Rick and Morty Season 4 Part 2 Review

Very few TV shows have come along that have had a significant cultural influence and impact on viewers. But I can confidently say that Rick and Morty can include themselves in this TV show stratosphere. From the schezuan sauce craze to Pickle Rick, Rick and Morty has brought about countless moments, jokes and memes that will hold their own place in pop culture history.

If you haven't seen Rick and Morty yet, I mean what are you doing with your life?! It follows the sci-fi adventures of Rick (Justin Roiland), a petty, alcholic mad scientist and his 14 year-old grandson Morty (Justin Roiland), who's a kind-hearted and easily distressed teenager. Whenever the duo isn't fighting aliens or monsters, they're flying around in Rick's space ship or jumping from one dimension to the next with Rick's portal gun in order to save the universe and the space time continuum. Also along for the ride is Morty's sister Summer (Spencer Grammer), his mom Beth (Sarah Chalke), and dad Jerry (Chris Parnell). Together we see the Smith family drama unfold in ways that are extremely far from conventional for "normal families".

Season 4 of Rick and Morty was big question mark in itself before any episodes were even released. The last episode of Season 3 was released on Oct 1, 2017. It wasn't until Nov 10, 2019 that Rick and Morty had a Season 4. After episode 5 was released on Dec 15, there were rumors as to whether creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland would even stay with Adult Swim. However, contracts were signed and the Rick and Morty creators were guaranteed 70 more episodes with Adult Swim.

Then on May 3, the other half of Season 4 was released. And what a better time than during a worldwide epidemic for people to get introduced to the animated show that has take the airwaves by storm. Except for the final episode, all of these episodes were stand-alones. So if you haven't watched a single episode of Rick and Morty up until this point, don't worry you're not missing out!

Overall, I thought these five episodes were a good indication of what is yet to come for future seasons of Rick and Morty. Here's my breakdown of each episode:

Episode 6: Never Ricking Morty

In the Part 2 premiere of Season 4, Rick and Morty found its footing. This entire episode is centered around the fact that Rick and Morty are trapped on a literal, literary train. Each compartment of the circular train is a different scene in the episode. We start out by seeing a never-before-seen character have a drink in the dining car and listen to another passenger tell a story about Rick and why he must kill him. Confused, this passenger goes into the next car and stumbles upon a group of creatures around a fire telling Christmas stories about Rick. From there this character comes face-to-face with another passenger who's equally as confused. We come to find out that these anonymous passengers were actually Rick and Morty in disguise. The two of them have to fight their way past the Tickets Please Guy in order to get to the front of the train.

Once they do, we're introduced to Story Lord. He's the conductor of the story train and the main antagonist of the episode. Because of his shear strength, Story Lord is able to beat up Rick and Morty and hook them up to his literary engine. With it, Story Lord harnesses anthologies from Rick and Morty's minds in order to give his story train the strength it needs to continue running and break through the fifth wall. Despite Story Lords efforts, Rick and Morty are able to block out the influence of his engine and make an unwatchable story with Veggie Tale characters and Jesus being included. Story Lord goes into the dream to try and stop it but Rick traps him in it allowing for him and Morty escape. It turns out though that Rick and Morty weren't actually in the train the entire time. They were just their living room watching TV and the story train was just a toy train that Morty had bought.

In the end, Jesus is walking on a beach with Story Lord in this dream of Rick's. Story Lord is telling Jesus the origins of Christianity when Jesus finally gives in and decides to self-destruct, causing blood to get all over the inside of this model train. Because of that, the train derails and Rick gets mad at Morty and tells him to get and buy another train because, "Nobody's out there shopping with this f***ing virus!"

That really was the icing on the cake. By including the fact that the entire world is facing the coronavirus, they decided to weave that into the episodes narrative and have a moment in history for future watchers to look back and laugh at.

Final Score: 9/10

Episode 7: Promortyus

If you've seen Alien then you know that it never ends well for characters when face-sucking parasites are involved. In this instance though, some good was done. Rick and Morty are under the influence of this parasitic race of aliens after messing with some alien eggs and having them attach themselves onto their faces, very much like the movie Alien. Under its influence, the two of them build up this advanced society where everything is just a normal day for them and the other alien races that are under the parasites influence.

It isn't until Morty runs into a rock that he realize that he has this parasite stuck to his face. He's able to get Rick's attention too and he shoots them off their faces. After that, Rick and Morty run into a group of aliens that are still under the influence of these parasites. But in typical Morty fashion, he's caught when the group realizes that his parasite is dead and that it's just duct taped to his face. This leads to Rick and Morty into a space car chase/shoot out with the parasites through their advanced society.

