God if feels so good to finally say – Rick and Morty is back! It feels so long since the series took another hiatus back in December, but the long wait is finally over and the mid-season premiere, “Never Ricking Morty,” is truly a world-class mind melter.
The fact that this episode didn’t have a pre-title opening sequence completely threw me for a loop. That was just the start of how this episode did things that confused the absolute crap out of me. Now, it’s not that out of the norm for Rick and Morty to go in weird directions or leave viewers scratching their heads as to where things are going. However, “Never Ricking Morty” takes trolling and pure confusion to a whole new level as it parodies so many different things at once that, after about ten minutes, I literally exclaimed, “Ok, what the hell is happening!” Even having the help of my brother didn’t make things much clearer as to what this episode is riffing on, exactly talking about, or what any of it actually means.
First and foremost, like my favorite episode of the first half of this season, “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty,” this episode touches a genre/form of storytelling that’s become incredibly popular recently – anthologies. For those that are unaware of what an anthology is, it’s essentially a collection of stories with different characters that are usually connected through a theme, genre, or specified location. Think of series like American Horror Story, Black Mirror, or The Twilight Zone. However, this episode’s intentions are a little unclear and the things connecting all the passengers and stories that unfold are unsurprisingly Rick (voiced by Justin Roiland, Solar Babies) and a mysterious train. At first, things seem very simple with a story about Rick foiling the plans of an acid obsessed villain through potions and farts and a quick story about how he once saved Christmas. I even laughed when I realized that the Tickets Please guy is meant to act like a narrator or connecting character – like Sam in Trick r Treat. However, things start to go too off the rails quickly as it slides into a successful parody.
Honestly, once the continuity is literally blown up, due to a container marked “continuity” that Rick is holding being shot, things just go all over the place. In some ways, it’s clever because of how they talk about the structures of anthology, and when I re-watched the episode some pieces came together and started to make sense. However, I just think that a lot of what’s happening is, as Morty (also voiced by Roiland) puts it, a little too meta and overly complicated to watch. From the entire musical sequence between Rick and Birdperson to hearing some alien talk about some religion they’re following, I found myself scratching my head as to what was really happening. The episode definitely tries to evoke the kind of storytelling and parody in episodes like “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty” and even “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” but ultimately forgets or just plain ignores what made them so enticing – the jokes and references were simple and easy to follow.
Half of the time, it just feels like we’re jumping around so much that it barely hits you what’s actually happening, and the randomness creates a disconnect. There’s just so much that happens in such a short amount of time that you not only don’t know what to make of anything or have time to try to, but the point or purpose becomes lost. Perhaps, that’s the point since Rick even reminds Morty, and the audience, that this is a one-off like Inter-Dimensional Cable and not canon. However, as much as this episode tries to shove in to make it seem like a clever riff on anthologies, it’s overcomplicated elements and storytelling make it tough to enjoy at times.
“Never Ricking Morty” isn’t a bad episode though – I would even say far from it. As a fan, there’re so many callbacks to great characters and locations from the series so far that just seeing them is a total blast. With characters like Snowball and his legion of highly intelligent dogs, Tammy fighting Summer (voiced by Spencer Grammer, Greek) in a lightsaber duel, a rousing trip to Blitz and Chitz, and even a version of Mr. Poopybutthole that’s seemingly turned to the dark side, there’s plenty of great callbacks that fans will enjoy. Not to mention, the sheer insanity to some of the hilarious weird stuff that comes from this episode is too good to really ignore.
Morty’s story to try and break the flow of the train about Summer and Beth (voiced by Sarah Chalke, Scrubs) using their vaginas to kill an army of female scorpions and then get approval from RGB had me in hysterics from start to finish. There’s also some great Rick-trolling, such as when he tried to break the Storylord’s (voiced by Paul Giamatti, Billions) machine by calling on the power of Christianity and Jesus Christ (voiced by Christopher Meloni, Pose), which was hilarious. It’s made even better when you realize that Storylord lost control when Rick lost marketability, broad-appeal, and became unrelatable when he turned to religion. It’s essentially a joke about out of character moments and understanding what the fans like about Rick, and it’s kind of brilliant. Even the whole speech about Rick being proud of Morty for supporting capitalism by buying a toy train is a hilarious way to troll fans and the remark Rick makes about everyone being at home because of the coronavirus is always a treat.
As I said from the very beginning, Rick and Morty is back and while it’s not better than ever necessarily – it’s still pretty great. The anthology riffs may miss the mark for me and disappoint compared to the heist parody from earlier in the season because it lacks relatable simplicity, but “Never Ricking Morty” is still a strong showing of the weird wackiness that any fan could love. Personally, I’ll be excited to return to much simpler, classic Rick and Morty adventures, but this episode is still a solid showing for the series, nevertheless.
Rick & Morty Season 4 airs Sundays on Adult Swim.
