[7.5/10] What do I come to Rick and Morty for? Surprisingly thoughtful emotional material coupled with beaucoup sci-fi weirdness and sci-fi storytelling, and “Rickmancing the Stone” had that in spades.
Most of the episode takes place in a Mad Max-style wasteland, and while that setting already feels a little passe (that’s what you get for going a year and a half between seasons), it makes for a nice launching board for each of the characters to find their own way to deal with Beth and Jerry’s divorce.
My favorite of these is Morty’s. We’ve seen that Morty has deep-seated issues he doesn’t know how to process other than with rage and violence before (most notably in the purge episode) and so a Rick-injected murderous arm with a mind of its own proves to be just what the doctor ordered. It works for character development as whomping people in the “blood dome” helps him deal with his disgust at his dad’s lack of a backbone, but it also works for comedy, with the arm gesticulating and using sign language to try to communicate. Plus the heart-to-heart between them as the arm goes on a roaring rampage of revenge gives a nicely off-kilter texture to the whole thing.
Summer’s was less my favorite, but still good. Her dealing with her current issues with her dad by shacking up with the leader of the post-apocalyptic wasteland tribe (who was, I think, voiced by Joel McHale?) had some juice to it. (Their discussion about his mustache -- particularly the “hat on a hat” bit -- was especially funny.) The fact that Rick messes them up by bringing electricity and the same workaday B.S. of the real world is a fun twist, and Summer hugging her dad and appreciating his “this is all bullshit anyway” mentality is a nice bow to tie on the whole thing.
Rick is his usual amoral but story-driving self. I love his plot to try to create android to fool Beth. There’s something amusing about him trying to retrieve Morty and Summer despite his claims that there’s “infinite versions of them” because to find replacements would be more trouble than its worth. Plus the robots are hilarious, with Robo-Morty’s protestations that he wants to be “alive” and run through a stream being particularly funny in that pitch-black science fiction way that R&M does so well.
On the whole, this was a great episode to kick off the new season (aside from our April Fools Day preview) and to have the characters (and the show) process Beth and Jerry’s divorce rather than just move on like nothing happened.
(As an aside, I assume it’s Rick who’s causing the wind to whisper to Jerry that he’s a loser and having stray dogs chew up his unemployment check? Presumably to prolong this current situation and keep him from developing the stones to go after Beth again? Neat/characteristically horrible if so.)
BLACK MIRROR JUST GOT ESOTERIC!!
I would argue over half of this latest season explores the supernatural from demons to folklore and (black) magic, which the show has never explored before from my memory (this binge has made me want to rewatch a lot of the episodes though). In fact, the first and second seasons are almost the antithesis of this sort of thing where it would centre around politics or would only blame humans for things like greed, envy or lust barely realising at the time that these are labelled as deadly sins in the Bible for a reason. I'm willing to bet that Charlie Brooker has had a mindset shift about the world since 2011 - as have I and so many others.
This final episode certainly rids any subtlety that may have been had with exploring demonic possession but this honestly makes it the most hilarious Black Mirror has ever been - I laughed countless times at Paapa Essiedu's perfect performance.
It's already proven (from reviews I've read in the last two days) that much of the audience are reminiscing over the days where the show would only talk about technology but I personally loved the direction it's gone in for undoubtedly its best season since s3. Joan is Awful and especially Mazey Day were mid but both still had a super likeable element to them. The other three episodes, including this one, were fucking killer!
Charlie Brooker said "let's try live action South Park for 2023" and I'm all here for it.
Bravo.
Quite possibly one of the most amazing episodes of any show I've seen. The humor throughout, addressing/explaining the depression the way it was done towards the end, Jimmy having his own mental fight over which decision to make and then making the less selfish one. Acknowledging that he truly does care for her, and loves her. Right after having said to her what he thought it would be like in ten years with her. He saw the car and it reminded him of all the good times that she was there for & with him, just so much going on throughout the whole episode.
Most importantly for me though, was when he built her a "box" to separate her from the rest of the world. He got in it and took care of her. Saying, without words, that he's there for her no matter what and she is his life now, she is everything he wants and he'll go through any amount of hell for even a moment of heaven with her. Aya Cash's acting, particularly at the time she said the line, "You stayed?!" - so many surprise feels.
