Review: Rick and Morty ‘Look Who’s Purging Now’

Spoilers Below:

While cruising through space, Rick and Morty stopped at a planet where a “purge” exists, like the movie The Purge, in which peace is sustained through one day a year when all laws are lifted – and it was about to begin.

On their way out, they rescued a girl in danger, who turned on them and stole their spaceship. Back at the house, Jerry was attempting to connect with Summer when they received a call for help from the guys.

While waiting to be rescued, Rick and Morty got in on some purging. At first it was a necessity in which Morty was reluctant to take part, but eventually he conceded, and even got a bit carried away. After getting armored weaponized suits, they met up with the girl who previously stole the ship, and learned she was only trying to punish the rich people putting on the purge to control the poor population. They tracked down and massacred those folks, and headed home.

On the way, Rick invented a lie about Morty’s rage being linked to a candy bar he ate.

In Case You Missed It:

1) When the girl asked if the guys’ spaceship was from the gods, they answered simultaneously. Morty: “Yes.” Rick: “No.”

2) Jerry called Summer an “assface.”

3) Rick’s blame on Morty: “You let your wiener do the walking.”

4) Rick called Morty a “dip-ass.”

5) Towards the end, Rick broke the fourth wall by referring to an event that happened in the episode’s “first act.”

6) “By the way, life on other planets exists. Don’t let it distract you.”

Before I get into the episode, I’d like to point out an important moment. This is the ninth installment out of ten, and in it, Rick stated that he and Morty have had “a pretty intense, mixed-bag-of-a-year.”

That really sums things up nicely, right? I’m not sure if Rick is just stating that there has been a wide variety of stories thus far, or – more accurately – the fact that the individual episodes have been pretty hit or miss. I get that R&M tries to put a deeper meaning in each of its efforts and likes to do the whole meta thing, but honestly it’s getting tiresome. I feel like the second season has almost been a parody of itself. If these were the first episodes of the show it might not be as big of an issue. But by comparison, there’s a noticeable dip in quality, and the fact that the characters are so self-aware is annoying.

I reluctantly report that this one was a pretty big miss.

Rick and Morty has shown that it can do a solid spoof – hell, they did two at once (Fantastic Voyage and Jurassic Park) in their third episode ever. But this one, an explicitly-stated Purge parody, was thoroughly dull. Aside from a few random lines (mostly insults), the dialogue took a backseat to the action and plot, a bad decision for a show whose strength has always been the writing, specifically the banter.

And the violence too! If this was Superjail! then it’s to be expected. If it was Family Guy or South Park it would probably be a bit much, but at least reflective of the more recent seasons of each. But with Rick and Morty it’s not needed, and pardon the pun, but it was overkill this time around.

Don’t get me wrong, I love me some gore. But what did it add to this episode? It was necessary to show some of the violence of the planet’s purge and how brutal the situation was, but the final massacre was way too drawn out. Again, they leaned on the action and story to fill the time instead of putting dialogue in, and the humor and episode as a whole suffered because of it.

There were a couple good lines and I appreciated how they used the plot cliché of someone taking others in and then telling them their story, but tweaked it by making the tale a screenplay instead – but other than these few bright spots, it was a passable but dull effort.

So far there has been a fair amount of crap in this mixed bag. Let’s hope the bottom contains one last gem.