Rick and Morty's Ultimate Fall into Inconsistency

when a tv show continues going on for long enough sometimes we like to ask where exactly it jumped the shark so to speak if it ever made that leap into declining quality at all if you ask a fan of the simpsons or family guy when their respective series fell off the variability of answers will inevitably be widened for a number of different reasons but if you're asking me one of the best universal determining factors for deciding a show's declining quality is the concept of inconsistency and with that kind of phrasing you might be a bit confused by what i mean in a broader sense inconsistency is defined as displayed or marked by a lack of consistency meaning when a series is inconsistent with itself some standard that was originally set has been interrupted or changed usually for the worse looking at the bigger picture a series of a long list of episodes having a few instances of lesser quality would almost seem unavoidable every once in a while whether it be in regards to one aspect or another maybe an episode that doesn't quite fit but that's not what i'm getting at no i mean when everything feels so different it's almost hard to see the product as the same show in one episode then it's back to the old vibe and the next then out of character than in character then out of character then in character back and forth back and forth until consistency has no meaning in the show's writing room at all causes can stem from several places maybe some new writers got brought in who still haven't gotten into the groove of what it's like to write an episode with these characters potentially the writing staff may be conflicted on where they want to take the series leading to split concepts and action as a season plays out whatever the reason if the staff doesn't get the issue fixed in the right amount of time they might just be canceled outright creating another show that jumped the shark and ended before it ever had the chance to leap again and then there are shows that figuratively jump the barrier to being inconsistent but still go on series that seem to have passed their prime or reached a point that doesn't feel the same yet they sold drawn anyway since it brings the network money thus i returned to the examples of family guy and the simpsons two shows once seen as the pinnacle of tv that fell off to where now you feel sad watching it more than any other feeling since you can plainly see the spark it once had has long been blown out but the decline was so gradual fans could make an argument for different times when the show really fell off the inconsistency wafted in over time so opinions on when the series became different entirely vary with that idea in mind i can't help but ask why does it seem like that issue of clarity doesn't exist at all for a series like rick and morty yeah it's easy to point out how there are tons of people that think the series never declined in quality at all and anyone who says it did is missing the point of the show but here at the just stop channel we try not to acknowledge people who choose to not critically look at their media and get on other people's asses for choosing to do so my point is if you ask someone who used to like the series that doesn't anymore there's usually a single answer they give for when they stopped caring season three among former fans that season is considered the point of no return from which their interest in rick and morty never recovered and so with this overly long analysis i want to try and get to why what makes season 3 so inconsistent compared to the first two that came before it and beyond that what makes it so hard to talk about the next few seasons in a similar light and even further thinking than that can it recover well the best place to start would be discussing the basic premise because i got really into that dialogue and anyone that hasn't seen rick and morty is probably confused as hell right now rick and morty is a 2013 adult swim animated series created by comedians dan harmon and justin roiland about rick sanchez a drunken nihilistic play on the mad scientist trope and his 14 year old neurotic grandson morty smith as they go on adventures ranging from wacky to dark across the universe all while they deal with family issues back on earth as far as my own involvement with the series goes i started watching it right before the third season started back in 2017 and so with that in mind i've gotten to see the dark path the series has taken over the past five years in real time in fact it was the fifth season coming out that originally prompted me to make this video but after going through a full bench of the series i realized the only way to fully discuss everything i wanted to would be by going over as much as possible so here we are each section of this video is going to be divided by seasons and more in depthly arranged based on the core of what i think made each of those seasons work or not work and yes i will be going into some explicit detail so spoilers for each season as they come if you didn't know already with that said let's return to basics with we're the only friends we've got morty it's just rick and morty season one for this set of episodes in particular i think the best way to describe and categorize its different working pieces is by interpreting it in terms of character dynamics and above all others this season the most important relationship has to be that of the main duo themselves put in basic terms rick is the leader he's more familiar with alien land and technology has been around long enough to expect danger and he holds all the power and where the two go with his portal gun and flying car morty by extension follows rick and acts as a sort of sidekick tagging along because he likes to help rick and see the universe that where he's just dragged along whatever the case it's best to establish that this relationship isn't formed out of an inherent need for a power dynamic where rick is on top all the time but instead one of necessities so morty doesn't end up in a situation he can't handle this idea gets exemplified in episode 105 where morty is given the reigns of an adventure and in trying to go with the flow ends up being assaulted by a jelly bean man throughout the episode you can see rick encouraging morty to end the adventure because he thinks what they're doing is dumb pointless etc and by the time we get to the moment where morty's put in a situation he can't handle physically or mentally from being unprepared rick's attitude about exploring starts making more sense in the first few adventures of the season rick is constantly on edge and insists on leading so he and morty don't get into scenarios where well either of them can be exploited he wants to protect morty though it's a sight he doesn't show often and 105 also helps in showing their original personality dynamic rick is a cynical guy molded by the lifestyle he's led choosing not to show his emotions often out of a necessity to stay alive but when needed he'll always come through for the people he cares about morty is almost on the opposite side of the spectrum being naively optimistic in most cases and his lack of awareness plus general teenage tendencies end up creating half the problems rick is forced to fix their differing world views make for interesting interactions and adventures and that contrast also helps when the characters need to keep each other in check or help instill lessons whether intentionally or not for example while it's undeniable that rick does a large portion of the issue fixing in season 1 the series itself opens with rake dragging morty along to nuke the world why is he doing this because he's drunk so morty has to take control of the situation and stop rick from doing something reckless to me that being the first thing we ever see definitely feels like an intentional choice to show that while rick is powerful and usually in control morty also has to keep the balance demonstrating that the two really complete each other instead of one having supreme authority when it comes to learning lessons going back to 105 morty helps rick to see that he doesn't always have to keep his guard up letting him know that it's okay to have a chill adventure whereas morty learns that you can't keep your guard down all the time because people will take advantage so both evolve in ways that affect them later down the line in fact you can see that play out in the finale for season 1 where morty is constantly on edge about a party rick and his sister summer are having basically flipping roles from earlier episodes by the conclusion of 111 though instead of morty the responsible one in this context being left to tie up loose ends by himself rick and summer help out too of course while also messing around whenever possible as a season finale it shows how r m's relationship has developed over time going from in the beginning being about one helping clean up the other's messes to now having the two both contribute exemplifying that their respect for one another has grown a lot it's really moments like that where you can see how much they truly care for each other though rick is less open about it he even has instances of actively trying to push morty's affection away like in 110 where he says that he uses morty's stupidity as a cloak to hide from the government but there's clearly more to it than that by how rick cry is re-watching his memories of morty later in that same episode also speaking on 105 for last time after morty is shaken up by the assault rick actively tries to go along with his adventure and get everything done the way morty wants to killing the molester in the process you can't help but love seeing those kind of subtle nods to both rick's character and the two's overall relationship since it shows there's more complexity than meets the eye and the same can be said about rick's dynamics to the rest of the family first looking at summer morty's sister rick has probably the most active relationship with her in the series though even then it isn't huge his most relevant interaction with her comes in 109 in which rick goes up against the devil who runs a cursed item shop that summer works at besides giving us some insight into rick's life when morty isn't in it actually being pretty sad and lonely him deciding to help summer get payback after being betrayed despite how she treated him in the episode showed his willingness to forgive and help family as they're the main reason for him sticking around to begin with when it comes to rick's relationship with his daughter beth and her