Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 6 “Never Ricking Morty” Recap & Review
Sweet crack of the bat, we’re f*ckin back babyy! It’s been 140 whole days since season 4 episode 5 Rattlestar Ricklactica aired, and tonight — May 3rd, 2020 — we finally got the next installment of the internet’s favorite show.
I’m not 100% sure why they holstered “the other five” until tonight, but… I’m sure glad they did. Because frankly, I need this a lot more now than I did back in December of 2019. And the fact that the writers even shoehorned in a coronavirus joke at the end of the episode lets me know that they’re acutely aware of the fans’ desire for more Rick and Morty.
Speaking of writers, recapping this episode’s plot would be somewhat pointless because, well, there isn’t one. There is no story. As Rick would say, “It’s more of a freeform anthology, don’t overthink it.”
But, even for an anthology, “Never Ricking Morty” is a complete shit show narratively speaking. But… that’s kinda the point. The randomness and discontinuity are largely intentional. The whole episode is intended to satirize storytelling and scriptwriting as an art form and shit all over people who overthink things like plot and dialogue and character development.
They even make reference to the Bechdel Test, a form of literary analysis that examines stories for feminist values. A story passes the Test if there are A) realistic female characters who B) interact with one another and C) discuss something other than men or sex.
The Rick and Morty writers bring this form of literary criticism to life by cutting away to a scene involving just Beth and Summer. The two female women talk about their periods and strong boobs and then fighting giant scorpions by shooting lasers out of the vaginas. Boom. Bechdel Test = passed.
Yeah, I got a B- in English Methods, suck it.
Throughout this episode, Rick and Morty debate the limits of suspending disbelief when it comes to sci-fi stuff, what is and isn’t considered “canon,” improvised dialogue in a scripted show, and whether or not teleportation is a cheap plot device.
Rick even comments on how his own character is written in the show saying,
“I was kinda funny, sometimes, mostly burping…”
All of the writers’ jokes about storytelling and plot development are personified by a character named “Story Lord” who beats the shit out of Rick and Morty and tortures them for not adhering to the strict principles of fiction writing.
One of the vignettes that take place in Story Lord’s lair is clearly making fun of the “Reddit” fans who spend hours of their free time theorizing and over-reading into every minute detail of the show.
“Evil Morty” makes an appearance in this scene, commanding an army of slave Rick. To thwart Evil Morty and Story Lord, Rick accepts Jesus Christ into his life and makes friends with characters named “Crossy and Biblesarus…” When Rick accepts Christ into his heart, Story Lord yells at him, exclaiming, “No! Your character wouldn’t do that!”
Why is Evil Morty’s presence significant? Because having this overly read-into character appear in a scene about NOT reading too far into shit is the perfect way to tell everyone to just chill out and not put everything under a microscope.
This episode was a freeform anthology just like interdimensional cable or Morty’s mindblowers, but this time it went a level deeper. It was an elaborate metacommentary about how stupid metacommentaries are.
The overall message from this episode is simple: Everybody, chill the f*ck out, this is a pretend show in a pretend universe populated by pretend characters. A handful of funny people wrote this shit for your amusement, it’s not supposed to be a literary masterpiece.
The episode ends — of course — by breaking with continuity and throwing us a complete curveball.
In the final scene, Rick tells Morty how proud he is of him for buying shit. He tells Morty that consumerism is the best and that he, “Loves buying things so much.” He congratulates Morty for, “Looking into the bleeding jaws of capitalism and saying YES DADDY!”
It makes no f*cking sense thematically and I guess that’s the goddamn point.
Morty is understandably confused when his grandpa praises him for spending money. Picking up on his vibe, Rick just yells, “Nobody’s out shopping with this f*cking virus!”
Review:
I thought that this episode was intelligent, ironically well-written considering they were insulting writers the whole time, and — most importantly — funny.
Was it my favorite episode of the season? F*ck no. The Old Man and the Seat all day. Was it a solid return to form? Yeah, absolutely.
The only thing I didn’t appreciate was the first 5 minutes of the episode… I had no idea what was going on. Nobody had any idea what was going on. Millions of viewers were staring at their TVs thinking, “For f*ck’s sake, what the f*ck is happening right now!?” And it turned out that the answer was (drum roll, please) NOTHING. Nothing was happening. It was all horseshit and misdirection intended to prove a point about continuity and plot not mattering. After that big reveal around minute 6, I started to settle into the episode and enjoy it.
I’ve always liked when this show is self-aware. When the writers break the 4th wall and insert little jokes at their own expense, I think it shows humility and endears them to the audience. And this episode was nothing but self-aware inside jokes at their own expense, at the critics' expense, and the fans’ expense. Everybody got shit on in equal measure.
As an English major, I appreciated their references to things like the Bechdel Test, narrative structure, and formal elements of writing. Even if it was basically to say that none of it mattered.
Let me know what you guys thought in the comments.
Thanks for reading,
CP
