Television Rick and Morty return June 20th

[gamer.tv]

That was the funniest episode for some time - and a big improvement on S4. 

[silentbob]

Man that was a weird episode, but you gotta love the creative carnage it brought. Pretty much all the advertising for this season can be found in this episode or the first. 

[Kal-El814]

This was a fun episode, and I like anything that fucks with the continuity wonks.

[ort]

I've liked both episodes a lot so far...

 

This one this week was completely messed up and I love it.

[Greatoneshere]

I thought this episode was brilliant. Very clever. The Asimov Cascade. Great stuff.

[Jason]

This was still pretty fun but felt kind of more by the numbers than last week's episode...this should have been the premiere.

[gamer.tv]

On 6/29/2021 at 4:25 AM, Jason said:

This was still pretty fun but felt kind of more by the numbers than last week's episode...this should have been the premiere.

Yep. Still better than (most) of last season but it felt rushed somehow.

[silentbob]

It thought last night was OK but not great. I liked the idea of turning Captain Planet in a girl and a helpless PR stunt going on since the 90’s. (Plus Allison Brie)  Anyways I though her arch near the end felt too much like Funny or Die’s version with Don Cheadle playing Captain Planet. If you haven’t watched yet, go online and do it already. Rick and Summer could of been a little better too, but so much blurring out of sexual mouth movements. 
 

I don’t know if this happens stateside, but they repeat the previous week’s episode right afterwards on Adult Swim Canada. Except this time you have no cussing being bleeped out, full on Mother Fucker here and Shit, Summer! there. Wonder if we can see what Rick and SumSum were really doing with their mouths 

[ort]

Yeah, this episode was fine and I liked it but it's not one of their stronger ones. It's going to be pretty forgettable I think.

[Kal-El814]

It is kind of odd to place an episode where we’re supposed to really care about these characters immediately after one where they were killed a million times over. 

[ort]

I think part of the problem for me is that I have zero nostalgia for Captain Planet. It was kind of a weird thing to hang half the episode on.

 

I think there is a chunk of their audience (probably people in their mid to late 30s) who have a lot of feelings about Captain Planet, but for pretty much anyone else, it was going to fall very flat. I can't imagine many people in their 20s (probably the bulk of their fans) even know who or what Captain Planet even  is.

[Kal-El814]

2 hours ago, ort said:

I think part of the problem for me is that I have zero nostalgia for Captain Planet. It was kind of a weird thing to hang half the episode on.

 

I think there is a chunk of their audience (probably people in their mid to late 30s) who have a lot of feelings about Captain Planet, but for pretty much anyone else, it was going to fall very flat. I can't imagine many people in their 20s (probably the bulk of their fans) even know who or what Captain Planet even  is.

 

Honestly Captain Planet nostalgia isn't necessary at all, if you know the premise of that show that's the only thing this episode really hinges on. It's just a weird episode.

[Jason]

When do the new episodes come out? 11 PM Eastern on Cartoon Network?

[silentbob]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

When do the new episodes come out? 11 PM Eastern on Cartoon Network?

whatever your Adult Swim is on then yes. In Canada we have it on Sun 11pm on a channel called Adult Swim. I remember late night stuff stateside would become Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. Didn’t know if they just gave it it’s own channel itself like up here.

[Zaku3]

2 hours ago, silentbob said:

whatever your Adult Swim is on then yes. In Canada we have it on Sun 11pm on a channel called Adult Swim. I remember late night stuff stateside would become Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. Didn’t know if they just gave it it’s own channel itself like up here.

 

It's still Cartoon Network.

[ort]

Woof...

[Jason]

Morty pleasuring himself with the horse machine didn't need to be an entire episode.

[Kal-El814]

This is probably the least interesting episode of the show so far. It’s got Keith David so it’s not all bad, but like… calling a group of creatures CHUDs isn’t clever when you don’t really riff on, you know… actual chuds. Giving Summer good ideas only to have them co-opted by men isn’t really commentary when that’s both the setup and the joke. And we already have an episode where Morty fucks a machine, chugs orange juice, and then has to deal with the consequences. There’s what, < 50 episodes of the show to date? Retreading ground this early isn’t a great sign.

 

I subscribe to the show on iTunes so each week there’s a little behind the scenes bit about the most recent episode. Last week’s was about how emotional the writers felt when Morty had to break up with Planetina, which suggests to me the creators of this show have a different baseline for how much I “care” about these characters. It’s weird.

 

Also the post-credits scene in this episode was easily the least interesting thing they’ve ever aired.

[silentbob]

Yeah it was one of my least liked episodes. It had a couple chuckles, but it seem to try to be fucked up for a usually a fucking weird show. At least when they usually do it, they do it in a smart sort of way. 

[Kal-El814]

7 minutes ago, silentbob said:

Yeah it was one of my least liked episodes. It had a couple chuckles, but it seem to try to be fucked up for a usually a fucking weird show. At least when they usually do it, they do it in a smart sort of way. 

