Category Archives: Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty S9 E10

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“Field of Dreams”

I am now caught up on the Rick and Morty series, finishing up with the episode 10 that debuted on HBO Max today, but had been shown on Comedy Central earlier in the summer.

The new episode started off as an enjoyable story of Morty going through the multiverse and attending other Morty’s funeral. Morty is discovered as he was watching the funeral by a family that was grieving “Mort,” the kid who was so much more successful and loved by his family.

Morty started spending time with this family, thinking that they were better than the family he had. Morty found out that this Smith family was extremely crazed and chasing after him to replace their Mort.

Morty went to this universe’s Rick, who had stopped drinking, had gotten married, and was living a happy life as a college professor. This was when the episode took a darker turn that I was not a real fan of.

As Rick was trying to help find a way to get Morty home, I knew what was going to happen. I knew that Rick was going to need to go back to drinking to get the work done. Watching Rick throw away his life, his sobriety, his wife to the bottle was so sad and too predictable. I wanted this Rick to not transform into yet another drunken Rick.

Of course the ending was anything but predictable as the whole family is butchered in their final confrontation. This allowed Morty to get back to his regular universe with a happier feeling toward these people.

The whole motorcycle scene at the end of the episode was odd.

Overall, this was an up and down episode for me, and with different shades of dark, it did not do well for me.

There is a season 10 in works right now with a rumored release during the summer of 2027.

Rick and Morty S9 E9

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“Salute Your Morts”

Yesterday, I had finished the ninth season of Rick and Morty… or, at least, finished the episodes of the ninth season that were currently available on HBO Max. There were two more episodes from the ninth season that were not yet available on the streamer. Today, the ninth episode was dropped on HBO Max and I watched it.

“Salute Your Morts” started off with Beth and Jerry called to the principal’s office to deal with Summer and Morty, who were doing whatever they wanted at school as disruptive forces. Principal Vagina was going to expel Summer and Morty until Rick portaled into the office and turned Principal Vagina into a giant carrot.

As a way to try and herd in the kids, Rick dropped them off on a different planet at a camp. Unfortunately, the camp they were at had been taken over by the kids, who killed all of the campers.

Meanwhile, with the kids gone, Jerry and Beth found Summer’s drug stash and smoked what was revealed as “Forever High,” where the parents spent the whole time stoned out of their mind. Rick joined in later as well.

I found this very funny and this new episode fit well into the strong season 9 batch of Rick and Morty. While seeing the parents stoned was a fairly regular storyline, seeing Jerry and Beth across the universe with anything possible made this funny.

Next Monday should see the final episode of season 9 released.

Rick and Morty S9 E1-E8

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I started the ninth season of Rick and Morty on HBO Max today and watched the first eight episodes. I discovered that the Rick and Morty show was shown originally on Adult Swim earlier this summer and then it debuted on HBO Max, releasing every episode weekly. I was confused at first as I saw episode 9 and 10 listed on Wikipedia as having been released already, but it was not available yet on HBO Max. I see that the last two episodes will be released over the next two Mondays, so we will finish as we go.

The last few seasons of Rick and Morty have been lesser than I was used to. They weren’t bad, but there were more episodes that I did not love as much as some of the earlier seasons.

However, I thought that the season nine episodes were just awesome.

The first episode kicked off with the return of Evil Morty, and Morty discovered that Rick was running adventures with Evil Morty. Rick was able to trick Evil Morty into destroying the Omega blueprints in all universes. It set off a war between them and Evil Morty gets arrested by the time police after he tried to time travel.

In “Ricks Days, Seven Nights” Rick went on vacation in a dimension and he wiped his own memory. He does it every year and goes to a planet under the name Ted. Ted decides to stay, and he has to fight against himself trying to get Ted to remember. This was so clever and creative… I loved it.

“Rick Fu Hustle” is next up and while Rick and Morty are trying to keep themselves from having their hearts exploded from a Kung Fu master’s special punch, Jerry is having sex with his robot pool cleaner. Not kidding.

