Too many Ricks and a whole lot of murder on a great Rick And Morty
A simple solution to a complex problem once again leads to a lot of dead bodies.
TV Reviews Rick and Morty
Narrative shows—dramas and comedies alike—depend on stakes. Actions need to have consequences in order for a story to work; not just in terms of building emotional investment and relatability (whatever that really means), but just as a way of establishing enough internal consistency for what we’re watching (or reading about) to have any meaning at all. Consequences lead to different potential outcomes, and the characters involved in those outcomes have preferences as to how things will work out; so does the audience. Sometimes our preferences mirror the characters’, sometimes they’re different, but on a basic level, we need a reason to be interested in what happens next. Which is a very convoluted way of explaining what I mean by “stakes.” And if you’re still awake after reading this paragraph, bravo to you, because I barely made it.
The thing about Rick And Morty is, how do you create a sense of stakes when all outcomes are always possible? The most basic consequence is the threat of death, but the show has repeatedly demonstrated that that doesn’t really matter here; there’s always another Rick, there’s always another Morty, and so on. And while the Rick and Morty we’re follow now are, I think, the one we started the series with back in the first season (actually I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about this, but since being wrong would actually prove my point, I’m not going to get too worried about it), the show has wrung a lot of plot and comedy out of repeatedly reminding us that it doesn’t really matter. Life is short. Nothing means anything. Come watch TV.
The trick, then, has been holding our attention with a seemingly boundless knack for concept invention, a gratifyingly deep bench of both sci-fi concept and nerd pop culture references (back when “nerd” meant “I like weird unpopular shit,” and not just, well, most people on the planet), and the occasional, and sometimes shockingly effective, moments of emotional truth. “Mortiplicity” delivers on all three categories, and while I’d be lying if I said this was the most moved I’ve ever been watching the show, it doesn’t matter. I laughed more than enough to make up for any paucity of emotional depth, and the high concept was strong enough that it held my attention throughout. I’ve criticized the show in the past for being overly infatuated with its own cleverness, but this episode is just an extremely good balance of “what if” taken to parodical extreme, with just a dollop of sincerity to give it an edge.
That premise: Rick and Morty are going to kill God. Well, that was the plan, anyway, and they explain it over breakfast (Jerry is excited because he has a job interview), but before we can get to the death of Iehovah, a group of squid soldiers burst in and kill everyone. We quickly cut to another home; now the family is running around hunting Mr. Always Wants To Be Hunted when Rick’s watch beeped. “Someone just killed a decoy family,” Rick says, and then quickly explains that because there are lots of crazy aliens out there who want him dead (and ever since that confusing Space Beth situation), Rick went to the trouble of making decoys to keep the real family safe. But then this group is killed by squids. We cut to the family frolicking at an Italian Villa; Rick’s watch beeps; he explains again; the squids bomb the room, everybody dies. Especially Jerry, who dies hard.
At this point, you can probably see where this is going, and the episode never disappoints those expectations. Rick And Morty creates stakes in its all-consequence reality in a couple of ways—developing the core characters enough to make use care about their relationships even when everything is exploding in chaos, as seen here, is a good one—but one of its best tricks is creating tension out of its own premises. It’s a kind of meta-fictional gambit; it introduces this idea (Rick created decoys, the decoys start getting killed) and then challenges itself to fill the full twenty minutes by both never breaking the rules of that idea, and by never boring us or repeating itself. It’s fun because we know the Summers’ dynamic well enough that there’s a lot of comedy in just seeing each iteration squabble before its inevitable destruction, and it’s also fun because we’re waiting to see how the episode will top itself next.
And boy does it ever succeed. Cleverness can be exhausting when it’s stretched out over too long a time span (or when it becomes too satisfied in itself), but there’s just so much delight in seeing all the various iterations of how this plays out, from Rick (quick side note: we don’t actually see the “real” Rick until the end, if then, but I’m just going to call them all Rick unless they have some other special distinction) using a feint at existentialism to trick Morty into staring at his naked ass, to the reveal that the squid soldiers at all, but just decoys dressed up as soldiers in order to follow “Rule 34 of Asimov’s Cascade.” It quickly becomes apparent that the decoys starting making their own decoys, because all of them think they’re Rick, and if one Rick is going to come up with the idea of making a decoy, every Rick is going to come up with that idea. And some of those decoys get increasingly freakish.
