Rick and Morty are back. Season 4’s premiere couldn’t have been a more perfect return! The epic journey continues in style. Pickle Rick may have had us excited for a long time, yet what we have here is not Prawn Rick, or even Wasp Rick, but the promise of oh so many more versions of our favourite characters…

SPOILER ALERT: You’ve been warned!

4.1 Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat

Life’s one hell of a complicated but beautiful mess. So is the first episode of season 4. It’s brilliant and it’s nasty, yet you wouldn’t expect anything less!

Take a moment to take in the title of the episode. Or better yet, don’t. Let it consume you instead. As soon as the episode was over, I had to watch it again. Rick and Morty never disappoints and whoever tells you it does, they just don’t get the bigger picture of the show.

But guess what? The Meeseks are back in the game, baby! This time their commander is none other than a horny Morty obsessed with dying with Jessica. When you mix teenage hormones with a race that only understands fulfilling a singular purpose, things sure can get out of hands…

It’s the intellectual elegance with which the multiplicity is presented that makes the show so successful with its big ambitions to analyse the world from the point of view of a bystander and a participant simultaneously played out.

“There’s a lesson here and I’m not the one that’s gonna figure it out.” A moment of taking a step back for Rick who usually thrives in the position of an almighty super human being. If you thought you’re not getting any wisdom from Rick, though, you thought wrong.

The lesson, kids, is, that “you have to think ahead and live in the moment.” If you snooze, you lose. If you ride the wave for too long, you lose too. The key to finding your happy path is balance. In the multiverses of Rick and Morty, balance seems to be even more out of reach than in our super boring in comparison days. I mean, what do we even stress about, man?! No galaxy creatures are after killing us – just the occasional deadlines to send an email or meet the team for a presentation. Damn. We just don’t know how to human.

I said it twice & I’ll say it again. We couldn’t have asked for a better return of Rick and Morty!

4.2 THE OLD MAN AND THE SEAT

Who said dating and toilet jokes don’t go hand in hand? Everything is possible in the world of Rick and Morty. I would expect nothing less from Jerry than to f**k things up by doing the exact opposite of what everyone is telling him to do.

So what do you do when you meet an alien who has tattooed on his face ‘DO NOT DEVELOP MY APP’ if you’re Jerry? You split the profit 50/50!

Black Mirror recently delivered a really strong dating episode where once you matched with someone, you also got to learn how much time you’re going to last as a couple. The logic in Rick and Morty is one step ahead, of course. There’s no love, no purpose, no real motive behind the matches other than to serve a rather random pursuit of a distant race of aliens. Yet one can’t help but notice the similarities with the current dating scene around the world nowadays: everyone’s so replaceable, so confused, so CBA right now.

While Jerry and Morty are in the middle of an alien development mission impossible, Rick’s busy p**ping all over the place. What an episode. Tempted as I may be to insert the poop emoji, I’d hold down my Summer-esque excitement. In a way, the second episode is almost like one big toilet joke & trust me there’s few things in life I enjoy more than a well-delivered toilet joke!

It’s not often you get to see a dynamic shift in Rick’s perception of the outer world. Especially when it comes to a most perfect possession. His heavenly toilet. For an unexpected turn of events, Rick gets to befriend – even for just a tiny moment – his toilet thief. What this shift shows us is that despite everything that he might be portraying, chasing or abandoning, what Rick really doesn’t want to be is alone.

But then again who does? And for the real superstar in the second episode: give it a round of applause for the kick-ass momma Beth! Nothing can stop a mother from saving her daughter from getting down with the wrong guy way too soon. I guess we all learn from our mistakes sooner or later.

I won’t get into the complicated relationship between Beth and Jerry, cause you know what – after everything that’s happened, they still have each other to come back to & that’s worthy of a different appraisal. I’d just like to point out that borrowing The Good Place’s Ted Danson as Beth’s match at the end of the episode made my day for the sole reason of Rick and Morty acknowledging yet another brilliant show into their multi-verse of genius!

Beth said it, folks: stupid phones are destroying us. don’t forget to look up more often while you’re waiting for the next episode!

To be continued…