The season seems to have a running storyline where Rick is trying to stop drinking after he has had several bad events, including locking himself out of the lab in the garage. He also lost his always filled flask of vodka from a world of pigs. There was another incident where Rick’s head is decapitated from his body, and the two parts of Rick get into a war with the other. While Rick’s head was separated, he saw how good he felt without the alcohol. Morty had the head and Summer had the body and they tried to reunite.

My least favorite of this season was “MortGully: The Last Rickforest” which saw Rick and Morty on a planet trying to find some special sap from a tree. The tree was alive and called the Warden, who sentenced Rick and Morty to be single celled organisms. The episode was the two of them trying to evolve enough to escape the Warden’s trap. It was funny, but it really went a long way for the joke, which was replayed multiple times.

There was also a wild story with Jerry consuming a bunch of space worms which made him more confident, but caused him to eventually vomit up a massive amount of worms.

I have liked this season more than the previous couple, but there does not seem to be much of a thorough line for the overall story arc. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I would like a little more connection.

Two more episodes to go.

Rick and Morty Season 8

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I finished season 8 of Rick and Morty this afternoon, leaving me with just the remaining 8 episodes so far of season to watch (I am not sure when new episodes are released on HBO Max. It would be fun to catch up to the current run before it wraps up the season).

I was not as much of a fan of season 8. I found most of season 8 to be average to slightly below average. It wasn’t bad per se, but I just did not think the plan for the season worked as well as previous seasons.

Then, among the first 4-5 episodes, I found a few of them to be in the same vein as season 8… disappointing. It did not make me feel confident about the whole season.

Among those first five, “Summer of All Fears” was one I did not love. It was a Summer-centric episode and, historically, those have not been my favorite. I also was not a huge fan of “The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly” which featured a story with other Ricks, specifically a Wild West version that reminded me of Clint Eastwood from Unforgiven. While I love that movie, this one bugged me. Another trend I am not a fan of is when we follow a character that is not our Rick (and I know that can be convoluted).

However, I did like the Space Beth episode “Valkyrick” a lot. The whole trope of a heist movie spelling out the plan of the heist as we see it on the screen was shown here, but the images on the screen showed the heist falling apart because of too much of a dependence on “Cisco.” I really loved that section of this episode.

“The Last Temptation of Jerry” was another of the first episodes that I thought was really funny, if not sacrilege. the whole Easter bit with the rampaging Easter Bunny was really funny and co-opting the Tim Allen Santa Clause plot was great too.

Episode five, “Cryo Mort a Rickver,” was another that did not impress me, though I found it better than the previous episodes that I thought were lacking.

Then, things turned around for the show, and the rest of the season felt like big hits.

I liked how Space Beth and Beth turned themselves into little girls who were anything but sweet. I liked the episode where Jerry gets lost on the road thanks to another Jerry. It was cool to see Morty’s son Junior make a return, which I think I called back when Junior was originally created.

The finale with Rick trying to purge the memories of his wife Diane from his mind so he could be more emotionally open was a very good episode. I loved the ending where Rick pretended to have killed “Memory Rick” and “Memory Diane” but instead set them up in a memory storage device. The finale was difficult to follow at times, but there is no doubt that it was a strong finish.

Then, episode seven was one of my favorite episodes of the series. “Ricker than Fiction” saw Rick and Morty watching the latest movie from one of their favorite franchises, “Maximum Velocitree,” but they responded with anger and vitriol. The dialogue was great as they were clearly mocking those people online who claim things like a certain movie “ruined my childhood” or some idiotic statement like that. They went to Warner Brothers to complain and came across James Gunn (yes, voiced by James Gunn himself).

They got into an argument with James Gunn and Rick decided to fix the next script to make it better. Rick designed a machine called the Movie-Lizer which can create a movie if given a script. It also allows the user of the machine to change the script easily. This is obviously a commentary on AI and its intrusiveness in the movie industry. Rick and Morty get sucked inside the Movie-Lizer and find themselves in the story, which they have to try to fix before it is too late. This is such a meta episode, but it is also remarkably funny and clever.

