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Rick and Morty begins its fifth season with the absurdly named ‘Mort Dinner Rick Andre’ which is obviously a reference to My Dinner with Andre, although the only remotely connective theme is the one of two people reconnecting after many years. Otherwise I think it’s just a silly play on words.
Everything in the episode comes from an accident, albeit a well meaning one, when Morty desperately tries to save his and Rick’s life by landing in the ocean after Jessica actually asks him out on a date. But this leads to the appearance of a campy man from the sea in a sort of knock-off Sub-Mariner vibe, calling himself ‘Mr. Nimbus’ (voice of Dan Harmon).
Rick identifies the man as the king of the sea and his nemesis, but we find out later that the two have a real history. Mr. Nimbus references Rick’s wife and their history as actual friends in years long past, and even saves their lives in the near final moments of the episodes. But because Rick is Rick and always has plans, he has sent Summer off to secure some sort of magical conch horn and she shows up at precisely the wrong moment.
It’s always interesting to see Rick wrong-footed, and despite Rick’s metacommentary complaints to the contrary, it’s also always interesting to see more glimpses into Rick’s mysterious backstory. Whether or not Mr. Nimbus will play a significant role in the rest of the season remains an open question, but he was immediately a delightful new character, also adding a funny new subplot where Beth and Jerry are now ‘sex-positive’ (to drop a buzzword) and accept a threesome hookup with the maritime dude.
Interestingly most of the episode’s screentime is actually on Morty and his accidental adventures, the ‘Narnia’ time dilation (a classic in sci-fi and fantasy alike) with a race of cow people that were initially only used for aging wine. But instead because no one was thinking about how long the time dilation would affect things, including Morty, a friendly cow man, Hoovy (Jim Gaffigan), ends up missing for decades and starts a crazy sequence of revenge driving everything (with multiple folks played by the legendary voice actor Maurice LaMarche as he often does on this show).
The escalation was pretty great and with a series of hilarious back and forth mini-stories, as the world jumps further and further into more advanced technology until it’s actually beyond even Rick’s capabilities. In the meantime though the show is required to destroy Morty’s romantic prospects, but this time by having Jessica frozen in time for likely millennia and becoming a self-proclaimed ‘time-god’.
Yet she still does say that Morty and she will have someone in the future so … silver lining? Rick and Morty is usually pretty good at continuity so I definitely expect a follow-up about Jessica’s bizarre situation. And I appreciated that she wasn’t just tortured or killed. She actually came off in a sort of better way than you might expect.
Over all it was a pretty funny, inventive episode with several laugh-out-loud moments and great usage of the time dilation nonsense. Stand out lines and moments were the references (and then a callback) to a ‘Nintendo 69’ and then the future cow man clone asking, ‘Why did I clone myself genitals?’ It’s a bit reminiscent of the robot from The Simpsons asking, ‘Why was I programmed to feel pain?’, but it still works.
And Jessica’s eerie note that ‘Time without purpose is a prison’ is something I think I’m going to have to really ponder further. I can’t figure out yet whether it’s profane or profound. But either way, Rick and Morty is back and it’s unafraid to have characters change, grow, or fall. A great start to the new season.
What did you think of the season premiere? Sound off in the comments below!
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