I've recently started dealing with depression issues that have been undiagnosed for a number of years. I'm still learning about it & myself, and my amazing wife is learning with me and helping when I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel or when I can't see how I've become. I can never explain it to her and this show has helped to give a voice to something I can't understand enough to explain. Every bit of this season, and the end of this episode, was incredible, witty, funny when it should be, serious when it needed to be. Perfect balances all around. Nothing I've watched in a long time has evoked as much emotion for me as this episode did. My wife & I watched the ending SEVERAL times.
"Need To Know" stars William Petersen (CSI) as an investigator looking into why people in a rural community are going insane. Francis McDormand, playing a woman whose father is a victim of the "disease", also assists in the investigation. In the opening scene, a farmer walks aimlessly along an old dirt road. He whispers something in the ear of a stranded motorist, who begins to laugh and wail hysterically, instantly driven insane by the farmer's secret. This is an absolutely terrific opening and left me on edge, wondering what just occurred. It totally geared me up for the story to come. There's also a great scene where Petersen's character is attacked by a kindly old woman. Later, he visits McDormand's father in the mental hospital. The room appears to be covered in blood and her father rambles on non-sensically. It's downright creepy.
The ending is great and it made me wonder what may have happened to the world as time went on. I especially enjoyed the last scene and shot of Petersen as he breaks the fourth wall and turns toward the viewer almost as if he's compelled to pass along the life-ruining secret. The silence followed by a distant scream from the farmhouse is very effective, as is Charles Aidman's closing narration. This is my favorite story of all of the '80s revival episodes.
8.5/10. One the last truly great episode of the classic era. From the opening soccer parody, to the hilarious commentary on firearms' place in American culture, to the jabs at sleazy motels, "The Cartridge Family" brings both the laughs and the biting satire that the show is known for. I'm especially fond of sequences like the one at the table with Homer trying to put the safety on and finding increasingly (and hilariously) implausible ways to up the ante in messing with Marge's picture.
While the perspective of the folks behind the episode is quite clear, they do a good job of establishing that as wacky as certain gun owners can be, the problem isn't people with guns -- it's people like Homer with guns. To that end, the scene with the NRA members who are as shocked at his behavior as Marge was is a key. But beyond the political side of the episode, there's a solid emotional throughline as well, of Homer realizing that without a family and the woman he loves to protect, a gun is pretty useless to him, even if, as he acknowledges, he can't let it go.
All of this adds up to a hilarious episode with solid insights about gun culture in the USA and enough character-based and emotional storytelling to tie it all together.
[8.4/10] My first (semi) live IASIP premiere! Huzzah!
Like everyone, I wondered how the show was going to deal with Dennis’ absence, but I probably should have expected what we got, a delightfully meta riff on what the absence of an essential character means, replete with boatloads of raunch and comedic takes on co-dependence and remaining static.
Maybe that’s a little high-falutin for a show as juvenile as IASIP, but I don’t think so. Especially as this show has gotten older, it’s gotten more ambitious, and dare I say deeper, even as it slings episodes where people play a sex doll like a tuba.
I think my favorite thing in the episode is how it explores the ways in which The Gang is fixated and dependent on Dennis as an ingredient in their group, while being blind to the ways in which he holds them all back. It’s striking how better situated and successful everyone seems to be with Dennis gone and with Cindy (Mindy Kalig, ably taking part in the show’s particular banter) calling the shots. The plans are better formulated, there’s more positivity, and everyone seems do be doing well overall.
Everyone except Mac, that is. I appreciated the tack where Mac, most of all, is still fixated on Dennis, and without his sexuality to repress, he’s now just repressing his crush on Dennis, replete with a lifelike and disturbing sex doll. The meta humor of Charlie and Dee assuring Cindy that no one knows why Mac does what he does (probably just a cry for help or attention) and to ignore it and move on was well done in that vein.
But Mac gets The Gang stuck on the “Dennis-shaped hole” in their lives in the same way that Mac does. The bell tolling as the camera zooms in on the unnerving face of the Dennis-esque sex doll is a great running gag, and I like how the episode uses it. Dee is feeling self-confident, Mac is proud of his body, and Frank and Charlie are competently executing (and appreciating) the plan for once, only for them to hear Dennis’s negging and have it still bring them down.