I loved the guest star voice of James Gunn who ran across Zack Snyder, who was also an actual voice for this episode. This unbelievably meta and hilarious encounter made me respect Zack Snyder way more. He was really funny and was allowing the script to give him crap.

The second half of the season was considerably more consistent and engaging than the beginning and “Ricker Than Fiction” is probably in my top 10 of all time.

Rick and Morty Season 7

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I have to say, Season 7 of Rick and Morty was my least favorite overall so far.

It was amazing when I found out that they had replaced the actor who voiced both Rick and Morty, Justin Roiland, because of a domestic abuse charge, because there was absolutely no concernable way to recognize the difference. Big shout out to  Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden for their seamless transition into the roles.

The season had a bunch of episodes that were fairly meh, and at least a couple that were total flops. Specifically, “Rise of the Numbericons: The Movie” may have been my least favorite Rick and Morty episode of the series run so far.

The end of season 6 hinted at season 7 being all about finally ending Rick Prime, but that story arc did not run the whole season. In fact, it was mentioned early, but all came to a close in episode 5, “Unmortricken,” which also brought about the return of Evil Morty. Rick ended up, thanks to Evil Morty, beating Rick Prime to death his his own hands. I found this end to be very unsatisfying. I think that might have been the point, having the theme be that revenge never makes you feel better.

Rick was scattered the rest of the season, and I do not think the show was able to regather the momentum of previous years. The Fear hole episode finale “Fear No Mort” was pretty decent, as Morty tried to face his fears at a Denny’s. There was a character introduced in “Mort: Ragnarick” that was fun with Bigfoot. Finally, there was a sick episode where there was a world where the people who committed suicide turned into tasty spaghetti that the Smith family loved to eat.

My favorite moments of the season came from the guest star Hugh Jackman in the season premiere featuring Mr. Poopybutthole. Actually voiced by Hugh Jackman, they spent the whole episode making fun of everything. Jackman clearly has a great sense of humor.

Other episodes featuring the return of Unity, turning Morty into a “Kuato,” and Rick and Jerry combined into the Jerricky were all lower than I thought.

Next up is season 8. I am streaming these all on HBO Max.

Rick and Morty Season 6

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Season six had two of my absolutely favorite episodes from the entire six seasons.

“Full Meta Jackrick” is my favorite episode of the series. The full embrace of the 4th Wall breaking with the return of Story Lord and new characters such as Miss Lead, Flash Back, Protago Nick, Connie Tinuityerror, and Mr. Twist. There was another character called Rhett Caan that made me laugh out loud. It was such a clever episode that it really stood out for me.

Following that episode was “Analyze Piss” which saw Pissmaster come to challenge Ric. However, Rick had decided, through therapy, that he would try to ignore the supervillains that come to challenge him. This led to Jerry stepping up and defeating Pissmaster. This episode had a trigger warning at the beginning about suicide because Pissmaster takes his own life. meanwhile, Rick takes his place to help give Pissmaster a happy ending for his daughter.

Both of these were just fully engaging and entertaining.

The first half of the season saw Rick lose the ability to form the portals. There was a running joke that Rick kept saying that he could fix the portal gun, but he hadn’t gotten around to it. Funny too was the fact that the dinosaurs were the ones to fix the portals.

We also got a season long arc with Rick Prime, the Rick who killed our Rick’s wife, free and searching for Rick to kill. Rick Prime killed off Jerry Prime, who we met again after “Mortynight Run” in season two.

The end of the season sees Rick, who had built a robot to replace himself, without the family knowing, so he could continue his search for Rick Prime. The Rick-Bot was programmed to give more support to Morty (22% more…) and soon became a beloved family member to the whole Smith clan.

Space Beth was around a lot this season, even though there were not too many major events with her. Of course, she did have an affair with married Beth in “Bethic Twinstinct.”

