Review: Rick and Morty “Rickdependence Spray”

Overview:

Morty is bored hanging out at his mom’s job, the horse hospital, until he discovers the machine used to extract the horse semen. Unfortunately for Morty, Rick needs the barrel of semen to create a bioweapon against the cannibalistic horse people living below the earth. And Morty is much too ashamed to admit that there may be anything other than horse sperm in the barrel.

The results of the botched experiment have caused the creation of giant man-eating sperm monsters. With the world in peril, the President needs the help of Rick and his loyal sidekick. But if they hope to save the planet, they are going to have to be truthful about their origins. Especially before they impregnate a gigantic egg donated by Morty’s sister.

Our Take:

If we have learned anything from Rick and Morty up to this fifth season, it is to expect the unexpected. So far, this season has been bigger and more versatile than any before. But this episode avoided the unexpected twists to deliver a straightforward action-packed world-ending battle against the most disgusting of odds.

For a significant part of the episode, it was assumed that things were going to take a nasty turn. Much like last season’s “Vat of Acid Episode” it seemed as if Rick was intending to teach his grandson a nasty lesson. Surprisingly, things do not twist, and the plot remains relatively level throughout. In a weird way not adding a twist was a twist unto itself.

Regardless, without any big spins in the plot, the show still manages to raise the bar. Though this piece does it through some cringe-worthy humour and some heavy action.

Fighting a collective of mutated monster sperm would be enough for most shows, but Rick and Morty took things further and further again. Managing to pack an entire epic into 20-something-minutes is no small feat. 

But the sperm monsters are just the tip in an episode that included underground dwelling horse people, a bad-ass ninja soldier, and a giant incest baby.

We should definitely address the giant incest baby. It can be hard to predict which of the hundreds of Rick and Morty side characters will ever make a reappearance. Fan favourites tend to disappear into the ether. Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland always seem to forget all of the hilarious characters they already have in the bullpen. However, with Clone Beth slowly gaining more relevance, it would be safe to assume that the gigantic space-bound infant child of Morty and Summer will have a part yet to play in the universe.

Only Rick and Morty could accomplish this level of deranged storytelling. The cold-open where it is implied that Morty has been using a horse jack-off machine is clever enough and leaves room for the plot to go in a thousand directions. But to be able to include the amount packed into this piece, and have it make sense, is above the par. An apocalyptic level war that climaxed with the number of relevant characters in the final battle would take most writers a trilogy of novels to complete. It makes you grateful that this wasn’t some twisted mind-fuck story, and the story played it straight. As straight as you can call this story.