Rick and Morty is finally back for its second season; officially that is. In all honesty, I did watch this episode when it leaked a few weeks back. However, I watched it again this morning for the purposes of supporting Dan and Justin, as well as refreshing myself for this review. In my opinion, based solely on the first season, Rick and Morty is one of, if not the most cleverly written animated comedy on television. I am happy to say it looks like it wont be loosing any of that quality with season 2.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the premiere was a direct continuation to the season 1 finale. In the past, there has been clever continuity woven into the series, but no direct continuations. However, rather than simply extending the story in a contrived manner, the writers decided to dive into the consequences of Rick’s disastrous party at the end of last season.
What I really give this episode props for is both the animation and clever writing. As I said earlier, Rick and Morty is an extremely well written show. This is evident especially in this episode, when Rick, Morty, and Summer accidentally split reality into multiple timelines. These timelines are almost identical, but have slight dialogue or animation nuances that make them distinct from one another. This ties into the animation of the episode. In a sense, the animators had to create not one, but a plethora of slightly distinct episodes for about 50% to 75% of the 22 minute run time. I give any animation studio that can pull this off successfully major props. However, this would have collapsed into anarchy if it weren’t for Dan and Justin’s phenomenal writing.
The only problem I really had with this episode was the B plot. Not only was it pointless, it was boring. Every time it came up, I was almost begging to return to the A plot. The episode could have been greatly improved if the B plot was either written better, or eliminated all together.
To rap things up, this episode was overall very strong, and definitely has me looking forward to a great second season. As I wasn’t able to catch episode 2 during the leaks, I am hyped to see if it can live up to or surpass the high standard that this premiere set.