“Rick: A Mort Well Lived” had Summer at the heart of a Die Hard parody. Maybe parody isn’t the right word, since they openly talked about Die Hard and how this episode was like the movie. I do love Die Hard so the use of the allusion was awesome for me.

“Night Family” was not one of the best episodes of the year, but I did like the attempt at the horror genre. There were some imagery that worked well, but the story did not appeal to me as much.

Perhaps my least favorite episode of the season was “Final DeSmithation” which had Jerry get a fortune cookie that said that he would have sex with his mother. This only got stupider from there.

Sounds as if Season 7 is going to be Rick and Morty hunting down Rick Prime. I’m in.

Rick and Morty Season Five

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I watched the fifth season of Rick and Morty on HBO Max this morning, moving my way through the series.

The last two episodes of the season, “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” and “Rickmurai Jack,” really flipped the show on its head with a break-up of Rick and Morty, and the revenge of Evil Morty, aka the President of the Citadel.

I have to say, one of the things I love about Rick and Morty is how they use continuity and return to dangling plot lines from previous episodes, even previous seasons. When in episode “Rickdependence Spray” they sent the Giant Incest Baby into space, I knew it was coming back around sooner or later.

It makes sense that they need to shake up the status quo on Rick and Morty as they have gone for five seasons. You have to keep it fresh and much of this season did a decent job of that. There were several episodes that seemed to me to be very complex, maybe even overly complex. The whole “decoy families” in the episode “Mortyplicity” and the whole “Amortycan Grickfitti” episode felt too much.

Lots of obvious parodies of the season including Planetina (Captain Planet), the GoTron ferrets (Power Rangers/Voltron), and Changeformers (Transformers).

The rivalry between Rick and President Curtis is revisited in a weird episode where Rick tries to get the President to pardon him by turning himself into a turkey. They also mentioned that this is not the first thing that Rick pulled this trick. It was weird because during the course of the episode, Morty accidentally opens up the giant robot hidden in the Statue of Liberty. That was a story bit that really was never fully touched on.

I did like Mr. Nimbus, who seemed to be a parody of Prince Namor, the Sub Mariner. This was the first episode, which had a weird storyline with Morty going into a dimension in search of wine and how that affected the creatures of that dimension.

Overall, I liked this season more than I liked season four. I have seen some hints that Space Beth is going to be used in a storyline which is interesting. Maybe she can do something with Giant Incest Baby, which would be her grandson.

Rick and Morty Season Four

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The fourth season of Rick and Morty on HBO Max was my binge this afternoon.

I am going to be honest here. I think there were some real high highs in this season of ten episodes, but also a few episode that I found to be lower than normal.

While there are several episodes that I did not love, there were still some really funny moments within these episodes. There were no truly horrible episodes in the season. I would just say that some of the shows were just not as strong of overall stories as they could have been.

The episodes that I did not like much were “One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty,” “The Old Man and the Seat,” “Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty,” and “Rattlestar Ricklactica.”

My favorite parts of the season for me were the following: the return to the Beth’s clone story from last season. I loved the episode of “The Vat of Acid Episode” which may have been the darkest of the entire series. The Rick clones across the multiverse were fun in the season premiere. The remarkably meta and fourth wall breaking episode “Never Ricking Morty” was awesome, even with the guest star role for Jesus Christ. Rick fights Zeus. They had a Covid-19 joke as well that was very funny.

It did seem like the second half of season four was considerably better for me than the beginning of this season.

Guest stars for the season included Sherri Shepherd, Sam Neill, Kathleen Turner, Taika Waititi, Jeffrey Wright, Pamela Adlon, Elon Musk, Justin Theroux, Claudia Black, Matthew Broderick, Liam Cunningham,Keegan-Michael Key, Eddie Pepitone, Paul Giamatti, Christopher Meloni, Susan Sarandon, David Herman, Chelsea Peretti, Harland Williams, Grey DeLisle, Natasha Leggero, Jake Johnson, Lauren Lapkus and Nat Faxon.

