thankfully, that’s more or less irrelevant when it comes to “Rattlestar Ricklactica,” the best episode of the season (so far), and a pure joy from start to finish. It doesn’t do anything revolutionary, it doesn’t change our understanding of the characters, there’s no sudden shock of emotion. But it’s funny as hell, taking a basic premise at once incredibly dumb and clever as fuck, and running it straight into the ground. Good main story, and a good Jerry story, and some minor Christmas theming. I don’t know as I’d say it was worth the wait, exactly, but my faith in the show is largely restored.
So: Rick gets a flat tire in space (complete with a flat tire simulation program he used over the celebrity voice version), and Morty, being Morty, ignores Rick’s orders and leaves the ship. While out in space, Morty gets bitten by a snake astronaut. The astronaut dies, and in the process of synthesizing the anti-venom to save Morty, Rick finds a planet full of snakes with thousands of different cultures. Morty is despondent that he basically destroyed the hope of an entire species by accident, so he buys a snake from the pet store, shoves it in the dead snake’s space suit, and sends it floating back down to Snake World. Then things get complicated.
This review is going to have a bunch of paragraphs, but honestly, all you really need is: a snake world where the snakes are intelligent and dress up like people, but they’re still snakes, and they only communicate in hisses. Oh, and they invent time travel. Seriously, I can’t think of a way to explain why that’s so goddamn funny (and just delightful to watch), but it is. There are Ricky And Morty episodes where I feel like I can be useful in pinpointing where an idea went wrong, or in really digging into the thematic weight of the thing, but here, it’s just snakes who act like people. One of them wears a suit like a college professor. It’s great.
I guess I could say something about time travel? It’s another one of Harmon’s bugbears, but the take we get here—that as soon as you introduce time travel into a story, what starts as an unexpected Terminator parody goes batshit insane almost immediately—manage to be effective satire without ever feeling quite as bitter as “Once Crew Over The Crewcoo’s Morty.” The time jumping here makes just enough sense to follow what’s going on (in that we all recognize certain basic signifiers with the genre, and we also understand that things can get out of hand very quickly), but it never really gets bogged down or hectoring. It’s joyfully clever rather than kind of pissed off and dismissive, and while the show can do pissed-off well, I prefer something like this. The non-scorched earth approach you could say. And if it seems weird to be praising the upbeat tone of an episode that ends with a grandfather giving his grandson a black eye, well, I don’t know what to tell you. It is what it is. And Morty should’ve stayed in the goddamn space ship.
As for Jerry’s plot, well, it’s good enough for me to talk about it in the body of the review and not save it for Stray Observations, which is about as high a praise as I can give a subplot. Rick makes Jerry’s body lighter than air but makes his shoes heavy, and so of course Jerry loses one of his shoes; but when Rick (goaded by Beth) tries to help, Jerry refuses, determined to prove he can take care of himself. Which he does, in typical Jerry fashion. The fact that he manages to survive on his own terms while still being a pathetic nitwit who manages to crash a plane in the process is just the mix of competence and ineptitude we’ve come to expect. In a show that can sometimes get a little too invested in its protagonist’s competence, Jerry is a good reminder of everything Rick wants to put behind him but can’t entirely give up.
So, that’s five episodes done, and who knows when we’ll see the back half of the bunch. Hopefully it won’t be another two years. This still doesn’t feel like a show that can keep churning out new episodes for another decade (at some point, they’re going to run out of tropes to mock), but “Rattlestar Ricklactica” is proof that it’s still worth waiting for. I don’t know of another series on television that would’ve offered up the controlled chaos of this episode’s second half, or the casually inventive way that chaos was expressed. Happy holidays, and I, too, can almost taste that eggnog.
Stray observations
- “People who are really dying don’t keep bringing it up.” “Is that true?” “I don’t know, I’m usually around people who die faster.”
- “Unless it’s possible for Jerry to fuck up wearing shoes. …oh crap, he’s gonna die.” -Rick
- “I am the Jesus Christ of Christmas!” -Jerry
- That snake in the mecha was pretty cool.
- Hissssssssss.
- “Nobody chokes me without my consent!” -Summer, laying down the law.
- Death to Snake Hitler!
123 Comments
Torn on this one. I feel like I want to love the episode, but maybe that’s only because there were some great ideas in it, just a few (hundreds) too much to process while watching. It felt a bit like an animated Where’s Waldo picture thrown at you.
Hilarious, grim way to cap off this half-season, which was ultimately a let-down. A few shaky entries early on wouldn’t be a problem in a 10-episode season, but we did wait an awful long time for a largely mediocre stretch. It’s not surprising the response was so lukewarm. It doesn’t matter regarding this episode though-it was this show at its best. Hard to describe, but it had that Rick and Morty magic that its best episodes have, an intoxicating mix of dark humor and insane, creative sci-fi concepts.
