Valkyrick

As a long-time fan of Rick and Morty, I never thought I'd say this but the magic is gone.

It's painfully obvious now that Justin Roiland was the creative heartbeat of this show. While Dan Harmon brings structure and depth, Roiland brought the chaos, the wild unpredictability, and that signature absurdist humour that made Rick and Morty not just clever, but electric. Without him, the show feels like it's going through the motions, trying hard to imitate a rhythm it no longer understands.

Yes, the voice replication is decent. The new actors clearly studied the vocal cadences of Rick and Morty down to a science. But sound is not soul. The characters might speak the same but they no longer feel the same. The dynamic between Rick and Morty feels flatter, more performative, like a cover band doing their best impersonation of the real thing.

The biggest tragedy is in the storytelling. Where Roiland once helped steer the show into brilliantly unhinged directions the kind that danced on the edge of genius and insanity what we're left with now is safe, overly polished, and at times, self-conscious. The surreal, improvisational chaos that defined early Rick and Morty is now replaced by tightly plotted, but soulless narratives that try too hard to be clever without ever being truly fun.

A side note, if you want to see what complete creative collapse looks like without Roiland, look no further than Solar Opposites. It's almost shocking how badly that show fell apart. Rick and Morty is at least trying to keep the illusion alive but it's just that: an illusion.

It's not awful television. If you never watched the earlier seasons, you might still find it entertaining. But for those of us who remember the show's peak, Pickle Rick, the Citadel of Ricks, interdimensional cable, this version just doesn't come close.

I never thought Rick and Morty could become just another adult cartoon. But here we are.

The character of Space Beth rarely appears in the series and interacts with other characters. The last time her relationship with Rick seems to have been explored in the series was with her first appearance at the end of season 4. Throughout the series, we see how these characters interact with each other, as her and Rick's paternal relationship unfolds. However, this exploration of their characters and relationships seems very superficial, due to the fast pace of the episode, the senseless conflict that does not fit in with the episode's theme and the drawn-out jokes. It seems to me that this episode could be one of the most interesting. Watching the rare interactions of Space Beth and Rick is very exciting, but these moments are only at the beginning of the episode. The other two thirds of the episode, as I said, consist of drawn-out fights and shootouts that don't seem to make any sense. I think if the episode consisted entirely of Rick and Beth talking while they're sitting in a bar somewhere and just having fun (like in the episode "A Rickconvenient Mort" only not with Summer, but with Beth) it would be much more interesting.

I guess last week was a tough act to follow, but this episode was still good. It was a double-edged sword with how ridiculously fast paced it was. This allowed for a ton of jokes to just come and go. I missed only seeing Rick and Space Beth in this. Still, the jokes it does have are quite good. This episode features Space Beth getting help from Rick after being hired to assassinate an insect queen.

Space Beth finds the queen already dead and works with Rick to find out who killed her. Hey, we get a new intro! I guess the last episode was just a fake out. I'm going to say none of these will appear in the season. This kind of seemed like standard sci-fi violence. It's still pretty interesting. ***

Seems like a return to form compared to the last season. New actors are settling in finally and I think so far the first 3 episodes of this season are solid 9s. All of them. This season is panning out nice to possibly be one of my favorites. Which is nice because 7 was 50/50. Some episodes were awful, some of the worse, but also some solid episodes like the hole. Season 7 seemed rushed, season 8 is seeming like they took their time on the scripts. I see a lot of h8 and I dont understand it. This season feels elevated, keeping the ball rolling. Hopefully the rest of the season follows this trend.

Not sure if it's just me, but Rick's voice sounds completely different in this episode, and it kinda threw me off. Otherwise, it would've been an amazing episode-everything else was on point, but the voice acting for Rick really didn't feel like him at all. It's hard to get into it when the voice is so off, and it makes it feel like you're watching someone else pretend to be Rick. It's frustrating because the writing and animation were top-notch, but the voice mismatch ruined the immersion for me completely. It's crazy how something as small as the voice can have such a big impact. I really hope they fix it in future episodes because Rick is such an iconic character.