Valkyrick

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. ***

This episode feels like it wasn't written by a professional screenwriter, but by some Rick and Morty fan dying of leukemia through a Make-A-Wish foundation. The dialogue is stiff and clunky, and the stakes feel nonexistent (who even cares about the Galactic Federation at this point?). Hopefully, this is just a fluke, and we'll get more creative episodes moving forward.

Also, it feels like the potential for centering the plot around Space Beth's adventures has run dry, especially since Rick himself says from the very beginning that they're just meaningless side quests and she's gonna grow out of it eventually.

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.

Ever since they switched up Rick's and Morty's voice actors there's been a few really bad episodes that have aired. Don't get me wrong, season 8's premiere was amazing, as well as season 7's finale. And I want to like every episode. But episodes like these it feels like I'm watching a show for kids instead of adults. I would never put this episode on and say "I love this. This is what good tv is all about, I approve of this." It lacks its usual adult dimensions of humor. Rick is ... more agreeable in these mid-grade episodes, and he spouts off "canned" stuff he would never, ever say in previous episodes. He's been "lobotomized" by people who don't understand he's a "sad old fart", not this "happy go lucky" guy who's eager to spout lazy garbage phrases for likability's sake.

I'm not going to lie, it also feels weird having episodes entirely centered around a few characters instead of featuring the usual full cast. That part I'm less mad about, but it signals to me that something is off beyond the voices, this seems more like a writer dilemma. I gave this episode a 6/10 for a show that is a 9/10 which is legendary that a show could reach that high of a rating. But I guess all good things must come to an end.

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.