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The latest episode of Rick and Morty is called ‘Final DeSmithation’ which is naturally a reference to the Final Destination movies, which are about people trying to escape their fate of horrible death (although I haven’t actually watched anything more than a few clips from them). That fate aspect is the big idea of this episode, along with yet another weird incest storyline.
At this point, there have been something like eight episodes (according to a reddit thread I found) with incestuous storylines, although only seven of those actually involve the Smith finally — one was that one weird dude stuck in Beth’s fantasy dimension. Honestly it would be just a funny joke except that it’s come up more and more, with this season having two episodes on the topic — the admittedly funny last episode with Beth hooking up with herself and now this one.
There’s also a weirdly dated runner about kids on TikTok remixing the theme from the classic show Taxi, which aired from 1978 to 1983 — honestly the main cachet of that show now is all of the people that became super famous (or simply were just very talented) that were in the cast. I guess that reference here is just random nonsense, because I somehow doubt that many people in the writer’s room even watched the show — much less were alive while it aired.
I suppose Dan Harmon (born in 1973) could’ve watched it as a kid, but I somehow doubt Justin Roiland (born in 1980) was aware enough to watch it while it aired. The main question is what it has to do with anything — the pure randomness wasn’t inherently funny to me.
But the zaniness of the episode was often pretty funny — there was a great little joke about Jerry losing his gag reflex to Sleepy Gary, his lover from the amazing ‘Total Rickall’ episode. There was a reference to two different ‘magic costume’ montages, with Rick shouting out ‘Eye of Thundara (misspelled in the captions), give me suits beyond suits!’ — which is a reference to the ’80s show Thundercats.
And then there was the delightfully spot-on copy of Jerry getting a Sailor Moon costume change sequence with ‘assistant clothing, MAKE-UP!’ and then he had the perfect victory pose. Stellar, no notes on that part. The concept of a secret organization using a weird chaos alien to control fate is a good idea, and the episode really ramps up with the nature of reality-bending that even Rick cannot easily counter in the final act.
Honestly I don’t really like the actual ending with Jerry and his mom, because it felt gross by that point with the explicit way they were showing things (albeit blurred). Although Rick did save Jerry in a nice moment, that was overshadowing by the uncomfortable parts. I did though like the final piece of Jerry calling Rick a friend, which naturally wasn’t what he wanted — even though it does actually seem to be true now.
So I guess I appreciate that sort of growth for the two characters, both of whom are actually showing changes this season, Jerry especially. The end tag at the ‘people zoo’ was just silly, and the meta jokes about the weird old guy wanting to marry the alien were only just okay. The final incest stuff aside, I thought the episode was pretty strong. I just really hope that Rick and Morty is done with the gross-out humor for the rest of the season. They’ve already hit their discomfort level as far as I’m concerned.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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