Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Rick is Back Baby!: Rick and Morty Season 3 Premiere Review



Rick is back baby! And its as absurd as ever. After two highly praised seasons Rick and Morty have been on hiatus for over a year. The last episode of season two left us with a cliffhanger. Rick was in jail and Earth had joined the byzantine Galactic Federation.

 As the Galactic Federation tries to hack Rick’s brain the federation has turned Earth into a giant nanny state which pays people in pills.  Desperate to escape this parody of government gone amuck, Summer exhumes the Grave of this dimensions Rick and gets a copy of his teleportation gun.
Morty and Summer wide up in the dimension he and Morty abandoned, where their family destroys the portal gun and starts after Summer who “Smells of Rick” She is saved however by Rick’s from the council of Rick’s who can’t allow Rick technology to fall into the wrong hands. 

Meanwhile we see the origins of Rick’s portal gun, but of course it’s a trap and Rick uploads into the body of the agent trying to break him. At this moment Seal Team Rick breaks in to assassinate him. Rick steals one of their bodies and kills them. Back at the Council Rick steals the body of another, higher ranking Rick to rescue his grand kids, who are currently on trial. Rick teleports the entire Citadel or Rick back into the prison and huge fight breaks out.  Rick kills the council of Rick’s. 

Rick, Morty and Summer proceed to the center of the prison.  Rick uses the alien computers to undermine their fiat currency which sends the government into anarchy.  Rick and the kids return to Earth where Jerry gives Beth an ultimatum, him or Rick. She divorces him.  

This episode was brilliant on so many levels. From the absurdity of Rick to the over the top parody of bureaucracy that is the Galactic Federation. The episode managed to tie up most of the loose ends from the last season. It was an absurd roller-coaster ride, which ended with Rick giving a crazy hard to follow rant; a call back to the first episode. 

The Social commentary was subtle and ripe. The Galactic federation could be seen as the authoritarian conclusion of several trends in today’s western democracies towards centralization and “protecting” citizens from themselves. That the leaders of the federation are giant insects plays into this. The nanny state metaphor is hammered home by The families new robot butler who forces them to take their pills and watches them for the state. It’s fitting that the only character who seems happy in this system is Jerry, whose many, many faults are treated as virtues by the new system. He takes pride performing a job with no real meaning as long as he is rewarded and exulted for it.  I hope that Jerry still makes appearances after the divorce because he is one of my favorite characters.

Rick and Morty teaches us that existence is huge and our lives are insignificant, so life is all about what you make of it, and that life is made better with more Rick and Morty. 

-Gedaemon

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