What happens next is probably one of the more controversial jokes used in the season. Before Rick is about to jump to light speed to escape, we see two skyscrapers that are meant to symbolize the Twin Towers. Instead of running into them and destroying them, Rick decides to casually fly off to the side and avoid them. There's this awkward moment of silence that follows and is finally interrupted when Rick says, "I'm glad we didn't do that". We then see this shipping yard that is supposed to symbolize Pearl Harbor. Rick and Morty decide that that is "in-bounds" and decide to bomb all those ships instead. At that moment, the scene felt very cringe-worthy and hilarious while watching it. But I can see why people went to Twitter though after the episode aired to voice there opinions.

Rick and Morty are back at home now eating breakfast with Beth and Jerry when they realize that Summer had come along for the ride too. For the first time in the series, Rick and Morty go back to a place were they unloaded absolute destruction and chaos onto it. They're able to sneak their way back in when they stumble upon this chamber room. In it, Summer is sitting on a bed around a bunch of aliens that are still under the parasite influence. It turns out that Summer had become the queen of these people and is charge of the place. And instead of escaping with them, she arrests them.

After that, Summer comes to visit them in their cell and gives them the entire back story as to how they got where they are, since they had no recollection of what happened. As it turns out, Rick, Morty and Summer were all in the flying car going off to explore a planet. On it Morty and Rick found a couple of alien eggs on the ground that ended up latching onto their faces. But Summer didn't come under the influence of these parasites because she had a toothpick in her mouth. And every time an egg tried to latch onto her, it immediately died after getting stabbed by the toothpick. As a result, everyone looked to Summer as this god and placed her in charge. So she was actually the one in charge with the development of this civilization and Rick and Morty's parasites were just doing as she commanded. From there we see that Rick and Morty's face parasites actually had feelings for one another and got a little busy. Then the episode comes full circle showing the moment where Rick and Morty are walking through the cave, holding some eggs and regaining their consciousness and realizing the situation they're in.

At this point, Rick and Morty go on trial with Summer putting up a ploy saying they are sentenced to death. She tells her fellow councilmen that she is going to get in Rick's spaceship with them to see their death sentence carried out. One of the council members catches on though and realizes that Summer is just trying to escape with them. Morty then pulls out a harmonic and attempts to play it. As a result, the aliens with parasites on their faces all explode and new parasite eggs are laid in their places.

Final Score: 7/10

Episode 8: The Vat of Acid Episode

Aside from the finale, this was probably THE BEST episode of this half of Season 4 (in my opinion). Rick and Morty are on a job where they're trading crystals with an alien mob gang. Everything is going alright until the mobsters pull their guns on them. Before they went into the warehouse where this deal was going down, Rick told Morty to jump into the same vat of acid as him. So in an attempt to avoid getting shot, Rick forces Morty to jump into a vat of acid with him. Unbeknownst to the mobsters, both Rick and Morty are actually fine. Rick had rigged this vat to contain what looked like acid but actually wasn't. At the bottom of the vat, Rick had installed compartments for bones to float up to make it appear like they're dead, a breathing system and a blaster (in case someone put a ladle in it to test its acidity); all to cover up the fact that they're actually alive.

The head mobster is taken back by the fact that Rick had "decided to commit suicide" with Morty. This leads the duo to stay in the vat a little longer than Rick had anticipated but they end up shooting their way out in the end. After this incident, Morty is genuinely pissed at Rick and believes that he's starting to lose it as a scientist and inventor. He decides to test Rick's patience and see if he will actually go through with creating an idea of his. Morty had an idea for a device that can save your current point in time and go back to that save point if you mess up, kind of like a checkpoint in a video game. And to Morty's surprise, Rick is able to do it. From there we're given a montage of Morty failing to do various things and going back to try and successfully do them. Whether it be jumping over a pothole, catching cheese balls in his mouth, or running towards the police and them calling it a "suicide by cop", this is one of the best moments of the episode.

It doesn't stop there though. At one point Morty is in front of a strip club when he saves his place in time. But instead of going into the strip, he decides to go into a coffee shop that just so happens to be next door. He holds the door open for a girl that eventually becomes his girlfriend. Another montage happens showing the two of them getting to know each each, texting each other, walking around town, meeting her parents, and getting into a fight. Instead of going back in time, Morty decides to buy plane tickets for a vacation to try and salvage his relationship with this girl.

During their flight one of the engines catches on fire causing the plane to crash in a snowy terrain. Morty and his girlfriend survive along with a few other passengers. They do what they can in the moment to survive and even resort to cannibalism. However, Morty starts to grow restless and decides trek out by himself and find his game-saving device in the back half of the plane that had broken off. He is able to find it but is extremely exhausted when he does. Instead of using it to reset everything, he pulls out his phone and tries to call 911 with his frozen fingers. He's unable to call someone in time before he passes out but a helicopter comes and saves them.

