RJ Writing Ink

Rick and Morty S9 Ep 10 Review

I didn’t really watch this episode of Rick and Morty. There, I came out and said it. Maybe it was because I was too busy with other things, or because I found the ending to be way too depressing for me to handle, but it was just too hard for me to watch. Though it also could’ve been because I accidentally spoiled the ending for myself, and I got the gist of what happened. The fact is that this was a lot for me to handle, and for good reason. When Morty gets the chance to see what a normal, loving family feels like, it’s him, not Rick, that ends up destroying it.

Morty Pulls a Tom Sawyer

It all starts when Morty goes to an estate sale for a dead Smith family. That’s where he learns from another Morty about funeral hopping: going to the funerals of alternate versions of himself to see how much his family loves him. He even gets a mini Portal Gun to do so! And for a while, it works great! But then he stumbles upon a version of the Smith family where Rick never invented portal travel, and distanced himself from the family.

At first, Morty is thrilled by this. He’s found the one version of his family that is loving and non-toxic. But then it goes too far, when Good Jerry tries to keep him from going home. That’s when he realizes that his alternate self was emotionally abused until he wound up either dying in an accident or chose to die.

The Smith Family Dies

Again, I couldn’t bring myself to watch this whole episode, but I got to admit that this was kind of brillaint. We’ve probably wondered what it would’ve  been like if Morty’s family chose to be good from the get-go, but as it turns out, an assertive Jerry may not be the best thing. And to make matters worse, our Morty ends up being what destroys this version of his family.

Morty is so desperate to get him that he enlists the aid of Good Rick, who left behind all his negative qualities and became a successful professor at MIT. But because Morty pushes him into inventing portal traveling, he becomes the alcoholic we know, even losing his new wife in the process. And in the end, it’s all for naught, as the entire family gets killed in the process.

And this is why I had such a hard time watching this episode. I have gotten used to how cynical the show is, and have done my best to make myself immune to it. But this? Seeing how Morty can be just as toxic as Rick? This is too much for me, man! It’s a great episode, but it’s just not my cup of tea.

The one good thing to come out of this ordeal is that Morty now knows that what he has is the best he’s going to get. He had a taste of what a normal family would be like, and it sucked for him. Like it or not, he and Rick are made for each other. And despite both having their problems, they have gotten better over the years. That being said, I don’t know if I will be reviewing any further seasons after this. Maybe I just want to enjoy the ride from now on, like with President Curtis. By the way, you should definitely watch that spin-off. It feels like the second coming of Inside Job.

I Give “Field of Dreams” a 4/5

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Rick and Morty S9 Ep 8 Review

I try to be an empathetic person every day. I think that the world can be too mean as it is for us to not feel bad for each other. But like many many things in life, Rick and Morty took this to its logical extreme, and therefore, showed us why it can be bad. And the worst part of it? It’s the fact that everything that happened this episode is mostly Morty’s fault.

Morty, this was all on you!

In this episode, we learn that Rick has a secret distillery where he creates his own alcohol as a hobby, and he seems to genuinely enjoy it. He’s happily making beer by himself and having a good time. But then Morty chooses to ignore the ‘Do not disturb’ sign he put on the door to bother him about something that is pretty pointless. I mean, it might not seem pointless to him, but in the grand scheme of things, bothering your grandpa during his personal time to help him get some Pokémon cards is a pretty stupid thing.

Normally, I would be on Morty’s side and say that Rick is being too hard on him. However, considering how the boy ignored the VERY VISIBLE sign asking not to be disturbed, and then destroying his grandpa’s distillery? Rick had every right to be mad at him. So, rather than deal with their usual arguments this time, Rick takes a shortcut by implanting Morty with a parasite that makes him emphathize with everyone, no matter how awful they are.

The effects of this parasite are actually pretty interesting to look at. Throughout the time Morty has it in his side, we are given almost context as to what is actually happening in his life, instead only seeing through his warped perspective of the world. For all we know, the way he tried to “help” everyone at his school was either making them feel worse or was just them yelling at him for acting inappropriately. Part of me wants to know what really happened, but a bigger part thinks it would be funnier not knowing!

Empathy can be a bad thing, I guess

Things come to a head when the pair head out to buy something, and Morty empathizes with an explosion that blows his arm off. By the time Rick pulls the parasite out of him, his empathy has been digested, turning him into the same stone-cold kind of guy Rick is. Karma sucks, though, because the parasite infests Rick’s brain, making him empathize with the guys trying to kill them! It’s a complete reversal of their usual dynamic, and one that is necessary for them to understand each other’s viewpoint…or something. I don’t really know or care.

It doesn’t care about the lotion!