husband jerry you kinda have to put the two as a singular unit since most of the plots around them have to do with their dysfunctional marriage in relation to rick beth is someone he holds dear and tries to be nice to despite having left her so long ago and while rick doesn't really like jerry in any way or even respect his intelligence he also doesn't try to mess with his or best relationship since that isn't his problem to worry about past their interactions to rick beth and jerry provide most of the b stories for the first season jerry's main lessons coming down to sticking up for himself acknowledging when he's wrong and believing in his own skills while beth faces issues surrounding finding her place in the world and wondering if her current family life is all she wants to accomplish they provide an interesting human appeal to any given episode on a regular basis and keeps the series as a whole way more grounded in family drama when rick and morty's sci-fi adventures with realistic elements aren't enough and that actually segues me pretty well into discussing season one's last important dynamic the relationship between rick as an entity and the greater confines of the universe most of his grander past is left up to mystery starting out but we can glean a few key details as they continually pop up in adventures for one rick is a massive nuisance to everyone in the universe no matter where he is the guy doesn't follow intergalactic law or really give a [ __ ] about it in any way so there's more than one occasion where he's chased by the galactic government which ironically led to several thousand versions of him making their own government that rick doesn't want to be a part of and for that conflict to be interesting on an episode episode basis rig needs to be smart but by no means invincible most of the time his only weapon is a raygun or some other miscellaneous sci-fi gadget within reasonability he can get himself out of bad situations through creative thinking most of the time like in 104 which has him escape a ship by using its functions to his advantage but on other occasions the guy can just straight up make massive mistakes and have to deal with it i can't think of a better example to explain what i mean than episode 106 rick potion number nine where rick miss calculates how effective a love hormone will be so he tries to undo it using various other sets of hormones only leading to the whole world becoming cronenberg monsters to fix this mistake rick's only other option is to take morty and go to a dimension where the crisis was averted and that universe's version of them died right after as such a shocking twist it acts as probably the season's darkest moment not only because the event has a long lasting effect on morty's mental state changing his view on life in general and evolving his character as the season goes on but rick during everything has a look of pure boredom how many times has he had to do this what number of mistakes may have led rick to do this kind of action so many times it becomes normal and mundane there's a sort of horror element in what's left implied there and i appreciate these kinds of episodes a lot since they show not only that rick is a human who can make big mistakes but also that morty isn't always going to be unfazed by what goes on makes the continuity a lot stronger as mentioned the season also takes time to show how being with his family but still feeling distant might be affecting rick's character as he's shown to be in a lot of pain with that being said i think i've covered everything important that made season one as special as it was i mean other than the basic aspects of comedy and sci-fi creativity but those sort of go without saying so moving on to season 2 let's talk about it in a section i like to call grass tastes bad do i then belong to the heavens why if not so should the heavens fix me thus with their ceaseless blue stare luring me on and my mind higher or season two continuing would work before rick and morty second season does what any follow-up to a beloved first should do and that the crew took what worked so well originally and amplified that while minimizing previous issues everything is improved upon and expanded naturally here and like the first there are a few bits i believe were done especially well since it was hinted in the season finale before it the adventures in s2 deal much more with how depressing of a person rick truly is episode 203 in particular reveals to us that there are indeed people rick cares about in the universe who aren't on earth including a hive mind being known as unity but the reason we never get to see these people is because rick either actively pushes them away or influences them negatively leading to them leaving time and time again in 203 when rick gets back together with unity for a while he completely messes up the functioning system she's been using so they can have a good time eventually becoming so exhausting that unity needs to leave lest she get completely destroyed trying to please rick it isn't because rick is malicious or trying to hurt her but he hasn't evolved as a person since the last time they saw each other and that inability to change forces her to go since she and everyone else around rick are able to mature in places he seemingly can't to that extent in episodes like 207 you see how desperately rick longs to be a part of some in-crowd or social group regardless of if he has to do something dumb like turn himself into a kid you see how he can only fit into most crowds for a short amount of time partying and having fun because when the party ends no one really wants to be around him which might explain why he's often so closed off to the idea of friendship or love and only shows it when he feels the most comfortable there's very much a voice in rick that longs for deeper attachment with people but he's not willing to change who he's fundamentally is and so mixed with his unwillingness to open up no matter where he's staying no one really gets him that's why when he almost kills himself in a place visible to everyone for days he's left to stir there because no one in his family would know he's actually a really insecure person i'll get a bit more specific about that when diving into the finale but throughout the second season you definitely see more instances of rick being vulnerable and caring about his grandkids when he's partying with unity rick still takes the time to ask where morty and summer are because he wants them to be safe in 209 during the purge rick makes sure to check on and keep morty from going too wild and getting angry and in probably my favorite rick moment of the series when reality is breaking apart in 201 thanks to morty's uncertainty rick chooses to give up his own collar with the pretense that he could die on its own there's already a really touching scene for rick having him give up everything for one of the only people he still cares about but in the context of what's going on that action somehow has way more significance previously in the episode reality started shifting due to time being unstable and everyone but rick being uncertain he makes it a really important point to be in control of his actions and tries to stop morty and summer from messing up since otherwise another split might occur at the end of the episode rick is forced to split reality up a ton before bringing it back together but one version of morty can't get his time sync collar on so that version of rick sacrifices himself and gives up his own collar but no split happens when he does that that means that in every context or possibility for what rick could have done when morty was in danger he chose to give himself up instead of letting morty perish of course rick still makes it out alive in the end but i can't think of a more character definingly subtle detail at any other point in the show in a similar vein to that as a whole the smiths are also given more opportunities to show off their personalities and grow as people morty learns in 202 that not a life is worth saving and sometimes it's better to not get involved in a situation you know nothing about when it'll only lead to trouble 209 explored how he could be very violent and show outbursts of stress potentially from some of the adventures he's been going on leaving space for that to be expanded in his character beth and jerry develop more in terms of their marriage and come to understand that they might have the most toxic relationship humanly possible but they're still going to try to keep it up because they want to go against everything for what makes them happy these developments in the family were also a good setup for the season finale which i still consider one of the best episodes in the show for several reasons bird person one of rick's closest friends from his days is a rebel for freedom across the universe is getting married but rick doesn't want to go because he thinks opening up is going to only cause problems and make it easier for him to be caught off guard needless to say by the ceremony rick warms up to being a more accepting friend for the sake of bird person's happiness and right when that happens the galactic government who rick has been shown to be fighting since 101 appears and kills bird person right before rick's eyes the one time and who knows when that he decides to genuinely not be cynical and drop all pretenses to show affection for someone in an open setting that person is taken from him with no remorse if you were in that situation rick's next line of action would only make sense he takes the family and tries to find another earth for them to live on away from the galactic government he isn't doing this just to save himself and keep the family from talking but because he wants to protect the last important thing he has as tightly as he can so it doesn't leave his grasp like bird person once again in doing so rick closes himself off emotionally and tries to act like everything is completely fine but after he hears jerry argue about going back home instead of giving up the family's lives for him and the others go against it for different reasons rick realizes he's doing the same thing he's always done to unintentionally push people away he doesn't embrace change due to his experiences and that preconceived emotional dissonance eventually makes others worry beth worries about rick leaving again if they don't go along with him and the kids say they love rick even if they don't know how to feel about him right now the only person without any bias behind tolerating rick's dissonance is jerry since he has