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The latest episode of Rick and Morty is called ‘Thanksploitation Spectacular’ and is one of those ‘don’t think that much’ episodes of the show. It doesn’t have a deep message or serious meaning or even significant change to the characters, with the possible exception of the President and Rick becoming unwitting allies by the end of the episode.
The episode starts with a sort of riff on the National Treasure movies with Rick and Morty attempting to steal the Constitution, and Morty accidentally releasing a giant evil French Robot hidden under the Statue of Liberty. It’s a funny idea, even if it doesn’t make any sense, and it was sort of a cute runner commenting on how the robot had eventually conquered New York and given it to France.
There were two main pieces to the plot, one was the President and Rick trying to out-think and outmaneuver each other, and the next was the two of them dealing with the aftermath when everything went wrong. Naturally it was all about a supremely ludicrous idea, the ‘turkey pardon’, which Rick uses to get away with all of his many crimes year after year. Having the President in this world be a fairly even match for Rick has been a fun ongoing story-line for the show, even in terrible episodes like the giant incest baby one.
There’s a side plot of a random soldier (voice of Timothy Olyphant) playing up red state clichés and tossing in a silly fake country song, even if the ultimate ending was just a sort of ‘well, health care in this country sucks doesn’t it’ comment. Having someone say ‘I refuse to pay for that man’s health care’ was funny if overly blunt, but that’s often how the show is.
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The episode really delves into meta nonsense a lot, even having the President break down his speech into meta components before saying that it’s really just about ‘will you do what I say?’ — I mean he’s not wrong, but the meta speech wasn’t as funny as perhaps the writing thinks it is, despite how well Keith David can deliver dialogue.
Eventually it’s more nonsense after more nonsense, with an accidental version of the President that was converted from a turkey — he gets the clichéd lines about getting Congress to agree with anything by giving them money, but at least there is one very funny line when he says he’s giving the money selling New York to France to Congress, someone mentions that ‘he became the President today.’
The final silliness is that the original Pilgrims and Natives were actually aliens at war that became allies to fight against giant Turkey Dinosaurs that ruled the American continent. Why, it’s almost like how Rick and the President did the same thing! It’s a throwaway gag that was more cute than funny, with something that feels like it could’ve been a much richer story-line.
Overall the episode was still pretty funny, with a lot of funny lines here and there — I did appreciate the concept of Charlie Kaufman writing a self-destroying Wizard of Oz remake. I wouldn’t say that the episode is particularly great either, but it was consistently entertaining and fun, which is sometimes all you can expect from this show — it’s not always about something, even when it wants to be.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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