But in what’s arguably the episode’s true stroke of genius, none of the iterations stray too far from the, well, essential Rick-ness of the situation. As always, his brilliant solution ends up causing more problems, because his brilliance is inherently corrupt; any Rick that exists will have the intelligence to come up with just about anything, but lacks the emotional intelligence to spend any time at all thinking about, well, those consequences. All of these families existed, had lives, cared about being alive, and they all slaughter each other for no other reason than Rick has to be the only Rick around. As one of the decoys explains, it’s Highlander rules. There can be only one.
Which is that emotional truth we were talking about before. That’s not to say this is a grim episode in any way; there is a fuckton of death (I measured), but because the premise makes it clear very early on that every new family we see won’t be with us for long and because we just keep seeing exact copies of the same family (with occasional variations down the line), those deaths have the kind of screwball manic energy the show often aims for but doesn’t always achieve. It’s the upside to having an infinite number of realities of limitless possibility—you can’t ever get too worked up about violent death because there’s always a replacement indistinguishable from the last coming down the line. And hell, they’re all decoys anyway.
Of course, the downside of that infinite number of realities thing is, again, a big part of what makes this episode work: there can be hundreds, thousands of copies of Rick and his immediate family, but Rick will always be Rick, Morty and Summer and Beth will always be themselves, and Jerry will be the Jerry-iest Jerry in the universe. I don’t want to lean too heavy on any expectation of thematic nuance here, because “Mortiplicity” ultimately lives (and lives very well) on the strength of its ingenuity and its commitment to its premise. But it’s hard to shake that feeling that no matter how big existence is, how much possibility space there is, it’s still just this guy who can’t stop killing himself and everything he loves, over and over and over again.
But hey, puppet Jerry, that was a trip.
Stray observations
- Shout out to my fiancee Caroline who caught the end song, Queen’s “Who Wants To Live Forever,” a great song and a Highlander reference. (That post credits sequence with puppet Jerry forced to exist for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years, was terrific.)
- “I’m Mr. Always Wants To Be Hunted!” “Yes, and how interesting did you think that would stay?”
- The family dynamics here were pretty excellent throughout.
- I would’ve expected “Rule 34 of Asimov’s Cascade” to be… nuder.
- One Morty referencing Westworld, another referencing Ex Machina in the same spot; I don’t really have anything to add, it just made me laugh.
- Excellent fake out with When Wolf.
- Pretty sure Puppet Jerry escaping and leaving the others to die was a reference to Burke in Aliens, although the episode wasn’t explicit about it so maybe not? (Jerry is, I think, too much of a fuck-up to be an actual Burke.)
- “Can you whip up a “Starfox Boss’ Season 4 classic.” -Rick (The hologram was, indeed, some Starfox Boss shit.)
137 Comments
That felt like another one of Harmon’s “Fuck your fanwank theories” episodes. I enjoyed it immensely.
I’ve long since come to the conclusion most of the reviewers do their watching while staring at their phones and tweeting about how “lol, reviewing new ep, can’t believe i get paid for this”.
I kind of hated this episode simply because it bored me. It’s a 2-minute concept gag repeated and stretched out to 22 minutes, and most of the variations aren’t funny or interesting enough to justify the exercise. The chaotic escalation doesn’t matter once you understand the premise that whichever version of the family you’re following is predictably about to die and it doesn’t matter which is real. And the show has done much more imaginative and visually fun carnage than this before, so I feel like the episode just doesn’t have anything to offer. Taking a sci-fi concept and running as far as possible with it is obviously an important foundation of Rick and Morty, but I think you’ve got to, like, do something with it or whatever.
Yeah. This was one of those return to the well, crawl up your own ass, and do the multiple versions fake out things over and over, again. Rick and Morty has done some variation of this to death at this point. There’s at least 2 a season, but then there are a bunch of fun ones to keep it interesting.
