5x06 Rick & Morty's Thanksploitation Spectacular

[7.7/10] If there’s one thing I love from Rick and Morty, it’s the way the show takes an absurd idea and just commits fully to it. The idea of Rick becoming a turkey to receive a presidential pardon is ridiculous on its face. The President going to extreme lengths, including training a turkey-transforming marine battalion to combat it, is even more ridiculous. But the way this Thanksgiving smorgasbord plays both ideas to the hilt absolutely won me over.

God bless Keath David. The dude is fantastic at spitting at Harmon-style dialogue from his days on Community, and he has such perfect tone and timing through this whole insane charade. Watching move and counter move play out as Rick and the President go toe-to-toe to try to get/prevent that pardon is a hoot. (Or, rather, a gobble under the circumstances.)

Of course, this being the insane show that it is, there’s an even greater level of comic escalation. A regular turkey coming back and getting humanified with Presidential DNA is a nicely absurd turn in the narrative to kick things up an even greater notch. Forcing Rick and the Prez to work together leads to some hilarious banter between the two of them, and the sci-fi silliness just stacks and stacks as the Turkey Clone unfurls his plan and the President/Rick/Morty triumvirate works to stop him.

Along the way, there’s a lot of good side gags. I love Timothy Olymphant playing the type of good old boy he often does, with spoofs of soldier types in action movies played to their ridiculous extremes. The whole episode is an amusing parody of blockbuster shlock like National Treasure and Independence Day, poking fun at the tropes of those pictures at the same time it’s playing them semi-straight. And Jerry’s main concern being that the “anti-portal shimmer” is messing with his turkey timer got a big laugh out of me.

All-in-all, this is as bizarre and deranged a Turkey Day outing as you’d expect from Rick and Morty, and I hope the rampant weirdness taken to its logical end will make it a Thanksgiving classic for years to come.