Rick and Morty Season 7 Episode 6 Review

Join Swimpedia as we review a screener of the sixth episode of Rick and Morty Season 7 with minimal spoilers.

[MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD]

One of the things that makes a new season of Rick and Morty such an event is that every season delivers 10 interesting episodes of television. While not every episode is a winner, you can just about count on every episode to deliver something new and interesting. Just like the older Adult Swim shows that preceded it, Rick and Morty thrives on the idea of breaking the constructs of television. This season’s anthology episode is no different.

After last week’s action-packed lore bomb, Rick and Morty take a breather with a lighthearted anthology episode, starring our characters in various situations ala Morty’s Mind Blowers from season 3, instead showing us past adventures that Rick and Morty actually remember, but we still haven’t seen. Similar to Morty’s Mind Blowers, each act of this episode takes a different turn on the premise. One of the most exciting things about watching Rick and Morty is when the story they set up ends 7 minutes into the episode, and you get to see where they are going to have to go from here, and Rickfending Your Mort is a great example. Rick is characterized as depressed in the beginning of this episode, however it doesn’t seem to be a true continuation of Rick’s devastation that we saw last episode. Rick is definitely more depressed and a bit more angry, but as the anthology kicks off and becomes more of an actual adventure, we see Rick get back into his normal self. A running theme of Rick and Morty as a series is that Rick’s connection with his family truly does make him better than other Ricks, and getting back into it with Morty seems to be helping with the existential dread he’s been facing since defeating Rick Prime.

Summer, Jerry, and the Beths each get to have their own mini anthologies, but they mostly do not have much to do in this episode. It’s been a running theme with this season, with the only family member outside of the titular duo having an A or even B plot is Jerry in the excellent Jerrick Trap episode. Every previous season leaned on the family for at least B plots for a majority of the episodes, and six episodes in, we’ve yet to get a story from the point of view of Summer or the Beths.

This season has leaned the hardest on Rick and Morty; which is ironic because this entire season was completed before the recasting. Ian Cardoni and Harry Belden, who both gave stellar performances last week as Rick, Morty, Rick Prime and Evil Morty, truly had their work cut out for them this season. This season hasn’t had any Summer interference or Beth/Jerry subplots to lean on in order to distract from the new voices; they’ve been put front and center, and they have truly been nailing it.

While last week’s episode put the lore and action front and center, this week the show is content to give us a much more subdued, comedy-focused outing. The comedy here is as sharp as ever, including some brilliant jabs at some of the product placement/cameos the titular duo have been forced into doing over the years. Roiland’s improvisation has long since been gone from this show, and episodes like Rickfending Your Mort show that they never really needed it.

Overall, this is a solid, funny palate cleanser after the massive lore bomb that was last week’s.