Rick & Morty Season 5 - commences June 20th

[Blumf]

I found this week's pretty dull. Not sure if I want to see Rick's car become a recurring character, if this is all they can think to do. Hellraiser stuff was yawn inducing.

[Retinend]

I loved it, but I'm a big Hellraiser guy. I've watched them all and I can tell you that the best one is number two.

[idunnosomename]

Looks like Warner Bros now considers Rick and Morty to be one of its most prized possessions.

https://www.avclub.com/that-space-jam-cameo-isnt-rick-and-morty-selling-out-i-1847310645

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPJO6Q0DRtc

wonder if Justin Roiland got an extra big pay back for those few lines or if he was contractually obliged by the media empire

[Alberon]

Another duff one. A lot of running around and explosions to try and cover up for a bad script. Felt like an American Dad story, to be honest.

[Blumf]

That's very unfair on American Dad[nb]They did a much better 'National Treasure' riff, for starters[/nb]. Otherwise, yep, another hollow episode.

[Master Cylinder]

At least with American Dad it knows what it is and isn't entirely run on a smug sense of self-satisfaction. Rick and Morty can be funny, but boy do they make it hard to like.

[ArtParrott]

The only similarity to American Dad was the Bruce Chutnick intro song. Except when American Dad did that type of thing (e.g. for Stelio Kontos) it was funnier.

[Sonny_Jim]

The one with the sperms felt very much like the episode where Mortys love potion ends up turning everybody into monsters, might have been that I rewatched it recently.  The quality definitely drifts up and down, which I suppose any series does but I'm definitely getting the feeling that they are running out of steam a bit.

wrt to 'splosions, I reckon one of the producers loves action films a little bit too much and if they could create a sincere action film[nb]Probably in the vein of Shane Black[/nb], they probably would.

[Retinend]

At least with American Dad it knows what it is and isn't entirely run on a smug sense of self-satisfaction. Rick and Morty can be funny, but boy do they make it hard to like.

Yeah... when it falls it falls hard, because it's so very pleased with itself. I don't think I'm contradicting myself here, because I do very much love it when it's working for me.

The most consistent criticism I've had of the show is how it deals with the brother-sister parents-children relationships. I don't know how they could have written it any differently, but these fictional relationships in the show never sit quite right with me. It's hard to explain it but they sort of seem like housemates rather than a family.

[Fry]

Yeah that episode was dogshit. No real story or theme, just a series of events happening. really. Like an Interdimensional cable sketch stretched on for 22 minutes, which could be good. But none of the jokes really landed.

[NoSleep]

The most consistent criticism I've had of the show is how it deals with the brother-sister parents-children relationships. I don't know how they could have written it any differently, but these fictional relationships in the show never sit quite right with me. It's hard to explain it but they sort of seem like housemates rather than a family.

Isn't that because granpa Rick is upsetting the usual dynamic? Morty & Rick fully know they're not part of that family and Summer also knows they aren't. And Beth may or may not be a clone. And Morty lost the ticket for the Jerry nursery, so Jerry may not be the right Jerry.

[Retinend]

I think it's more to do with the lack of any equilibrium there in the first place. The attitude seems to be "we're all cool, except Gerry". They are all "cool with" each other in this "unfamilial" way, if that's a word. It's hard to explain what I mean. Normally at this point I would say "so just don't watch it", but I'm already hooked.

[NoSleep]

Jerry is exceptionally uncool, though.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Struggled with that one past the pre-credits. This series does feel like it's turning into a show they need to churn out due contractual obligation rather than because anyone involved has any genuine interest in it. Previous series' felt like every episode meant something, now it's just conveyor belt "content".

[Sonny_Jim]

To be fair, they did kind of paint themselves into a corner.  It's hard to feel peril for your characters when you know the writers can pull the multiverse card and have them pop up somewhere else.  It's probably a very common criticism for the show and they do work hard to make it at least fun.

I also think Jerry is cool, certainly more so than he was in the early episodes.  Yay character arcs.

[NoSleep]

This latest episode was written by the same person as wrote the snake episode, which it resembled without being as good. To be fair, at least it felt like a Rick & Morty episode whilst ep 4 seemed way off the mark.