I’m glad I’m not the only one who felt this! Ultimately, I do feel like this episode might end up as a divisive episode. Some will laud it for its genius at pushing a concept as far as it can go while others will find it to be another example of R&M being too clever for its own good.I do appreciate the comitment to resisting any kind of narrative stakes or momentum, but that’s really all I felt for it: appreciation. It’s hard to get too invested when the show keeps pulling the rug out from under your feet. Yes, it does attempt some sort of emotional moment—a bit unearned*, IMO, but, I guess, credit for trying—with the Muppet-Disguise version, but the rest is just clever fluff.The show has been successful with the “let’s push a premise to the point of that the story hardly matters anymore” episode before—the snake time-travel episode is still reliably funny after many rewatches—but this just never really landed for me. Well, at least, the theory-crafting R&M community going to have a field day with this one. How confident are you that the “returning from space” family at the end of the episode is the real family, Zach? Because I have a feeling there will be several videos up on Youtube disproving that within the week.*If I’m being totally honest, that emotional moment doesn’t feel too far off that mark from the one at the end of most Family Guy episodes where somone (usually Peter) attempts to atone for an episode of bad behavior with some treacly speech about family or whatever.
To paraphrase Ian Malcolm:“Your writers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
It’s hard to get too invested when the show keeps pulling the rug out from under your feet.Dan’s trying to have it both ways. He wants praise for creating a serialised show with continuity and logic, but doesn’t want to take on the responsibility for it.
This is why I haven’t watched any of the show (outside of clips I see on YouTube). I’m cool with pushing boundaries, but if it’s just “look at what I’m doing!!! Isn’t it cool and edgy!?”, then pass on that.
It’s a 2-minute concept gag repeated and stretched out to 22 minutesExactly this. Hell, they could’ve had the decoy family bit set up as a red herring for the first five minutes, they get killed by the Squids, and then they have an adventure that’s completely unrelated to decoys.Then at the very end of the show have the real family come back from outer space and kill that family we’ve been watching throughout the episode.
This was exactly what made me clock off R&M after the Heist episode. It was just a joke that became more and more tedious with each repetition. But this one for some reason landed for me, the escalating joke of the premise and the inventive variants of each cycle made this one joyous where the Heist was just mean spirited.
The dragons episode was even worse, as it took an incredibly infantile concept and just kept on hammering it beyond the point of even keeping my attention to finish watching the episode properly. I zoned out completely with about 10 mins left.
You son of a bitch. I’m in.
I agree.Other than the Jerry post-credits scene, which was genuinely better than anything else in the entire episode.
(Still grey. Sigh.)
Man, I am with you. It was funny at first, but then it just gets repetitive. Like you I can appreciate that they’re trying something against the grain, but in the end I still have to ask myself if I was entertained. I really wasn’t. There were some funny lines and bits here and there, but it’s all a joke that’s taken beyond what its premise can handle. It’s a lot like most of the SNL movies in the 90’s. Just because you can trot out the same joke for two minutes every other week doesn’t mean that you can stretch it to a 90 minute feature.
Yeah, I barely laughed once. It’s that mobius-strip Harmon thing where a story is just being told for the sake showing off infinite, identical layers.
Womp, womp. it’s not supposed to be a mystery.
Hate might be too strong a term but don’t think anything could have followed up on the Mort Dinner Rick Andre episode.
Imalso going to assume that this episode like the majority of others will benefit from repeat viewings. This episode might have even taken longer to produce since it’s all basically one concept. Would like to see how many different iterations didn’t make it to the final cut.
To be totally objective, I can see your side on it. But for my entertainment, after the 5 minute mark you kind of get the rhythm of what they were trying to do. The deaths were the spectacle but seeing how all the decoys somehow found a way to make a version of the Citadel of Ricks, or the one family that had accepted their fate, it all felt comforting to know that through all this chaos, they would’ve preferred peace if not burdened by Rick’s drunken fueled paranoia of self preservation.
Like a Mayfly, have you never wondered how a species can flourish with just a few moments to live?
I mostly felt the same as you, but I didn’t really mind the concept so I guess I was indifferent to it.
Thanks,nerd.
The post-show interview with Harmon, he just seemed bored/tired of the entire concept. Unless that’s Harmon’s usual MO.
You call them the “Summers family,” like, half a dozen times, but you also mention Summer, so. . . do you think her name is Summer Summer, or Summer Summers?They’re the Smiths. It’s Rick Sanchez, Jerry Smith, and Beth and the kids are Smiths.
Fuckin lazy & sloppy.. seriously, did he even read it over once? Full of spelling and grammatical errors too, like “enough enough” “Iehovah.” A cursory Grammarly or Word error check and/or reread would have fixed all in under a minute.
The internet can wait an extra 5 minutes for a R&M ep review… I suspect he racing to get it published before Midnight.
Iehovah was used in the KJV, so that isn’t a typo.