To me it’s the layers of absurdity. Not just that there is a planet of snakes, but that the planet of snakes history is basically our history, but with snakes. That the reaction to Jerry floating around isn’t “how is he doing that” but an indignant “you can’t do that in here”. The best episodes IMHO challenge your ability to suspend disbelief.
“siri set a timer for nine hours and fifty minutes” “now playing: The Beatles”
Either Rick is more famous than he thinks he is, or he’s decided to live in a dimension where people accept stuff at face value. Not every dimension in R&M works that way – note how alarmed the chair people were at the sudden appearance of bipeds in their world.
There’s been lots of crazy stuff in this world, assuming similar timelines (since this isn’t the earth we started out watching). The entire planet has been conquered by dogs and aliens, and kidnapped by giant floating head. They’re not going to be too put out by a minor thing like a guy floating.
I have a weakness for when a show goes all-in on a gloriously stupid concept, and this episode did not disappoint. I thought it peaked with Snake Jazz, but it just kept on going…
Then snake Jazz bit was great. Having Summer and her friends get into it was better than great.
They stole that conversation Summer and her friends were having about snake jazz from my mind 5minutes earlier when they introduced the concept of snake jazz.
I’m sad that 12 hours later, still none of my streaming services have a Snake Jazz playlist.
Wow, a case where my sentiments are almost exactly in line with the reviewer. How Zack feels about the individual episodes are exactly how I feel, right down to some ambivalence about the height episode.
While I initially defended it, after rewatching, I actualy think the dragon episode is not only a dud, but possibly the worst episode the show has done yet. As the Toilet episode probably ranks as the second worst, that IS concerning for the future of the show.
An obseervation I made- one thing all of the shows this season have in common, independent of how individually good they are.
The pacing.
It’s hard to put my finger on, but all the episodes this season seem much faster. As if the show has it’s running time cut slightly.
I realize that isn’t actually the case.
Part of it feels it I think is the speed of jokes, references- I noticed this since the season premiere. It almost feels like they are deliberately going too fast, knowing people will be rewatching things endlessly and making them with that in mind. Maybe that is part of the problem. Trying to make that work is probably much harder. When it works, like tonight’s episode, it feels like sensory bombardment.
When it doesn’t work, it’s like, ok, wait,where are we again. Oh wait, the thing I thought was just happening didn’t matter. Why should I care again?
One potential fear- I think Comedy central undersands that part of the appeal of Rick and Morty was the long wait. But I fear they’ve taken the worst tactic- forcing the team to make epsidoes at a breakneck pace when they’re presumably athe their creative height, then releasing them in five eipsode packages every few months.
The notorious perfectionism of Dan might have been what made the show so consistently great. the cost of that might have been long waits. I’m afraid we may get long but shorter artificial waits driven by marketing without the benefit of the perfectionism that went into that.
Another potential concern- in terms of the “good” versus “bad episodes, it didn’t just feel like a matter of average quality. It almost felt like they wre entirely different projects.
Thus it could also be something like- the team has decided to let Dan have two epsidoes out of five he can obsess over, and then relinquish control over the others.
The Dragon and toilet episode almost reminded me of some of the lesser Rick and Morty Comics. For anyone who is unfamiliar, there are different authors and artists who do those, resulting in wildly different quality. There are some,. like the “doofus Jerry” arc, or the hard to explain “layered extrapolated simulation/mind transfer” arc (which sounds like it might be a knockoff of the Scammer simulation episode, but is actually a completely dfferent concept) which are worthy to be episodes. And some that are… not. In the case of the latter, the humor is in the style of Rick and Morty. It’s just not as good. The characterizations can be slightly off, although that isnt really an issue with the recent episodes.
But the dragon, toilet, and even to some extent, thje heist episode felt like those.
I also have some concern- I know people have criticized new writers in bad faith, but I can’t help but wonder given the imporved budget and huge schedule if it’s possible for some episodes Dan and/or Justin have given up too much control.
Like I could see how the dragon episode could have been pitched as something that everyone on the staff thought was really funny (maybe funnier then the average viewer), and then they committed and couldn’t make it work in execution but said “fuck it, maybe we’re being too self critical”
Same with the toilet episode. When you have a bigger staff, you do have to defer to room consensus, but new writers may be overly influenced by group mentality- i.e., people have their doubts, but no one wants to express them, because no one is expressing them, and nobody wants to undermine anyone else or upset them. Which clearly wasn’t the dynamic between Dan and Justin, as they were fighting all the time and being obsessive.
Finally (and it might seem like a paradox, but i don’t think so)- they’re taking too much criticism to heart. The third season received a lot of criticism. I think though, it wasn’t on the decline at all, or certainly not remotely rocky like the middle of this stretch of episodes was. It got more crticism because it blew up beyond a cult fandom to something everyone was talking about, and thus will receive more criticism.
