Review - Rick and Morty Season 5 Episode 4

Rick and Morty comes back from last week’s misfire with by far the most repugnant premise in recent memory. On the surface this episode could be seen as Rick and Morty battling sentient monstrous sperm cells but if you delve a little deeper… they’re still just fighting sperm.

Is it stupid? Yes. Is it funny? Shamefully the answer is also yes.

When the episode begins with Morty pleasuring himself with a horse breeding mount, you understand that something horrible and disgusting this way comes. Once Rick rolls that canister of Morty’s “deposit”, you could be forgiven for thinking it would be another retread of previously touched upon material. Perhaps similar to Gazorpian of season one, presenting us with another mutated Morty offspring. Though surprisingly Rickdependence Spray manages to subvert our expectations by giving us something much more abhorrent, flying sperm that eats people alive.

Throughout the episode it becomes apparent the writers are really throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks, poking fun at the hyper masculine tropes of action films and introducing cannibalistic horse people called Chuds. This isn’t the first episode to have chaotic, almost improvisational style of writing, but this is the only time it’s felt genuinely stupid. Rickdependence Spray is vaguely reminiscent of the Slut-Dragon episode of season four yet avoids being as one note by the apparent abundance of semen related material the writers have at their disposal. The “Handjob Solo” line was a particular favourite. The way the episode turns twenty minutes of seminal fluid jokes into decent comedy is commendable. However for a show that has maintained a reputation for turning lowbrow comedy into something more, to see such a surface level episode is ittedly disappointing.

Some of the famously “high IQ” fans of Rick and Morty could find the subtext about the ridiculousness of Toxic-Masculinity and pretend the episode has a lot more going on intellectually than it does. With the female characters like Beth and Summer being frequently sidelined for laughs as the men of the episode take the credit. Though they would probably have a harder time attempting to justify the episodes climax of cirque-du-soleil acrobats and Chuds defending a giant egg to prevent the forming of an incest baby.

Truthfully this episode occasionally toys with the idea of saying more but in the end it ends up saying nothing at all. Rickdependence Spray may be a complete mess but unlike last week’s episode it doesn’t come at the cost of comedy. It may indeed be inconsequential and tasteless but it is hard to argue that it wasn’t a lot of fun.