Smart people get a chance to climb on top, take reality for a ride, but it will never stop trying to throw you, and eventually it will." This penultimate episode feels a lot more like a Season One episode, especially as we're delving into the background story of Rick's own daughter, Beth. The tone is far more vulgar and depressing this time around too, giving us another serious look at how Rick's miraculous creations have caused real-life distress and disaster. But, this time, it seems Beth has made the biggest faux pas - Rick may be indifferent to his daughter's mistakes, but we see an element of her father in Beth here, which is more revealing than anything else. Perhaps, his influence on her is more far-reaching than we first assumed. Unfortunately, as the writers decided to feature a more subdued, life-is-unfair narrative, they lost a lot of momentum early on.
The premise is brilliant as always, introducing us to Froopy land, a place designed by Rick for his daughter's perpetual enjoyment as a child - a place that regressed in her mind to imaginary. But, there's also a dark story behind the place, which was catalysed by Beth's abandonment of her childhood friend, Tommy. This resulted in him creating his own society after mating with a local sentient species - spiralling into a cannibalistic civilisation that worships Tommy as its ruler. Vulgar and blatant though it is, the story mirrors that of real life in which his actual father is accused of eating him in explanation for his disappearance. Rick and Morty has touched on dark plot lines before, but this may take the biscuit as the most disturbing conundrum yet. What Beth does to resolve this incredibly complicated and seemingly impossible predicament is beyond words. It's clear that she commits genocide in Froopy land, including killing Tommy, and returns his finger for Rick to create a clone. What ensues is a particularly savvy sequence of events that leads up to Tommy being returned to his family and his father being saved from execution for a crime he didn't commit. in typical Rick and Morty style, it tells a million stories in a short minute clip. This is where the integrity of the show lies, in which the writers merely need a few expressive scenes to describe conclusions. It's the final father and daughter discussion that has the most meaningful content though - with Beth considering cloning herself in order to escape the humdrum of life. Rick's openness to performing the cloning is typical of his indifference to the normality. Perhaps the most meaningful conversation they've had in the entire show, and yet it contains the most disturbing tease yet, in which we will now question whether Beth is the original her or just a clone in disguise. The main plot line was coupled with a return to form Jerry, who is at his old tricks again, making a mess of the Universe with his incompetence, cowardice and severe lack of consideration for his own kids. Shacking up with an alien known as Kiara (something like that), in a semi-revenge against Beth, who is also an obsessive huntress, Summer and Morty finds themselves dragged along in the flawed relationship, in which they perform ritual hunts in order for Jerry to train his telekinesis and perhaps form a decent relationship in the process. The jokes may be a recycled form of Jerry's complete ignorance to boundaries and his capacity for the extreme, but the revelation in which Kiara was actually using Jerry as rebound hit the nail on the head regarding Jerry's entire existence. The show has definitely become more self-aware this season, and I liked the fact that Rick mentioned his tendency to have an adventure with Morty more than anyone else. Also, this episode had one of the best post-credits scenes yet, in the simple form of messages on an answering machine. But, because it has touched on many of these themes thoroughly already, it can seem repetitive of the writers to revisit past narratives for derivation in new ones. The concept beyond Beth's imaginary world was originally conceived, but the reliance on both Rick and Jerry's opposing personalities as the catalyst for the stories was less than inspiring. Nevertheless, the effort that goes into creating this hundred mile-an-hour script is always at the forefront, and it is consistently a joy to watch and hear. 8/10
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