This criticism seemed to come in a fw forms. 1. Too Meta 2. Too Dark 3. bandwagon reaction to fans and the show by extension 3. (very small) we can’t separate the difference between novelty and quality so lt’s blame women- Worthy of note the last group was pretty small but got way singal boosted which ironically gave them a louder voice. I would say people should stop doing this, but they won’t, so whatever.Beth’s meta-commentary in the season three finale and Nazi Morty’s in the season 4 premier implied to me that they got the wrong message from the criticism. Which is a concern. Basically all plot with the characters frozen in their season one forms. What made R and M work was balancing the sci-fi absurdity and hi-jinks with character development, albeit very slowly and subtly and revealing layers. Granted this is hard to pull off, but just freezing them till the inevitable “big plot” arcs isn’t going to help.
Also, we learned that dan and Justin lie alot (pretty much everything they said about this batch ofepsiodes prior tp them being released was a lie) but I guess we sould have expected that.
One potential fear- I think Comedy central undersands that part of the appeal of Rick and Morty was the long wait. But I fear they’ve taken the worst tactic- forcing the team to make epsidoes at a breakneck pace when they’re presumably athe their creative height, then releasing them in five eipsode packages every few months.
It’s Adult Swim/Cartoon Network that airs Rick & Morty, not Comedy Central. And you have it backwards. AS wanted to renew R&M for a single season, but Harmon and Roiland were tired of the delays between seasons and were holding out until AS agreed to multiple seasons upfront.
Yes, I know it’s adult swim, I don’t know why I wrote “Comedy Central”
While I initially defended it, after rewatching, I actualy think the dragon episode is not only a dud, but possibly the worst episode the show has done yet. As the Toilet episode probably ranks as the second worst, that IS concerning for the future of the show.I still like the dragon episode. Probably not my favorite overall, but I still thought it had some funny aspects.
One potential fear- I think Comedy central undersands that part of the appeal of Rick and Morty was the long wait. But I fear they’ve taken the worst tactic- forcing the team to make epsidoes at a breakneck pace when they’re presumably athe their creative height, then releasing them in five eipsode packages every few months.As pointed out, that was a decision by Harmon & Roiland to avoid the excessive delays, not AS. So nobody is forcing the team to make episodes at a breakneck pace. And I doubt there is a strategic advantage to making people make years. That kills momentum (although that’s a tradeoff I’ll always make in terms of quality, so that’s not a huge gripe on my part, just an observation).
My guess is simply this. We’ve only seen half the season and there were a couple that I thought were very good and three that were pretty great. I’ll re-watch them and see if they hold up, but I’m also content to see how the rest of the season plays out (and how they hold up over time, individually and as a whole) before deeming this season a success or failure. For now, I still love the show, find it funny, and think it’s also doing enough to let the characters evolve in their own ways. They’re still the same characters, but we’ve also seen some signs of growth from the main ensemble of characters. In that regard, I think there’s still plenty of room for growth.
Delays can kill a series.Ask Venture Brothers, 7 seasons in 15 years and I don’t know anyone that has watched the last 2-3 seasons.The delay isn’t inherently evil, but people grow out of their tastes and move on to other things, the longer it drags on.
Ask Venture Brothers, 7 seasons in 15 years and I don’t know anyone that has watched the last 2-3 seasons.Ironically, that’s the series I was mainly thinking of and why I’m on the fence. On one hand, that delay between seasons killed momentum and I kind of forgot where we left off.
On the other hand…I found the last two seasons absolutely incredible! If you haven’t watched them, I found them a great return to form. Hank and Dean grew tremendously and in my opinion that character growth gave the season a reason to still exist. I also enjoyed the ongoing and evolving friendship between the Monarch and Henchman 21. But seriously, that last two seasons (the most recent one in particular) were amazing. Surprisingly so! I just started rewatching Venture Bros. and found a lot of it still holds up very well.
So, I’m torn. Do the delays kill things a bit? Yes. But given the quality of the last two seasons, and how I’m not sure they would have been that good had they not had the chance to let them percolate, I guess I’ll take what I can get.
I feel similarly toward Atlanta, Master of None, and felt that way about Louie until that one’s fate was pretty much sealed. If something’s a real passion project, and not something that is made to be turned out quite like a standard network TV show, apparently I will make accommodations in my mind. It’s not a great strategy to delay things, and I doubt anybody really wants that, but for something that requires a person or team to recharge and let ideas ferment a bit before they reach their full potential? I’ll wait.
Seriously though, if you haven’t watched the last 2-3 seasons of Venture Bros., you should go check them out. I was sort of apathetic after the delay, but the payoff was huge!