It’s a frickin’ neurosis, and the show uses it both for humor and for its dark character explorations. The way everyone instantly regresses, and falls back into old habits is well done. I even like how they tie things in with The Waitress, using the whole “absence” thing to tie into Charlie never wanting to talk to her and then tying that into her hearing the Dennis doll too, showing that he’s burrowed into everyone’s brains. Community’s pulled the same trick (and with a similar, albeit more network-friendly version of the same archetype), but it still works in IASIP’s more sophomoric setting.
And I like how the show turns that into a miniature referendum on whether the show itself will evolve (which it has, despite maintaining much of the same style and humor) or whether it will remain the same, reuse the same ryhthms, and so on. It’s not the first time the show’s tackled this sort of thing, but it does it well here, with Cindy representing change and something new, and a surprise return from Dennis himself representing the comforting but sclerotic business as usual.
Of course, this is The Gang, so they go with the easy and familiar. Dennis returns, the status quo is maintained, and with it, the rest of the group are doomed to confidence-shattering insults and failure once more. There’s something implicit in that -- the show kind of admitting that it’s not inclined to evolve or get better in a self-aware but kind of cynical way -- but then again, maybe they know that those familiar rhythms are part of what we love about the show, even if tired bird jokes start to grow thin for both writer and audience. Either way, it’s good to have IASIP back.
[8.7/10] One of the defining Finn moments for me will always be his refusal to kill an “unaligned ant.” Finn’s not above kicking butt when necessary, but killing, particularly someone who has at least some good in them, is the sort of thing that understandably rocks him to his core. So accidentally killing not only someone who means well, in his own twisted sort of way, but who is a reflection of him, is an understandable heavy thing for him to confront.
There’s a mournfulness, a regret that hangs in the air as Finn makes his way back to the treehouse. Jake immediately knows something’s wrong. BMO recognizes that Finn has killed someone (maybe from her experiences with AMO?). And it’s the perfect sort of shock to keep the show’s main character in after such a harrowing, soul-straining experience.
It reaches that point after Fern tricks Finn into entering some old ruins, and then aims to trap him there so that he can take over as the “real Finn” (having mastered his shapeshifting ability to pull off the impersonation). It’s a nice touch for Finn to get so frustrated so quickly and admit he has abandonment issues that exacerbate his problems. And as I mentioned in my write-up for the last episode, there’s something understandable, if terrifying, about Fern’s pretzel logic here and attempt to take over Finn’s life to try to self-actualize.
Finn manages to solve his problem via his PB-constructed robot arm. In the bit that brings most of the episode’s comedy, Bubblegum’s little voice message to Finn (particularly her little hand-puppet bit) and deadpan responses to Finn’s unrelated questions (“what are you doing?” “I’m a weedwacker!”) brought the laughs in an otherwise heavy episode.
It’s heavy because Finn gets out of sorts enough to attack Fern, because his great goal in life is to make everyone happy and see the best in people, and having to see a version of himself that would not only lock him away but try to take over his life has to be an unmooring experience for the young hero. His pleas that it doesn’t have to be this way resonate, and add another level of tragedy when his hope to avoid such “finality” is interpreted as “fatality” and obliterates his doppelganger. The mysterious wizard who collects the remnants of Fern suggests there’s more to come, but the power of the episode comes from Finn crossing a line he’s never crossed in this way before, even accidentally, and the magnitude of force that event has on this kind, decent kid.
[9.0/10] Not since The Sopranos has there been a show on television so devoted to examining the psyches of its characters. I feel like I need to rewatch this episode five times to truly unpack everything there is to glean from such a dense, psychologically complex episode. If there’s been a consistent theme to Season 3, it’s been digging deep into what makes the show’s main characters tick, what makes them who they are, and “Rest and Ricklaxation” both literalizes that (by separating its title characters into their constituent parts) and plays it out in fascinating, emotionally-wrenching detail.
