With how long we had to wait for new episodes, it’s weird to come back to split season. Especially since, unlike other shows, this one doesn’t have a return date nailed down for the rest. Four episodes and then an extended break? It’s the most Rick and Morty season ever. This is clearly a midpoint for the season, though. No arc has emerged and none of the plot threads from previous seasons (evil Morty, specifically) have been addressed. Nor has there been any meaningful change or event like we’ve come to expect from season finales on this show. The result is we’re in for another wait without the satisfying conclusion this show usually provides. At least it shouldn’t be as long this time.
The first half of the season went out on a high point, at least. The previous two episodes were funny, but didn’t reach the highs of even the first two episodes of the season. Last night’s episode closed out this batch with a Terminator parody that took time travel to its ridiculous conclusion. Also, Jerry almost kills himself again. This week’s adventure starts with Rick getting a flat tire in space. I love that this is never explained. Why does his ship need tires to run in space? And since the rumbling is just a simulation programmed to let Rick know he has a flat, why can’t his ship run with a flat anyway? None of this matters, it’s just funny watching someone change a tire in space.
via Adult Swim
Morty gets board waiting in the ship and joins Rick outside. While Rick is distracted, a snake in a space suit slithers up and bites Morty. Why is there a snake in space? Because everything is in space. How did it bite Morty when it’s wearing a space helmet? A space helmet that Morty breaks open to kill it and get it off his leg? That’s not important, stop asking questions. What’s important is, Morty got bit by a space snake. Rick has his ship’s computer find the snake’s home planet and analyze its culture for an antidote. He’s able to synthesize one, but also learns that the snake planet is currently involved in a global war over race. Rick has a good laugh at that. Imagine being a snake racist. Imagine a snake hating another snake because it’s a different color. Man, it sure would be stupid if any other species did that. *Looks directly into camera*
Rick and Morty return home to find Jerry trying to put up Christmas lights. Aw yay, Christmas episode. At Beth’s request, much to Jerry’s humiliation, Rick makes it so Jerry can’t die by falling off the roof. He makes Jerry slightly lighter than air and makes his shoes slightly heavier. This gives Jerry moon physics. He can jump really high and float safely to the ground. No way he can put himself in danger now, right? Right? Oh god.
via Adult Swim
For his part, Morty really shows he’s Jerry’s son here. He feels bad about having killed a planet’s sole explorer, thereby dooming an entire species to a war that will send them back to the dark ages. So he goes to a pet shop and buys a snake to send back. It never occurs to him that a species currently in the middle of a global race war shouldn’t have access to knowledge of alien species. Every moment of Morty’s plan should tell him it’s a bad idea. The snake bites him when he tries to get it into the suit. It bites him all the way to the snake planet and bites him once more as Morty tosses it out of the ship. He even calls the snake a monster, and still feels good about what he’s doing.
What follows is easily the coolest moment of the season so far. The next part of the story is told entirely in hisses. We don’t get any subtitiles, just animated storytelling accompanied by characters hissing at each other. We see the Earth snake enter the snake planet atmosphere. The military captures it and sends for a professor to figure out how to communicate. Because of course snakes on another planet would use a different hiss language than Earth snakes. The professor begins communicating with the Earth snake and soon, they have snake sex. Yeah, if snakes freak you out, this was not the episode for you. Hopefully the hilarious snake jazz joke softened it a little.
via Adult Swim
Morty’s solo mission is discovered when snakes start appearing in and around the Smith home trying to kill Morty. Soon, other snakes show up and try to protect him. Including a weird grotesque little creature designed to put humans at ease, but is easily the most horrifying of them all. Because of course alien snakes don’t know what humans look like. All they have to go on is a description of Morty. This is what I want from Rick and Morty sci-fi parodies. It doesn’t stick to one joke, it explores every aspect of its premise. It takes the Terminator series to its logical conclusion, then an illogical one, and then it uses every inch of the sandbox a time travel story provides them.
Beth and Summer fight off the snakes as they teleport in. Both of them have become accomplished fighters in their time with Rick, it seems. After a super on the nose parody of the Terminator 2 opening, just in case you didn’t get it, Rick comes up with a solution. He travels to the snake planet to stop their time machine, but finds out it hasn’t been built yet. He has to come up with the solution to snake time travel for them, but he doesn’t have enough time to learn snake math. He reminds himself to do it later and a very irritable Rick and Morty show up and hand their past selves the solution, along with a couple of shoddy snake costumes. What a great way to set up a joke for later.
via Adult Swim
They travel back in time to the snake 1980s and leave the secrets of time travel behind. Because as long as we’re making fun of time travel movies, why not take some shots at Back to the Future as well? The snakes put together a time machine, go back in time and stop snake Lincoln from being assassinated. Then, they try to kill snake Hitler, but snake neo-nazis show up and try to prevent that from happening. Suddenly the entire planet being engulfed in racist violence at the beginning of the episode makes a lot of sense. This kicks off a massive time travel fight with snakes going back to kill snake Hitler and other snakes going back further to prevent it. Eventually, all this time travel catches the attention of the time cops. Hey, at least we get some kind of callback to a previous story before the break. As the cops put a stop to all the snake time travel shenanigans, the snakes attacking the Smith house curl up and slither out of existence.
Of course, the adventure isn’t over yet. Rick and Morty still have to make good on their past commitments. Rick has spend Christmas learning snake math and Morty has to sew snake disguises. So that’s why they’re such jerks to their past selves. I loved this bit because I always thought about the laundry list of stuff Bill and Ted leave themselves to do at the end of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. They have to remember to steal Ted’s dad’s keys and drop a garbage can on him. We never see the moment where they have to do all that work though. Rick and Morty shows it, and it makes for a fantastic gag. I also love that it sets up Morty’s black eye and doesn’t give us an explanation until the final moment of the post-credits scene. That’s just fantastic comic timing right there.
via Adult Swim
I don’t know when we’ll have more Rick and Morty. It won’t be as long a wait as last time. We know the episodes are written and most if not all of the voices have been recorded. Neither Adult Swim nor the creators have given a concrete return date. It’ll definitely be sometime in 2020, and I’m guessing it’ll be before the summer. Just a hunch. No matter how long the break though, what an episode to go out on. It was fun, packed with truly funny jokes and featured the extensive explorations of sci-fi tropes we love the series for. And like most great sitcom episodes, it functions perfectly well as a standalone. You could show it to someone who hasn’t seen Rick and Morty before, and it would serve as a fine introduction to the series.
The only anomoly would be Jerry getting even close to a win on his own, but hey, it’s Christmas. This episode definitely had one of the show’s better Jerry stories. He tries to take advantage of his buoyancy by showing up guys at the basketball court. Instead, they find his White Men Can’t Jump references outdated and racist. He tires to dunk on them, but ends up losing one of his shoes and flying through the air. The entire time, he refuses help because he doesn’t want to admit to Beth that he’s going to get himself killed. After getting thrown out of a bar for carrying a boulder around, Jerry latches onto a nearby plane to take himself home. He ends up getting the Christmas lights up and fighting off all the snakes on the roof. The only reason he didn’t come to Beth’s rescue is he couldn’t hear her screams over his own. Yeah, that check out. Jerry sucks, but at least he tries most of the time. And it was nice of the show to give him a small victory before an extended break.
Rick and Morty airs Sundays at 11:30 on Adult Swim
Previously on Rick and Morty:
- Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 4 recap
- Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 3 recap
- Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 2 recap
from Geek.com https://ift.tt/2S8qbrd
via IFTTT
0 comments:
Post a Comment