Review: Rick and Morty “A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort”

Overview

Morty gets a sword from the Knights of the Sun much to Rick’s chagrin and is keen to join the group. Problem is, the Knights have a weird tradition where noobs have to cut off of their penises to which Morty has no interest in, but when he beats the king at a sword fight, the locals take Morty on as their new leader. At first, Morty is able to relinquish the title by explaining to his followers that whatever belief system they have, it’s horseshit, and that they cut their penises off for no good reason. Still though, the power vacuum that goes down when the Knight of the Sun is largely disbanded is bat shit as the rest of the planets of the solar system feature their own kingdoms, as such, war ensues.

Rick tries to genuinely be supportive, but ultimately, comes up with the perfect plan to cure all of their ills and gets them out of trouble.

Our Take

Any other show would have promoted the fact that Daniel Radcliffe and Jack Black were guest-starring this week, or that Will Forte did last week, but seldom does the show do that and I think we’re better for it. A lot of series, and I mean a LOT, use guest stars as a crutch for quality, and that definitely isn’t the case here. In fact, save for maybe Giamatti, I can’t think of any guest role that was that important to the character that it couldn’t have been recast by somebody else, and I’m not sure that’s any different here.

The thing that is MOST surprising by the season six penultimate episode, that I’m not sure we got anything as deep as we did last season in terms of importance to an arc. A two-parter starter this does not appear to be, and even the finale appears to be a “play it safe” X-mas episode, but I could just be getting lulled into oncoming traffic for all I know.

In any event, the episode itself was more in line with a classic Rick and Morty adventure, something closer to what you would have seen in a season two or three, with some slight similarities to, obviously, the infamous “Vat of Acid” episode and even Morty’s plot in “Mort Dinner Rick Andre“. That said, Anne Lane likes her “onion” episodes, the episodes that have a deeper meaning than what is presented on the surface. For starters, she’s continuing her fascination with the dual Beths that she kind of opened the can of worms for starting with “Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri“,but more importantly, “A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort” continues it’s gut punches to religious ideology, again, not unlike Morty’s plot in the season five premiere, or even the punches that have been levied against Jesus/Story Lord.

The other thing that was with this week’s episode, and this really bothered me, it sounded like Justin Roiland’s voice records were a bit off. Like, I don’t know if this is the early start of the records done in Justin’s home studio produced during the early stages of COVID, but there was just something a bit off with the snap of his Rick and Morty voices, especially his Rick records.

As we head towards the season finale, Rick and Morty season six hasn’t shown that many signs of the all-important arcs that the show was teasing before the season premiered, but with one episode to go, perhaps a bomb is about to be dropped.