Exactly how I felt about Venture Bros. One of the greatest “adult animated” series since it came out forever ago, but tough delays between seasons. In their case, though, it’s – by their own admission – the creators’ own fault. They choose not to bulk up the staff or outsource writing, because they feel like it would water the series down and affect quality. And as Jackson said in an interview, I believe, they have so many inside jokes and references that anyone other than those two wouldn’t know where to go. I mean…take the premiere of last season, for example. They referenced a throwaway gag from the FIRST SEASON and it became one of the biggest reveals/plot points in recent memory.
Ironically, that’s one show that I can confidently say has gotten better every single season. I agree that while the delays/waits basically breeze the show out of memory, it’s a show that always impresses when it comes back.
I was going to say the exact same thing. The last two seasons of Venture Bros, particularly the most recent one, have been fantastic
Agreed on the Venture Bros. These last two seasons have been a goddam delight. The “Jaws” references in the Blue Morpho episodes had me in stitches.
Since when did the delays kill Venture Bros? Its still as well done and popular as ever. If anything, us fans appreciate the delays because it means a superior product in the end, and that’s what we get with the Venture Bros.And as explained, the delays with R&M were not intentional, it was more because of back and forth between the network and the creators over renewal and how many episodes.
If anything, us fans appreciate the delays because it means a superior product in the end, and that’s what we get with the Venture Bros.The superior product is important, and honestly Venture Bros. nailed it! There are tons of so-so shows out there. If I have to wait a bit longer but get something that’s of a markedly better quality? Sign me up! Given how good the past two seasons have been in particular, looking back they were well worth the wait and totally better than getting a subpar product sooner would have been.
Not cartoons, but delays or extended breaks in production killed Good Eats and Cobra Kai for me (it probably doesn’t help that CK ran out of story by the end of S1).
I’ve never heard of Good Eats, but S2 of CK came out almost exactly 1 year after S1 so I’m not sure what delay or extended break in production you are referring to there.
The last season of Venture Brothers was as good or better than anything they have ever done.
VB’s greatest sin is that it went up its own butt in terms of fleshing out its world, constructing an ever-elaborate backstory. Is there a vlue in world-building? Yes. Should there be so much world-building that it gets in the way of storytelling? No, it should be in service to storytelling.Here’s an example. At the end of season one, it’s mentioned in passing that the Monarch killed Captain Sunshine’s boy sidekick; it was just one villainous act in a list of acts. Well later on we just HAD to meet Captain Sunshine and do a whole episode about him (oh and he’s a pedophile, which is fun and original, because pedophilia jokes about superheroes are ALWAYS fun and original). Then later on there’s ANOTHER episode where we learn that Captain Sunshine’s butler was the first Captain Sunshine. All this in service to fleshing out a throwaway line that didn’t require any fleshing out.The show’s single worst creative decision, IMHO, was when the Guild of Calamitous Intent barred the Monarch from arching Dr Venture, and he more or less abided by their terms. That’s when the chaos of the show got replaced by bureaucracy. Where the show should have gone was, the Monarch waged war against the GCI and somehow destroyed them, unleashing even more chaos. Instead we got the GCI members driving around in a Wacky Races car together.
Except The Venture Bros is about as far from death as its ever been. If you haven’t watched the last two or three seasons that’s on you cause they’ve been brilliant.
Screenname checks out.
Ask Venture Brothers, 7 seasons in 15 years and I don’t know anyone that has watched the last 2-3 seasons.I feel like that has more to do with availability then anything else. Its not like they are sitting on Netflix waiting to be watched. Maybe HBO Max will change that….
The last couple seasons of Venture Bros. have absolutely been worth waiting for.
I relate to so much of what you’re saying here. The pacing of these episodes is too fast, and maybe that works for watching again, the first watch of these episodes has been over whelming. I do worry that they learned the wrong things from season 3 which I thought was uniformly great.As for the quality of this season, I can’t say where these episodes rank yet, but if these are two of the worst episodes of the series, then we are truly blessed and this is possibly one of the greatest shows of all time. Personally, I think every season has epsiodes like this, too many ideas and tropes to be subverted packed into a 22 minute episode, which never hit as hard but are still funny and do a good job filling out the season. What this season hasn’t had yet is a “Pickle Rick” or a Mr. Poopybutthole moment (forget what that episode is called). This episode was close (as was the toilet epiosde with the possibility of rick making a friend) but it didnt quite pass the mark. The best episodes of R&M not only surprise us but they break out of the format we expect from episodic television and even structure/payoff (specifically thinking of cronenberg episode but pickle rick fits because it wouldve felt hollow without the ending therapy session.) I am still hopeful about this show, and what I’m really hoping is they just wanted to give us some “elemental” R&M episodes since it’s been so long, and since they have such a huge show order they can take their time building to the more serialized, nuanced character work.