Rick and Morty Season 3

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I watched season three of Rick and Morty on HBO Max throughout the day today. I have not watched many episodes of Rick and Morty over the years, but I have seen some. This season included a few of the episodes that I had seen before.

Specifically, I have seen “Pickle Rick,” “Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender,” and, I believe, the season premiere “The Rickshank Rickdemption.” These were very strong episodes, but I remember the reason I did not consistently watch the show when it was originally on was because of the time it was on TV (Late night Sunday night).

The season long storyline of Jerry and Beth’s marriage falling apart saw the two of them planning a divorce, though they wind up back together at the end of the season. The last couple of episodes questioned whether or not Rick had cloned Beth and let her wander the universe to find herself. At the end of the finale, Rick claimed that Beth was not a clone. I am not sure I believe him. It feels like a storyline that could carry over the next several seasons even.

In “The Ricklantis Mixup” starts with Rick and Morty heading to Atlantis, but the episode did not follow them there as the show went to the new Citadel of Ricks and saw the struggles and conflicts between the Ricks and the Mortys. We see a new Morty elected president. It is another potential future arc for the show.

The “Morty’s Mind Blowers” episode was batshit crazy, using some old memories that Morty had erased from his mind. It was done as a replacement for the typically annual Interdimensional Cable episode that they had in both of the first two seasons.

One of the most iconic episode was “Pickle Rick.” I did not think that this episode, the one where Rick turned himself into a pickle in order to avoid family therapy, was this early in the overall series. I love this episode.

I did enjoy the battle between Rick and the President of the USA in “The Rickchurian Mortydate.” It was also funny how the conflict was resolved.

Overall, season three was tremendous. My favorite episode is “Pickle Rick” and my least favorite was “The ABC’s of Beth.”

Rick and Morty Season Two

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I decided that I would start watching the Rick and Morty series as I did in the What We Do in the Shadows series. Since there are a limited number of episodes in each season and each were around 25 minutes, I decided that I would watch the whole season in one sitting.

Season two was the first season that I binged on HBO Max.

The first episode was “A Rickle in Time” where they picked up immediately when season one ended with Morty and Summer finished cleaning their house as time has been frozen. It winds up having multiple Ricks and Mortys and Summers since they were messing with time.

My favorite episode of the season was episode four, “Total Rickall” where an intergalactic parasite found its way into the Smith’s house and, by planting fake memories into the Smith’s heads, created people and creatures they believed were real. There was Mister Poopybutthole, Cousin Nicky, Sleepy Gary, Pencilvester, Tinkles the Fairy Lamb, Frankenstein’s Monster, Mr. Beauregard among others. It was such a funny episode.

Jerry and Beth’s marriage was a huge side story again. They even are taken to a planet for the most successful marriage counseling organization, which they destroy it with their toxicity. This was episode 7, entitled “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez.” The continue to be fighting and this marriage truly feels to be temporary.

Also in episode 7, we get “Little Rick!” Rick puts his mind into a younger clone of himself to help search out a vampire in Summer and Morty’s school (who was Coach Feratu). The vampire plot is mostly off-screen as it is the “Little Rick!” character that is focused. He shouted “Little Rick” very much like he would eventually yell out “Pickle Rick” in a later season.

“Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate” was a sequel to the interdimensional episode from season one. This one was funny, but it felt like it was not as strong as the first one.

There are several moments of breaking the fourth wall in this season as well. These all worked pretty well including the one where Rick called “Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate” a sequel, but he did not know why.

There were other parodies including an episode spoofing the movie The Purge.

There was a great cliffhanger at the end of season two with Rick turning himself in as an intergalactic terrorist in order to get Morty, Summer, Beth and Jerry freedom to return to the earth. The whole family had left earth to attend the wedding of Birdperson and Summer’s high school friend Tammy. Tammy turned out to be an agent of the Federation, killed Birdperson and arrested everyone. It was a cool twist and sets up the show for season three.