the least emotional connection to him in the first place and i think it's that voice which compels rick to turn himself in hearing one free thinker among the people he's kept at arm's length listening to someone who says what he deep down wants to hear rick gets that he can't help his family as is and that with each passing day his choices are only making life worse for them which he doesn't want to do so in an ultimate act of taking accountability for himself and thinking of the family first rick leads the galactic government right to him choosing an action based solely on keeping the last people he cares about out of the crosshairs his own friends got caught in hoping that the sniffs can live a normal life on earth well as normal as it can get with the galactic government having taken control rick might have infinite families and infinite universes but with this one choice he drops any previous nihilistic beliefs and chooses to say this family in this universe is important to me and i would die for them i find that ending epic and complex for not only the character but the audience watching rick goes back and forth on what to do but ultimately chooses the most logical step in his mind whether it's the right decision or not a threat that was previously in the background has gotten to a point where it's directly affecting the story environments of the characters and so on and it leaves plenty of room for what rick will do next how he and the smiths will go further as characters and what the next evolution will be for them as people and a family to be honest i don't think you could ask for a better season closer so now all that needs to happen is for season three to land that plane as it enters the shuttle but like the avgn trying to land the aircraft in top gun i guess the forces of nature had a mission to make that reality impossible no matter how many universes we have to travel to we shouldn't take things for granted are you saying granite well yeah it's granted but icarus went higher and higher dazzled perhaps by the dizzy incandescence of waxing wings or how season three started the downward spiral if you look at most discussion videos around the third season of rick and morty in regards to what it did that made everything feel so different a lot of people's go to is episode 303 otherwise known as pickle rick and don't worry i'll have plenty to say on that in the grander scheme of the narrative i'm telling but i'd say the problem started long before 303 all the way back at the season premiere the rick rickshank redemption having just described the intricate details and theming behind 210 you should have some adequate context for where we left off in the story that this episode is picking up from and i'm sorry but whenever i look at this all i can see is something that wasn't made with a prior plan in mind just look at rick's motivation described in the episode in universe he explains that his reasoning for turning himself in was to take down the galactic government from the inside and in the process kick jerry out of the family and sure to an extent you can reason that he also has the underlying idea of helping the smiths as he didn't need to save summer and morty when they came looking for him and got caught by the citadel of rix but even under that assumption there are so many questions to raise first the idea of taking down the government from the inside is completely separate from the motivations he was shown to have in 210 on a logical level sure in 210 the galactic government was able to find him and his friends after years of hiding and fighting against them but it's not like rick wasn't always wanted by the galactic government since episode 1. with that in mind considering bird person mentions how he rick and tons of their friends have been wanted by the galactic government for so long why didn't rick go through the whole process of turning himself in way earlier i mean when rick says why he wanted to get rid of jerry which i'll get into later what was it he said we've got adventures to go on morty just you and me and sometimes your sister and sometimes your mom but never your dad you want to know why morty because he crossed me considering that quote comes from the series premiere i should ask why didn't rick destroy the galactic government a long time ago so they'd get off his back end i don't know bird person and several of his implied friends wouldn't have died and spent so long having the potential to die while fighting them rick takes down the government like it's just another day and he accomplished it swiftly in a single episode so how come he didn't do it earlier with just how many times they crossed him it's been stated that rick and the government don't mix because he values freedom above everything else and dislikes being controlled so why would he ever leave himself in a position where a big power he could easily topple might find a way to take away his freedom and i must reiterate kill his closest friends if i didn't know better with that kind of explanation for his actions i'd have to assume rick is a complete dumbass that's not the only plot hole for this episode either considering the original implications of rick turning himself in was so the smiths could have a normal life away from him and the people after his head to the point he basically says as much in 210 why would he then spend the next episode actively getting out of that same prison you can make an argument for why you think rick does care about his grandkids again he had no obligation to save them but him just up and leaving while trying to destroy the government sounds like it would have some serious consequences on the family if they weren't just outright killed his actions in this episode actively destroy what his character arc was coming to at the end of season 2 because he's not taking responsibility for anything and instead going off on this plan that seems to completely disregard what could happen to his family because of it that was the whole reason for the climax of the second season rick understanding that his reckless actions have a negative impact on his family and that nothing good can come from him getting them harmed while running from the consequences of his actions it was about him taking accountability for his choices and not pushing it onto the people he loves when it could destroy them now it doesn't even [ __ ] matter and that whole arc of change we saw rick go through in previous episodes leading up to 210 has been chucked out the window never to be seen again how am i supposed to feel about such a blatant character shift that completely disregards everything that came before it they took a naturally progressing character and pretty much regressed him back to where he was before and obviously at the end of 210 there was still plenty of room for growth in rick's character and everyone around him because while him turning himself in does keep the smiths away from trouble they're still left miserable because rick is running away from his issues instead of confronting them choosing to push his family away once again though this time under the pretense of wanting them to be safe there are so many complexities woven into the end of season 2 and so much opportunity for what they could do with it after you can see these setups for flaws and rick's person that could have been deconstructed by external characters like morty to help him grow even further just like the two have helped each other grow in older episodes but the writers for season three up and abandoned it for this epic story of rick taking down the galactic government and citadel of ricks as if any context beforehand doesn't matter and all we want to see is rick turning into the terminator the whole thing reeks of fear and cowardice so many big changes occurred in 210 to shake up the series and potentially have an arc of the characters developing and trying to get rick out of jail or something but we linger on the changes so little that we never even see what life in prison is like for rick before he's already broken out the writing doesn't allow for us to slow down at all since it's so focused on returning to the status quo at any cost they want that conclusion so bad that by the end of the episode the galactic government has completely left earth since rick was able to seamlessly topple their entire federation in a matter of hours on his own we get a small glimpse into what life under them is like for earth and the smiths but once again that time spent is so short that we can't have an adequate view of what the galactic government is truly like and why rick might even want to go against them it infuriates me to know in that the writers go so hard taking away the opportunity for character growth resolution of arcs more permanent changes etc also they can reach a predetermined goal where everything is back to the way it was before except now beth and jerry are getting a divorce man it's like the theme of rick's actions building up and coming to bite him in the end never existed at all since writers don't want to have to deal with it man isn't that ironic i will say that beth and jerry splitting up is probably one of the only things this season opener does right at least in concept i kind of dislike how rick basically splits them up himself when previously he made it clear that he didn't want to interfere with their marriage even attempting to help it in the past by setting them up with couples therapy plus it seemed like jerry's words were part of what originally made rick want to give himself up agreeing with his sentiment but then again the motivations are all topsy-turvy for plot convenience anyway so you know what the [ __ ] ever the concept still works on a basic level since it does shake up the status quo in some way that can make for interesting execution later in the season though it's gonna crash and burn but you're you're gonna have to wait for that morty and summer also had an interesting dynamic and that morty believes rick is someone summer shouldn't idolize thanks to all the antics the two of them get into together and while morty mostly acts the way he does towards summer in the episode for that reason i'd also argue that 301 was the beginning of morty's inconsistent downward spiral into either being a regular teen like he was in earlier seasons or more often than not starting from this episode a complete cynical [ __ ] it's another topic for later but i just brought it up to mention that in this episode morty shoots rick thinking he's actually killed him with no remorse because rick called morty stupid and