Review: President Curtis “Purchase”
Four episodes into Adult Swim’s President Curtis, the Rick and Morty spin-off is beginning to
show what it can do when it fully embraces its own brand of absurdity. Episode 4, “Purchase,”
turns the Louisiana Purchase into an outrageous conspiracy involving French loyalists,
vampires, werewolves and a very unusual piece of historical evidence.
The Plot
President Curtis, Roe Banks (Stephanie Beatriz) and Special Agent Francis O’Doyle (Jim Rash)
discover a warning connected to the Louisiana Purchase that leads them to a mysterious cave.
After accidentally violating the original agreement, they learn the French may have a way to
reclaim Louisiana, through Napoleon’s penis.
The President’s team races to find it before the French can have it legally certified in court. Their
search leads them through the Louisiana black market, a vampire conspiracy and ultimately to a
chaotic courthouse showdown involving a judge, a helicopter, throwing stars and a werewolf.
Our Take
“Purchase” is the kind of episode President Curtis has been building toward. Rather than trying
to make the premise feel logical, the episode keeps piling absurdity on top of absurdity and
trusts the audience to go along for the ride.
The biggest strength is the escalation. What begins as a ridiculous historical footnote quickly
becomes a national emergency, and the writers continually find ways to raise the stakes. The
idea that Napoleon’s penis could legally reclaim Louisiana is already absurd, but watching
government officials treat that possibility as a legitimate threat makes the joke even better.
The episode also has several strong visual gags. The elaborate cave booby trap is a great
example, turning a simple warning into an unnecessarily complicated chain reaction involving
ropes, water, boats, birds and lightning. It feels perfectly suited to Adult Swim’s animation style.
The vampire storyline works surprisingly well, too. The betrayals give the episode some
structure without taking away from the comedy, while Elsie provides a welcome change of pace
when she turns against the other vampires to protect Curtis and his team.
But the real highlight is the courthouse sequence. The vampires being stopped by a security
guard because they need an invitation is funny precisely because it treats an absolutely insane
situation like an ordinary bureaucratic inconvenience. The absurdity only gets better when
O’Doyle arrives by helicopter and shoots the gavel out of the judge’s hand.
Keith David remains the episode’s secret weapon. Curtis doesn’t need to be the funniest
character in every scene. David’s delivery makes the President’s willingness to treat ridiculous
situations as matters of national importance consistently entertaining.
The episode does occasionally become overcrowded with characters, twists and competing
jokes, but its momentum keeps the chaos from completely collapsing.
The Verdict
“Purchase” is chaotic, ridiculous and unapologetically Adult Swim. More importantly, it gives
President Curtis a stronger sense of identity. The show works best when it stops trying to imitate
the structure of Rick and Morty and allows its own bizarre political world to take over.
