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Rick and Morty S9 Ep 9 Review

You know those episodes of shows where the parents get fed up with what their kids are doing, so they send them away to a camp? Man, I hate those episodes. It just feels like bad parenting to pawn it off on someone else, even if it can help them learn a lesson. But this is Rick and Morty, so you know that camp was going to go sideways for them. But on the plus side, we got to see the adults of the Smith family get baked out of their minds, and it was hilarious!

So Much for Reform Camp

Lately, Morty and Summer have been getting full of themselves thanks to the stuff they have access to thanks to Rick, and it’s getting them in trouble in school. When they finally push their luck too much by crossing Rick himself, though, he decides to put his foot down. After getting them un-expelled from school, he ships them off to this camp that’s supposed to bring entitled and wealthy brats into line. It looks as though the Smith kids are going to be dealing with this military boot camp or a scared straight program, but then the show immediately pulls the rug out. It turns out, the campers at the place Rick sent Morty and Summer had overthrown and killed the counselors years ago. Now they’re just using it as a place to revel in drugs and alcohol.

Thank heavens that the whole thing was just a setup for joke! Like I said before, I hate storylines where the kid gets sent to a camp to help them against their will. Either it turns out to be a waste of time because it doesn’t work, or it works too well and will alter the kids personality to the point it’s unrecognizable. And then everyone else has to work to change them back to normal. Either way, I hated it as a kid, I hate it now, and I’m glad it gets zig-zagged by the show as Morty and Summer quickly tire of the constant rager life at camp. Unfortunately, their attempts to leave are thwarted by the fact their parents and grandpa are completely baked.

Beth and Jerry are so high, they can barely see

So, as soon as the kids are gone, Beth and Jerry stupidly decide to go through Summer’s drug stash and huff something called “High Forever.” The next thing we know, they look like they’ve got Spice Addiction with their eyes all blue, and they are completely baked. They’re acting goofier than a little kid, they forget how stairs work, and they’re just complete idiots! It was hilarious to watch! And when their attempts to cure themselves fall flat, Rick shows up just as high as them!

I loved this entire part of the episode, to be honest. It just shows how much of a hypocrite the adults on the show are. Morty and Summer even say that this is why they act out in the first place. The adults in their lives are so useless that they had to get this smart to get by! And I see their point, too. Rick barely does anything to help them get out of their mess, and when the adults in the nearby town hear about the camp being without guidance, they try to hold everyone for ransom. So, Morty and Summer have to rally the campers into taking back the camp and save their parents after they get taken hostage.

Screw the camp! ANARCHY!!

In the end, the whole camp was completely useless and didn’t do anything. It’s Morty and Summer seeing their parents high on the drugs that Space Beth gave them that makes them decide to chill out. Yes, Space Beth shows up and proves to be the only responsible adult in the room by taking everyone home. Which is why she is the cool mom!

This episode was just so stupid, you guys! If it wasn’t so late at night when I was watching it, I would have been laughing my ass off at the entire thing. It also makes me happy that I never had to go to an actual summer camp growing up. No offense, but I wouldn’t have survived without my TV and video games!  

I Give “Salute Your Morts” a 4/5

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Rick and Morty S9 Ep 4 Review

I don’t know if I will ever see the appeal behind alcohol and getting wasted, and frankly, I think I’m better off not knowing. Since day one, we’ve seen Rick Sanchez use alcohol as a means of numbing himself to the pain of his existence, but this episode might be among his worst drinking binges ever! Being Rick, though, he’d rather find a convoluted method of avoiding the consequences like forgetting his passwords than address this drinking problem. The result? I walked away from this episode thanking myself for avoiding alcohol whenever possible. And I pray to heaven that Morty is better about it.

Remembering your Passwords Sucks!

The episode starts off with Rick coming home absolutely wasted. He’s so out of it, he wets himself   From being unable to control his bladder. Then he drunkenly tries to unlock his computer, only to get locked out when he forgets his password one too many times, leaving him to cry for Morty. And judging by the look on Morty’s face, this is a regular occurrence. The plot then segues into the arrival of Reese, a folksy man they’ve apparently known for years. Except it turns out that Reese is just some kind of advanced password manager for Rick. He’s programmed to show up whenever he forgets his password and help him remember it.

