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.

Back to its ol' recognizable self, I can't believe it. The torment of the past year is gone.

For most of the episodes up till now since Vat of Acid, the characters weren't like themselves at all for some reason, and the content of the episodes was too random, meaningless-seeming and disjointed, lacking intellectual content and emotional depth, not to mention not funny most of the time (even the first episode this season). I'm relieved it's finally back to how it was before with this episode, and I'm glad they seem to have payed no more attention to the fans and the internet now. I hope they continue doing that.

Thank you.

A really cool sci-fi concept with good action and comedy! I loved the simulation concept and how it furthered the relationship between Rick and Morty. I don't know how they keep coming up with these concepts! I also loved the B plot with Summer and the Die Hard stuff was hilarious. The only thing holding this episode back is some of the jokes, some of them felt forced but that's okay because the jokes that were funny were REALLY funny and reminded me of old seasons of Rick and Morty. The pacing was good, the animation was great, and the dialogue between Rick and Morty was emotional and gave us a lot more insight on how Morty feels about Rick and the other way around. Overall this is just another good episode from the Rick and Morty team and I'm super excited to see where they take it from here. Good job to the team and I'm looking forward to where they take the season in the future!

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.

My biggest gripe with the show over the past few seasons is that they almost always try to fit two storylines in a single episode and often have them tie in together at the end. That is very hard to do well in a 23 minute runtime. Both of the stories in this episode had potential (ESPECIALLY the 5 billion Mortys concept) but it felt rushed and barely developed since they kept cutting back to Summer.

Also, I don't know to put this into words very well but the spacing/timing of jokes and punchlines feels...off? Characters respond too quickly without letting a setup develop is the best way I could describe it.

Overall, this show is still entertaining but a fraction of what it was in seasons 1 and 2.