though rick thought ahead to have a standoff the fact that morty still performed this action as he did is a complete betrayal of what his character was like up to that point and i think it serves as the best starting place for [ __ ] morty needless to say 301 was truly the start of rick and morty's fallen to inconsistency by being one of the most logically hard-to-follow and world-breaking occurrences in the entire series basically creating a black hole for continuity character and everything else we liked about the past two seasons in service of the writers doing what they want when they want with nothing in their way and i haven't even talked about the most inconsistent element this episode introduced in a way that would irreparably damage the rest of the series until its removal that's right if you've watched rick and morty for the past four years you know it you probably [ __ ] ate it because i sure as hell no i do the ultimate writing inconsistency of all rick and morty time 100 years of rick and morty over and over again www.rick and mortyfailures.com season 3 episode 1 of rick and morty introduce the concept of rick being the smartest man in the universe he's more like a demon or a super [ __ ] up god god god to give a brief summary before entering this [ __ ] the concept i'm referring to is pretty self-explanatory though some casual viewers might not remember if it was like this from the beginning or not it is pinpointively provable that characters outside of wreck himself i'm not the nicest guy in the universe because i'm the smartest began calling him the smartest person in the universe the smartest mammal in the galaxy during the season 3 premiere and no sooner and it is the most [ __ ] thing to ever come out of the season 3 writing room first looking at it from a purely logical perspective in the context of the last two seasons something i'm sure the writers who came up with this idea didn't take the time to do it already makes no sense going back to 106 rick potion number nine he makes a mistake in causing everyone to lust after morty like rodents and heat then to try to compensate for that he uses mantis dna since by his logic mantises have bad mating habits but that just leads to horny mantis people so he tries to fix that and then rick and morty's universe is completely full of cronenberg's versions of everyone tell me do you think the smartest man in the universe will be able to make such a basic mistake as mixing up scientific ideas with logical fallacies that don't work when thought of on a deeper level how about 103 in which he had a guy dying of various diseases shouldn't the smartest man in the universe have a failsafe for dealing with something so easily foreseeable oh and we can't forget about 206 oh my god 206 the rix must be crazy annihilates the concept of rick being smarter than anyone else by its very inception to not take up too much time explaining it rick has to go in his car battery when it stops working which he's made a small universe inside of to operate machines that give him most of the power but another scientist in that self-contained world has actually made his own battery of the same idea and they go inside that box and find yet another guy attempting to do the same the point is by making a self-contained world in a box where society can thrive eventually rick is faced with minds that develop to be just as intelligent as him with the ability to think on a similar brainwave despite their universe being made to do nothing more than power his car when the other scientist discovers his purpose to rick the two of them have a sort of mental dick measuring contest in which rick only wins by hair in basic hand-to-hand combat as a whole it shows that man will always have a way of recreating different versions of more convenient processes and if we think only people like us can do it we're in for a shocking surprise there's also some great dark comedy of being forcibly trapped into an endless cycle of labor or dying but the bit to focus on here is that rick met people who were just as smart as he was that's the point of that particular episode i guess we might as well count it as non-canon though since that's the only way this episode can work on a canonical level why did they do this to me as is shown starting from 301 rick's power level throughout the series also becomes jacked beyond belief to basically make a majority of conflicts feel meaningless and since rick now has this massive power boost i'm gonna let you know why again this doesn't work in 107 rick and summer get captured by a group of intelligent alien women and are nearly killed by a boulder he doesn't have any major restraints besides basic handcuffs so using any of the god mode gadgets he had in season 3 would probably help him out here about that time he tries to fight some crab monsters in 110 with nothing but his bare fists remember in 206 when he got stranded with no technology and had to use whatever was around him to get by damn sure could be using some of those cybernetic [ __ ] robocop implants he got right about now and we mustn't overlook that time rick literally got ambushed and overpowered by a teenage girl that stole his gun i guess he was just going easy on her and did you think the inconsistency of this power-up was only constrained to the seasons prior to when it was implemented no because that would make too much sense and show that the writers can keep some semblance of a relative narrative really what grinds my gears more than anything about the massive power up rick receives is that the implementation of it fluctuates to only appear when the writers think it'll be more or less convenient for the story we already saw that in 301 he completely destroyed the galactic government and took down the citadel entirely by himself with almost no help all in a single episode when previously they were both seen as major threats but then in 302 he had a hard time getting a glowing rock from some mad max [ __ ] with only basic weapons on hand if you thought a one episode delay of power scaling wasn't enough in 303 rick is able to turn himself into a pickle then finding a way to make a full suit of body armor out of wrap parts of an endless supply of ammo yet he's also so brain dead that he can't do something as basic as not having the serum to turn him back precariously placed over him with a rube goldberg machine anyone would notice in 304 he's got an epidermis barrier which as the name implies seems to activate when his skin is touched yet in 305 he never uses it when being ambushed in 306 we don't even get to see the situation he and morty are in but he says he had no control over it whatsoever seemingly completely contrasting the confidence and self-assuredness he had in 301 in 308 rick is shown to make basic grammar mistakes any 12 year old wouldn't which he then deletes from morty's memory but it doesn't make sense that the smartest man in the universe wouldn't know something so rudimentary for a few more callbacks to earlier seasons because if i did that with every episode i mentioned we'd be here all day in 309 when he loses an arm to some human birds rick has a robot arm ready to caterize the wound and fix it for him whereas in 209 he had to limp around for a while after being shot since he had no way of fixing it finally in 310 rick seems to get the epidermis barrier back plus he now has an ability that literally kills people simply by touching him like yeah rick has the powers of a [ __ ] god sometimes and as i just showed it's inconsistent as hell for the writer's benefit and pretty much no one else's and yet why does it also feel like the writers who seem so intentional about their disregard for the continuity and structure of the past seasons also want to deconstruct what the series itself is and stands for what i mean by that is that s3 in particular seems to want to be the season where everyone thinks wow they just blew my mind with that explanation when in reality the best way to get people's minds blown is by conveying that explanation without needing to explain it believe it or not people will feel way more intrigued for a character that has some level of complexity to them that isn't outright stated for what it is rick for example is a being with very little regard for most of the people around him he's indifferent to the universe as it relates to him and in many instances he will run from his problems instead of facing them hiding behind his scientific pursuits and petty desires to cover up for the fact that he's actually a really lonely person in that infinite space he says he's so indifferent to the cracks are shown throughout the first two seasons and how he tries to reject morty's importance to him yet is willing to die for him on multiple occasions when morty can't see that weakness when unity leaves him rick tries to end his own life and all other versions of him since he feels like one of the small pieces of his humanity and care for the universe has slipped through his fingers and can't be given back that's all [ __ ] the audience can understand without explicitly being told because the visual representation and implied dialogue make up for it and vince them while leaving room for interpretation now we can talk about pickle rick rip i'm pickle red chances are if you've never watched rick and morty or look deeper into it beyond this video pickle rick is still a meme if not an image you've seen or heard of in a way its relevance has kind of transcended rick and morty as a show first it was simply the phrase i pickle rick the image was iconic for a while people went nuts then long after its relevance faded the meme got brought back with the phrase i [ __ ] you not he turns himself into a pickle funniest [ __ ] i've ever seen which goes past the original image and phrase to become a meme unto itself based around a reference people are assumed to already get pickle rick as an idea is so widespread and understood that making fun of how unfunny it is became a joke on its own but the meme isn't the only reason people dislike the episode pickle rick no the main reason for people's disdain of this episode comes down to one character her name is dr wong and she's a regular earth therapist voiced by susan sarandon there's really nothing all too special about her as a character and hell she holds almost no relevance to the series other than in this one episode in fact she has only one purpose to act as a direct mouthpiece for the writer for context rick has turned himself into a pickle to get out of going to family therapy and through his fluctuating intelligence he