I’m going to be honest: I don’t see the point behind all of this. I mean, obviously, Rick would want some high-concept idea to serve as a means to remember his passwords. I just don’t understand why he would have to go through all of this trouble when he could save it to his phone or computer. Why build a cyborg to do all of this? Then again, this is Rick Sanchez. He turned himself into a pickle to get out of therapy. Of course he would be this this petty! It just wasn’t a joke that I liked.

What I did like, though, was how it handled Rick’s alcoholism, and how that leads to more problems in this episode. When Morty tries to do the right thing and save Reese’s life by getting him someplace safe, the universe decides to have it backfire on him like it often does. In this case, he takes Reese to the planet where Rick makes everyone supply him with alcohol, thinking he will be safe there. However, that leads to a group of radical youths, fed up with having to serve Rick, to hijack Reese and use him to gain control of all of Rick’s technology to kill him. That includes not only the garage and his actual weapons, but the entire house! The floor turns into actual lava at one point!

That IT guy was pretty funny

The real highlight of the episode, though, has to be who Rick gets to try and help unlock his computer. He calls these IT cloud-people that need to possess a physical form to interact with the world, and the one Rick’s talking to uses Jerry as a host. We get to see him spend the majority of the episode running around being possessed as the IT cloud just abuses his time to enjoy having a body, leading to some very funny moments. It’s one of the better parts of the episode, to be honest.

Ultimately, the episode ends with Rick having to shut off all of his tech to force the hackers out, meaning he can no longer rely on a bottomless flash anymore. The IT cloud takes Reese’s body to use for themselves and goes off to enjoy being physical. And you would think that all of this would teach Rick to cut back on the alcohol, but no. Instead, we get to see him end the episode downing even more beer while telling Morty that he’ll become just like him when he’s older. I wanted to say that this was just Rick being a jerk, but I looked it up, and it turns out that an affinity for alcohol can be genetic. Either way, I’m glad I don’t need booze in my life.

I Give “A Ricker Runs Through it” a 4/5

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Rick and Morty S9 Ep 3 Review

I’ve never been that into martial art movies, but I do appreciate the culture behind them and their impact on pop culture. Given that, I suppose that it was inevitable that they would be a target for parody from Rick and Morty at some point. And I have to admit, I think that this was a pretty funny parody of kung fu movies. Mostly because it’s just like the show to deconstruct the mystique using science, and for the trouble to start because of two stubborn old men.

Man, I need to make sure I don’t end up like Rick if I make it to his age.

Boob World foiled again

So, Rick is finally going to take Morty to Boob World like how he’s been wanting to since season four, so they stop at Trader Joe’s to get some snacks for the trip. But then Rick’s ship apparently bumps into the car being driven by this old an who looks like a martial arts master from those old kung fu movies. And when Rick refuses to apologize or cooperate, he gets hit with a death punch! If he takes five more steps, then his heart will explode unless he apologizes!

Of course, this is Rick we’re talking about. So rather than apologize or die, he looks for an out, first by walking backwards to avoid the curse, and then by using science to undo it. And when Morty tries to mediate an apology, the kung fu man, Lin Siu, gives him the death punch!

Really, should we expect anything less of Rick at this point? In the first season, he met the Devil running a thrift store, and proceeded to remove the negative effects of cursed items he sold. When his vat of acid plan failed and Morty called him out on it, he manipulated Morty into a situation where it had to work. Rick refuses to admit when he’s wrong no matter what! But if he did, there wouldn’t be much of a show, would there?

In any case, it turns out that the kung fu man, Lin Siu, is no better. He hit Rick’s ship on purpose to force them into conflict because that was the only way he can interact with people. But it was all worth it, though, getting to see the three parody old-school martial arts movies, complete with the hokey names and everything! And then it gets crazier when the god of punching shows up and angrily tries to kill them or teach them a lesson or something. I don’t know. At that point, I was just thinking how this was like something about of a shonen battle anime. They make up in the end and it’s all good.

