Rick And Morty (S08E04)

“The Last Temptation of Jerry”

As Jerry unsuccessfully plans to celebrate Easter with his family, he accidentally runs over the Easter bunny and starts to transform into the Easter bunny himself.

Yeah, the fourth episode of Rick and Morty's eighth season begins with a silly Easter-inspired twist on The Santa Clause, but as Rick begins to look for a cure to Jerry's were-rabbit affliction, the episode takes a turn and becomes a Dan Brown inspired mystery of sorts. One complete with a religious cult and everything.

Now, I don't know how other Rick and Morty fans feel about Jerry, but I actually really like him. He's a fun character, and I like seeing the silly shenanigans he ends up getting himself into. So when I saw that this episode was going to be a Jerry-centric one, I was definitely looking forward to seeing it. Especially considering how good the previous three episodes turned out to be.

But while the first three episodes may have been some of the best episodes of Rick and Morty in a long time, episode four ended up being one of the worst.The episode just tried to combine too many different elements in my opinion; elements that definitely didn't mesh well together.

I mean, I already mentioned the Easter bunny Santa Clause plot and the Dan Brown religious cult, but that doesn't even cover how the episode also involved space aliens from the Andromeda galaxy. Aliens who reveal that the Easter bunny was created as a biological weapon, not unlike the xenomorph from the Alien franchise. But the Alien parallels don't end there, since the episode also featured a different alien species that is meant to resemble the Engineers from Prometheus.

Funnily enough, Jesus Christ was implied to be one of these Engineers within the Prometheus continuity, and in this episode of Rick and Morty, Jesus Christ was revealed to be a member of the species trying to stop the Engineer-like aliens. Meaning that, in the Rick and Morty continuity, Jesus Christ is canonically a space alien from Andromeda. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with that information

I don't even know what this episode is trying to say. That holidays are stupid? That they're merely a byproduct of a capitalist society. That's an oddly cynical message to convey, isn't it? I mean, I know that Rick is a jaded and cynical character, but that doesn't mean everyone else also has to be. Didn't it feel weird to watch the entire Smith family go on a holiday hating spree? The scene was played as a joke, obviously, but the joke just didn't really work for me. And considering how most of the other jokes felt incredibly crass and tasteless, much of this episode didn't really work for me

So this was probably my least favorite Rick and Morty episode since the giant sperm episode of Season 5. And since that is probably my least favorite episode of the entire series, this is probably one of the worst episodes of Rick and Morty, ever. Which is so disappointing to say, especially considering how good the past three episodes were.

I still have faith in the rest of the season. If the series can bounce back from the lows of Season 5, then it can definitely bounce back from the lows of this episode, after all.

So, hopefully episode 5 can prove to be a much better episode, because I would really like to go back to enjoying this season. But I guess we'll see how episode 5 will actually turn out to be once it gets released on Sunday.