‘Total Rickall’. Other such episodes throughout the series include ‘Rick Potion #9′, ‘Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind’ and ‘The Wedding Squanchers’. Series 3 was full of them: ‘Rickshank Redemption’, ‘Pickle Rick’ and ‘Rest and Ricklaxation’ for Rick, ‘Morty’s Mind Blowers’ for Morty, ‘The Ricklantis Mixup’ for them both, ‘Rickmancing the Stone’ for Summer, ‘The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy’ for Jerry, and ‘The ABCs of Beth’ for Beth.
first half of the dragons is greatafter they start saying slut constantly it just got boring
I turned it off somewhere around the point where the dragon dealer was whipped the dragon and calling it a slut.
The only one I’d agree was a total failure would be the Dragon Episode. I’m a big defender of the Heist episode. I thought it was really funny to see a genre parody of something that’s barely even thought of as a genre in some ways. And Morty’s plot was one of the best of the eps that shows ow dark their relationship is. There were a lot of funny jokes and a catchphrase “you son of a bitch I’m in” which somewhat permeated pop culture. I wouldn’t say the toilet episode was one of the best but I don’t think it was outright bad. It was a classic thing where Rick gets obsessed with some trivial thing and interesting to see how it stopped the possibility of him maybe making a friend
Thoughtful critique. My main problems are that the show isn’t very funny this season and that I suspect Harmon and Roiland have checked out. Your theories as to why this batch hasn’t been too good are valid points, but Occam’s Razor suggests a lack of effort by the writers. Jokes are few and far between these episodes and it’s coasting on the top notch visuals. They’re entering Michael Bay level of leaning on visuals.
Maybe that’s the point? I got heavy troll vibes from this episode compared to last week. Heist and time travel plots are not dissimilar. Good for them if they want to hold the moronic Rick wannabe, worshiping idiots in contempt, but still provide some damn humor while doing it.
The expanded writers room criticism is nonsense. Good leadership and vision trumps (god I hate using that verb these days) any bad idea or time crunch. Solid plot premise? Hand it over and clean it up. Weak plot? Punch it up with good jokes and one-liners. This is squarely on Harmon and Roiland.
I’ll still watch the next batch of episodes, but I’m highly irritated with the show right now. It’s either lazy or trolling, aggressively so, I can’t decide which. Just feed my dumb gullet with funnies damnit!
Harmon and Roland are not making episodes at breakneck speeds. If AS/CN was forcing them to make episodes faster we wouldn’t have the crazy hiatus between seasons. Each season has taken longer then the last. From S1 to S2 it was 15 months, S2 to s3 was a year & a half, and s3 to s4 was 2 1/2 years. Harmon is good but the same shit happened with community. Each season just got worse. There was always those standout episodes but it’s like Harmon runs out of juice after a season or 2. I loved season 1 & 2 but season 3 & 4 just feel meh. The Toilet and Heist were awful. The Dragon one was like wtf. Weird even by Rick and Morty standards but was ok. The whole snake/jerry floating was the best episode but that isn’t saying much with the episodes we got so far. I feel like Dan and Justin are using the comics to expand and explore the plot and the tv show for “adventure of the week” type episodes. A huge part of last season was Rick wiping out the Council of Ricks. They reformed and are worse then last time. But unless you read the comics you wouldn’t know that. We get 1 episode that gives some actual story a season. I want more story and they can do that with adventures. I want Rick to get in trouble for the shit he caused. Like where is the president? Why is evil Morty evil? What happened to his Rick?
I particularly loved the weirdness of the bar scene when everyone was yelling at Jerry that he wasn’t allowed to bring the rock inside (and then that he wasn’t allowed to float inside).
I wonder if it was a reference to segregation. They did talk about racism earlier in the episode.
I think it’s more just an extreme parody of the trope of the tough “biker bar” where people are overly hostile towards outsiders.
I think it’s more just an extreme parody of the trope of the tough “biker bar” where people are overly hostile towards outsiders.
Seemed like a machismo reference. How fictional bar fights are always start due to trivial nonsense. “Oooh look at the big man with a rock. You think you’re better than me?”
The fact that he manages to survive on his own terms while still being a pathetic nitwit who manages to crash a plane To be fair to Jerry, at least some of the blame for the plane crash should go to the pilots getting high.“Whoa. Feel that turbulence?”“Nope. I’m on molly.”
so was this growth for Jerry, or not?
The best bit is still the snake alphabet being variations on the letter “s,” which pays off in the Lincoln assassination attempt.
I love how snake history is exactly like our history, with a Lincoln, Hitler, and Pentagon for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
I’m calling the snake-Hitler “Hissler.” Haven’t come up with a good name for snake-Lincoln yet.
Sadly there is a snake-related pun, but it refers to his opponents; people who wanted the Union to make peace with the Confederacy were known as “Copperheads” after the poisonous snake common in the US southeast.
