Rick And Morty (S08E07)

“Ricker Than Fiction”

After hating the newest installment of “Maximum Velocitree,” Rick and Morty head to Hollywood to give Warner Bros a piece of their mind. 

And I think that made for a decent episode. I mean, I liked how the episode poked fun at Warner Bros and the current state of movie franchises - especially since James Gunn and Zack Snyder were given the chance to poke fun of themselves - but I didn’t care much for the actual plot. 

Because, once Rick and Morty leave Warner Bros, Rick decides to make a better “Maximum Velocitree” film than James Gunn. But the “movie” that he makes isn’t even all that great. It’s actually pretty generic and even surprisingly predictable - which felt really out of place for Rick’s taste. 

Plus, the “movie-lyzer” machine that Rick created made the episode feel way more meta than necessary. After all, this is an episode where Rick and Morty head to their own parent company, so it didn’t really need another meta narrative involving Dan Harmon’s story circle. Especially since that narrative was nowhere as creative as season four’s “story-train” episode. 

I think “movie-lyzer” was supposed to provide some sort of commentary on AI technology like ChatGPT - you know, since Rick, Morty, and Jerry can just prompt things into existence - but the episode didn’t really do anything interesting with that concept. Hell, the episode didn’t  do anything interesting with the James Gunn storyline either. So I really wasn’t engaged by anything in this episode, which was really disappointing. 

James Gunn is a funny guy - and he’s an incredibly talented creator - but his presence here didn’t feel creative or funny. As a matter of fact, since he was actually involved with this episode, it felt like the writers were pulling their punches against him and Warner Bros; as if they were too afraid to make too much fun of Gunn and WB. Which was disappointing, because it felt like the show was holding itself back. And I could be wrong about that, of course, but I think the episode definitely failed to live up to its full potential. 

That being said, I still enjoyed this episode far better than the Easter bunny one. Sure, I may have some issues with it, but at least it isn’t overly crass and crude. So, while Ricker Than Fiction may not be the best episode of Season 8, it definitely isn’t the worst either. 

Hopefully the next episode will prove to be better, but I guess we’ll see how it’ll actually turn out to be once it gets released on Sunday.