“Rick and Morty” Season 4 Premiere “Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat”
November 14, 2019 7:27 am |
Season Four of “Rick and Morty” opens with the title characters (both voiced by co-creator Justin Roiland) visiting an alien planet to harvest “death crystals,” which grant you the power of seeing how you die. Morty sees a flash of, among several possibilities, himself dying of old age while his longtime crush Jessica stands over him. It’s a Morty-centric bottle episode!
Obsessed with this outcome, Morty bases his every decision on visions from the crystal, which inadvertently lend him god-like powers in a series of escalating encounters based on the 1988 anime classic “Akita.” You know, typical “Rick and Morty” stuff.
The episode picks up after Season Three ended with the family coming back together and Rick, by his own admission, becoming the least important member.
To underscore this, he dies early on during the Season Four premier and is several times regenerated in different realities by a cloning machine, in one of the episode’s main running gags. We meet Prawn rick, Wasp rick, and Rick as some kind of mutant teddy bear, with the only common denominator being that all of the universes are fascist. It may or may not be a commentary on our current political state, but the show, typically, makes it funny rather than preachy.
When Rick finally gets himself back together, he must save Morty from the blob-like monster he’s become, similar to Tetsuo’s final mutation in “Akira.”
Because it’s “Rick and Morty,” this involves Hologram Rick taking over the god-like powers and Wasp Rick pitching in to save the universe by impregnating, and thus exploding, the monster’s left eye. Because, why wouldn’t it? The show for three seasons has delighted in subverting expectations, often favoring absurdity and randomness over strict or cohesive plot through-lines.
If that sounds like a complaint, it isn’t. “Rick and Morty” remains smart, ridiculous and singular. What started as a raunchy parody of “Back to the Future” on LSD has morphed into a show that can and will do absolutely anything in the name of comedy.
“There’s a lesson here, and I’m not the one that’s gonna figure it out,” Rick says during the end of the Season Four premier, breaking the fourth wall and letting the viewers know the point is, there wasn’t one.
There’s also a meta tease for the rest of the season, with Rick offering, “From now on, Rick and Morty [will be] doing a little of this and a little of that.” Morty adds, “Yeah, sometimes we’ll do classic stuff. You know, other times we’ll do whatever!”
The episode is full of similar hints of it being a one-off, including Fascist Morty demanding, “Stop doing meta commentary. Just have fun. We’re going on a simple, fun, classic adventure.”
“Rick and Morty” will almost certainly get back to some of its recurring season-spanning plotlines, including Evil Morty and the Citadel, but viewers should also expect a slew of more straightforward sci-fi romps in the abbreviated Season Four. If the premier is any hint, the show, like most of Rick’s bizarre gadgets, continues to fire on all cylinders.
PCL Rating: Tupperware
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: FRESH 🍅
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