Rick and Morty season 6 premiere is joyless

One of Adult Swim’s most popular series, Rick and Morty, return the other day. In the season 6 premiere, an attempt to bring some order to the multiverse ends up backfiring and sending Rick, Morty, and Jerry to their original universe. Meanwhile, Summer gets twice the mother-daughter bonding time when she, Beth, and space pirate Beth set off to the Citadel to help the lost travelers back home. All this and more in the season 6 premiere of Rick and Morty, “Solaricks.”

I usually don’t want to start off these reviews with the stick, but truth is that I found this episode kind of joyless. It opens sometime after the season 5 finale, with Rick and Morty traveling in the detached satellite from the Citadel of Ricks. The hopeful ending from the last season is quickly put down. With little fuel and no food, all of the saved Mortys are either dead or resorting to cannibalism, and Rick and Morty are close to death themselves until saved by Space Beth, who was just passing by.

Not a great start for me. Personally I’m quite sick of Rick and Morty building up to emotional moments just to do something brutal with them for a joke later on. It’s just miserable, and not in a fun way, because the show is constantly doing it and still thinking it’s fresh.

Speaking of “not fun,” I’d be remiss if I didn’t smack the show in the back of the head for the dumpster-quality of the jokes in the opening scene. References to Twitter, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Minecraft, and the ever-clever meta commentary. God almighty. These jokes are the type you would come up with if you were trying to make fun of cheap humor. I haven’t watched Rick and Morty since the season 5 finale, and the first thing it does is remind me how insufferable and cringe Rick’s humor had become. Bold move boys.

Two Beths, a lot of Mortys, and infinite universes

Okay, let’s get on to the story, which I think is a really clever concept. Rick, while trying to hard reset the multiverse, accidentally sends all dimension hoppers back to their original dimensions. This affects Rick, Morty and Jerry. Rick returns to the world he had abandoned when his family was killed, and Morty to the Cronenberg-infested Earth.

Rick’s storyline is a big “eh” to me. The first half involves him interacting with a wife-robot-voice he made to forever haunt him, and I guess he programmed it to share his taste for expositional and explanatory humor. Morty’s adventure is more interesting; he explores the shambles of his former home with his hardened survival dad Jerry. I enjoyed their conversation.

The other storyline involves Summer and the two Beths, who are in the Citadel to help Rick. The tension comes from Beth feeling left out as Summer has more fun with Space Beth.

I just didn’t care about the emotional arc here. The family dilemmas haven’t been interesting to me since season 3. The series has gone out of its way to show that they don’t matter. The animation is nice, though, even if we’ve seen monster fights like this before.

There are some moments that work. I liked that weird creature that multiplies by biting things and soon takes over the Earth. The show also sets itself up with a new villain now that Evil Morty seems to be out of the picture, at least for a while. It’s hard to get excited about it though, because I know Rick is just going to complain about how unoriginal his tactics are and deflate all tension.

All in all, this was quite a bad season premiere. When it comes down to it, I just don’t like the direction Rick and Morty is going as a show overall. I’m sure season 6 will no doubt have its highs, and I’m looking forward to them, but it did not start with its best foot forward.

Grade: C

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels