[9.1/10] What a blast this one was. I think my favorite thing about the episode is its sort of symmetrical structure. The episode begins and ends with grousing over the vat of acid. In between, it has the two title characters going back and forth about what Rick can and can’t do and who has good and bad ideas. And in the creamy center, you have one of the show’s trademark instances of taking a wild sci-fi concept to its insane, comical extremes.
To be honest, it’s the straightest shtick in the episode, but I may love the actual vat of acid humor the best of any of the material in this episode, which is saying something. There’s just something so delightfully absurd and almost vaudevillian about Rick and Mory having to pretend to be dissolved in acid, whether to wait out some alien gangsters or to stave off an angry crowd. (I died laughing at the one with a “Return the Whales” sign.) The gangsters contemplating the moral and practical implications of diving into acid, the quick creation of little rat bones, the “use in case of ladle” ray, and the guy convinced he’s impervious to acid are all such silly but enjoyable bits that really tickled my funny bone.
But I also like the angry banter between Rick and Morty both before and after the “save your place” device. The two going at one another over whether it’s the idea or the execution that makes it, and how come Rick never takes Morty’s ideas feels very meta, but also rooted in the characters’ longstanding love-hate relationship. There’s tons of funny references to other art from Futurama to Bukowksi. And just their general angst and frustration with one another reflects in nicely comic dialogue that still hits home. It walks the line between realness and absurdity so well like this show does at its best.
That said, the actual use of the “Save Your Place’ device was brilliant. In the span of ten minutes, the show mines so much comedy gold from the concept of being able to try things while knowing you have a do-over in play. I love Morty using it for everything from trying to conquer his fears to literally going back when his character dies in a video game. The writers clearly had tons of fun cooking up ridiculous and mundane ideas of how you could use this thing.
But the piece de resistance is the Pixar-like interlude in the middle, where a romance with a generic cute coffee shop girl is conveyed in montage as the ups and downs of teenage love, until it takes a dark turn during a plane crash, leading to a rescue and romantic catharsis that is, of course, all undone accidentally via Jerry’s numbskullery. It is, again, the right mix between sincerity of emotion, pitch-perfect spoofing, and insane escalation that makes this show’s humor work so well.
I also enjoyed this as another example of Rick going to utterly deranged lengths to prove his grandson wrong about something utterly mundane because he’s just so affronted by any whiff of dissent. The reveal that the lesson here isn’t to accept consequences because they define us, but rather the Twilight Zone-style twist that the device killed Morties in alternate realities, and that Morty has to accept everything they did to quasi-reverse that, is superb. It’s a nice swerve for the traditional “do-over” fantasy story, takes it to a characteristically dark place, and does it all with panache.
Overall, this is arguably the best episode of the season, taking something as strangely low-stakes as a fake vat of acid, and spinning it out into the outer bounds of the show’s sci-fi absurdity and comic riffing. A real stand out.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2020-05-27T19:46:36Z
[9.1/10] What a blast this one was. I think my favorite thing about the episode is its sort of symmetrical structure. The episode begins and ends with grousing over the vat of acid. In between, it has the two title characters going back and forth about what Rick can and can’t do and who has good and bad ideas. And in the creamy center, you have one of the show’s trademark instances of taking a wild sci-fi concept to its insane, comical extremes.
To be honest, it’s the straightest shtick in the episode, but I may love the actual vat of acid humor the best of any of the material in this episode, which is saying something. There’s just something so delightfully absurd and almost vaudevillian about Rick and Mory having to pretend to be dissolved in acid, whether to wait out some alien gangsters or to stave off an angry crowd. (I died laughing at the one with a “Return the Whales” sign.) The gangsters contemplating the moral and practical implications of diving into acid, the quick creation of little rat bones, the “use in case of ladle” ray, and the guy convinced he’s impervious to acid are all such silly but enjoyable bits that really tickled my funny bone.
But I also like the angry banter between Rick and Morty both before and after the “save your place” device. The two going at one another over whether it’s the idea or the execution that makes it, and how come Rick never takes Morty’s ideas feels very meta, but also rooted in the characters’ longstanding love-hate relationship. There’s tons of funny references to other art from Futurama to Bukowksi. And just their general angst and frustration with one another reflects in nicely comic dialogue that still hits home. It walks the line between realness and absurdity so well like this show does at its best.
That said, the actual use of the “Save Your Place’ device was brilliant. In the span of ten minutes, the show mines so much comedy gold from the concept of being able to try things while knowing you have a do-over in play. I love Morty using it for everything from trying to conquer his fears to literally going back when his character dies in a video game. The writers clearly had tons of fun cooking up ridiculous and mundane ideas of how you could use this thing.
But the piece de resistance is the Pixar-like interlude in the middle, where a romance with a generic cute coffee shop girl is conveyed in montage as the ups and downs of teenage love, until it takes a dark turn during a plane crash, leading to a rescue and romantic catharsis that is, of course, all undone accidentally via Jerry’s numbskullery. It is, again, the right mix between sincerity of emotion, pitch-perfect spoofing, and insane escalation that makes this show’s humor work so well.
I also enjoyed this as another example of Rick going to utterly deranged lengths to prove his grandson wrong about something utterly mundane because he’s just so affronted by any whiff of dissent. The reveal that the lesson here isn’t to accept consequences because they define us, but rather the Twilight Zone-style twist that the device killed Morties in alternate realities, and that Morty has to accept everything they did to quasi-reverse that, is superb. It’s a nice swerve for the traditional “do-over” fantasy story, takes it to a characteristically dark place, and does it all with panache.
Overall, this is arguably the best episode of the season, taking something as strangely low-stakes as a fake vat of acid, and spinning it out into the outer bounds of the show’s sci-fi absurdity and comic riffing. A real stand out.