The first 3 seasons deserve all the praise they get: clever tight scripts, funny jokes, imaginative sci-fi, creative stories, memorable characters, genuinely surprising plot turns, all worth rewatching...9/10 overall.
But much like Game of Thrones Season 8 we're now dealing with a massive dip in quality. Rick & Morty has become painful to watch, leaving behind a lack of enthusiasm for the rest of Season 4, and certainly no interest in rewatching any of these 5 eps.
How did this happen? Well, here's a handy list of what's gone wrong:
- the first thing you notice is that the opening of each episode no longer has a funny or crazy WTF sting before the title song begins. The opening sequence ends on a mild joke or exclamation, hardly whetting the appetite for what's to come after the title song.
- the guest-star voices are now too obvious. You can clearly hear they're mixed differently, as if they recorded in a separate studio to Justin. So you know that particular character will be hanging around for a while. They have flat vocal deliveries and bland characterisation. The curse of relying too much on guest-star appearances has afflicted other comedy shows in the past too. The humour loses edge as the script dances around mildly so as not to offend the guest-star.
- Rick is too OTT in characterisation. No subtlety at all. And far too OverPowered...dare i say it, he's like a ridiculously-OP Mary Sue. Rey Skywalker has nothing on Rick! In previous seasons, he would solve problems in clever ways which would satisfyingly reveal itself to the viewer, often even more so on a rewatch. Now he just solves problems with endless deus ex machinas.
- Morty's characterisation has also lost some depth and nuance. Like Rick he's become a caricature of himself. Same goes for the other family members.
- The plotting and pacing of each episode is far too hectic, there's too many things happening. no staying in one scene or focussing on one story-thread, no balanced narrative to latch on to, no internal logic...all this means there's no tension for the viewer, no emotional journey to be had. No feeling of "wow, that was impressive" during or after viewing.
- a lot of ideas are cheap repeats of what we've already had, or are poor homages to ideas from other media. Seasons 1-3 had bags of originality, Season 4 is lacking.
- no arc story. No Evil Morty etc. The five episodes just exist in their own space.
- The mainstream criticism against the 'toxic' fanbase (which was blown out of all proportion anyway) has been handled very on-the-nose...you can sense the writers are desperate to prove their liberal credentials to the twitterati...all those tired tropey nazi themes etc.
- there's no exciting new characters, and old ones returning fell flat.
- the writing has become very self-aware, there's too many fourth-wall breaks, and too many easily-dated cultural references (twitter, taylor swift, siri, netflix etc). As a viewer, this makes you lose suspension of disbelief...it takes you out of the story. Not good for immersion.
- barely any laugh-out-loud jokes...just lots of lame ones that you'd associate with unfunny people trying to be funny. And too much crass swearing (as in coarse swearing is used to artificially pep up the lame jokes).
- there's weird voice mixing on the actress playing Summer...she's sometimes unintelligible, as if her words are garbled together. Seems some quality-control was lacking.
On the positive side, the first episode is easily the best and has some standout moments which feel like classic Rick & Morty.
In conclusion, the talking cat from ep4 said it best: "if the goal is to make something up, why not make up something...funnier?"
...the second-half of Season 4 must be a return to form otherwise the series is dead.