My bad, I hadn’t seen it that way.
I’m pretty sure he just cribbed it from The Last Crusade.
Professor Henry Jones:But in the Latin alphabet, “Jehovah” begins with an “I”.
Nothing wrong with that.
Didn’t you ever see Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade?
I assumed it was a very well done Indiana Jones reference.
Cringe.
Fuckin Fucking lazy & and sloppy.. Sseriously, did he even read it over once? {It’s} Full of spelling and grammatical errors too, like “enough enough” “Iehovah.” {not sure at all what you are saying here} A cursory Grammarly or Word error check and/or reread would have fixed all in {this in} under a minute.
The internet can wait an extra 5 minutes for a R&M ep {Rick & Morty episode} review… {just a single period} I suspect he racing to get it published before Midnight. {Midnight is not capitalized}
Your final score is a B-, maybe a C+.
First time here?
Nah, just fed up with the slop.
J IS IVST A STVPID MODERN INVENTION LIKE U AND LOWER CASE. THE ROMANS DID NOT HAVE ANY OF THESE.
“Iehova” as a pop culture reference is correct.
There were tons of errors and dropped words, but I believe Iehova was intentional.
Enough enough was intentional.
Has it been edited since you wrote this comment? I’ve gone through it a couple of times now and see Summers family nowhere?
Like the Mario Bros, Mario Mario, and his brother, Luigi Mario.
It’s because Summer is the best member of the family so we’ve decided to rename the family after her.(just kidding, the best member of the family is Snowball. Which is why he left. Too good for those jerks.)
It’s the Smith family, not Summers.
It’s pretty crazy, Handlen is a strong writer, but seriously how many episodes of this show would you have to have slept through to think the family’s surname was Summers?
I thought the lemon squares joke was OK funny in the commercials, but I have to say that “lemon-free” lemon squares made me laugh.
I also liked President Keith David deciding whether to get involved depending on if the states voted for him.
I also liked the “Now, get your white ass into the kitchen and get me a Diet Coke” line. Solid dig on the “former guy” who once occupied the WH.
I appreciated this episode’s insanity. I’m not sure what exactly happened and I doubt I ever will. Still though it was fun.
– The fact that the decoy override passwords were Calculator “BOOBS” and the “Equals Sign” Dick is just the right amount of juvenile for me.- All Summer cares about is how accurately or inaccurately Rick recreated her bedroom.- Jerry tries to hide in the fridge, because fuckin’ Jerry.- For some reason, Justin Roiland’s voice sounded off during his Rick lines. I’m guessing part of that had to do with home recording, but he just sounded kind of blasé about most of his line readings tonight. A lot of stuff was pretty monotone, even when Rick’s face implied a higher intensity.- Muppet Beth and Rick is a show we all need.- Summer slitting her wrist, then being relieved at seeing blood, only for Rick to come in and rip off the arm skin entirely to reveal a robotic endoskeleton might be one of the darkest jokes this show has ever done, and I kind of love them for it.- Rick bringing up Connery’s complete lack of a Spanish accent in “Highlander” reminded me fondly of a routine Craig Ferguson used to do on the same topic. I kind of want to watch both now just for the nostalgia feels.- “Christianity again?! You guys came back around to it?!” -Varnished Jerry, eternally damned.- Am I the only one who kind of hoped Mr. Always Wants to be Hunted was going to be revealed as Mr. Poopybutthole’s cousin or something? Ooowee.
“- Am I the only one who kind of hoped Mr. Always Wants to be Hunted was going to be revealed as Mr. Poopybutthole’s cousin or something? Ooowee.”I was expecting him to unzip and be the real Rick, tbh!
“Christianity again?! You guys came back around to it?!” -Varnished Jerry, eternally damned.You cut out the best part in my opinion. “Christianity, again? After cowboys?!” I liked the episode fine but the adventures of varnished Jerry were sublime.
Yeah, it wasn’t just me? He looked exactly like Mr. Poopybutthole, right?
I think they’ve established now there’s a whole species of them. Like Mrs. Poopybutthole and Mr. Stealy.
maybe because they were decoy Ricks! So probably intentional”
But otherwise you pointed out some stuff i missed. TY
“one of the darkest jokes this show has ever done” – jesus, and the slow Summer-on-Summer chest-knifing elsewhere in the episode was legitimately upsetting…
I’m sure the voice acting and character motivations were letting the audience know that they were decoys made by decoys. You know, character degradation and all that. Many other people pointed out this is the 2nd episode of Rick being sober or not having his spit face.
