Adult Swim
The latest episode of Rick and Morty is called ‘Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty’, an obvious riff on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and is just as disconnected from the actual content as usual. Here we see one primary storyline of one sort of fantasy and one of quite another. After a typically pointless adventure to satisfy Rick’s need to learn minutiae, where Morty’s temporary alien friend ‘Chachi’ is killed without much note, Morty demands a dragon.
Rick then becomes the cause of his own pain when he pours a knockout gas into the spaceship, essentially forcing himself to face Beth and perform Morty’s silly task. This dragon is Balthromaw, with the voice of Liam Cunningham who played Davos on Game of Thrones — it’s a good sort of avuncular friendly voice for this character. Rick and the dragon end up ‘soul bonding’ after getting high and flying around, in what is later called out and lampshaded by Morty as uncomfortably sexual.
But I’m not sure about that lampshading; even if some of the jokes are cute or funny, especially the weird dragon elder literally calling for a ‘slut dragon’, the nature of the discomfort to connect Morty with Rick and Summer in the bonding ritual feels pointlessly crude. That part I can’t say I particularly like, because it’s one of the few times the fourth wall breaking meta-commentary felt too sly.
Instead, we get a thrown together set of ‘magic has no rules’ scenes, and showing that Summer and Rick are far more similar in personality than with Morty. Morty insists on taking things seriously, while Rick (after watching the ‘Ass Crimes’ show with Summer) tells her and us, ‘Don’t tell me how to enjoy things.’ It’s hardly a coincidence to have Rick express such a sentiment, confusing the issue about people who might be watching this show.
What is certainly funny is how the dragon sent an ‘animated GIF’ of Taylor Swift pumping her hands, and I could’ve stood more of that sort of the story.
Adult Swim
Jerry has the other storyline, a weird Florida-centric tale with a talking cat (voice of Matthew Broderick, of course), whom we later discover performed some sort of unthinkable atrocities, so awful that Rick nearly kills himself in horror. Obviously there’s humor in the juxtaposition between a little soft-spoken talking cat and that reveal, but the actual lesson reflects Rick’s comment earlier, frustration over wanting to have fun but still be able to ask questions.
To me, this strikes as a blow against ‘mystery box’ tales that intentionally push back against consumers who want to know the answers. ‘Just relax and enjoy the ride’, that is antithetical to Rick’s personality of a know-it-all. The reveal that is too horrible to know is both a joke on that (as we don’t know it) and a way of being sincere over that sort of distressing story choice.
Ultimately, this wasn’t one of the better Rick and Morty episodes of the season, even if there were funny and interesting parts to it (oddly enough the secondary storyline worked better). Maybe I’m missing something in the way the episode tells its dragon story, but the only thing I see is the obvious — Rick is a dragon, hoarding knowledge and gadgets, ready to wait out the humanity until he’s all alone.
What did you think of the premiere? Sound off in the comments below!
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