The Day Jerry Committed Cringe

The b-plot of the episode, though, might have been even funnier thanks to how cringe it was. The new pool that Jerry got for the family needs cleaning, and he refuses to hire the cleaning guy Beth wants because he makes him insecure about his masculinity. In a nice parallel to Rick, he instead upgrades their pool bot to do the job better. Then it become self-aware, attracted to Jerry, and they somehow have s**. And then the robot tries to kill the pool guy for being a homewrecker.

Honestly, it’s both sad and hilarious to be reminded of how pathetic Jerry can be at times. But it’s those moments that make us appreciate it when he actually steps up. And he somehow does that again by tricking the yandere robot, I think. I don’t know; the whole thing was pretty cringe on my part! But at least he got the pool clean in the end, and everyone got to enjoy a pool party!

As someone whose family once had a pool in our backyard, I can appreciate the sight of a pool party.

This was a fun little episode, as far as I’m concerned. No major lore, no depressing ending. Just fun. I doubt I’ll remember it that well, but that’s fine by me. I was just happy to see the homage to old fashioned kung fu movies, bad attack names and everything.

I Give Rick Fu Hustle a 4/5

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Rick and Morty Season 9 Ep 2 Review

You think that being smart or being able to know what’s going to happen would be a good thing, but as Rick and Morty suggests, its a blessing and a curse. For Rick, it means he knows how little everything matters in the grand scheme of things. For me, it means I’ve watched this show long enough to know where it’s going without even finishing an entire episode. That’s right; I didn’t watch the full episode, and I was still able to figure out that Rick’s little misadventure was going to end badly for everyone. And I think I robbed myself of an otherwise emotional episode as we see Rick vs Vacation Rick. Or maybe it was just my brain’s way of managing having to juggle multiple things at once in my life.

Vacation Rick is Okay, I Guess

The episode starts off on a very strange note as we see Rick traveling to a bowling alley in an old RV to meet up with some friends of his who think his name is Ted. At first, I thought that this was another bit that Rick was doing. He would be pretending to not to be who he is so that he can get away from the stress of his regular lifestyle. And to a certain extent, I was right. This is, in fact, Rick’s way of going on vacation. However, after he gets caught in a robbery at a gas station and winds up killing his attacker, it becomes clear that there’s more to this.

As it turns out, Rick’s idea of a vacation involves him taking a vacation from himself. And that by, I mean he erases his own memories for a few weeks and makes himself believe that he’s an average guy so he can live a normal life. Once he’s done, he restores his memories and goes back to how he normally is. Since Vacation Rick is still Rick, though, Rick had Morty and an army of drones on standby to bring him back by force when he inevitably resists.

The problem? Like I just said, Vacation Rick is still Rick. If he doesn’t want to do something, he will fight like hell to avoid it.

This was pretty much the moment where I lost interest in the episode as a whole. I’ve been watching the show for years now, and I knew that this was not going to end well for anyone. Rick is a man who can do anything he wants, and we know he sees his knowledge as a double-edged sword. He believes that ignorance is bliss and that living a normal life to be the ultimate happiness, and is thus willing to lie to himself by becoming vacation Rick. He may end up having a point, though, as once his vacation friends, people from a world with an early 90s aesthetic, learn about everything, it pretty much ruins their lives.

I kind of knew where this was going

I only watched the remainder of the episode intermittently from this point onward. Vacation Rick tries to fight back against regular Rick, but in doing so, he falls into the trap he was trying to escape. His vacation friends start abusing Rick’s resources for their own benefit, and by the end of the episode, “Ted” is pretty much back to being Rick, two of his friends are dead, and he’s no longer welcome among them. By the time he hits the reset button, there’s hardly any difference between vacation Rick and regular Rick. It’s as Emergency Awesome put it: Rick is his own worst enemy.

Maybe I’m just too accustomed to the show or it’s because I can be good at predicting where things will go in fiction, but this episode just wasn’t doing it for me. I liked how emotional it was, but that’s about it. What made it veer back into comedy though was the post-credits scene where we see Rick doing the exact same stunt on another world, only for Summer and Morty to speedrun everything to save everyone the heartache. That was pretty funny.

I Give “Rick Days, Seven Nights” 2.5/5

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Rick and Morty S9 Ep 1 Review

I wasn’t planning on reviewing Rick and Morty this season, but after seeing the season premiere, I’ve had to rethink that. It gave us back one of the best characters in the show, someone who has been able to run rings around everyone, Evil Morty. The only problem is that the way it portrays Evil Morty seems to contradict everything that we know about the character. Or maybe the writers just decided that Evil Morty is not above it all like he made himself out to be.

Evil Morty is Back? But Why?

In the season premiere, Morty discovers that not only is Rick in regular contact with Evil Morty, but he’s been going on off-screen escapades with him. The reason being that Evil Morty has been using the Omega Device as a sword of Damocles hanging over our Rick’s head, extorting him to help him with stuff. They’ve been fighting off threats to their neck of the multiverse, and our Morty is not happy about it. Neither am I, really!

Even as I was watching this episode, one of my initial thoughts was, “this feels like character regression.” The whole point behind Evil Morty is that he’s the Morty who wants Rick out of his life. It’s why he orchestrated the fall of the Citadel. The only reason he helped Rick kill Rick Prime was to keep him from messing with his new life, with the Omega Device serving as his nuclear deterrent. Yet this episode reveals that not only is Evil Morty regularly forcing Rick to help him out, but he spends a good part of the episode acting like he wants to make our Morty feel jealous.

Maybe the show writers decided to change up this aspect of Evil Morty’s character so that they could keep him on as an antagonist. Or they were trying to show that despite what he says, Evil Morty can never fully get rid of his connection to Rick. Either way, though, I dont like how it feels like a 180 without any hints or build-up. The only thing that I did like about it was that we got to see just how competent the pair are working together as we get this big, sakuga-level fight against this multiversal threat. And the only reason that works is because the situation they’re in demands that they be competent, or else they will not survive. It’s cool in a vacuum, but if every adventure were like this, it would get boring.

Evil Morty finally Slipped up With Rick

In the end, though, it still feels like this was character regression on Evil Morty’s part. He talks all about how he wants to be the Morty that doesn’t need a Rick. But if you ask me, this episode said otherwise. It portrays Evil Morty less as someone who wants to get away from Rick, and more like someone who subconsciously wants Rick in his life, but on his terms and as an equal rather than a sidekick. Ironically, he ends up falling victim to the very ego that allowed him to one-up the Ricks.

When he carelessly lets Rick go off on his own, claiming he has to use the bathroom, Rick uses that to destroy the Omega device by destroying its very blueprints. And since the weapon erases all trace and memory of it from the multiverse, its gone for good!

Ultimately, Evil Morty’s subsequent assault on the Smith family’s bunker world is little more than icing on the cake for fans. It’s a chance to show what would happen if Rick and Evil Morty actually fought, and to its credit, it is pretty cool. Unfortunately for Evil Morty, Rick had won before firing the first shot. He tricked him into making a device messing with time, and thus, leading him to get busted by the Time Police. The last we see of him, he’s getting hauled off to Time Prison!

This isn’t the Last We’ve Seen of him

Now, some people think that this might be the last that we see of Evil Morty, and they might be right. Getting locked in prison for literal eternity is a good way to write a character out of the story. However, I disagree with this. Evil Morty is still the most dangerous Morty on the show, and his now-established ego won’t let this slide. I think that he’s going to eventually bust out of prison, utterly pissed, and he’s going to want revenge.

Regardless of whether this is the last we see of him or not, though, the myth has been broken. Evil Morty was seen as the ultimate enemy for Rick and Morty who could run rings around them. But that aura of an invincible villain has been shattered. Whether this is for good or for ill, I don’t know. But much like the character, I’m now compelled to keep following this show. Happy 9th season, you guys.

I Give “There’s Something about Morty” a 3/5

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