Loved the high-concept nature of this one. There’s a brief period where with each family you wonder if you’re following the “real” one (except maybe the ones vacationing in the fancy villa, that’s too posh for them) until they’re killed and the decoys start spiralling into increasingly wild offshoots. This actually worked slightly better as a follow-up to last season’s finale by acknowledging Space Beth and the cloning debates.
This sort of reminded me of the “Remedial Chaos Theory” episode of Community where you learned a lot about each member of the study group by their absence. The more differences we see in each iteration, the clearer it becomes who these characters are–or, depending on how the decoy development process works, what Rick thinks of them and chooses to imbue them with.
How long exactly do you think it would take for different species to evolve into sentience over and over again, Zach? There’s no ‘maybe’ about Puppet Jerry living thousands of years…more like billions, it is rather amusingly implied.
Its crazy how this show gets every episode covered over others (cough) Mythic Quest. Overall, the grade feels a bit too high but I did enjoy the episode overall. Rick and Morty subverting audiences expectations once again but this time it feels like the show isn’t firing on all cylinders. The plotting is good but it doesn’t add more than the horror feeling in previous episodes.
The way this site decides what to review and not to review now is maddening. Honestly I think it’s just cheapness, in that they let reviewers pick their own shows to cover now, but only have the budget for a select amount. (Same goes for stupid BS “News” posts, really) The judgement for what they think people want talked about (or better yet, click) on an A/V site is waaaaay off anymore.
For every obvious show like R&M (popularity) there’s a full season review of totally subpar show like Clarice. I mean, why? There are so many better things that get glossed over now. Mythic Quest is a good example.
It’s obvious AVC just goes for the lowest-hanging fruit, something they can “watch” while dicking about on their phone or making soup or whatever, or stuff that’s so YUUUUUUUGE in pop-culture review-o-sphere they literally can’t miss it less they be murdered on twitter for it.
oh my god how entitled have human beings become?IT’S NOT YOUR WEBSITE GUYS THEY CAN DO WHATEVER TF THEY WANT TO
if you want it differently spend hours cultivating, setting up and working on your own website for your income and see how that turns out
Dave is another good example. One of the most watched shows from last year (largely due to it coming out right as everyone went in lockdown but still). Critically praised. Anecdotally, I know quite a few people that watch it. Hardly a peep about it anywhere here on the site. Part of me thinks they review legacy popular show (like Rick and Morty, say Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones, etc) and a lot of these other shows picked are actually paid reviews. Like PR from the shows/studios, goes around to sites and pays for x amount of articles written for the show, reviews happen to be one of them. So for example, Netflix sends outs a press packet, says “pick 2 shows from this list to write about” and we’ll pay you this.
This is sort of half the case. The main reason they’re aren’t reviewing a lot shows any more is because they don’t generate as much ad/click revenue as their other stuff does. Just look at this article; just barely 100 people commented on it, and its even less for The Masked Singer and etc. Meanwhile, articles about a news article on a controversial celebrity/topic or if its about comics movies and TV shows, Star Wars, Game of Thrones, the legacy shows that you mention etc, get the most clicks, views, and comments and therefore profitable. Sure they do press junkets from time to time, but it doesn’t make them as much money as say writing an article about the latest Louis CK outrage that makes them tons of clicks from the flame war that erupts in the comments sections. Its also why out of all of the Kinjaverse, this is the easiest site to get ungreyed.
Yah, that model (or something near it) makes total sense. It’s not terribly different than car companies flying the journalists to some fancy retreat with great food and entertainment and some cool test drives/track time all in return for a car review. I’m not at all in this world, but it sure seems like that’s the general approach for reviews/articles/etc.
At this point, my guess is that 90% of the reviews on AVClub are paid reviews.
I think there’s just so much TV/streaming now that it’s impossible to do recaps of every show that’s relevant so they have to make choices. I’m not saying I agree with the choices they make, but it would be literally impossible to cover everything that there might be some interest in
I don’t know everything about the business and editorial workings of this site, but I do know that they have a small staff and a limited budget for freelancers. So the decision of whether a show gets full episodic coverage comes down to two things: a) will the reviews get enough traffic to justify the expense?, and b) can they find a capable writer who’s interested in covering the show? Also, it’s important to bear in mind that an article’s pageviews and social media shares do not necessarily correlate to the amount of comments that an article gets.
