Rick and Morty Season 4 (part 1)

2019 - Adult Swim (5 episodes)

Rick and Morty came out of the gate fully formed.  Going back to the earliest episodes of the series, the characters are already willed into being and the structure of the show is already in place.  Few shows come out so self assured.  Community is the first show at the top of my mind where the pilot seemed to know exactly what it wanted to be, and largely who the characters were.  Of course the through-line here is creator Dan Harmon who seems to be able to fraction of his complex personality into distinct character units, and then build them up into unique and complex individuals that extend beyond him.  The characters start fully realized, and grow and evolve from there.

There have been 3 really terrific seasons of Rick and Morty so far, becoming a series resonating strongly and passionately among it's 19-49 year-old demographic.  It's a show that satirizes pop culture tropes frequently -- often critically, sometimes savagely, usually insightfully -- but its best moments are always those that dwell on the characters and the impact the events of the show have on them.  There's not really a dud episode in the run so far, though some clearly stand out more than others.

Season 4 is disappointing in that it only delivers five new episodes out of its remaining 70 episodes ordered by the Cartoon Network.  But, all five episodes are superb for extremely unique reasons.


"Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Repeat" finds a space crystal embedded in Morty's head granting him ultimate foresight, with Rick both envying Morty's power while also struggling to free him from the cage such power brings.  It's reflective of Morty's usual helplessness that he traditionally finds himself in that he embraces the crystal...but he also embraces it for such shortsighted reasons, being the vision of Jessica caring for him on his death bed.  Morty's unhealthy fixation on Jessica is such a teenage boy thing, but that toxic fixation is something that the show needs to clearly going to deal with at some point but is taking its time getting there.  In the meantime, we often see how this toxic fixation leads to Morty making some really bad decisions.


"The Old Man and the Seat" has two very silly threads, one about an alien-created matchmaking app (Harmon's insight into dating app culture here is as biting as his social media app culture commentary in Community's "Meow-Meow-Beenz" episode) and the other about Rick's most epic and exclusive pooping area which is discovered by an interloper.  Both threads, though, end up highlighting feelings of loneliness and isolation in very different ways, with Rick's pooping saga being surprisingly effective.


"One Crew Over The Crewcoo's Morty" screams Dan Harmon from moment one (even though these episodes each have credited writers, Harmon's showrunner status looms large, and from the sounds of things he was even more involved with this season than he was previously).  Clearly Harmon, with Rick as his avatar, needed to express his utter distaste for the "heist movie" formulae, and this absolutely hilarious episode is a non-stop piss-taking on the genre.  So effective it is, that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy a heist movie ever again.


"Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktims Morty" finds Morty demanding, and getting, a pet dragon.  This is a very potent and uncomfortable episode.  It's an extremely weird examination of how we deal with pets as property, how we may or may not bond with them, and how "ownership" of another living being is just weird.  Plus, poking at so many fantasy tropes.  And then it gets cerebral-sexual, which is really, really, really off-putting.  This is the show at its most provocative and twisted.  It is literally hard to watch.  I'm not sure if it's successful at what it really wants to say but it's certainly memorable.  Jerry's b-plot about the talking cat is total goofballs.

The final episode, though, is its masterstroke.  "Rattlestar Ricklactica" finds Rick and Morty accidentally killing a snake astronaut from an earth-like planet, but where snakes are the dominant species.  Rick and Morty replace the astronaut with an earth snake and the impact upon this other-earth society is monumental.  A 9-minute montage of this evolution is the brilliant result.  It's entirely wordless (only snake-speak and snake-jazz is heard along the way). This all culminates in Terminator-like time-jumping from multiple parties to try and correct the mistakes only to devolve into ultimate chaos.  Rick and Morty is always at its best when ultimate chaos ensues.  Of all the wonderfully conceptual things the show has introduced, from Mr. Meeseeks ("look at me!") to Pickle Rick, I think snake-jazz may just be my favourite.