Rick and Morty season 5 has rediscovered the shows sense of one-off fun

Date:
Mon, 16 Aug 2021 11:15:44 +0000

Description:
From Mr Nimbus to wooden Rick and Morty decoys, season 5 has doubled down on clever sci-fi comedy.

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Mild spoilers for season 5 of Rick and Morty follow.

Successful science fiction comedies arent quite as rare as some would have
you believe. One thing pretty much all the good ones have in common, however, is plenty of brains to match the laughs aim too low and you could find yourself taking a dip in a Hot Tub Time Machine.

Like Red Dwarf and Futurama before it, Rick and Morty would still function as solid sci-fi if every one of the gags was surgically removed. Sure, at times the Adult Swim show wheels out some of the crudest, stupidest jokes on TV,
but theyre underpinned by at least as many grade-A, big ideas as youd encounter in Star Trek even in the glory days of The Next Generation , when Jean-Luc Picard and his crew threw around high-concept technobabble as if the fate of the universe depended on it.

Where many sci-fi series will base an entire episode around a single premise, many of Rick and Mortys half-hours feature A-, B- and even C-plots of awe-inspiring ingenuity. Indeed, its so ideas intensive that its easy to see why only 49 episodes have aired since the shows 2013 debut an average of
just seven stories a year.

While the glacial release schedule is great for quality control, it makes it somewhat harder for a viewer to keep track of the shows continuity. From the beginning, Rick and Morty has followed an adventure-of-the-week format, but
as its evolved, its backstory has become more and more complex, with supporting characters recurring, old plotlines revisited, and in-jokes more integral to the shows DNA.

Thats great when youre following the continuous narrative of a Game of
Thrones or a Breaking Bad, but more challenging when every episode throws up
a different story like Doctor Who and The X-Files, Rick and Morty is a show caught in the crossfire between its continuity and self-contained stories. Best HBO Max shows When is the next episode of Rick and Morty? How to watch Rick and Morty season 5 online Morty meets the Captain Planet-inspired Planetina one of season 5's ingeniously twisted spoofs. (Image credit: Adult Swim) Rick and more-fun

Rick and Morty brings an extra (albeit adventurous) complication into the mix by embracing multiverses, populated by numerous versions of all the lead characters. When told across a single episode, Rick and Mortys adventures through multiple timelines are ingenious and exhilarating, but when the plotlines stretch out across years, you start to need a crib sheet to keep
up. (This could be a cautionary tale for Marvel, now that Loki has brought
the multiverse into play.)

Rick and Morty season 5, however, feels like a breath of fresh air because
its re-emphasized what the show does best brilliant standalone adventures,
and some of the best comedy writing on TV.

Maybe thats because, nearly eight years into its run, the show is no longer the anarchic new kid on the block, meaning the creative team arent feeling quite so much pressure to ride the wave of the zeitgeist. Or maybe the
writers have simply been given a directive to have more fun.

If its the latter, its one of the smartest moves the show has ever made.
After all, classic season 3 episode Pickle Rick isnt a fan favorite because
it enhances the shows canon its loved because its a weird, ingenious, hilarious piece of storytelling. Its an ethos thats been a guiding force in season 5, where Rick and Morty has captured the beats of a perfectly calibrated sci-fi sitcom in which everyone yes, even Jerry plays their part to perfection. It's always good to see more Birdperson but Rick and Morty thrives on new characters and plotlines. (Image credit: Adult Swim) Greatest hits

The latest season has felt like a showreel of everything that makes Rick and Morty tick when it's firing on all cylinders. As well as introducing Mr
Nimbus a wonderfully bizarre, Aquaman -inspired ruler of the oceans season opener Mort Dinner Rick Andre treated us to a glorious subplot where a dimension-hopping journey to mature some wine turns Morty into the nemesis of an entire civilization and sentences Jessica, the object of his affections, to eons as a prisoner on an alien world.

Then, Mortiplicity echoed season 2 classic Total Rickall with its perfect execution of an ingenious premise, as Rick, Morty and the Smith family negotiate legions of increasingly weird decoy Sanchez/Smith families.

Weve also been given spot-on-but-twisted spoofs of Captain Planet, Transformers, Voltron and Hellraiser along the way, with only the giant sperm plot of the icky Rickdependence Spray feeling like a significant misstep.
What a shame that the episodes giant incest baby one of the shows crudest plotlines should be the main recurring gag of the season.

While its been fun to catch up with the likes of Birdperson and Space Beth and laugh at a casual reference to Pickle RickRick and Morty season 5 has soared because because you havent needed to be a superfan to enjoy it. Aside from rare exceptions like Arrested Development, TV comedy tends to work best when standalone plots take precedence over arc stories.

If creating all-new characters and plotlines takes more time, then so be it. Rick and Morty has never been prolific, and theres no reason to break the habit of its lifetime even if it means we have to wait a decade for all of the 70 episodes Adult Swim commissioned back in 2018 to make it to the
screen.

Rick and Morty airs on Adult Swim in the US, and on E4/All 4 in the UK. The two-part season 5 finale airs on September 5. Best Netflix UK series



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/news/rick-and-morty-season-5-has-rediscovered-the-sh ows-sense-of-one-off-fun/


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