left the anti-pickle serum out in the open for beth to grab and take making him have to create a bodysuit from wrap parts to look for the same serum i could assert that it would be easier for him to make a new serum as the smartest man in the universe or that he could have had a backup serum in the first place since having a plan b seems like an obvious thing someone with basic intelligence would do but i digress the writers need this situation to work so rick has to come to therapy that's all the scenario is meant to do logic of the series be damned they need rick in that [ __ ] chair so he can talk to the mouthpiece so throughout the episode rick has kept himself from airing out his issues instead going on a violent rampage of scientific machines he probably shouldn't have been able to create in a way you could see his scientific pursuits as a drug or vice but unfortunately the show won't let you come to that conclusion on your own instead the mouthpiece is there to spoon feed you open up baby she's here to explain everything so you don't have to think in a two minute or so speech directly to rick the therapist says exactly what i did but slower speaking as though she knows exactly who rick is after only just meeting him and deconstructing beth a bit as well which again we could have gotten without the explanation the writers are communicating to us with this detailed speech that they think the audience can't get themes they can't interpret anything there's no room for us to infer because it's been laid out with no settled to your class it is the pinnacle of tell don't show and you feel every painful second of it as this nothing character prattles off about the complexities of someone we as the audience should be able to understand through the story to put it in an easier way it's lazy and condescending with a complete disregard for what storytelling is and tells us that the writers don't trust our own ability to interpret media that's why episode 303 pickle rick is hated and just like every other aspect of season 3 how it's handled is more inconsistent than you could possibly imagine the often dismissed episode 305 the worldly durley conspiracy only two episodes later implements a somewhat similar idea of having the characters discuss their traits to one another but execution can make all the difference in this case it's not one random character monologuing to another before that other character does the same in an uninterrupted response but rick and jerry are going back and forth over why they hate each other's guts this scenario works a million times better than pickle rick for a myriad of reasons 1. rick and jerry have always been openly unfriendly to one another and shown disapproval for how they act but in this episode they were having fun together until jerry decided to go along with a plan to get rick assassinated this argument between them is happening in the aftermath of that so not only has the confrontation been building since the start of the series but it also works as a climax of the episode which set the situation up naturally it doesn't feel like we were handheld to this conflict secondly neither side is fully in the wrong or right with their arguments mixing objective with subjective observations the audience can choose to agree or disagree with so neither is a mouthpiece for one specific set of ideas and thirdly rick and jerry are characters we've already gotten to know over a long period of time partially through the two's interaction so it makes sense not only to the audience but to the characters in universe that they would have so many observations about one another they lived together and talk on a daily basis this episode basically does everything pickle rick was unable to and the one after 305 rest and relaxation continues that theme though to a lesser extent basically rick and morty are stressed out and go to an intergalactic spawn to release their toxins which manifest into their own personalities that subsequently come after diversions who've removed all the traits they saw as negative for the most part it plays out about as you'd expect with the detoxified cells eventually deciding that the toxic parts make up who they are just as much as the traits they like and fusing back but one interesting detail about rick's toxic self is that he actually cares a lot from morty like as opposed to the regular rick while this version is a raging narcissist and yells out every thought he's willing to openly show affection for toxic morty when he could die in turn showing that rick sees his love for morty as a toxic crutch which says a lot about him without needing to say anything though i obviously think that it goes against the characterization from previous seasons it's probably the first subtle thing season three ever did but then you look at how they handled jerry and beth's divorce and that toast during bath time starts sounding more and more like a good idea like i said at the beginning of this section jerry and beth getting a divorce was the only really substantive change we got from the premiere and in 302 the concept was explored in an interesting way by showing how the kids chose to deal with their feelings though summer's actions felt way more unclear in terms of how it related to her parents looking at how the rest of the season uses the concept is difficult though because it's almost non-existent now i fully understand that focusing a full season of rick and morty around jerry and beth's divorce sounds dumb and i'm not saying that's how the season should have gone but having even one more episode fully about how it's affecting the family could have really shown how this season does still carry consequences over from earlier episodes i guess that's kind of futile though when they get back together in like five minutes at the end of season three yeah it's not even the main focus of that episode instead mostly being about rick trying to get a selfie for morty from the president like with one more episode you could have at least shown how beth and jerry started realizing they had feelings for one another or hell just sprinkle interactions throughout the season to build it up off screen and not make it seem like as much of an [ __ ] but they couldn't do that could they why does it always feel like after the writers implement a big episode with major changes they can't follow it up with something they planned do they not know that when you write a twist or change you should have some plan behind it so the hype about what'll happen next doesn't burn out just as quickly at best the season finale has narrative consistency with the season premiere and that seemingly major changes get undermined in a short amount of time and make it feel like the family's never gonna have a positive change based on past experiences because [ __ ] development [ __ ] having characters face the consequences of their actions [ __ ] following up on a story element you introduced who even gives a [ __ ] oh i better be careful if i keep acting this negative i might start giving off the same energy as season three if you're confused by my wording all it takes is back to back comparing a season one episode with a season three episode back in the day almost no one but rick was really all that cynical and even in rick's case he could still get pretty serious or jokey without coming off as sarcastic then you look at an episode from season three and it's like ugh what happened rick has gone from a kind of sarcastic nihilistic but still fun-loving old guy to a [ __ ] youtube commenter everything he says is so full of utter disdain or like he's completely done with everything but like not in a fun way it makes sense that he wouldn't care too much about the world that's kind of his thing even though the second season was supposed to be the start of that philosophy being turned around but at least in the first two seasons it felt like he could express other emotions and was like an old guy i don't think rick ever feels anything besides anger and sarcasm throughout the whole season and weirdly he mentions youtube cat videos reddit and more like why would he look at these things rick is stated in season 2 to be an 80 year old man though in season 3 they go back on that and say he's 70. am i to believe that he watches cat videos and looks at reddit the closest thing to modern references rick made before season 3 were a reference to the purge an r horror movie and inception a very big movie which i could understand these newer references just feel entirely shoehorned in and unlike something rick would know about let alone use and unlike before morty's no longer there to balance out rick's cynicism but instead uses it to fuel his own angry rants rick and morty's relationship was a perfect easily executable dynamic that did wonders for conflict as well as resolutions rick offered the universal experience tech cynicism and moral ambiguity while morty gave a straight man for the viewer with a focus on optimism teenage idiocy and exploration in tandem they teach each other lessons using their different world views and find that one could never really function as well without the other you know in their own dysfunctional way their relationship in season 3 on the other hand could be more compared to an old married couple who stayed together for the kids morty switch from regular teenage kid to outright cynical [ __ ] is say it with me really inconsistent in season three and more often than not the latter takes over honestly morty becoming wiser to the universe around him and its inherently [ __ ] nature sounds like a place his character would go but the fact he got that [ __ ] so early on with little to make the progression seem natural beforehand really makes me believe the writers didn't think this idea through i mean we've got like 80 confirmed episodes left to go this show and morty continues being an [ __ ] throughout season five spoiler alert so we've seen him in this less dynamic relationship with rick for longer than we've seen the relationship that worked and the longer we see it the more we realize how annoying and unlikable it is beth's attitude has also taken a sharp turn whereas previously she was a doting but irresponsible mother sad drunk and insecure cynic who constantly worried about her place in the world in season 3 her cynicism takes a left turn into the mean-spirited becoming more about how mad she is over whatever problems she or rick cause becoming much harder to watch but the worst of those hit by the cynicism bomb has to be jerry for sure before he was a bumbling dad with insecurities about