(Photo courtesy of Cartoon Network)The final episode of Rick and Morty ended in a classic television trope: The parents have gone away, so the kids subsequently are throwing a party. Over the course of the episode, the house gets destroyed. They clean the house just in time and ultimately become closer to one another and live happily ever after. It’s a plot device used in practically every TV show and teen movie imaginable. I was a little disappointed last week when I learned that the last episode of the season was going to take such an uncreative route.
As an avid fan of the show, I knew that creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland have the creative talent to end the wildly entertaining and unpredictable show on a higher note. Fortunately, in the fashion of the show, I was blown away by its ingenuity, hilarity and substance behind, well, some of the crudest jokes I have seen on television.
The show follows Rick, a drunken mad genius with a “Cat in the Hat” level of tricks up his sleeve and his grandson Morty, a timid and confused 14-year-old boy, as they travel around the multi-verse going on insane adventures. In this particular episode, Rick invites hundreds of his friends from whatever bizarre corner of the universe he found them. The show also features a hilarious character called, Abradolf Lincler, the deranged DNA combination of Adolf Hitler and Abraham Lincoln. Morty also accidentally sends his house and all its partygoers to a strange alien planet with huge monsters.
In the side plot, Jerry and Beth, Morty’s parents, take a Titanic re-creation cruise to celebrate their anniversary. In an ironic twist, a ship that is on rails and is designed to sink just like the Titanic, “completely misses the giant iceberg.” Jerry even mentions how he hates that the fourth wall is being broken which happens constantly in the show. Although a lot of the show’s heart and reality is channeled through the rock marriage of Beth and Jerry. This particular episode’s sentimental moments are countered by a bukkake joke.
But this is why the show is so well done. Even after all of the low-brow, dark humor, the writing can bring about an emotional response. We learn that Rick parties so hard because he is tortured by depression. Even though Morty is disrespected and ignored by Rick for most of the episode, Morty still cares for Rick at the end of the day. Rick quickly pauses time in the show’s constant deus ex machina fashion to fix the destruction of the previous night’s party.
This episode wasn’t as sweet or as heart-wrenching as some of the previous episodes, nor was it the most bizarre or creative with its plot line. However, it was the perfect combination of the two and a solid way to end a cartoon that reminds you what truly is important in life, all the while featuring a morally-neutral super-leader that threatens to “emancipate (a monster’s) impure genes from its body.”
Reach the reporter at mhkent@asu.edu or follow him on Twitter @guccimileskent
