Rick and Morty season 4 episode 6 Review

The Sunday evening of May 2020 will be celebrated as the release date of a new musical by Birdperson. After four months of suspension, the beloved series returns to the screens ‒ it’s Rick and Morty season 4, ladies and gentlemen. The new episode called “Never Rick and Morty” is packed with numerous twists and details, attracting even more public attention, compared to the other episodes.

The storyline of Rick and Morty season 4 episode 6 is pretty simple. Morty goes on an adventure with his grandfather. In space, Sanchez sees a magical squirrel and takes it to his spaceship. The outcome of this adventure is highly unpredictable, well, just as always.

At first, the episode puts the main characters in the background, focusing our attention on the figures they offended in the previous episodes (check out episode 2 review).

Anyway, Rick and Morty find themselves on a train of stories where they encounter the Lord of Stories. Heroes recall different moments with characters from past adventures. Failing to find a way out of the situation, the grandfather goes for prayer. As it turns out in the end (Spoiler!) ‒ the couple were just playing with the train of stories in their living room all this time.

Concept

A similar approach has been used before, but it has never been so multi-threaded as this time. Instead of implementing the concept of the video-show from “Morty’s Mind-Blowers” and the “Interspace Cable” chapter ‒ “Never Ricking Morty” places its jokes in a long chain, thus showing us new facets of their application. 

Different types of cars have different goals. “Rick and Morty” takes the conditionality of “Snow Pier” with Storylord (Paul Giamatti) as the train conductor serving Ed Harris, creating a kind of reference to corporate brand synergy.

“Never Riking Morty” has the potential to be the brightest, the densest episode after “The Ricklantis Mixup”. Thanks to the unfamiliar innovative atmosphere and unconventional techniques used.

Traveling to the Smith’s house is Bechdel’s trademark, the last scene in the living room is accompanied by a sharp side angle. The cheerful pace is similar to the story of the snakes in the last episode ‒ a lot of information is given in a concise manner, helping the episode not to be overloaded with too much detail.

The story of the sixth part of Rick and Morty season 4 has kind of train-like structure really. The situations that our heroes find themselves fluctuate inside and outside the walls of the train. In a show, in which one of the main characters once shouted “Inception” because of their silliness, there is a mixture of penetrating levels that make the viewer unwittingly smile at all the absurdity that takes place in the scene.

Prospects

The two best episodes of Rick and Morty season 4 were built on the show. An episode about the dangers of the actual execution of one’s desires gave a chance to take a retrospective look at certain crazy series of the project fandom.

The development of the adventures of this insane duo ‒ scientist Rick and his grandson Morty ‒ in the fourth season was foggy. There even was some kind of scandal going on because of it.

One of the authors of the animated series, Dan Harmon, published a tweet, that creating a show without being ordered by a TV network could be extremely difficult. This statement provoked a wave of panic among the fans of the show. The information was picked up by many media outlets. Fans immediately explained what was happening via strong criticism of the previous season.

Actually, no one really considered stopping the project. The work on the fourth season has simply not been started yet! In spring 2018, the Adult Swim company placed an order for 70 new episodes of the series. According to one of the creators of the franchise, Justin Royland. Such a massive volume of the series implies that the creators of the project have a large stock of ideas securely in place.

At the same time, the season 4 episode about the Toilet Planet is more understandable when revisited. It has some element of admitting that Rick’s isolated nature has its shortcomings ‒ these winding, one-time adventures have an expiration date. Even this episode, literally, raises the question: how a certain part of the audience can see the release of the Lord of History. The moment of the train crash corresponds to the approach of the whole show.

From a creative point of view, it is difficult to understand why so many perspectives are closed in one episode at once. It is an act of self-preservation through open self-criticism and the “Never Ricking Morty” episode seems to be serving exactly that purpose.

Star Recon, a guest of the show, described the premiere as Giamatti’s big night. Paul is the perfect guest star for such a show. He has enough technical experience to bring a character to life in a well-thought-out manner. The level of performance he gives clearly has a purpose behind it that is more than just to create a “funny voice”.