Meanwhile, we have this subplot going on where Summer and Jerry are trying to get the supplies that Rick needs to rebuild, and find out these drums are being hoarded by a serial killer. Jerry is left to distract the guy while Summer gets the drums and frees this girl who was held captive in a pit out of Silence of the Lambs and…oh, who am I kidding? I wasn’t really paying attention to what was happening. I didn’t care about that part of the episode. I didn’t like that part of the episode. And I didn’t care when the serial killer got shot to death by the cops. It wasn’t that interesting for me.

So, in the end, Rick kills the parasite with beer, and Morty is left without any empathy until the next episode. Whoopdy-freaking-doo. This was honestly one of the weaker episodes for me, and I’m probably going to forget about it by next week. I know should have some empathy for Morty, but remember that this was largely because he ignored the dang sign.

I Give “Rickuiem Mort a Dream” a 2.5/5

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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 7 Review

Have you ever heard of the concept of Saṃsāra? It’s the Hindu/Buddhist belief that all life is part of a cycle of death and either reincarnation or rebirth, and thus is filled with pain and suffering. The only way to break the cycle is by achieving enlightenment and understanding. But what if you did that and found out that whoever’s controlling the cycle is a jerk who uses the suffering to sustain themselves? Replace Saṃsāra with the cycle of life and the food chain, and the one in charge with a sentient tree, that sums up Rick and Morty’s latest adventure. It’s a bizarre look at the circle of life, death, rebirth, and how it ultimately benefits those at the top. It’s bizarre, but also oddly entertaining to watch. Break the circle!

Jerk Tree Enforces Circle of Life

It all starts when Rick and Morty go to this planet orbiting a black hole. Their goal is to get this tree sap that Rick claims gives this crazy high, because why not? Unfortunately, the tree turns out to be sentient and doesn’t take kindly to intruders ruining nature. It traps the two in an ecosystem underneath its roots as single-celled organisms alongside countless other victims in a cycle of death and evolution. They can evolve into more advanced forms of life, but they have to start at the beginning every time they die.

Death is not a new concept to the likes of Rick and Morty. They’ve seen countless beings die and get reborn throughout their adventures, themselves and other versions of themselves included. And considering what the duo have done throughout the show, you could argue that is the perfect punishment for their antics. Well, mostly Rick, but Morty has done some crazy stuff, too. Going back to the concepts of reincarnation and rebirth, it’s like the idea of Saṃsāra masked as the circle of life. You would think that the whole point of this experience would be to teach them, and us, a lesson about respecting life. But this isn’t some eco-friendly program or Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. This is Rick and Morty. They’ll either refuse to learn their lesson, or, as I bet on, it would turn out the Tree was just being a jerk. To my amusement, I ended up being right.

After trying to make it through evolution together for a while, Rick and Morty try their own methods of escaping the cycle of death and reincarnation. Rick, naturally, refuses to bend to the rules and tries to escape using the other prisoners as fodder for experiments. Meanwhile, Morty opts for the nonviolent route by evolving into a tree that eventually makes it to the surface. However, the Tree reveals that there was never a lesson it wanted everyone to learn. It was just capturing them and using the circle of life to feed himself! That’s like making it to Nirvana or Heaven and then finding out that God is gatekeeping everyone for their own amusement!

Screw the Circle of Life!

After the big reveal, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how things are going to pan out. Rick and Morty rally the other prisoners to break the cycle of pseudo-Saṃsāra by refusing to kill each other. They lay low for the Tree to grow weak, and when it investigates, they jump it. What follows is a pretty satisifying moment where the captives manage to kill their tormentor, ending the cycle. Unfortunately, no one turns back into their orignal forms right away, and Rick and Morty just bail with the sap like they wanted.

This was honestly a good episode, if you ask me. I know that some people care more about the overarching lore, but in my experience, it’s the one-off adventures in a show that I’m most likely to go back and rewatch. If there was any lesson to be learned, it’s that either nature is cruel and comes at someone’s expense, or not to mess with Rick and Morty. Break the circle!

I Give “Mortgully: the Last Rickforest” a 4.5/5

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Rick and Morty S9 Ep 6 Review

I know that some people are at war with themselves, but I think Rick might have just taken that concept to a new level of hilarity. When a portal mishap leads to Rick’s head and body getting separated, we get treated to an entire episode of them first trying to reunite before trying to kill each other. And it is freaking hilarious!

Who let Rick get that Drunk?

It all starts with Rick on a drinking and eating binge with Summer and Morty acting as his chaperones. The show has been putting a lot of emphasis on Rick’s alcoholism this season, and I can’t help but wonder if this is going somewhere. That gets put on the back burner, though, when a portal mishap (that was all Summer’s fault) leads to Rick’s decapitation! The good news is that Rick’s cybernetics let his head and body survive for the time being. The bad news is that Morty and Summer are on opposite sides of the planet, and Rick’s Portal Gun is broken. So now both parties have to fight their way past doctors, bounty hunters, thugs, and police to reunite their Grandpa.