his own worth and a constant want for approval matching with beth to create a really toxic relationship they wanted to make work he was also a bit of a sarcastic guy oftentimes not realizing how dumb he truly sounded for season 3 they cranked the sarcasm and insecurity up a ton and removed the likeable traits from his person becoming the worst character of the show i hate season 3 and beyond jerry with a burning passion and while sometimes the writers can use that anger for laughs or fun storytelling i can't help but think he's gone through a massive downgrade from the first two seasons which gave him traits you could actually sympathize with back then there were episodes that built on he and all the other family members characters that seemed to affect them and changed their viewpoints in future episodes but now there's no consequence at all the second season's ending partially worked so well in terms of development for multiple characters because the traits they exhibited were already foreshadowed and shown in smaller doses over the season all culminating in the finale where minor instances felt important all the end of season 3 does is show that nothing mattered as long as the original status quo was maintained and that's so goddamn disappointing that it hurts i would like to mention one saving grace however episode 307 the ricklantis mixup you might be wondering why i haven't mentioned such an episode up to this point and that's because it actually doesn't relate to anything going on with the rick and morty we follow normally instead of that 307 offers an exploration of various ricks and mortys living in the citadel going about their daily lives in a way you could see it as completely isolated from the rest of season 3 which might explain how it became one of the best stand-alone episodes of the entire series the ricklance's mix-up is indeed set within the rick and morty universe and uses that universe well to construct its narrative but at the same time this episode in particular almost feels like a completely different show compared to the rest of the season dare i say it rivals some of the most straightforward approaches to concepts that season 1 and 2 handle brilliantly not containing any pretenses or winking at the camera just a story carried out as it is you feel for the various ricks and mortys involved and see their distinct personality traits even if they're quite literally the same person strung out across a multitude of dimensions whether it's a new rick cadet and his jaded older morty superior or a group of mortys trying to find their place in the world their circumstances aren't treated like they don't matter despite the fact that easily could have been the road the writers took considering we'll most likely never see most of these ricks or mortys ever again since these circumstances are treated like they're important with characters we come to like in such a short time though it makes the episode's execution of themes all the more poignant using the stereotypical archetypes the show is built for rick and morty one being smart and useful the other dumb and ignorant 307 creates an unexpected narrative around racial discrimination showing an underrepresented laughed at morty candidate running for office who after he gets in still has a council of ricks telling him what to do the older morty cop also demonstrates the assimilation of minorities into a corrupted system where they act like their abusers to fit in other themes like unhappy complacency in the workforce and lacking a motive to go on are also touched in the episode which has so much to say about society the world and morality while still brilliantly fitting into the rick and morty canon that morty running for office that i mentioned before was actually evil morty a character set up in season one and with the position he's in at the end of 307 there's so much potential for what can be done with him so the story works as both a standalone plot and piece that's foreshadowed to affect the main characters later on everything about it is just so perfect i have no idea how it could have come out of season 3 but nonetheless if there's any episode from season 3 to give praise it's the ricklantis mix-up with that one positive out of the way we come to the conclusion of season 3. i already described how the finale was a mostly non-sequitur installment about rick fighting the president while beth and jerry got back together like their breakup could have easily been resolved at any time but it does represent a good descriptor for the season as a whole there is little aim throughout it to create any kind of cohesive narrative between its overarching plots and characters instead relying on small speeches or singular events to justify big changes being taken back are considered invalid stuff happens in the season that you'd expect would have an effect on the cast which the writers implemented in both seasons prior but by the final climax of season 3 everyone is about the same as they were at the start of the season beth and jerry are slightly more assertive about their parenting style i guess but beyond that no one has gone through a major change no big revelation has shaken the status quo or giving us a new outlook on someone like we've never thought of them before 310 just does nothing as good a season finale's prior and it goes out with a whimper instead of a bang leaving more viewers unsatisfied than not it doesn't surprise me that after such an ending the series would start to heavily decline in ratings and by the time the crew realized it was too late they were already falling deeper into the hole of inconsistency hello i'm that supreme court lady and you [ __ ] did it or do i then belong after all to the earth why if not so should the earth show such swiftness to encompass my fall or denying the fault to a relevance season 4 continues with the legacy season 3 left behind by having there be one meaningful change at the start of the season in this case being that rick now has to ask morty before going on adventures together but unfortunately we never see this same course of action take place over the rest of the season so what was even the goddamn point and i'm only getting started with the train wreck that 401 is for example did you maybe think the stakes in season 3 were too high because that's exactly what i thought rick and morty are in too much danger when all rick has to protect himself as an inconsistent epidermis shield instant death touch and the ability to make death machines out of pretty much thin air how about now we basically make him immortal that's not hyperbole 401 starts with rick dying and trying to come back to life using a machine called operation phoenix to regain consciousness on its own this sounds kinda outlandish and bullshitty but if they established that rick could only keep so many clones of himself or that they were way too hard to make for him to mass produce them that would be one thing that kind of machine could be a one-off gag that comes back later on when [ __ ] gets real and everyone would be like whoa i can't believe that was actually important but no that's not even close to what actually happens since rick's own operation phoenix pod isn't active he ends up auto using the clones of rix in other dimensions instead reminder here there are infinite versions of rick in the multi-dimensional rift up till now even though season 3 had people describe rick as a vengeful god we could at the least pretend he had some chance of dying or getting hurt but with this concept rick can die as many times as he wants there's no urgency for if he gets hurt or killed because rick can infinitely reincarnate himself no problem that means 401 has not only retroactively made every other episode before where rick and morty are in danger have zero stakes but also every episode after it will go by the same standard and you want to know what's even funnier the episode also implied that rick had a completely different method of being brought back to life if operation phoenix didn't work so yeah we've got no stakes here that revelation seems to have also made the cynicism even more prolific than it ever was before morty being the one to get rick killed with little regard for him not even trying to bring him back in service of going after jessica as love interest beyond characters the entire narrative around the series is plagued by cynicism too these writers have quit any pretenses and are straight shooting their hatred for the world directly into our veins and complaining about wanting to go back to episodic storytelling since it was so much better like cool you can do episodic storytelling just because you had one episode relating to an ongoing story that happened to be one of your best yet doesn't mean that it has to be your whole deal no one is asking for that of you but that won't stop season four from continuing to go on and on about continuity and episodic versus linear storytelling as mentioned 401 has rick and by extension the audience told not to look into anything going on or make mad a humor but just have fun for the sake of it 404 has a subplot about jerry going on a miscellaneous adventure with a talking cat where the whole point is that he shouldn't ask questions and instead enjoy the ride since finding out what the reason is only makes him miserable did i ever mention how subtle post season 2 rick and morty riders are i wanted to make sure you understood that since it's really integral to get the intricacies of the later seasons 406 relies on the premise of showing any potential follow-up episodes to previous stories and [ __ ] on continuity gee do you think maybe the writers have some hang-ups about the rick lantis mix-up being so beloved 407 also had a line where rick straight up says he doesn't care about continuity and it's dumb and after all that you might think the season is saying that it doesn't want to do any continuations from previous stories and for the most part it does but then you look at the season finale and they make a second episode based around a concept that was introduced in the previous season where beth was given the option to clone himself and go wait what do you [ __ ] want me to think this whole season you do nothing nothing but mention how stupid and meaningless and inconsequential follow-up storylines are and that episodic [ __ ] rules in comparison but then after all of that when rick and beth's relationship hasn't been all that interesting since the second season you want me to care about something set up before [ __ ] you how do people think this is not how writing