The impetus for that is Rick and Morty going into a psychological toxin-clearing chamber at an intergalactic spa. The catch is that the chamber doesn’t just free you from harmful it elements, it removes those elements, personified as “booger” versions of you, and keeps them trapped in a chamber. So while the real Rick and Morty are feeling happier and more relaxed in the real world, the concentrated toxic parts of them are caught in the chamber working frantically to get out.
The initial results seem predictable, if a little twisted. Toxic Rick is even more hateful and self-aggrandizing than Real Rick. He’s constantly touting his own genius, constantly belittling Morty, and constantly lashing out at the world. Toxic Morty is entirely self-hating and debased, little more than a subservient wart of a person accepting any and all abuse.
What’s interesting is that it seems to flip the good/evil dynamic in Healthy Rick and Healthy Morty. While Healthy Rick feels compelled to rescue their toxic counterparts once he knows of their existence, Healthy Morty likes his own happiness and is constantly resisting any attempt to set things back the way they were under a the guise of not questioning it.
Now splitting protagonists into their good and evil sides is nothing new. (Lord knows the Star Trek franchise returned to that well time and time again.) But the twist, and the thing that makes the episode really stand out from the pack, is that the divergence point for “healthy” Rick and Morty isn’t some arbitrary definition of toxicity, it’s what they themselves view as the toxic parts of their being.
Which leads to all kinds of interesting complications, not the least of which is that Toxic Rick isn’t just some personification of bad, and Healthy Morty isn’t some noble personification of good. It’s a brilliant, fascinating choice to depict Healthy Morty as this honest but heartless, manipulative douchebag. The things that Morty sees as toxic in himself -- his self-doubt and self-loathing -- weigh down an overconfidence and disregard for others’ that, left unchecked, turn him into an uberpopular, successful stock broker, but one who doesn’t really care about anything else or anyone.
It’s a deranged echo of Inside Out’s thesis that negative emotions are vital and valid and help make us stronger individuals. There is something so frighteningly recognizable about Healthy Morty, between his offhand quips about his food being organic to maxims about saying important things face-to-face that reveal a deeper soulless beneath despite all the crowd-pleasing pablum. Toxic Morty isn’t a pretty sight or an encouraging reflection of the real Morty -- he’s deeply unhappy, horribly self-defeating, and outright declares that he wants to die. But the idea that these are the things keeping Morty from becoming a wide-eyed, smiling little monster is one of the boldest and darkest takes this show has offered on one of its main characters.
But that’s only half the impact of the twist. The other, and arguably more foundational reveal in the episode is that Rick really does care about the people in his life, at least Morty, but he views that as toxic, as “irrational attachments” he’d rather overcome. It’s striking in that it answers one of the basic questions the show has been teasing out forever now -- whether despite his protestations to the contrary, Rick loves his family. “Rest Ricklaxation” suggests that he does, but it’s something he hates in himself, which explains how and why he’s always trying to disclaim any such affections.
Rick may acknowledge the other parts of his personality as “toxic.” He admits narcissism, of disregard for the rest of the universe in favor of his own brilliance. But without that, without the parts of him he views as holding him back psychologically, he only has a general care for the world, about the impartial welfare of all, without any personal attachments to his grandson or anything else. The episode digs into who Rick and Morty are, what they hate about themselves, and the people they become without that, which tells you so very much about the show’s title characters.
Meanwhile, amidst all this deep psychological examination is an episode that just works on a nuts and bolts level. The conflict of reconciling toxic and healthy versions of Rick and Morty propels the episode nicely. Seeing a Rick-on-Rick battle throughout the Smiths’ house is thrilling with plenty of creative turns. Healthy Morty’s quiet psychopathy builds and builds keeping a comedic hum the whole time. And there’s even some amusing social commentary as Rick’s toxicity ray covers the globe and Morty’s restaurant acquaintance yells out “sea cucumber!” The main event of “Rest and Ricklaxation” is the show boring into the mental processes and damage of its protagonists, but it keeps the tension and the excitement up for what could otherwise be an overly cerebral exercise.
Like nearly all sitcoms must, it then returns things to the status quo. But while for most shows that’s a return to normalcy and sanity, for Rick and Morty it means returning those two characters to the fraught place where they began the episode. One of the most harrowing scenes in the entire series is the two of them sitting in Rick’s craft in the intro. Morty cries; Rick screams in anguish and admits he wasn’t in control, and the episode doesn’t turn away from the unnerving distress and damage these two individuals have accumulated over the course of their adventures.
