Rick: A Mort Well Lived

Like last week's episode, it's another Rick and Morty that I'm not sure I'd describe as being hilarious, but one running two plots, both of which have the seed of a good idea, but neither of which felt developed quite enough.

An off-world arcade is attacked by terrorists and the power disruption leaves Morty's (Justin Roiland) consciousness spread over the millions of non-playable characters in the game he was playing. Rick (Justin Roiland) goes in to convince these individuals of their true nature, but a divided Morty struggles to decide whether to believe him. Meanwhile Summer (Spencer Grammer) tries to foil the terrorists, led by an Alien Hans Gruber (Peter Dinklage) by doing a "Die Hard", except she hasn't seen the film.

The Rick and Morty story feels like it's ground we've covered before, with Morty struggling to decide whether Rick actually cares about him. There's a nice little moment in a late scene that suggests he does, more than he lets on. The "Die Hard" story has an excellent vocal performance from Dinklage, and some comedy from the rest of his group of Jar Jar-esque aliens. But it's central joke, about everyone acknowledging that their doing "Die Hard" is beaten to death pretty quickly, and lacking in an imaginative twist to elevate the premise

As I say, both these stories are decent enough ideas but neither felt quite fleshed out enough to me and neither of them produced enough laughs. I wouldn't go as far as to say that the edition was a failure, but it's a fairly underwhelming episode for a show that often aims, and hits, much higher.

Some people that have watched the previous few episodes may be disappointed with this episode, since it isn't that lore heavy and doesn't seem to be accomplishing anything, but when talking about this show you shouldn't expect continuity every episode, sometimes you just gotta appreciate the zany stories that this show has to offer.

Having said that this was a blast of an episode, it reminded me a bit of Mortyplicity by how disconnected it is from the main story, but that doesn't stop it from being an overall great ride. Very solid episode and season so far and hopefully that consistency will be maintained, can't wait for the next episode.

Rick A Mort Well Lived is nothing that special in comparison to the episodes that came before it. I found it pretty boring throughout its run, especially the entire Die Hard subplot. It was sort of funny at first, but the joke gets old quick when you realize that's the entire subplot. The main plot with Roy was interesting at first, but didn't maintain its neat concept for long. I feel that there was a lot of story potential for a return to Roy, but it didn't work super well here. This episode was a large step down from last week's premiere and hopefully the next episode is better in terms of its premise and execution.

The snappy, high-intensity dialogue of the first seasons is long gone, replaced by over-explaining everything and repeating the same joke over and over.

I do like the concept of the Roy subplot. It's creative and inventive, but execution is lacking. It gets too sentimental at times - it would be good if the writers weighed up the softer pieces with the more brutal humour that Rick and Morty is known for.

In the end, both the overall plot and the Roy subplot is painfully predictable and generic.

Some people wanted more Rick and Morty and they wanted it now. Unfortunately, the result is that the episodes are just not that special anymore.

In fact, they have been perfectly mediocre adult-cartoons.

Or should I say, the Die Hard 5 we deserved?

I'm not sure I understand any of the negative reviews for this one. I get that Season 5 wasn't perfect and maybe Season 4 wasn't either, but I don't think the quality in writing or character work has dropped substantially from the first few seasons if at all. I enjoyed this as much as any other Rick and Morty episode!

This was actually a pretty fascinating episode though. I thought Morty being trapped in a simulator was really interesting and executed really well. This felt like a S1 or S2 plot to me.

Summer doing a Die Hard was also really funny if you've seen that movie. All of the references to that first film and other action movies was insane. I'm sure I missed some myself. I immensely enjoyed Peter Dinklage.

All in all, another solid episode of one of the best animated programs airing today. It's deep enough and absolutely hilarious.