Honesssssst Abe
“Haven’t come up with a good name for snake-Lincoln yet.”Ssssssss?
Presssident Lincoln.
Aboaham Lincaconda
Snakebraham Lincoln, of course.Oh wait, you said a good name…
Abe Ssss-slinkin’
Winner!
Abracondaham Slinkin
Slincoln (pronounced slinking) pretty much writes itself
Abraham Slinkcon.
Slinkon.
“Slincoln” is right there!
Slinkoln?
Snakebraham Slincoln.
Slincoln. Cause he slinks.
Ssssslinkin’
I like how by the end, the snake history is not only citing specific places “Snake Berlin” but specific (earth?) years as well. It’s a hilarious conceit.
Important question, though — is there a snake version of Abradolf Lincler? (I mean, probably not, as there doesn’t seem to be a Snake Rick, but I wonder…)
Love this episode because it feels like a challenge Harmon and crew had for themselves:“hey everyone, why don’t we make an episode about a planetary/time conspiracy wiht none of the dialogue because everyone has already watched this type of story 20 times?”And Rick laughing at how stupid and pathetic racism is was a nice jab at the toxic fans, I like that 🙂
Me after Season 3: Dan Harmon really needs to stop getting so far up his arse and having each consecutive episode be some increasingly pretentious high-concept five-levels-of-meta wacky fourth-wall breaking bullshit like it happened with the later seasons of Community.
Me after Season 4: You know what Dan, fuck it, maybe it’s best you go back to doing you.
Favourite episode of the series because I’m immature and I’ll always mark out to animals acting like humans. My favourite part was when ’80s Snake Dude handed Abraham Lincoln Snake Dude the note that just said Hiss.
I like the fact that he looks like a snake Chad from the 80’s, which is a humorous point that any douche can time travel to be a hero or thinks they’ll be one lol
Booster Gold for the win.
*In the hilarious voice provided by Billy West*
“Good one, sir!”
“I’m only here because I have a certain power I wanted to kinda celebrate before it goes away.”“Yo! We got a Nazi up here!”As far as solo Jerry plots go, this one was definitely top tier. Even if he is pathetic and socially inept as hell, his determination to prove to Rick and himself that he could survive his own fuckup (even if it meant crashing an entire plane in the process) was oddly endearing. Stupid, but endearing.Also, everything about the snake planet having an identical snake version of human history was pure gold, right down to the snake-shaped swastikas and 80s snake snorting coke. This show, man.
Slippy is now coming to mind as the most underrated comedic gag in that whole episode.
Morty feels bad that he killed a famous snake with the intelligence and experience of an astronaut, and replaces it with a pet store snake…how was this supposed to work? LOL
Part of what made this episode so much better was that all the main characters got at least one character-consistent moment.
And those character-consistent moments also included development from a previous season. Jerry still sucks, but now he’s a confident sucker because he has a false sense of bravado thinking Rick is respecting him, instead of admitting that Rick is just following Beth’s orders, lol.
As soon as Rick said, “You’re staying in here were it’s safe” as he opened the door on his ship and exposed Morty to the vacuum of space, I knew this was going to be a good episode.
And did the plane actually crash? It disappeared over the mountain ridge…
Jerry only destroyed one engine. Planes have at least 2, possibly 4.
Don’t forget the pilots are on molly…
I like that the unstoppable corrective force to any advanced civilization conducting warfare across time-and-space …… is two street detectives/testicle monsters beating people down with their bare fists and yelling “don’t fuck with time”.
I loved that they used the terminator films as the main reference of why Rick hates time travel, because once you have terminators traveling back in time to fight other time traveling terminators from another reality, you hit ad nauseam redundancy and know why nobody went to see the last film
You would think the Terminator writers would have figured this out but nope.
“Mr. Cameron, if Terminators can come from different realities, where they successfully took over without the interference of the Connors, wouldn’t they have calculated that it was a bad idea to go back in the past and agitate the one family that always ruins their plans?”
“YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT WRITING ABOUT REAL WOMEN!”
Not to nitpick or anything but iirc the NewNet or whatever it was called (Legion?) were trying to kill whatshername and Sarah Connor showed up because Johnkiller told her to. That movie would have been significantly better if it had ended with her finding the time machine tech, setting it to self-destruct, then at the last second using it to go back to 1998 and undoing the opening. Because in time travel films, that sort of thing is always an option. It also would have been an entertaining way for Cameron to set it up for his central protagonist (Sarah) to give a middle finger to the middle finger he himself had given to his deuteragonist (John).
But the machines were the ones to invent time travel, which already was idiotic because somehow this advanced and superior version of skynet never calculated that it created multiple variables to its own demise.Even MK11 had a better conclusion to all this: The machines always lose because they always intwine themselves to humanity, thus it’s better to make peace instead of facing eventual annihilation. Brilliant!