should work in fact while we're on the concept of continuity how about we discuss more of season 4's groundbreaking world [ __ ] ups and inconsistencies generally in season 4 it appears there were more episodes that tried to debuff rick and make him a little more vulnerable but he's still considered the smartest man in the universe here and we've seen what he can do so him having less power in a few specific instances only makes me wonder why and the key phrase in that sentence was more episodes not all episodes because in the instances where rick does have god's strength it's far worse than before in 402 he instantly conjured a tron-like battle suit with powers like cyclops from x-men that he uses to obliterate an army of lizard people like it's nothing in 403 he's got anti-booby-trap armor that protects against all traps 405 he's got a weapon that can pause people instantly for seemingly as long as he wants 407 gundam suits activated in seconds 409 he tries to fight a literal god rick has an episode where he goes toe to toe with a god and the show still wants us to have moments where he can barely fight in 406 he fights a guy called storylord with his bare hands and gets his ass beat why not use his laser hand or his epidermis shield or his instant pause button or his instant gundam suit or his instant cyclops suit not like it didn't matter if he died since he's got operation phoenix to resurrect him i could go on like this for days the show made me this way i didn't choose it oh and did i mention magic got introduced in the show like actual magic that is stronger than science which rick is able to harness and use to his benefit way more easily but then he decides to not use it ever again for no reason besides saying magic actually sucks because he had a weird dragon orgy even if this rick decides he doesn't want to use it why hasn't there been any other rick or morty that did why hasn't the citadel switched to a magic system when it would greatly benefit them all and grant infinitely more power why hasn't any other antagonists use magic these are the kind of questions i'm forced to ask when you introduce such broad topics without any thought show you did a bad so now you have to go to the timeout corner think about what you've done to cap off season four we got episode 410 the star wars rick turn of the jerry which not only has a stupid barely pronounceable name not only undermined the rest of the season's narrative about not bringing back returning ideas from previous episodes not only underpowered rick and tried to make it seem like he was ever in any real danger not only tried to make us feel for beth and rick when their relationship was only explored in 409 and nowhere else this season but it also set up how the other beth who may or may not be a clone is awesome and accepted by the family and that we'll probably see her more often but guess what by the start of season 5 she's nowhere to be found and at best we get a short cameo from her in episode 502 but nowhere else when it comes to continuity season 4 may very well be the most inconsistent so far along the journey and like season 3 before it the finale really summed up all its issues in a nice little bow but honestly the overall episode quality consistency for season 4 was kind of better than season 3 with more entertaining one-offs and less outliers on both sides on the spectrum to bring down the value of more middling episodes sure the inconsistency is at an all-time high in one way but in another it's not nearly as bad so as season 4 comes to a close we have to only be going up from here right right right [ __ ] you i'm real i'm the smartest man in the universe probably not even wrong but that's just it i'm not a man i'm god to punish me for not believing in myself or for believing too much too eager to know where lay my allegiance are vainly assuming that i already knew all or how season five makes me confused and thus we've returned to the most recent incarnation as of the scripting of this video which is a weird way of saying that we've gotten to season five the one everyone has opinions about whether positive or negative so what did i think well first things first a majority of episodes this season felt really out of character and that's taking into consideration the cast's current iterations or boring and not worth watching at all which is something i never thought i'd say about rick and morty but here we are when it comes to 501 through 503 i don't have much to say they're pretty fun episodes for the most part and morty finally getting a relatable moment in three seasons through his on-screen relationship with planetina a captain planet ripoff he fell in love with quickly felt great about being with at first but then came to realize was toxic and not good for him really made me feel for his character and i quite liked it but on the other hand the same episode's b plot had rick unironically and entirely willingly falling for a woman because of her arm tits like he genuinely thought she was in love with him when clearly she wasn't and the fact rick doesn't catch on until she flat out tells him is so out of character that it hurts and automatically brings the episode down in my eyes 504 follows the same narrative by having rick completely unaware that morty used a horse sperm collector to get off and contaminated a tank of horse semen leading to a bunch of sperm monsters attacking and saying it out loud only makes me realize just how stupid that concept is and i thought it was [ __ ] moronic before seriously it's gotta be the worst episode of the entire series by far not only since the whole thing could have been avoided by rick having some basic sense and reading morty's obvious body language something you'd think the smartest man in the universe could pick up on but morty's also weirdly characterized as being really innocent and unable to lie which i did not understand at all and made no sense beth and summer were there too to un-ironically talk about men being sexist to them because they couldn't handle planning or fighting like this is the kind of [ __ ] you'd see rick and morty parody in any other episode 406 had a whole segment making fun of the dumb standards of the bechdel test but this it's just bad and really unlike the personalities we've come to know there's no sarcasm the writers really want you to think this is a serious theme they're covering and it's really bad and unfunny i have no other descriptors all right i almost forgot the whole problem being faced was deu sexed away by getting a group of fighters out of nowhere to help i think it's safe to say no one other than the animators gave a [ __ ] about this episode 505 was a real mess with morty and summer trying to impress this new kid who never gets any development or characterization at all and trying to impress him they use rick's talking car and the car blackmails them into doing what it wants but the car changes motivation and wants so many times throughout the plot that it's hard to keep up with and doesn't flow at all the best i can say of this episode is that the subplot of rick getting jerry to hang out with hell creatures that love pain was kind of interesting and in character though it didn't really go anywhere narratively and by 506 rick goes back to being weirdly stupid so it's hardly worth mentioning for that episode rick fights the president again while trying to get a pardon and he's oddly scared of the president for whatever reason the power dynamics have completely shifted compared to 310 where rick effortlessly fended him and the secret service off now being rivals of some kind so is the president like the second smartest man in the universe or i don't know there's another deus ex ending like 504 with another group of fighters we weren't aware of until that point don't know why that's so weirdly similar two episodes apart but yeah it doesn't matter 507 which has to have the stupidest most hard to pronounce name of the whole series features rick wanting to get voltron robots and then when he gets them he wants to make even bigger robots and bigger than that and then yeah beyond that he has pretty much no motivation morty warns summer in the family of this like rick is some sort of child who does this all the time but they brush him off and completely abandon him after something that isn't even his fault the whole family is completely out of character and insufferable to watch especially when looking earlier in the same season beth weren't you like comforting morty at the end of 503 when he broke up with planet tita you're literally gonna leave him to go have fun with robots and be angry for no reason okay thanks i just don't understand this season's affinity for having everyone be completely out of character at the most random points as stated before rick doesn't even seem like the same person at the time taking a major blow to his intelligence and acting more like morty wood in a few instances for no discernible reason and what makes me all the more frustrated about it is that when season 5 does have good episodes they do better at being entertaining than the best of season 4. they're not great but they're still better 508 and 509 in particular did more for rick and morty's characters than anything in the past six years what i mean by that is in 508 bird slash phoenix person gets screen time again and for the first time ever we get some background on rick's past seeing fragments of their relationship scattered around while rick tries to get bp back to his senses having a moment where rick acknowledged for once that he still cared about someone despite their technically being infinite versions of bp felt nice but at the same time with how much rick has regressed since season 2 it ironically doesn't feel like something he'd be willing to say also i'm still not all too satisfied with the conclusion considering this backstory was built up since season 2 to be complex and meaningful and rick runs through most of it like there's almost nothing important to mention 509 carries those same continuity problems over by being directly about rick and morty's relationship being toxic and loveless when that type of relationship only sprung up because of the bad writing decisions made in season 3. before that there was an obvious established bond between rick and morty that expressly got questioned and reaffirmed in 111 where bird person asks why morty chooses to stay with rick despite all the trouble he causes there morty has the opportunity to stop going on adventures with rick by simply not cleaning up a mess he caused but instead morty does the