Review: Rick and Morty returns and ends with an “Hour Long Special”

After a long break, Rick and Morty is back to end its fifth season with an “hour-long special”, which I found out midway through the hour isn’t actually a special at all; it’s just the last two episodes aired one after the other. Nonetheless, for the rest of this review I’m going to continue to sardonically refer to it as an hour-long special.”

Rick and Morty Review: “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall”

We start off with “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall,” which opens with Morty dimension hopping to past realities and repairing some of the damage that he and Rick haphazardly caused while adventuring. But when he gets home and tries to replenish the portal fluid he ends up getting some on his hand, opening a portal that leads him to Nick, another long-forgotten victim of Rick’s past actions. Rick also finds out about the portal fluid and decides to try and replace Morty with (spinning wheel)…two crows.

So that’s the setup: Rick replaces Morty with crows, and meanwhile Morty replaces Rick with Nick, with whom he feels a a kinship as a fellow discarded sidekick.

This is a pretty strong episode thanks to Morty’s storyline. It’s another coming-of-age story for him. Frustrated with Rick, Morty goes to Nick, who he believes he’ll be able to relate to better. It’s got an emotional core we can latch on to. Also, the idea of two people linked together with portal holes on their skin is very interesting, and the writers get a lot of mileage out of it with visual gags and a really cool fight scene. It’s inventive, funny, and I dug it a lot.

“Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” takes Morty on an arc. While adventuring, Nick becomes more and more like Rick: abusive, demanding, aggressive. We also get another instance of Morty doing something out of the goodness of his heart and having it blow up in his face, like in season 2 with Fart; to be honest, I’m getting a little tired of this trope, because the underlying idea always seems to be that Rick is right and that you shouldn’t disobey him or help people because it causes more trouble. This ends up happening again, but Morty’s handling of the situation in this episode is much more satisfying. It indicates a positive shift in his character; he isn’t going to allow himself to be stuck in toxic relationships.

Meanwhile, Rick goes out and adventures with the crows, which doesn’t last long. Once the crows start bossing him around, Rick tries to leave them on a planet ruled by crows; the crow people there teach them about empathy or wisdom or something and then take Rick back home. They see the Replace Morty wheel with “Two Crows” written on it, flip the switch and become the antagonists for the rest of the episode. Surprise surprise, Rick kills them.

The Rick storyline doesn’t do much for me. It just isn’t much of an adventure, especially when you compare it to the other stuff going on. It’s just boring. There aren’t any stakes, and I don’t find the crows very compelling. I suppose Rick is able to use them to fight in an interesting way, but he can get creative with or without them. However, I liked how he and Morty come together in the end. Even though Rick’s enlightenment moment with the crows was a little rushed, it also lays the foundation for him realizing that what he and Morty had wasn’t good, and so they separate. Rick leaves for further adventures with two crows.

While Rick’s storyline was a bit lacking, Morty’s story provides more than enough interest and intrigue.

Episode Grade: B

Rick and Morty Review: “Rickmurai Jack”

That leads me to the next episode in this “hour long special”, “Rickmurai Jack.” I’m not sure how to give a brief synopsis because if I did I’d end up misleading you, so I’ll try and tip-toe. At the start, we see Rick’s adventures as the Crowman, fighting anime villains in a rural Japan setting. Morty reappears hoping to get him to come home, but Rick is steadfast in his resolve to study the crow. Or at least he was until he finds out the crows have been cheating on him. Then Rick comes back, and the episode becomes a whole different thing! Because Morty aged himself to get Rick to come home, they have to go to the Citadel to fix him, and the real meat of the episode takes place there.

This was a weak episode, especially for a season finale. It sets up the premise of Rick adventuring with the crows, but because the crows are adventuring with a scarecrow guy, he ditches them. And this betrayal comes straight out of nowhere; it isn’t built up and is essentially meaningless, as is everything that came before it. Makes you wonder why the show spent nine minutes on it.

At the Citadel, we get an update on how things have been going since Evil Morty became president. The duo fall into Evil Morty’s clutches, we hear his evil plans, so on and so forth. It’s rushed and I’m barely able to understand what this scheme is or how it works, even how the components of it work. And what do you expect, they’re trying to get this all out in practically half of a normal episode’s runtime.

That said, I didn’t hate anything in the Citadel. I liked seeing Evil Morty’s plan come to fruition, but it needed more time to breathe.

I can’t for the life of me understand why the writers went in this direction. They’ve spent episodes building up Evil Morty’s rise as President, and then they don’t even dedicate a full episode to exploring the payoff. Maybe some people will think this episode was worth it just for the confirmation of Rick’s backstory alone, but not me. This season finale just came across as rushed and sloppy. It didn’t allocate its time properly at all. It seems to me that someone at adult swim is in a rush to get Rick and Morty to end.

Episode Grade: C

And so Rick and Morty season 5 comes to a close. Is this the last we’ve seen of Evil Morty? Where will Rick and Morty’s relationship go from here? Will Mr. Poopybutthole find happiness again? These are the biting questions left for viewers to ponder.

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