Morty is able to fully recover and the Smith's are gathered around their TV celebrating. At one moment Jerry accidentally knocks the remote off the couch arm chair onto the ground. But instead of picking it up he picks up Morty's game-saving device by mistake. And in typical Jerry fashion, he presses a button on the device causing Morty to go back to the time where he saved his place in from of that strip club. His girl friend doesn't recognize who he is and she pepper sprays him when he tries to explain that they were boyfriend and girlfriend once. And in an attempt to change the situation, Morty keeps re-spawning at the moment when she pepper sprays him but is not able to reconnect with this girl. I mean I COMPLETELY LOST IT AT THAT MOMENT! That had to be one of the funniest moments of the season!

Now defeated, Morty goes back to Rick and accepts that fact that time travel should be taken seriously and that our mistakes make us who we are. However, Rick pulls the ultimate douche move and explains that every time Morty reset his place in time it didn't actually save it. All of the things that Morty did actually happened. He wasn't regenerating into a new Morty, he was still his same self. What happened was that a Morty in a reality with a similar outcome was destroyed and this Morty took his place. In essence, Morty had dozens of Morty's across different realities killed by trying to succeed in these different stupid tasks. Completely shocked and taken back by this, he asks Rick to merge all of these Morty's consciousnesses into his mind since he had saved them. He is then met by SWAT cars and rioters of everyone he affected from his carelessness.

The only way Morty can get out of this situation is by accepting that Rick's vat of acid was actually a good idea and jump into one that Rick put in their front yard. That just goes to show you right there how incredibly petty Rick is and how he holds grudges against people that don't completely agree with him.

Morty jumps into the vat and releases the compartment of bones. Everyone is convinced that he's dead except for two of the SWAT agents. In an attempt to see if Morty is actually dead, one of the agents sticks a ladle into the vat. Morty fumbles around with the ray gun that's at the bottom of the vat and accidentally shoots that agent and kills him. Some of the liquid splashes onto the other one but he doesn't die since it isn't actual acid. He believes that he is completely impervious to acid. He then goes on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, since he's still alive in that reality, in the end credits and is slowly lowered into a vat that has actual acid in it.

Final Score: 10/10

Episode 9: Childrick of Mort

Every once in a while, there's a Rick and Morty episode where the characters take a break from the sci-fi adventures and have a plot with a normal, everyday life situation. Here the Smith family is going on a camping trip to take their minds off things. That is all interrupted though when Rick gets a voicemail from a girlfriend saying she's pregnant. Beth demands that Rick go and see her immediately, so their camping trip is put on hold for the moment. Rick transforms the family station wagon into a flying car and they fly off into space to find this girlfriend. When they approach the planet where the call came from, we come to find out that Rick had sex with a planet! And of course he had, what normal person wouldn't go and do something like that, right?!

From there the Smith family stumbles on a pit that looks like, well you can use your imagination here. All of the sudden Gaia, the planet that Rick did, starts spewing out these clay-like children that start breaking on impact if they aren't caught. Rick and Beth decide to help Gaia out and build an advanced city. At its core it divides the children into different professions and disposes of the Unproductives'. In an attempt to salvage the camping trip, Jerry takes Summer and Morty with him to show them what camping is all about. The two of them aren't too impressed with their dad though and Jerry decides to take a walk of shame. During it he falls into a river that carries him into the children sorter in the city. And because Jerry is unemployed, he is thrown back out and with the Unproductives'. This leads to Jerry become their leader, showing them the ways of camping and convincing them that the society that Rick and Beth had built is bad.

Now on their own, Summer and Morty decide to go on a walk to find their dad. Instead they stumble on a spaceship that crash landed. They go inside to investigate and see if it still works. According to Morty, the controls are similar to his video game console he has but doesn't know which button does what. Summer finds this contraption that looks like a bong and gets high off it. She's then able to tell Morty what each buttons does.

Back at the city, Beth and Rick are having a celebration with the clay children when they're suddenly interrupted by this cloud. We come to find out is that Rick didn't actually get Gaia pregnant. It was this Zeus-like god in those clouds that was the clay children's father. He had come back to tell Rick to stop building this city for them and leave. Rick doesn't take kindly to that so he went up into the sky to fight it.

