Childrick of Mort
Rick and Morty returns this week with another good episode although it’s arguably one of the weakest of the season so far. While the jokes are fine and the different ideas are okay, the clay people and the idealistic world Rick crafts for them isn’t the first time the show has delved into this idea and here, the jokes don’t quite reach the same level they have for some of the previous episodes, especially last week’s hilarious acid vat segment. Episode 9 of Rick & Morty season 4 begins with Spring Break as the whole gang head out for a trip but Rick avoids messages from a girl telling him she’s pregnant. Only, this girl happens to be an entire planet. When they land on its surface, a geyser spews out hundreds of clay people prompting Beth to use a trampoline to save them. From here, all of our characters split up. Rick and Beth work together to create a self-sufficient species in a perfect utopia. Only, it turns out they’re not actually Rick’s children they’re God’s (or Reggie as he’s known as here), who appears as a cloud-like creature. Meanwhile, Jerry takes the kids off camping but Summer lays into him for being lame which forces Jerry to walk away, holding back tears. Unfortunately he falls down some rapids but at the bottom ends up talking to the “Unproductives”; the castaways from the perfect utopia above who worship him like a messiah. After training them up, Jerry arrives and fights Beth and the other clay people at the entrance to the city. Morty and Summer end up stumbling through the forest alone and arrive at an abandoned spaceship. While Morty powers up the ship, Summer gets high thanks to sucking in energy from the bong-shaped tubes onboard. Together, they fly it straight into Reggie’s celestial form midway through his fight with Rick in outer space over the clay kids. As all the storylines converge, the planet erupts into fury following Reggie’s death prompting Rick, Morty and the others to fly away, which is where the episode ends. The biggest problem with this latest episode comes from the number of different arcs all being crowbarred together. I can’t help but feel the episode may have even worked better with Morty and Summer staying home playing videogames. While I understand they were crucial to destroying Reggie, their entire arc this episode revolves around getting high and helping Rick. They could have replaced Morty with Jerry, made it so his staff accidentally shot a beam into the sky and killed Reggie, and Rick begrudgingly thanking him for help. To be fair though, the moments with Beth and Rick working together are easily the strongest of the episode and these heartwarming moments are enough to see you through. It’s not a bad episode per-se, and there are still some entertaining moments throughout, but compared to last week this one pales by comparison. Published: 25 May 2020 at 10:04am on TheReviewGeek.com
