Rick and Morty – Never Ricking Morty Review

“Never Ricking Morty” was the most ambitious and meta episodes of the fourth season so far.

Rick and Morty find themselves trapped on a literal story device, a space train filled with characters who have had a past with Rick. Rick and Morty seek for a way to escape the trains as they experience various stories from the past, present, future, and completely made up.

“Never Ricking Morty” was this season’s version of an “Interdimensional Cable” episode and Season Three’s “Morty’s Mind Blowers.” These episodes were essentially clip shows where the clips just happen to be original.

I personally disliked the “Interdimensional Cable” episodes because they were a random collection of skits. “Never Ricking Morty” was more “Morty’s Mind Blowers” because most of the clips were more focused because they mostly involved Rick and Morty. Examples in the episode where Rick fighting a space warlord, and Rick and Morty experiencing different realities when getting the crap beaten out of them.

“Never Ricking Morty” was a self-aware episode regarding its writing. As Rick points out the train was a story device and the plan of the train was a circle. This was a reference to Dan Harmon’s use of the Hero’s Journey template which is often illustrated as a circle that is divided into quarters. The episode explored the literary idea of the Bechdel Test which leads to Morty telling a story about Beth and Summer’s time of the month powers.

The aim of the episode seems to be ‘screw you’ to the fanbase. The showrunners have often gone out of their way to disprove fan theories. In this episode when the Story Lord beats up Rick and Morty Rick states a load of future story possibilities are lost like Summer going to College and a big epic battle against Evil Morty. The ‘screw you’ was confounded by Rick and Morty praying to resolve a situation. The final part of the ‘screw you’ comes right at the end of the episode with a St Elsewhere style reveal.

One of the big features of Rick and Morty was its willingness to look at complicated philosophical ideas. “Never Ricking Morty” returns to questions of reality. When one character was dying, he creates a whole universe in his mind to cope with the pain and impending death. It leads to a dark and hilarious subplot set in this world. Rick and Morty also get to experience some alternative realities when fighting The Story Lord.

“Never Ricking Morty” takes some shot against organised religion. As previous stated Rick uses The Bible to ruin a story. Within the ‘screaming man’ universe a religion forms around the spinning man in the arcade and shows one character breaking his oath of celibacy.

“Never Ricking Morty” shows what Rick and Morty was capable of because it lofty ideas and meta-commentary. But it will be a love-it-or-hate-it episode. I personally loved it.