Rick & Morty wobbled a little bit in season four. There were still some great episodes (three, by my count) and Claw & Order was the only real dud, but still, it felt like a dip. Rick & Morty season five is here to correct that downward spiral, but to understand exactly how the show wandered off the path, we need to talk a bit more about season four. Claw & Order wasn’t just a meh episode, it was the worst one the show has ever done, and felt like it was fighting against itself. Like someone, somewhere, had forced them to do a dragon episode, so someone else said, “Okay, but I’m going to make the dragons fuck each other all the time, and whenever they’re not fucking each other, they’re talking about it. Deal?”
Most of the rest of season four’s offerings were pretty forgettable - remember the heist episode? Well, now you do - or failed to justify their own ideas. There’s a whole episode about Rick trying to figure out who took a shit in his private toilet, and it ends with an existential crisis about his need to control his environment, his unwillingness to be vulnerable, and his permanent state of melancholic loneliness. It sounds like vintage Rick & Morty, but it’s more like karaoke. It’s all the right words being sung in the right tune, but it’s just… not right, somehow. Rick & Morty season five is not like karaoke though, it’s full-on Taylor Swift. That’s a compliment in this metaphor. I know it’s cool to hate her but we all agree Shake If Off is a bop.
We’ve had two episodes so far, and both seem like a concerted attempt to counter the criticisms of season four. The first one, Mort Dinner Rick Andre, felt like a whole season in a single episode, eschewing the Monster of the Week storytelling of season four for an exploration of the cast’s lives, nudging the story forward while yet still going on wacky adventures. Season four's opener was also narrative-driven, but season five's was stacked to the rafters with storytelling and made sure to include everyone, without a begrudging reliance on the overall Tammy/Council/Birdperson mythos.
The second episode, Mortyplicity, was far more high concept. After the first two seasons used Interdimensional Cable for the anthology episodes, season three switched to Morty's Mind Blowers, using a similar idea but riffing off Rick and Morty themselves. Season four went way too meta with things, setting its anthology tale inside the narrative train going around in a circle - another meta reference, this time to Dan Harmon - while exploring the way the show tells its own stories. It was both self-indulgent and self-loathing in a soupy mixture that never quite thickened enough - then it just gave up at the end, despite some decent one-off moments. In season five, the anthology episode has been both reinvented and returned to the familiar as we watch various decoy versions of the Smith family fighting each other in an attempt to discover which versions are the true originals - upon each family's death, a new story begins.
Mort Dinner Rick Andre and Mortyplicity are both very different episodes, but they shake off season four's biggest problem - they don't feel like they're trying to be Rick & Morty. They undeniably /are/ exactly what the show has always been, mixing weird characters, layered storytelling, and outlandish sci-fi drama with fart jokes, but it doesn't feel like an attempt. Like the commenters on the Rick & Morty subreddit, season four was just trying too hard. Season five is much more relaxed about things - with that comes more confidence, less desperation, and a return to the form of the first few seasons, particularly season two.
Right now, season five is set to be the show's best yet, but if season four had opened with Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat and Rattlestar Ricklactica, I might have said the same thing. However, season five has been confident enough and consistent enough that I have enough trust that even if it doesn't eclipse season two - I don't expect it to beat Total Rickall or The Ricks Must Be Crazy - it will at least offer a solid course correction on season four's missteps. There are eight episodes left yet, and like so many of Rick's spaceships, it could yet crash and burn, with episode four being all about zombies, except these zombies love to do incest, or something. Rick & Morty has always surprised me, but if it finds something worse than Claw & Order, that will be the biggest twist yet.