Mortyfied

The first half of the fourth season of Rick And Morty just ended.  The second half won't air until next year.  Rick And Morty is the best comedy on TV at present, and each season keeps getting better. Until now.  Don't get me wrong, it's still a great show, but none of the first five episodes of season four would make the top five of last season.

Maybe I'll change my mind after several viewings--Rick And Morty can hold up to repeated viewings--but my first impression is the stories don't quite compare to the best of the past.  They're often more complex, but that doesn't make them better.

The end of episode one warned us that this season would be about anything they wanted, even trivial, one-off stuff, which turned out to be true.  I'm not saying every episode needs to be part of an arc, or has to have a strong emotional core, but still you don't want the surface effects to be so clever that there's nothing going on underneath.

This leads to stuff like the third episode, which is a parody of all the heist movies where every plot point is a trick to fool you into thinking something else is happening.  The episode is clever, but ultimately tiring.  And something similar can be said for the fifth episode, where Rick unleashes a time travel bomb that gets a snake planet in trouble.

I'm looking forward to the second half of the season. But I hope they've had their fun and are ready to be a little less clever and a little (or lot) more funny.