This is what the combination of good and bad in Rick and Morty gets them. There’s the sense that both need that balance, to keep them tethered and, in different ways, to keep them caring about people, but the results of that cocktail -- of self-glorification and self-loathing, of brash confidence and debasement, of personal fulfillment and global concern -- doesn’t create a pretty picture for our heroes either.
[7.8/10] It’s occasionally hard to know how to unpack an episode of Rick and Morty. The show has so many layers to it, of irony, of parody, of character, of story, of theme, that’s hard to separate each into discrete groups and consider what exactly the episode is trying to say. I consider it a feature, not a bug, but it does sometimes make the show hard to write about.
That said, there’s a few things (I think) we can take away from the episode. The first is that, as evidenced by this episode and the series finale of Community, Dan Harmon does not particularly care for The Avengers and its related films, now the baby of his old friends The Russo Brothers. “Vindicators 3” does a nice job of parodying these films with the Vindicators themselves, poking fun at oddly specific or impractical problems with convenient or unnecessary solutions, and through Rick more directly commenting on them.
The show has fun playing around with colorful superheroes and mixing them into R&M’s sad sack world where people more readily die and friends and families are more apt to turn on one another than be united by the latest adventure. Bringing in Gillian Jacobs certainly helps the proceedings, and the escalation as the heroes keep getting picked off in Drunk Rick’s amusing Saw-like series of death rooms fits the weird creativity of the show.
Now I’m a fan of the MCU movies, so I’ll admit to bristling a bit at the criticisms of the episode, but I also think that’s kind of the point. The mouthpiece of the show (and to some degree, it’s creators) is Rick, and while Rick rails away at the formulaicness and lack of complication to the Vindicators (and by extension, The Avengers), the show also acknowledges that everybody loves them and hates him, and that it’s not unfounded.
One thing I appreciate about this season of Rick and Morty is how the show’s been committed to exploring its protagonist as a bad guy, and filter it through the lens of the people around him coming to realize that. Morty is his companion through all this excitement (and his sandwich shop punch card to pick an adventure is a nice touch) and seeing Rick not only rain on his parade and excitement about working with The Vindicators, but realize that his grandfather is the one keeping him from more of these sorts of adventures, that he’s being treated as guilty by association, is a very interesting tack.
Hell, I love the fake out of this one, where the group supposes that Morty is the only thing Rick thinks is worthwhile about The Vindicators, and the episode plays up a tearful drunken confession, only to reveal that it’s Noob Noob, the Mr. Poopybutthole-esque underling at The Vindicators’ base, whom Rick was blubbering about. More and more, we’re getting indications that Morty’s questioning how much his grandfather cares about him, how much he wants this insane man to be in his life anymore, and I’m more more and intrigued by it.
Of course, the whole thing naturally (and amusingly) ends with a big party and a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles style rap about the heroes, but the scars are still there. As much as Rick derides The Vindicators (and by extension the du jour superhero movies) as insignificant relative to him and what he can do, they’re something that other people appreciate, something that makes him seem less uniquely brilliant and superlative, and maybe that’s what really bothers him. Rick is the type who always has to kick over someone else’s sandcastle, and Morty’s starting to realize he’s tired of it.
[8.2/10] When I saw that Oliver & Co. were covering Alex Jones, I rolled my eyes a bit, expecting this to be yanking at the low-hanging fruit. But I actually really liked the direct LWT went with this. The best LWT episodes typically have a strong thesis, and that helped this episode become more than just a series of easy digs against a televised nut. Oliver didn't just point to Jones's more outlandish statements to paint him as a loon; he took Jones at his word to put the show in its larger context and paint him as a shill. It's easy to laugh or shake your head at Jones's out there claims, but it's more troubling that he's not only puffing up these imagined problem, but claiming that he can offer solutions. There's something far more corrosive and despicable about that, and looking at him through that lens gave the episode a focus and impact that a more scattered dig-fest wouldn't have.