Except, that’s not how it works at all. The girl was always going to become the leader of humanity that destroys the machines. The machines obviously weren’t going back in time to kill random people, they invent time travel on the eve of their destruction in order to kill who they determine to be the most important person in the resistance.
You just repeated the plot of part 1 and switched boy for a girl.I couldn’t come up with a better metaphor for how repetitive that franchise is now.
Remember the one where John Conner intentionally made himself a loser so he couldn’t be important in any way?
I kind of like that concept. Like the terminators travel back to fuck with John Connor in subtle ways, like posting a fake tweet from him that makes him lose all his followers, or convince his girlfriend to break up with him, or kill his beloved dog or something.
I can’t get over the line ‘That’s gonna turn into you manipulatin’ the fabric of shit!’ Hilarious. Particularly the delivery.Also hilarious: the fact that it *worked*.
“HEY! You think I wanna be an omniscient immortal being transcending time and space my whole life? I got ambitions man, bringin’ you guys in is my ticket up.” Season 12, A Rickle in Time.
So, you’re travellin’ forward in time to see 8 seasons in the future Rick and Morty, are you? You a smart AV Club user, huh? … That’s gonna turn into you manipulatin’ the fabric of shit!’ (Like makin’ ’em repeat shit from Season 2!)*punch*
Eight season? That’s all?Damn. I knew I went too far when I saw the dolphin people.
This still doesn’t feel like a show that can keep churning out new episodes for another decade (at some point, they’re going to run out of tropes to mock)I imagine that at some point we’ll probably see some more continuity with the show, perhaps even approaching serialization. Not because that’s just what happens to shows that go on long enough, but also because when you know you’ve got literally dozens of episodes to bring a plot to fruition, that you don’t have to worry about ending the season on a cliffhanger and then getting cancelled, that gives you a lot of room to work.
Gotta agree with you here, before this there were two great episodes and two mediocre (still say Interdimensional Cable 2 is the worst episode, but Claw and Hoarder does come pretty close). As for the heist episode…what did you mean when you said you were wondering if you liked it? Are you starting to think it was just a one-joke episode? Also, I’m sure you got a lot of angry responses from fans for giving season 3 almost straight A’s (not that I agree with them, just saying).
I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever laughed harder at a joke when Morty was stuffing the replacement snake into the suit all the way to the snake scientists struggling to communicate with him. Seriously anytime they showed a snake scene I would just burst out laughing uncontrollably. Bravo guys
I think I have to disagree. Part of why I started disliking Community was that it evolved into something where every episode was premised about some trope, genre or specific movie/show and (supposedly) turning it on its head. That seems to be happening here as we’ve seen heist movies, DND fantasy worlds and time travel all spoofed in a row. Each episode might be different, but the modus operandi isn’t, and it starts to come off as lazy and uninspired.
Your episode grades leading up to this episode have been A-/B+/A-/B+. You have a funny definition of “shaky.”
I feel like I’ve been saying this a lot in the comments for this season’s reviews, but even if these are weaker epsiodes than we are used to, they are still better than almost every other show on tv. I havent lost faith Rick and Morty still is capable of greatness.
If the episodes were weak by R&M standards, which they were as the reviewer described this as a “shaky season”, then they by definition should have received a weak rating, instead of B+.
That was Professor (Indiana) Jones snake that the army snakes brought in to investigate Slippy, right? The clothes AND satchel matched what I remember from “Lost Arc” 😀
I don’t think these gents have any intentions of completing the massive order of eps they got… it’s Dr. Whovian levels of content, and this isn’t that show. Plus, I think Venture Bros. shows us that the momentum will eventually run out. (I love Team Venture but I feel like it’s time they rap it up before the rest of us lose interest in checking in every couple of years… or at least end the show properly and shift to a movie ep every so often).
Finally, my mental canon was thrown into disarray with the time travel element. I know that the time travel box has been in the garage forever, but I was always hopeful that time travel was the ONE thing this show would never touch upon as being possible so that Rick had no way of saving his maybe wife and maybe child Beth from the maybe scenario that was also in the Shoneys. I know he straight up said he kinda made it up, but I assumed it was a bit of truth & lie, and now that we clearly have time travel (that Rick helped INVENT), I can’t really hold on to the idea that he’s unable to save his family because of the lack of it.
OR… MAYBE Rick thinks it’s futile to save his wife & Beth because of the random cruelty of the universe, OR that he’s not deserving of that family, OR that he knows saving them maybe means no Jerry, and thusly no Morty. That time did what time did and thems the brakes? I don’t know… Still a very entertaining episode though.
Finally, I’d like to think that the astronaut snake (who was a female which makes the loss even more heartbreaking), attacked Morty because she was stranded & hungry. Or maybe snakes just gotta be snakes 😀
#ripSASACommanderSlippyTheFirst
Well it was snake time travel so maybe it only can involve snakes.
