“Rattlestar Ricklactica” ends this stretch of Rick and Morty on a high note

When Rick and Morty is good, it’s great. This has been an up-and-down half season, overall. I don’t think I’m giving a hot take when I say that. I wasn’t able to write the review for last week’s dragon episode but if I was around I would have said that I was worried about the direction the show was taking. Toilet episode followed by the Dragon-slut episode had me worried that Rick and Morty had maybe lost its stride during the hiatus.

But then Rattlestar Ricklactica happened, and those fears have gone away again. At least for now.

This was an excellent episode that was a perfect cocktail of the Rick and Morty universe: Rick is an asshole, Morty is a well-meaning idiot, a solid B-plot involving another member of the Smith family, and an absurd premise that is taken to the extreme conclusion.

There was a lot that happened this episode, but to sum up, R&M are out in space and Rick gets a flat tire. He tells Morty to stay in the ship, and Morty doesn’t because of course. While out in space, a spacesuit-wearing snake slithers up to Morty and bites his ankle. In his panic, Morty kills the snakestronaut. The duo fly over toward the snake planet to create an antidote for the venom, only to find that the entire planet is at war. Morty feels bad for killing their snakestronaut and therefore their hope of a better tomorrow. So when he gets home, he buys a snake, paints it to look like the snakestronaut, and sends it back to the snake world thinking it will help.

Instead it confirms alien life for the snakes, who rally to save themselves from whatever alien sent the snake to them. It sets off a Terminator 2-style series of events with snake terminators and Snakenet and everything else. The scenes on the snake planet are hilarious, as the snakes are dressed like humans and have human traits and buildings (including the pentagon) but only communicate with hisses.

The thing about Terminator, and time travel in general, is that it creates plotholes: if you can send back one Terminator, then there would just be this constant stream of Terminators coming back to kill John Connor. So when the snakes start going back in time to save Snakeraham Lincoln or to kill Adolph Snakeler, eventually every time period is overflowing with time-traveling snakesassins. It’s the same on Earth, where the snakes are trying to kill or protect Morty. It sounds like a mess, but it’s all easy enough to follow because the entire time Rick is expositing about how dumb the situation is and how this could have all been avoided if Morty had just stayed in the ship.

The B-plot is also entertaining this week, and does a lot to develop Jerry after he was sidelined for most of this season. Jerry is hanging Christmas lights and Beth is worried he’s going to get hurt, so Rick makes him slightly lighter than air but makes his shoes slightly heavier, so he can bounce around like he’s on the moon but still land safely. All he has to do is keep his shoes on, which lasts about 10 minutes.

He’s floating around, waiting on the floatyness to wear off so he can fall to his death, but at the last minute he decides he’s going to do the very un-Jerry thing and fight back. He tries multiple times to tether himself to the ground or holds onto rocks and walks into a bar an orders a diet Sprite remix (of course) before eventually floating up to the heavens and grabbing onto a plane. He crashes the plane, but survives and for the first time is able to say he did it without Rick’s help… until he falls off the roof, but we’re still counting it as a win for Jerry.

As I said at the top of the article, when Rick and Morty is good, it’s great. This episode delivered from start to finish, with a great mixture of premise building, one-off jokes, sight gags, and character development. This wasn’t the best five-episode run in R&M history, but it was good enough to remind you why we were all excited when Adult Swim gave the show a giant renewal order. Going forward, let’s hope for less midseason finales and more episodes like this.

Episode Highlights

• Summer yelling “nobody chokes me without my consent” at a snake was excellent.
• The 1980s-themed snake MIT was amazing
• Seriously, Jerry ordering a diet Sprite remix at a biker bar was peak TV
• Rick and Morty having to continuously close their snake loop and missing out on egg nog
• The weird Smith family head phone call creator that Rick had was such a dark throwaway

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