Otherwise this was business as usual. The opening rundown was entertaining; watching news anchors try to avoid saying the most vulgar parts of Scaramucci's statement was entertaining; and it's always a treat to have Jack McBrayer around. But on the whole this one succeeds on the strength of its main segment, which had a nice throughline to attacking Jones beyond just spotlighting him as a crazy man.
9.7/10. I always appreciate it when SNL has standup comedians on because, unlike many other performers, standups have a clear comedic voice -- it's essentially a necessity in their line of work -- and that allows the show to have a certain clarity and focus in its perspective that makes those episodes stand out. Getting a solid set from Chappelle riffing, as he is wont to do, on the election, on racism, on the unique position of being both black and wealthy in this country, was worth the price of admission alone, and as always his insights and laughs were cathartic. His closing bit about seeing the progress this country has made, and how it prompts him to want to give Donald Trump a chance, and the hope that he'll give the historically disenfranchised a chance too, was sincere and affecting -- the perfect way to end the monologue.
The cold open was affecting too. Kate McKinnon's not the world's greatest singer, but having her sing "Hallelujah," in a way that serves as the perfect mournful epitaph for both Leonard Cohen and Hillary's 2016 campaign, was an inspired choice. It's always a bit polarizing when the comedy people get a bit serious, but the hushed, sad atmosphere of the performance worked for me.
The election, understandably, permeated a lot of the show. The sketch after the monologue, with Chappelle hanging out with a bunch of stereotypical liberals on election night, did a nice job at capturing the sort of confidence morphing into shock that a good chunk of SNL's audience experienced. And the perspective behind the sketch (aided by a cameo from another great standup comedian, Chris Rock), that the African American community wasn't shocked by this, but rather sees it as a lot of more of the same, and that there's a naivete and myopia to the coastal elite crowd experiencing this, was the kind of nice specificity you appreciate from having folks like Chappelle and Rock host the show. (And the "kids talk politics" sketch felt like a neat little coda to that.)
Politics, again as expected, played a big role on "Weekend Update" as well. Jost and Che continue to offer cutting commentary in the wake of the election. (Che's chuckle at "united" in "United States" was a nice opening touch.) And their pseudo joint monologue at the top of the show did a nice job at commenting on the election and the response to it. Bits like Jost's "women of color in the senate" montage were great, and Kate McKinnon's Ruth Bader Ginsburg is always a fun mix of political commentary, goofy dancing, and amusing insult humor.
But the show was funny even when it wasn't digging into the political side of things. The "Inside SNL" sketch was a fun, inside baseball bit. The idea of turning the criticisms of a sketch into a post-game press conference was a nice way to explore the critiques of the show, and the way it leaned into the legitimate criticisms of this cast (which, I have to admit, I myself have made) from Kyle Mooney's broadness to Leslie Jones's unpreparedness to reliance on wacky props, worked well. It was a nice way for the show to respond to those criticisms without seeming too thin-skinned about it. And despite that, I actually liked the pre-taped sketch about Leslie and Kyle dating. It had a different energy than a lot of SNL bits (and Leslie and Kyle bits for that matter), using understatement and sincerity and drawing out the comedy from the little exaggerations on the edges. A highlight to be sure.
Really, the weakest spot was the Walking Dead parody, and even that was solid! It was a thrill to see all the old Chappelle's Show characters again, but there wasn't much of a point to the sketch beyond the nostalgia factor. (Though, Tyrone Biggums's weird speech at the end was good for some laughs.) The other pure comedic sketches worked for me as well. I have to admit I groaned a bit when I realized were gearing up for another "Kate McKinnon is the last girl at the bar" sketch, but the writing of the episode ("that gave me a hard-off") and the absurdity of Kenan's bartender character finding signs of the apocalypse and handing out yellow cards, won me over. And the middle-aged dude still breastfeeding sketch is the kind of out there premise that gets a little gross, but embraces the ridiculousness of it for laughs (and Kyle Mooney's character being oddly into it was a nice touch.)
Overall, it's as strong an episode as SNL has had in what has already been a strong season. I don't know if this is the kickoff of a Dave Chappelle "comeback" as he stated in the goodnights, but if Dave can bring this level of wit, insight, and humor to television once again, I will be incredibly grateful for it.