Rick and Morty S1 E6, E7, E8

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“Rick Potion #9”

“Raising Gazorpazorp”

“Rixty Minutes”

Rick & Morty are a lot of fun, but… geez are they inappropriate.

I do have to say that I loved in “Rixty Minutes” how Morty brought up stuff from other episodes that season such as the episode where Rick and Morty ruined the world and took up residence in another universe where they had died. Continuity, you know.

And my favorite new word…

“Gazorpazorp”

If ya know, you know.

We’ll have to see if Morty Jr. will ever make a return cameo in the show.

The TV shows and commercials on the infinite cable had to be a hoot for the writers of the show. Anything was available, and they came up with some of the best (and worst) things on TV.

I love how this show is so irreverent, just doing whatever it needed to do to get a laugh. Morty and his sex robot, The Cronenberg planet, etc.

There is also a serious storyline running through the series, which is the marriage of Jerry and Beth and how their marriage is on shaky ground. We discovered that Summer was not only unwanted, but Jerry had to talk Beth out of getting an abortion. We learned about their potentially successful lives had they not gotten married.

So far, Jerry and Beth have ended episodes in each others’ arms, but will that maintain?

Three more episodes of Rick & Morty before moving into season two.

Rick & Morty S1 E3, E4, E5

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“Anatomy Park”

“M. Night Shaym-Aliens!”

“Meeseeks and Destroy”

Rick & Morty continue along in their first season, showing how different it is than any other animated show. The humor is hilarious, even if it could tend towards sophomoric humor at times.

Rick sends Morty inside a body of an old man, dressed as Santa, to an amusement park he had constructed inside. This episode was a lot of fun, especially with the all-star cast of voice actors including John Oliver, Dana Carvey, Kari Wahlgren and Gary Anthony Williams.

This is a parody of both Jurassic Park and Fantastic Voyage.

Another example of Rick getting Morty into trouble comes in the next episode as he is inside a simulation as aliens are attempting to steal Rick’s recipe for the Concentrated Dark Matter. The girl with Morty tells him that he can put his fingers anywhere he wants as they makeout.

In the fifth episode, it is Morty’s turn to plan the adventure. This is an example of how the show pushes limits as Morty comes across a humanoid Jellybean in the restroom at a pub and the Jellybean attempts to rape Morty. Rick later murders Jellybean, who was revealed as the King of the village Rick and Morty were working for.

Meanwhile, Morty’s parents were using an invention of Rick’s called the Meeseeks Box. Meeseeks would po into existence and help you with a problems, only to then pop out of existence. However, taking two strokes off Jerry’s golf game. Finding it impossible, more Meeseeks are summoned until they go wild with their failure to improve the golf game, trying to murder Jerry.

Again, this is not your child’s animated show. The adult themes and jokes are all over the place, but they make Rick & Morty very funny to watch.

Rick and Morty S1 E1, E2

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“Pilot”

“Lawnmower Dog”

I started another show today on HBO Max. Rick and Morty is an animated program that I have seen a few episodes from over the years, but not as many as I would have liked. Seeing the whole series available on HBO Max recently gave me the happy chance to see everything.

What I know of Rick and Morty was introduced immediately as Rick showed himself to be a poor influence, a drunken-mad scientist using his grandson Morty for his own warped, dimensional means. In “Lawnmower Dog” there are two major arcs: One was going into Morty’s math teacher’s dreams to try and get Morty an A in math and two trying to prevent Morty’s dog, Snuffles, who was given intelligence from Rick, from taking over the world.

Rick and Morty parody several movies & TV shows, including Steven King’s Lawnmower Man. There was also a parody within the episode of Freddy Krueger, called Scary Terry. They made some references to the Christopher Nolan movie, Inception as well.

The character of Rick is unlike any character on TV. He truly is a horrible person, and I know he will only get worse as the show moves on. I am not even sure that Rick could be given the benefit of the doubt that he cares about his family.

The show is very funny and I am looking forward to continuing this show watch as the days and months come.