 

While I’ve never been part of the “actually Rick and Morty is super fucking smart” crowd, I did think the show was dumb in a generally smart way… if that makes any sense. It seemed pretty consistently creative at any rate. This episode is just dumb. And they did this already! I don’t know that the show has “earned” cross season referential / repetitive humor at this point, it’s not the Simpsons, it doesn’t have 700+ episodes under its belt. Lampshading Morty as being dumb because he’s never at school / having adventures all the time is fine, having 2 episodes dealing with the consequences of Morty fucking a machine within 45 episodes is lousy.

[Greatoneshere]

Yeah that wasn't a great episode. 

[Jason]

This show has lost its mojo.

[silentbob]

19 minutes ago, Jason said:

This show has lost its mojo.

It was better than last weeks episode. I wonder with Covid, if it kept them away from table reads and nixing bad ideas for the show. Also I wonder what the fuck kind of drugs they experimented with during these Covid lockdowns

[Greatoneshere]

7 hours ago, Jason said:

This show has lost its mojo.

 

Yeah, I don't know that it has myself. Last week's episode was no good but this week's was solid I thought. The A.V. Club review for the episode breaks the season down so far this way: "Five episodes into the season and we’ve had one stone cold classic (“Mortyplicity” ranks up with the show’s all time best), two pretty good episodes, one trying-but-not-quite-making-it episode, and one dud. That’s not amazing math, but “pretty good” is better than “oh god my eyes,” and I’ll happily take something like “Amortycan,” which has a lot of good character work and some solid jokes, even if its twin storylines aren’t quite as sharp or inventive as they could’ve been."

 

https://www.avclub.com/jerry-goes-to-hell-on-an-entertaining-rick-and-morty-1847317168

 

I mostly agree with that. 

 

7 hours ago, silentbob said:

It was better than last weeks episode. I wonder with Covid, if it kept them away from table reads and nixing bad ideas for the show. Also I wonder what the fuck kind of drugs they experimented with during these Covid lockdowns

I also felt this week's was off, but still pretty solid.

[silentbob]

Ok, now that was some classic Rick and Morty storytelling. I would of Pickle Rick  the whole turkey thing a little longer, but the whole idea this was all for a presidential pardon 

[Kal-El814]

This was the kind of stupid I come to this show for, I liked this one a lot.

[legend]

Best line of the last episode was

 

Spoiler

"He became president today." God I hated people saying that shit in the Trump presidency.

 

[Greatoneshere]

That was a fun episode. Except for a few standouts, last season and this one have felt like a step down from previous seasons though. I know the writers' room rotates a lot on Dan Harmon's shows but the underlying "cynicism but growth" and family drama stuff used to land. There used to also be an underlying darkness to the show, like when Beth shot Mr. Poopybutthole. The episode cuts immediately to Beth traumatically drinking wine and it is animated in a very dark fashion. The first three seasons had lots of this, and their fun and weird ideas were more inventive and strange than obvious. That's my take anyway.

[Jason]

10 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

That was a fun episode. Except for a few standouts, last season and this one have felt like a step down from previous seasons though. I know the writers' room rotates a lot on Dan Harmon's shows but the underlying "cynicism but growth" and family drama stuff used to land. There used to also be an underlying darkness to the show, like when Beth shot Mr. Poopybutthole. The episode cuts immediately to Beth traumatically drinking wine and it is animated in a very dark fashion. The first three seasons had lots of this, and their fun and weird ideas were more inventive and strange than obvious. That's my take anyway.

 

And basically no portal gun usage. The alternate dog/cow people dimension wasn't technically accessed with the portal gun but whatever I'll count it, and they seemed to use it as a device to get around on their earth this episode, and...that's it. 

[SimpleG]

35 minutes ago, Greatoneshere said:

Except for a few standouts, last season and this one have felt like a step down from previous seasons though

Agreed but last season grew on me over many rewatches.

[Greatoneshere]

1 hour ago, Jason said:

 

And basically no portal gun usage. The alternate dog/cow people dimension wasn't technically accessed with the portal gun but whatever I'll count it, and they seemed to use it as a device to get around on their earth this episode, and...that's it. 

 

Yeah I agree. I feel like we need more portal gun, more space stuff, etc.

 

47 minutes ago, SimpleG said:

Agreed but last season grew on me over many rewatches.

 

I definitely liked season 4, and so far it's better than this one (which I'm mostly enjoying still).

[Jason]

This week was better I thought. 

[Greatoneshere]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

This week was better I thought. 

 

Yeah I enjoyed the anime, Voltron, giant mech, Evangelion spoofs. All the incest baby stuff isn't as funny as the show seems to think it is, and the episodes hang together rougher than they used to, but I still laughed a good bit.

[Chadatog]

13 hours ago, Greatoneshere said:

 

Yeah I enjoyed the anime, Voltron, giant mech, Evangelion spoofs. All the incest baby stuff isn't as funny as the show seems to think it is, and the episodes hang together rougher than they used to, but I still laughed a good bit.

But his name is Naruto, I thought it made the incest baby storyline pay off more and think it will culminate into a classic episode

[silentbob]

Wasn’t the funniest but I think one of the best episodes this year for the series. Tons of hints to Rick’s true backstory and what makes him Rick. Plus I’m a sucker for anything with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  being the huge reference this week.