The bottom line here is that it’s often unfair for us as readers to judge the editorial decisions of this site based solely on the information that’s available to us. We can and should criticize what they do publish, but we shouldn’t criticize those articles through the lens of what they could have published instead.
100% agree, and let me add that the jump from “I don’t understand how this site makes decisions” to “Obviously they’re operating at a scandalous level of corruption” really bothers me.
Zach always grades R&M episodes way higher than what they actually are and should be. Can’t remember the last time a R&M episode got less than B+/B. It hasn’t been recently. Season 3 had A’s on every single episode. AV Club must have a grudge and thing against Apple, because they tend to ignore all of the Apple TV shows, not just Mythic Quest. They write lots of articles about Ted Lasso, but didn’t review or recap it. Barely a peep about For All Mankind, The Morning Show, Foundation, etc.
I know it wasnt super popular but Hacks is also quite good!
I really thought the first half of Hacks was teetering on the line of absolute garbage, but around episode 6 it really clicked into gear and everything started working really well. I don’t remember the last time I’ve seen a show do a complete about face quality-wise as noticeable as this one. Maybe Parks and Rec between season 1 and 2? I won’t get into my complaints about the first half but they mostly revolve around the younger lead character being so poorly realized.
I literally have never met anyone who has Apple’s Streaming service and can see those shows
Sounds like you need to go out and meet more people, because you all are missing out on some great TV.
Now THAT was a good, solid, Rick and Morty. I think one of the true tests of a good R&M episode is how badly you want to retell it to somebody else. Yes it’s another episode where the concept eats its own tail, but this show does that particular trick fairly well.Also nice of them to put a Space Beth (adjacent?) Episode here at #2 instead of at the end of the season. I’m enjoying Tuca and Bertie a lot. Never watched it until now. Nice of [as] to pair the two shows.
Man, there was just no narrative spine to this episode, was there?Increasingly R&M seem to be relying on Family Guy chicken fight style comedy, where long action sequences and no jokes are confused with jokes. I know R&M is the kind of show that can be stuck in a wasteland and then pull off an incredible episode, but it really feels like they’re out of ideas.
Maybe Harmon’s finally working his Program and has eased off on the booze?
First off: there was a narrative spine, and they literally explained it to you on a whiteboard in the episode. They made the choice to position the viewer at many different places within the narrative instead of setting you outside of the arc, observing from a distance.At the same time, the fact that you think there needs to be a narrative spine shows you’re just not on the same page with Rick and Morty. There have been plenty of anthology episodes, their “narrative” is minimal at best, and yet they still make for great television. How many times does a show have to explicitly turn and tell you, the audience, to stop taking it so seriously and just enjoy the ride? If you haven’t gotten that message, that’s on you at this point.
good
hello
hello
This guy has a hard on for Justin roiland – this show is crazy overrated and this guy is looking wayyyy too deep into the plot – Rick and morty is not the amazingly deep and existential show that these fanboys swear it is lol – this douche is talking like this is an Ingmar Bergman film or something
Why are you here? Did you come here just to say that? Are you that bored?
This was exhausting and really liked it.
The name of the episode is Mortplicity and no one is mentioning that it’s a take on the movie Multiplicity?
I dunno I mean it’s literally in the title, does it need to be said? Then again, that movie does seem to be forgotten (or never even heard of) by many these days.
That the movie was awful I’m sure has something to do with it.
Could be. I loved it at the time, but I was also like, 13 when it came out. I’ve never revisited it, as I cannot fathom it having aged well from what I recall of it.
Blake and Jillian from Workaholics like it!the jokes about mental disability really dont age well, but everything else basically does
I feel like, ALL the clones having sex with the wife and her not knowing is a bit sketchy. I mean yes theyre clones of her husband but, they’re also noticeably different personality-wise.
Because it is painfully obvious?
Rick did mention the “copy of a copy” thing…
Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland are smarter than me.
Jerry forced to exist for hundreds, maybe thousands, of yearsWho knows, could have been tens of years. How long would a guy have to be buried for life on Earth to evolve to sentient birds, then cowboy aliens, and back around to Christ redux? A few weeks at best?
Reminded me of Mr. Burns’ Bobo or the “A.I.” boy’s eternal reemergence.