On the ground, Jerry shows up with his group of Unproductive clay children on one side of the river and Beth's sophisticated ones on the other. They go into an all-out battle that's more of a stand still. Back in the sky, Rick isn't doing too hot against this Zeus god he's fighting. All of the sudden the god dies without Rick landing a final punch. It turns out that Summer and Morty had both gotten high in that alien spaceship, lost control of it and crashed it into the god's brain. As a result, the god falls from the sky and impales himself in the skyscrapers of the city Rick and Beth built. Gaia is extremely upset with Rick and starts having volcanoes erupt with lava to express her anger. The entire Smith family was able to escape at the last second and were able bring along a few of the clay children.

The line that stuck with me the most from this episode was when they had escaped and on their way back home. Rick says, "And Morty, the f***ing moron. He thought the ship worked like a game controller. What in the Disney Channel f**k is that?"

Final Score: 7/10

Episode 10: Star Mort Rickturn of Jerri

In the Season 3 episode the ABC's of Beth, Rick and Morty fans were left with the impression that Rick had made a clone of his daughter Beth. And up until this point we didn't truly know if the Beth we've been keeping track of was the actual Beth or the clone. But with this episode that question was answered, kind of? This rogue-Beth that's in outer space has a vengeance and has come to this dimension to kill Rick once and for all.

Next we see the Smith family at their dining room table enjoying a nice breakfast. That's interrupted though when talk of an opening with their psychiatrist Dr. Wong is available. Dr. Wong was first introduced back in the Pickle Rick episode when Beth, Summer, and Morty were sent to her by their school for Summer huffing glue and Morty peeing his pants. And just like in that episode, Rick tries to get out of family therapy by putting on an invisibility belt. Morty is able to see through Rick so Rick decides to give the belt to Summer in order to piss Morty off.

Morty ends up finding Summer at a crush's house using a pair of heat-seeking, night vision goggles. The two make a trade only for Morty to get away and Summer getting caught by her crush. It's at this point where Rick comes face-to-face with this rogue-Beth. He tries to explain to her the situation and talks her into getting drinks at their favorite restaurant Shoney's. At Shoney's, Beth tells Rick about all of her crime-filled adventures and that she's considered one of the galaxy's most wanted now.

On a TV in the background, we can hear that a new and improved Galatic Federation has invaded Earth and is hunting down Beth. Rick runs away to try and save Beth and Jerry from their appoint with Dr. Wong. It is then that we are re-introduced to Tammy as well; the leader of the bug invaders and a former friend of Summer's in high school before leaving. Rick is able to get Beth and Jerry out by releasing some contingencies he had installed in Dr. Wong's office.

This leads to a car chase in their space vehicles through the town only to have rogue-Beth crash into Rick's ship. Tammy is able to catch up with them too and has rogue- and regular Beth beamed up to their Death Star-like ship; the NX-5 Planet Remover which can destroy entire planets but not Wrangler jeans for some reason. Rick then shoots Tammy and has Morty, Summer, and Jerry go with him in order to blow up this knock-off Death Star. The group splits up by Rick going to save the Beth's and Morty and Summer finding a way to destroy the ship.

Morty decides to take off his Wrangler jeans in order to distract the guards while Summer goes and throws them into the engine. This causes the ship to stop working and start a self-destruct mode. After Rick frees the Beth's we come face-to-face with Bird Person. This character was also in earlier seasons and was one of Rick's closest friends. At his wedding, Tammy kills him and transforms him into a Terminator-like character now named Phoenix Person.

What ensues is anything short of a chaotic fight. Rick is using all sorts of bionic gadgets in order to give him the upper hand against Phoenix Person. At one point, Phoenix Person is rapidly pecking at Rick's chest and pierces his way to his heart. But he is able to block this by having a metal shield form around it. With what looks like his dying breath, Rick is saved by both Beth's who find an ON/OFF switch on the back of Phoenix Persons neck and just flip it.

When the Smith's return home and are standing around in their garage, Beth decides to go off with the rogue one. But before she leaves Rick asks everybody if they want to know which Beth is the clone and which isn't. And to his surprise no one really cares. So when Rick is left all alone in the garage he watches a video of the day he made the clone of his daughter. In the end, both the clone and regular Beth were in septic tanks with stickers labeling which one was which. However, a machine arm comes in and removes the stickers and moves them around a couple of times like that ball in a cup magic trick. It was hard to keep track of which Beth was the real one and which one was the clone. I think we're meant to believe that neither we nor Rick knows which is his actual daughter and which is the clone.

Final Score: 10/10

Overall Average: 86%

Overall, I was extremely happy with the way this second half of Season 4 turned out! I don't know why I was so worried after that long hiatus. I'm guess Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland just wanted to get it right and not rush things. Which is why I'm all the more excited to see where these next 70 episodes take us!

If you want to catch up on some Rick and Morty, you can watch some of the episodes from this season for free on AdultSwim.com or watch Seasons 1-3 on Hulu if you have an account.