How Poopy Got His Poop Back

It goes far beyond the new voices. Rick felt like an entirely new character, Morty was barely even in the episode, and the plot was irrelevant to the main story line. After all the setup from last seasons finale and the fact that Rick and Morty premiers usually advance the plot the most, I was super bummed out when I began to realize this was just a lame story about Mr PoopyButthole getting his wife back (which he didn't even, she hated him afterwards). I'd be lying if I said I don't fear for the future of this show; everyone was so caught up by the fact that Rick and Morty were gonna sound different that they completely disregarded Roilands influence on the show itself. Feels like it's making a shift towards a more pg-13 demographic and my god does it suck.

I'm in my 40s, raised with the Simpsons (and DBZ) and this episode gave me the same feeling when I gave up on Homer&co 15/20y ago.

Like for the Simpsons, this show has lost its mojo over time, but I would have argued was still good.

But this episode is the stereotype of a show turned sour.

No real story, just a pretext for some random stuff to happen in a succession of shorts gags. Bring some random hollywood star to make up for the boring story and do another set of short gags. Then bring some random TV/Cinema reference and do another set of random short gags...

In the end, now it looks a lot like the cheap recipe of American Dad or Family guy but worse.

Don't Cry Because It's Over; Smile Because It Happened.

The voices sounded kinda similar to me. But they all blended together, like they're cut from the same boring cloth. No energy, no spark. Felt like I was stuck in some robot chat room with no escape button.

The episode itself on the other hand was aweful. It had potential - could've been this epic tale with old Rick's gang getting into some wild antics for a mate. But no, it was a swing and a miss.

Super shallow story. It's like they weren't even trying. Honestly, it felt like they just threw it together last minute. Hopefully the next episodes will be better than this, or people will definitely just bail.

There was nothing particularly creative or interesting about this episode, which is usually not the case for season openers in this series. Also there were almost no jokes that I found to be funny at all, which might not be the case for everyone, it could just be personal preference. Overall I just found it to be a quite boring episode unfortunately, one of the main draws of Rick and Morty for me is it's consistent creative concepts, and there was really just nothing here like that.

I will also say that I did find Rick's new voice to be pretty distracting. It's not just that it's different, I just don't think the performance is there yet. But if given time I'm sure the new actor will be fine, he just needs to find his stride. I will say the new Morty is pretty much indistinguishable for me, at least from the few lines he had in this episode. Mr. Poopybutthole was also a standout in the episode, I forgot he also needed to be changed and I didn't even notice a difference. I'm very glad that Roiland's departure seems to have had a minimal effect on the show's quality, with Rick being the only noticeable change, but maybe I'll feel differently as the season goes on.

This episode is basically written like a middling Simpsons celebrity special-guest episode. It really feels like this episode's been re-written to purposely make fun of Roiland after his departure from the show. There are a lot of callbacks to previous episodes that aren't really jokes so much as references. For a show that's headed by someone known for his cleverness, this episode misses the mark. I probably laughed...once?

The replacement voice actors were clearly still learning the nuances, and calibrating them well is on the director & Harmon. Cardoni does the best with the challenging character of Rick. The main failure of this premiere is the lack of joy that the actors are bringing to the roles, even some of the regulars.

The animation is still stellar, so I'm giving the episode 5 stars for that, but some of the POVs are still questionable, such as one shot involving Mr. PB that undercuts the suspense of a life-threatening situation necessary for the subsequent joke.

I'm pretty bummed that this show's quality is seeming to suffer yet again. This feels a lot like the Season 4 dragon episode, and I'm wondering if this is just an intentional passive drop in quality to help the show get canceled.