Oh my god how does this comment have only ONE LIKE??? It’s fucking perfect. I GIVE YOU 100% more likes because sadly that is the most I can do.
I’m still laughing at the absurdity of the original line and the absolute chef’s kiss of a takedown.
Loved this episode, classic Rick and Morty. “Sci-fi rigmarole” and dated pop-culture references (cause I’m old). Also generally I love when the entire family is interacting with each other.
After coming off the fantastic premiere episode, this felt like a step back to the type of episode that plagued so much of season 4. I would never accuse any episode of this show of being “lazy” because it always feels like there’s so many turning parts, but it’s so hard to be invested when all the show does is present you with a high concept and says, “Let’s bend this until it breaks,” for 22 minutes.What I loved so much about last week’s premiere was that it had the high concept but also remained grounded with the characters surrounding it. That’s what seasons 1 and 2 (and most of 3) executed so flawlessly. I feel like the 70 episode pick-up deal really changed the approach this show is taking to its stories, and that bums me out a bit.
really, you wouldn’t call “the heist episode” lazy?…
I thought this episode was 10 times better than episode 1. I recognize, however, that there are many different constituencies that Rick and Morty appeals to, and they all like different aspects of the show (for example, the range that people fall into on the Roiland-Harmon spectrum). I’d recommend getting used to the fact that they have a lot of different people to please, and not every episode will be your favorite. But every episode will be SOMEONE’S favorite.
I usually don’t mention the typos on here, but GEEZ, there are tons.
This is the kind of nihilistic, high-octane, high-concept, sci-fi nonsense i expect from Rick & Morty so i enjoyed it a lot.
Right? Some people over analyzing and Pauline Kael-ing an episode of Rick and Morty over here
I love anytime we explore multiple dimensions on Rick and Morty, so this was a special treat: multiple Smith families in the same dimension, meaning that we now have infinite dimensions full of decoys. Did the Decoy War happen in all of them? Is there a dimension where all the decoys are still running around, oblivious of each others’ existence? Is there a dimension where they continue to exponentially expand and take over the planet? I hope we find out.There’s something about Harmon’s (and Roiland’s?) tendency to let the air out of our suspension of disbelief that I find both deeply off-putting and totally fascinating. Straddling that line of “does this break the show forever?” is queasily exhilarating. Shades of late-stage Community.Did anyone else notice that “Italian villa” Morty was engaged in a “Call Me By Your Name” type situation with the tan hunk? Loved that.Also to love: Summer’s new coinage of “licks.”Finally, why not hunt Mr. Always Wants to Be Hunted to completion? If you don’t, he’s going to turn around and hunt you. Another example of Rick creating a no-win scenario.
If I had to guess, I’d say other Ricks might not have decoys, or at the least not those level of sophisticated decoys. Rick said he only made them after the whole Space-Beth thing and I don’t know if any other Rick loves his Beth enough/hates himself enough to do the same thing
True, “our” Rick is the Rickest Rick, but when we’re talking about infinite dimensions I doubt anything only happens once between them. Even if Ricks only made decoys across a small percentage of infinite dimensions, that’s still a lot of decoys.
The societal logistics of the decoys boggled my mind: where did all the decoys live? Did all the separate Ricks have the wherewithal and finances to establish the family within neighboring…neighborhoods/cities? Morties and Summers just showing up at various high schools, etc.?
Yes! I imagine a decoy Morty and Summer transferring to the “real” Morty and Summer’s school. It could still happen. Nothing says they’re all dead…
Rick is a time and dimension traveling genius . . . soo
also different towns , and disguises and its a cartoon
I mean, the decoy war seems to have only lasted a day or so, and they all wiped each other out before the (presumably) real Rick even noticed anything had happened. It could have happened in most universes and not actually have made that big of an impact.
Why are people in this comments thread so eager to poop on the fun implications of this episode? Let a man wildly extrapolate from his favorite cartoon for a minute. It’s not going to hurt anybody. Sheesh.
I’m extrapolating too, I’m just reaching different conclusions than you are.
I loved the “Call me by Your Name” thing
At least for Rick, there will never be any stakes, and they illustrated why in the season 4 premiere. Because even though Rick removed his backup consciousness protocol in our universe, when he died in that episode, he still backed up to another universe’s protocol and was reborn there, eventually able to make it back to his universe as a human Rick at that. All that aside, loved this episode, just a goofy killing spree full of misdirects.