Ryan Ridley's departure is going to be hard to overcome (at least as long as Harmon & Roiland don't show interest in steering it themselves).

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

I thought the first few episodes were perfectly fine, but this last two have been very by-the-numbers. The turkey mutants felt like an obvious rehash of the intelligent dogs from the first season - but that episode also had the Inception/Nightmare on Elm Street plot as well. It's a measure of how imaginative the show used to be, that an episode which ends with laser battle on the Washington Monument in space can feel bereft of ideas.

[mjwilson]

Ah well, at least there's only five more seasons to go.

[Master Cylinder]

To be fair, they did kind of paint themselves into a corner.  It's hard to feel peril for your characters when you know the writers can pull the multiverse card and have them pop up somewhere else.

And they can't  really pull a Venture Bros when they had the same sort of thing with the clones and get rid of them cause multiverse is a much a grander thing that's harder to sweep under.

[chveik]

multiverse schmultiverse

[madhair60]

i thought this episode was really good to be honest

[Led Souptin]

I thought it was fine, some great jokes here and there, but what I like about rick and morty most is when they expose a sci fi trope and really mess around with it.
Not a massive fan of "rick fights the president" or "rick fights the president but they are turkeys"

[weaseldust]

i thought this latest thanksgiving one was much better than some of the previous eps, possibly on par with episode one. i got a good laugh out of the president's life flashing before his eyes mostly revolving around the playstation releases. however i don't really like these south park-esque songs they keep doing...

i think the shittest episode so far was the hell episode and the one with planetina was a dud, didn't really go anywhere or seem to have a point

[NoSleep]

i got a good laugh out of the president's life flashing before his eyes mostly revolving around the playstation releases.

Yeah, loved that.

[Blumf]

So the latest episode (S05E07) is greeted here with a big shrug?

Bit better than the last two, but can't remember any big laughs.

Spoiler alert

Giant incest baby brought back

[close]

, but, so what?

Spoiler alert

Cheap anime characters piss take

[close]

didn't really hit.

Spoiler alert

Scarface homage

[close]

, yawn.

[selectivememory]

The decoy episode was so good, but it's shocking how bad it's been since then. Definitely the worst stretch of episodes in its entire run so far. Kind of feels like a different show now. Something very off about it all. Real Community Season 4 vibes for me.

[lankyguy95]

I started a post yesterday which I then deleted because I couldn't be bothered to finish it. That should summarise my feelings on it.

The dialogue seems so flat at the moment. It used to be so quick and filled with jokes and at the moment there are skeletal impressions of jokes but nothing actually there. I haven't looked anything up but have they really got a whole new set of people writing this now? Because it sure feels that way.

[Alberon]

Certainly feels like we've left the Golden age of this show and are well into the Silver.

At the moment the drop in quality feels similar to Futurama after its first cancellation.

[Led Souptin]

Agree that the first two eps were really good, even a step up from season 4 I thought, but everything since has been lackluster.

Still enjoying it though, a bad episode of Rick and Morty is better than most other animated comedy right now, but it's not meeting the high bar that it's set previously.

I guess the theme theyre going with this season is showing that the family working together are monstrously worse than the sum of their parts. The pay off of Giant Incest Baby wasn't actually paying anything off though was it? A bit lolrandom, and not in a fun Roiland way.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Spoiler alert

Giant Incest Baby

[close]

is some proper bottom of the barrel South Park shit. Bringing it back and trying to give it legitimacy with the

Spoiler alert

Summer speech

[close]

just made it worse.

Agree with everything feeling really flat now. I think part of the problem is pushing Morty into the background and pushing Summer to the foreground. I don't think Spencer Grammer can give Summer the sort of performance the past couple of stories have needed. The

Spoiler alert

incest baby

[close]

speech felt really underperformed, for instance. There's also not the conflict between Rick and Summer that you get with Rick and the others, so the dynamic is uninteresting.

But there's still good stuff in there. Properly laughed at the idea of

Spoiler alert

Boob World

[close]

and

Spoiler alert

Morty's ferret being based in a multistorey car park that's really awkward to get out of

[close]

. The post-credits about

Spoiler alert

kaiju being sent to deliver the cure for AIDS

[close]

was suitably silly as well.