opposite since he realizes rick is a more complex person than just an [ __ ] and that stopping their adventures won't be good for either of them in the long run their relationship had its ups and downs but in the end each had moments showing they cared for each other so in those worst times the two knew it wouldn't be worth ending their adventures over since through those adventures they were helping each other grow as people that's part of why the end of season two stung so much morty thought that rick had abandoned them and not grown at all choosing to do the thing morty decided wouldn't be good for them but in his act rick was actually showing the greatest moment of selflessness he could whether his family could understand or not so how did we get to 509 where a mental patient who appears here and nowhere else can plainly tell that rick and morty's relationship is abusive and unfair that sense that the two were helping each other grow was completely lost and forgotten in favor of cynicism around wacky concepts and an inability to grow them as people which is why i can't stand when 509 rick has to be taught basic [ __ ] empathy from some crows like he never knew anything about understanding others pain with that in mind all i can think when watching 509 is that it's a culmination of someone trying to deconstruct the toxicity of the last few seasons without taking into account the first few seasons since if they did that deconstruction would end up turning to dust and blowing away in the wind unable to ever be reconstructed basically when put into the context of only season 3 through season 5 it does have some bearing and a point to make but when put into context of the entire series it only illustrates the ultimate representation of everything that went wrong with the series along its gradual fall into inconsistency the two even decide to split up at the end of the episode and immediately get back together for 5 10 since that's what the writers need and i've got just as many thoughts there as for this episode i know i've spent half this video doing nothing but going in-depth on episodes and showing their inconsistencies in relation to the rest of the given seasons they belong to but i don't think i've ever had a more mixed opinion about anything from the series than i have for the finale of season five buckle up this is going to be a wild one to begin the opening is really rushed since it starts with rick and morty apart after coming to think their relationship is toxic and the story the writers want to tell in this episode requires them to be together after rick immediately discovers his new partners have seen him as nothing but a rebound he goes back to morty who was emotionally blackmailing him into coming back by making himself look older so they have to go to the citadel to fix it already there's so much to hate and be disappointed by the ending of 509 made it clear this was a change rick and morty both needed to truly be happy and yet here we are seeing them get back together in the next episode we barely saw what rick's life had become before being taken out of it and in 5010 after getting back with morty he doesn't seem any better than he was before so i guess the main reason for their split happening didn't make either of them better at all morty emotionally blackmailing rick into coming back also appears out of character for him and like rick we didn't see how morty was affected by the rift at all since there was no time to linger on it before the status quo was returned both of their experiences could have held weight if we actually saw how it changed them and why being apart might feel worse than together for them but no it was way more important to have the sentient sperm talking horse people giant incest baby episode i totally forgot in a similar fashion we don't get to linger on how the citadel has changed with evil morty as the new president which could have also been its own episode instead right as our duo gets to the citadel evil morty out of nowhere already knows the two are there and preemptively invites them to dinner as soon as they arrive i'd like to say the pacing gets better after that but that would be a [ __ ] lie for the next few minutes evil morty does nothing but info dump about how morty is indefinite in the universe and that the rix makes sure mortys are created so he can always have a partner in every version and all i'm thinking while listening to this explanation is well that's a nice way of saying you bullshitted a whole reveal that never had any build up beforehand to indicate that was happening how else can i take that there's no way that was the intent of the writers in seasons one two three hell even four or five all this confirms to me is that when evil morty was revealed as far back as season one there was no idea for where that would go and this conclusion honestly doesn't make sense after evil morty reveals this whole selection process for the r plus m we follow rick is questioned on whether he'd have gone back to morty if the crows didn't leave him and he's shown not knowing how to answer that question all i have to say to that is [ __ ] so writers you're telling me that rick had no attachment to the morty he was with and that he'd be willing to trade them in for a pair of crows any day have you [ __ ] ever watched the first two seasons genuine question i've gone over this so many times you should probably already know why this doesn't work at all so i won't even bother repeating myself but you oughta know at this point and that makes no sense whatsoever and i do find it hard to care about any of what's going on when rick is so nonchalant about everything morty says he wants to go to the citadel damn hitting the ground running with a citadel episode evil morty invites him to talk when previously the duo would have no knowledge that he was evil morty fine i could eat but the second he reveals he's evil we're gone even rick's backstory the mystery we as an audience have been teased at for so many years gets exposed to morty and what's rick's response oh dead wife yes now everyone can shut up about it how am i supposed to care about all these bombs being dropped when rick's constantly winking at the audience about every troper idea being utilized while i'm on that backstory i should mention that the fact it turns out it's rick's joke backstory you know the one we were led to believe he created to full government agents and make fun of the sad backstory trope in 301 is his actual backstory comes off as nothing but lazy there are infinite possibilities for rick's backstory and how it could have been handled but they decided the best way to go about it would be by acting out the very trope rick was originally making fun of before it became canon are you [ __ ] me it doesn't matter how good a backstory it is when fundamentally you're missing the original point i do like some aspects of the backstory and rick's affiliation to the rest of the multiverse but at the same time it's impossible for me to accept with how blatantly it doesn't understand at the same time though there could be an argument made that rick acting like that backstory was a joke could be part of the facade he's putting on mentally acting like he doesn't care to hide the pain the thing is though that explanation is entirely retrospective and sounds incredibly aspully so i don't find it satisfactory and rick clearly didn't show any [ __ ] emotions about it one way or another after morty sees so the theory seems all the more unlikely and then there's the ending the part of this finale that everyone seems to like and honestly i agree if one positive came out of episode 510 it's having evil morty destroy the concept of rick being the smartest person in the universe to open up a much wider array of stories to be told which i like to call the first two seasons you [ __ ] idiots of course after three goddamn seasons of rick being the smartest in the universe the crew finally deciding to revert it is a massive wave of relief in so many ways but at the same time it's also not a big change in the grand scheme of the series when all it's doing is going back on a decision made several seasons ago braxton you're such a sour [ __ ] can't you just enjoy a series that's been in the gutter for years finally getting the chance to crawl back out you're right i am being sour about all this but i think after going through the whole series in frustrating detail i have the right to be this finale does a lot of good for where the series can go in the future but there's no guarantee another sperm baby episode won't happen our characters won't continue to deteriorate from what they once were instead of growing or that the series won't continue making big changes only to spend almost no time on them and go back we kept seeing much of the same throughout the entirety of season five with the lows continuing to get lower the highs being not as high and the middling stuff being more inconsistent than ever so how can i say at this point when 510 is still really [ __ ] inconsistent in so many ways that the series has improved i can't not until season six comes out and if it blows me away then it blows me away right now it's got no right of passage for me to think it'll go into a whole new direction if the last three seasons in this finale or anything go by there's no plan ahead so i hope they've got one hell of an improv team to make the next season's reveals appear even a little bit thought out beforehand since we haven't had a good stinger of an ending since season two's finale and they've got more eyes on them now than they had in season four so they better take that olive branch with time effort character development a well-thought-out twist and more definitive changes this shipwreck can still set sail but you've gotta prove it to me first rick and morty or the inconsistency will swallow you whole i've been just stop have a good one um [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Just Stop

Views: 2,252,146

Keywords: Rick and Morty Rant, Rick and Morty Review, Just Stop Review, Just Stop Rick and Morty, Rick and Morty Season 4, Rick and Morty Season 5, Rick and Morty Season 3, Pickle Rick, Rick and Morty Season 3 Rant, Rick and Morty Season 2, Rick and Morty Analysis

Id: _n3W_W3oSAY

Length: 67min 12sec (4032 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 29 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Starcomet1]

Honestly, at least it is not as bad as Steven Universe when it comes to inconsistency.

[u/Q_OANN]

It’s a cartoon, guys, 30 minutes a week for 10 weeks. Don’t think about it