I didn’t really like this one much. It was tedious.
I thoroughly enjoyed this episode.
I disagree with Rick and Morty. I feel the addition of a time traveling Dracula who found peace in prehistoric times adds new dimension to the When Wolf concept, not detract.
this conversation was one of the few funny parts of the episode for me
This was the highlight for me too. Other than the Jerry stinger at the end. I wish they would do a solo Jerry episode that is more character based instead of just slamming as many concepts into 22 minutes as they can (not that I don’t enjoy these episodes too.)
Really interesting to see how divisive this ep was (based on the comments here). I loved it, a really wacky episode. It’s fun to see the writers getting a bit more experimental with the format of an episode.
I would’ve expected “Rule 34 of Asimov’s Cascade” to be… nuder.I have not seen the episode, so I may end up embarassing myself, but …I want to say this was written by someone and sent to Isaac Asimov, who gleefully included it in one of his books or essays or an issue of his magazine:When Isaac’s at a nudist camp He promptly joins the fun, For “When in Rome” ’s his favorite quote As he tells every one. So when the signal’s given out, “All clothing you must doff.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Isaac Asimov.
So last weeks episode were the decoys then? I found the lack of Space Beth intriguing and this episode explains that one. How far back do you want to go with this?
Space Beth is fighting the groplomites or whatever. She only came back to earth because she discovered Rick put a bomb in her. It wouldnt make any sense for her to stick around on earth just because she learned she might be a clone- for her thats the only thing thats changed about the sitiuation, she previously thought her clone was raising her kids. Why would she stick around instead of going back to what she was doing?
It doesn’t matter. That’s literally the point.
I can understand if some people found this episode a little repetitive, but I can appreciate them really burning out this concept so that you can actually see that there was a building dialogue between Rick and Beth.
Kind of like what Cloud Atlas was trying to do, where the concept of relationships can still grow even if the lifetime has come to an end.
Very unique, good on them for taking big chances and not afraid to crash.
I loved this one. It does seem like this show is going to be very divisive from now on, which seems kind of inevitable given the separation between the early seasons and the “cartoon’s network’s biggest show” seasons.
I think the only thing everyone agrees on is that the dragon episode was the worst. Only that and the toilet episode were ones i didnt like. i would be interested to her from Dan and Justin about the Dragon episode- they even managed to include a joke in a season 4 episode acknowledging that one sucked. I’d like to hear the story behind that one. It wasnt just bad, it didnt feel like Rick and Morty- it was as if it was a substitute writing team or something.
I was hoping that with Rick being arrested last episode there was gonna be some continuation of the Mr Nimbus thing.
I’m pretty sure this was just the once-per-season Gimmick episode, right? I think the Whenwolf thing established that.I wouldn’t read too much (i.e. anything) into what happened in this episode.
Come on, you forgot POTUS. He had a couple good lines.
I will honor the show by now commenting on the commenters of the commenteary of the show.
I read their words and all hear is “ Wawawawawa Want the show to be clever!” They gave you clever. “It was too clever. We want a show that grows and characters expand and we feel for them.” We gave you that too.
“Ya, but isn’t it kind of pointless cus Rick can do anything. Now you are forcing me to consider the meaning of my own existence” Well ummm thank you? What do you want?
“Something different, but not too-different, groundbreaking.”
Well its hard to keep breaking ground when you are in a worldview partially defined by your own groundbreaking.
“well sometimes the show is just too polished and you all seem smug about it.”
okay we will make some boring lame 70’s era H&B stuff. . . .
So i guess theses fans of the show are angry that the writers and show runners are too good at writing but also not good enough. Ah so is life
Here I am reading this a week after the show aired (and the review posted), and it still says the “Summers family.” Get some respect for your own work, ffs.
“hundreds, maybe thousands, of years” – you may have lowballed that ever so slightly.
I enjoyed the episode, but I don’t think it’s going to hold up on rewatches. It’s a single punchline stretched out to episode length, and I could already feel it overstaying its welcome by the end of my first watch.
Yay, more clones from the R&M multiverse. Very original… NOT! S05E01 was good but the goodness was not meant to last. S05E02 is just another rehash of a joke concept that degrades each time it’s cloned. Again.
As one of the decoys explains, it’s Highlander rules. There can be only one.Sorry for the stupid question, but why? What was the point of even making the bloody decoys in the first place?