I felt this was a much better episode than the dragons one. That one seemed to have no direction and just went with a bunch of sex jokes, whereas this one took full advantage of the snake planet nonsense.
i think there is a flaw in harmon’s story circle method, in that it works wonderfully at first and can create great characters and good story arcs, but subsequent attempts at applying the same circle to the same characters gives diminishing returns – they aren’t as changed each time. tv seasons don’t fit into the campbellian novel/filmic format, they play more like sequels. also dan seemingly gets fed up with repeating himself so you get these weirdly fast paced episodes that skim over exposition to avoid everything that may have been said once before, to get to the new material, which appears rarer and rarer with each rehash.
Snake jazz made me crack up every time they showed it.
Overlooked in this discussion is Beth’s voicemail message when Jerry called, indicated that he reache her voicemail because he wasn’t in her contacts, and not to leave a message…
I’ve watched the episode at least 5 times by now and enjoying the depth of all the details.
I actually thought this episode shows that this Beth* is a perfect middle of the road version of the previous seasons. She is fully aware that Jerry is a complete screw up, but gives herself that privilege of being mean spirited because what the hell is he going to do about? Plus, she’s basically the head of the family now: Rick can’t just freely endanger her children, and Jerry can’t say anything to attempt to get rid of Rick. She’s the matriarch with an attitude, good for her*.
*Clone still possible
The snake hitler scene was hilarious. I was busting up as the snake time travel assassins were overflowing the building. At the end, I felt a little bit proud of Jerry. He stood up for himself and made it back alive.
I’m impressed/annoyed by the way he can survive grabbing onto a speeding plane and then jumping off the plane and grabbing a tree. That should be way more damaging than falling of a roof.
That was a terrific episode.Since it hasn’t been mentioned: “Can you recognize the sound a of man’s pants filling up with rain?” and “I… hope to, one day?” killed me. Jerry’ solution was actually pretty clever, but Rick’s reaction to the apparent non-sequitur was to rapidly take it in stride without admitting any real weakness. Win x2
This is likely not the space for a full analysis, but one of my favorite ongoing developments in the series has been Rick and Jerry’s interactions.
You can see that Jerry is more confident in this season than previous ones, and you can almost feel that Rick is being more tolerant than before. It’s a nice little concept of how even in a dysfunctional setting, two characters can still develop some mutual level of respect.
I was impressed with Jerry’s plan, but I think Rick was actually just trying to be nice, or at least trying not to yell at Jerry so he wouldn’t hang up and die.
I enjoyed this episode but I think the writers like kicking Jerry more than I like watching it. Also can Rick pause everyone or just Beth? How hard would it be to just fake Jerry’s voice? If testicle monsters are the time continuum’s police force and anyone knows about it, what’s stopping would be chronopirates from sterilizing them back when they were sperm swimming in the primordial ooze?
If you want an explanation for that, you could say they’ve mastered time travel and seen its dangers, so they’ve somehow removed their existence from the normal timelines and exist outside of them to police the rest of the multiverse.
The testicle monsters live outside of time. You can’t mess with the fabric of their shit.
Somehow your review doesn’t include the two best words of the episode.Snake Jazz.
Kind of felt like a nightmare version of a Prime Directive ST episode
Kind of felt like a nightmare version of a Prime Directive ST episode
I actually burst out laughing at the delivery when Rick realized that Jerry could fuck up wearing shoes
So summer liked being choked. Wow that’s …..
She likes it when she consents to it, homie.
Beth, Summer and even Morty laughing hysterically at Rick saying “maybe he’s having an affair” in reference to Jerry had my crying it was so funny. The entire family realizes Jerry is a doofus and the fact that they made that so obvious made his plotline even better.
My favorite part of the episode is right before the credits:Morty: I’m not in danger, there’s nothing out here.Rick: Literally everything is out here…*space snake bites Morty*Morty: There’s snakes in space?Rick: There’s LITERALLY EVERYTHING in space Morty, now get the fuck back in the car!So much awesome, crazy shit happens on Snake World that this line is almost a throwaway, but it is just so good. I think this may be my favorite episode, but for fucking Jerry murdering a plane full of people so he doesn’t have to accept help from Rick even though the robo-snake says he wasn’t sent by Rick. Snakes with knives in their tails were the best snakes.
Snake jazz got me every damned time.
Ok, I know no one is going to read this because this episode aired a year and a half ago (right before the pandemic really hit, so it actually feels like a lifetime ago). But because this is one of my favorite Rick and Morty adventures, I was rewatching last night and found a joke I completely missed all the other times I watched it.The rocket with Morty’s snake splashes down in the ocean and is picked up by a ship on the Snake Planet. The name of that ship: S.S. SSSSS.Gold. This whole episode was gold.