I dont know who came up with this concept, but it’s actually pretty genius. We get to see each Smith sibling deal with their own struggles to try and fix Rick, with each of them running into different problems because of it and resolving them in different ways. Morty and Rick’s Head get chased by the police due to a misunderstanding and are forced to use their wits to get out of trouble. In contrast, Summer has to fight her way through the slums while using the weapons in Rick’s Body to fight off their attackers. It’s just so entertaining to watch, and I remember openly laughing at several points. The show could have simply had this play out for the entire episode and it would have been fine. However, all of this only counts for the first half of the episode. The second half centers around Rick’s Head and his Body trying to kill each other.

Don’t Lose your Head Over this, Rick!

As it turns out, both halves of Rick start to like not having the other to make act in a self-destructive fashion. Rick’s Head is thinking clearer without any beer or lust clouding his judgment, while his Body is able to express himself emotionally without logic getting in the way. It really highlights just how at war with himself Rick is as a person, to the point that we get a literal war of the body and mind, and it’s as destructive as it sounds.

In the end, the status quo demands that Head Rick and Body Rick recombine, and so they do. As for what Head Rick promised his body, I dont think I want to know. Rick doesn’t really learn a lesson about treating himself better, as he just makes Morty and Summer get fit before joining him in a binge eating session at the same place this all started. He even uses what happened as a joke. So, pretty good episode. Great reminder that I need to take care of myself in the future.

I Give “Erickerhead” a 4.5/5

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Rick and Morty S9 EP 5 Review

Question: does Jerry Smith getting a job count as a sign of the apocalypse? Because if it does, then we’re all in big trouble. Besides the time Earth got taken over by aliens, Jerry hasn’t had a job since the first season! Though, I think that this episode involving that idea makes sense since it’s also calling back to another early plot point from the show: Morty’s pet dog, Snowball. He’s back!

But seriously, I’m more concerned about the fact that Jerry got a job!

Snowball is Back!

The main plot of the episode is about Morty going on a week-long trip to see his old dog, Snowball. Back in season 1, Rick gave him a helmet that granted him sentience, so he decided to lead a bunch of other dogs to a separate dimension to build their own society. This is the first time that we actually get to see it, and it’s pretty cool. Except for the fact that the Dogs have come full circle by creating their own pets, Mups. Understandably weirded out by this and the Dog’s hypocrisy, Morty tries to bail, but winds up getting involved when Snowball tries to kill him out of paranoia of what he thinks. Then he winds meeting the wild Mups called Mancors and is involved even more.

I think what the writers were trying to go with this plot was showing Morty’s character development via his refusal to get involved. He’s tried to take a moral stance on similar things in the past, and that only getting involved will make things worse. So he’s making the reasonable decision to try and get out of everything. The problem isn’t him; it’s Snowball. He gets super paranoid that Morty will think bad of him that he pushes him into leading the rebellion. Which I think only makes his unwillingness to get involved feel a little hollow.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter. Morty and Snowball make up and decide to just ride out the civil war that was already underway. Even Rick is proud of Morty for not making things worse than they would have been.

The real draw of the episode, though, is the plot with Jerry. He actually gets a job!

Jerry got a Job! Is this the End Times?

Jerry managed to get a job interview at an advertising company, and he’s super nervous about doing well. Ironically, his family has long since accepted his unemployment status and no longer mocks him for it. To help him out, Space Beth gives him these worms that feed on anxiety, turning him into this laid-back and chill guy with a ton of rizz. I can only imagine what the recording booth was like when Chris Parnell did his lines for this episode, because he must have been having fun with chill Jerry. I practically burst out laughing when I heard him unironically sing “Friday,” with full confidence!

To be honest, I was more invested in seeing how Jerry’s job interview panned out, and I was t disappointed. Jerry ends up becoming a breeding host for the worms that keep him chill at all times even when anxiety would be expected. He delivers a baby on board a private jet as it’s about to crash, and lives! It’s just so funny!! And the entire joke comes together with the worms just spewing out of Jerry like a plague, and his prospective employers are into it!

I think that my favorite part was that the worms tried to go after Rick, because they sensed how worried he was about Jerry having a job. I’d be right there with Rick! I watched the entire episode and my brain was going “does not compute!” Jerry has been unemployed for so long that the idea of him having a job feels like going against the natural order!

But somehow, it works. Jerry Smith now has a job again, and judging by the stinger, he’s happy with it.

Oh, and Rick feeds those worms to the Dog Planet so the Dogs and Mups can chill out. And that’s how the episode ends! Jerry has a job now, and he’s happy with it! Maybe things are finally changing!

I Give “Jer Bud” a 4.5/5

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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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