Summer Gets Her Kuato Back in ‘Rick and Morty’
Rick and Morty S7 Ep 7 Review
Over the course of Rick and Morty, Summer Smith’s gone from being simply Morty’s older sister to a certified badass in her own right. She can hold her own adventuring with Rick to the point where she might be better at it than Morty. Rick and Summer’s adventures have become a staple of the series, but the seventh season has seen her take a backseat. It’s an unfortunate consequence of the show deciding to re-focus itself and return to its roots. Even more unfortunate, though, is that this season’s Summer-centric episode “Wet Kuat Amortican Summer” rehashes action movies. Instead of Die Hard from the last season, this time it’s using Total Recall and Taken. And something called a Kuato.
What the heck is a Kuato?
Kuato Summer and Morty
When Rick gives Summer a device that lets her swap her attributes like she’s in an RPG as payment for doing his chores, Morty gets jealous. The two of them end up fighting over the device at a party thrown by their school’s Frolf (frisbee+golf=frolf), leading the two to fall into a pool along with it. As a result, their bodies fuse with Morty becoming this parasitic creature jutting out of Summer’s stomach that everyone calls a “Kuato,” after the character from the sci-fi film Total Recall. The entire thing is every bit as disturbing as one would expect, and when Rick refuses to fix them until they do more chores, Summer bails for an alien nightclub with more Kuato’s.
While the idea of Morty becoming this parasitic being stuck to Summer’s body sounds interesting on paper, I failed to become emotionally invested in it. I’ve never seen Total Recall before and have no plans to do so in the near future, so the reference flew over my head. That was strike one for me.
Strike two was how Summer initially acted following her becoming a Kuato. Rather than doing everything she could to get them back to normal, which is likely what Morty wanted, Summer decided to exploit her newfound Kuato status for popularity. While both teens were at fault for what happened to them, Morty wound up having far less agency from this, being forced to go along with Summer’s whims. If I were Morty, I’d be screaming for help.
From Total Recall to Taken at the Drop of a Hat
Ulimately, Summer’s need to be popular bites her hard when a group of Kuato traffickers drug her and take Morty to sell on the black market. She escapes, Rick eventually gets involved, and from here, the whole episode is a beat-for-beat remake of the Liam Neeson movie Taken. Right down to the underground auction and the fight on the yacht. The only difference is that Morty manages to free himself in time to take part in the final battle against the ringleader. Who, for some reason, is revealed to be a Kuato inside a Kuato…inside a Kuato.
Look, I’ll be honest: by this point, I had already lost much of my interest in the episode. I saw Family Guy parody the first Taken film years ago, so I knew how this would play out. It was a little impressive that the episode managed to transition from sci-fi to thriller like it did, but that was about it.
Rick Does Respect Summer
The one thing about this episode that keeps me from fully writing it off is how this deepened the relationship between Rick and Summer. In a shootout near the climax of the episode, Summer complains about how Rick’s so much harder on her than he is on Morty. His response? Rick says it’s because he sees much of his late wife in Summer. He knows that Summer is more capable than Morty can be, and whereas he tends to treat Morty as someone he has to look after, he considers Summer an equal.
This was a genuinely sweet moment and a highlight of the episode. I’ve talked in previous reviews about how badass Summer can be, but this moment feels like the culmination of it. Rick acknowledges her as someone who, while not as smart as him, is on his level of adventuring.
The episode ends with Morty remaining a Kuato until the next episode and Summer hopefully learning not to crave other people’s approval so much. Plus, she gets a girlfriend in the form of another former Kuato she saved from that Kuato ring. On its own, this is a good episode. However, it’s also one that comes after the dizzying high that was “Unmortricken.” Compared to that, most episodes will seem like a step-down. Still, at least Summer got a big adventure this season and her name in the episode title for the first time.
That, and there was a hilarious parody of those “cake or not” videos that Rick was watching.
I Give “Wet Kuat Amortican Summer” a 3/5
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Adult Cartoons, Animation, Blog Posts, Rick and Morty, TV Shows
