Rick and Morty – Rickdependence Spray Review

Season Five of Rick and Morty seems to be the Morty being horny season. “Rickdependence Spray” is the third episode revolving around Morty’s libido being central to the plot. It is also set to be one of the most controversial episodes amidst the fandom.

Morty discovers the magic of the breeding mount at the horse hospital and volunteers so he could use the device. However, Rick takes a load of horse reproductive material so he can make a biological weapon to kill an underground race of humanoid horse cannibals. Rick’s experiment results in the creation of gigantic killer sperm and Morty tries to hide his role in the matter.

At the time of writing the episode has a 5.8 rating on IMDB. This makes it the worst-rated Rick and Morty episode by a country mile. The episode has two major factors against it: being a long gross-out gag and was random.

It seemed that in the writer’s room random words were said and they formulated a plot around that. ‘Gigantic killer sperm,’ ‘badass marines,’ ‘cannibalistic horse people,’ and ‘giant incest baby’ were all shouted out at some point. Events in the episode include a massive battle in Las Vegas and Rick finding out he fathered a child with a horse princess. This description would make Rick and Morty a hard sell and if “Rickdependence Spray” was someone’s first episode it would also have been their last.

Fans of the series like to say Rick and Morty is a smart show pretending to be dumb. That description has been true because it had complex philosophical and scientific ideas, some heart-wrenching moments, obscure pop culture references, and mix it with some low-brow humour. It would be hard to argue “Rickdependence Spray” was a smart episode.

“Rickdependence Spray” felt like a cross between Big Mouth and Family Guy. The setup seemed like something that would have happened to Andrew Glouberman because his horniness would get the better of him, whilst Family Guy likes to see itself as edgy for its crude and dark humour. It’s a bad sign for Rick and Morty to be compared to Family Guy. At least with Big Mouth, it’s a show about the pitfalls of puberty so it can get away with this type of story.

Rick and Morty was not above crude humour, but it was never as graphic as in “Rickdependence Spray.” The episode boiled down to being one long spunk joke. Rick even gets encased in jizz which was just gross instead of funny.

The idea for the episode would have been more fitting for “Morty’s Mind Blowers.” In this episode, Morty does something that leads to death and destruction. It’s the sort of event that Morty would want to be erased from his mind and the concept would have worked better as a two-minute sketch.

Whilst the plot for ‘Rickdependence Spray’ was bizarre and off-putting, I would be lying if I said I didn’t laugh at some jokes. Beth had a dig against Marvel movies which I like to think was an inside joke because some of Rick and Morty’s writers have gone on to work on MCU projects. There was humour and social commentary with Beth and Summer having to deal with the blatant sexism of the President and his team. Jerry got to show how useful he is when working for the President. However, the funniest joke from the episode came from the YouTube comments because someone’s response to Beth saying the Horse Hospital put food on the table was ‘you told me it was beef stew.’

There were also pop culture references in the episode. Morty’s relationship with Sticky resembled Hiccup and Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon. The Battle of Las Vegas had visual cues that matched Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and World War Z. The post-credit scene was clearly a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

After three strong episodes ‘Rickdependence Spray’ was a big misstep for Season Five. It was the worst episode of the season so far and one of the worst the show has ever made. A few decent jokes were not enough to lift a bad concept, story, and an over-reliance on shock value.