Rick and Morty (2013)★ 8.7/10

Episode 2 parodies "Inception" with a plot to manipulate Morty's math teacher's dreams, while another storyline spoofs "Planet of the Apes" as dogs gain consciousness and rebel against humans. Episode 10 explores parallel universes in bizarrely humorous ways, proving the show's brilliance in weaving complex, entertaining narratives.

Initially, Rick appears as a brash, antisocial genius, but a deeper pain is revealed when Birdperson translates Rick's seemingly nonsensical "Wubba lubba dub dub" into a cry for help in episode 11, exposing his loneliness and despair across infinite timelines.

When "Live Forever" plays, the dual overlay of life and death stands out in absurd irony. How do we face death, and how do we view life? Do we embark on the greatest adventure in the vast universe? Or go with the flow and live out the rest of your days? Rick's brilliance and evil Morty's perfect schemes complement each other. The overarching storyline spanning seven seasons comes together as "Look On Down From the Bridge" plays.

Though the characters may not be entirely likable, they sufficiently serve the storytelling. The most fascinating aspect of this series is its universe-level creativity, alongside its depiction of morbid human and interstellar relations. Under its absurd and edgy style, it deeply explores ethical relationships, the undercurrents of marriage, gender equality, intellectual discrimination, political facades, and historical reconstruction, offering profound hypotheses and reflections on multiple dimensions.

It wasn't until they stopped using it that I realized how great dual-narrative storytelling can be. The utilization of dual narrative urges all the viewers to keep up with rapidly unfolding plots, making it all so fast-paced that it doesn't leave much time for thinking, which is just perfect for when the show dishes out wildly imaginative ideas. However, as the plot's pace has now been slowed down due to a single storyline, the excellent material in the fourth episode turns out to be a disappointment. What could have been a great season is now so mediocre that you can predict the outcome after seeing the beginning. What a pity.

The content of the seventh season is extremely clichéd, with characters portrayed in a superficial, stereotypical manner. The script lacks effort, touching on different topics briefly without getting into the juicy bits. The character development is getting so far off that some characters become barely recognizable. I've seen many people still praising this show, making me wonder if I've been a little too critical about it. So I rewatched the first three seasons and found them to be just every bit as amazing as they were years ago.

My worries didn't come true and that's great news. The first episode wasn't all that impressive, but the overall quality after that has remained on par with previous seasons if not better. The plot, creativity, dialogue, and performances were all top-notch, bringing back the same feelings I've had watching the previous seasons. I truly enjoyed it! The story remains strong so far, despite the weak intro. At least that's how I felt after watching the first five episodes...Episode 6, however, was a disaster, like, was the script written by AI?

Getting really sick of shows of the same genre competing for our attention. Due to the fact that the original creative team already moved on plus the obvious lack of innovations in the later episodes, the show is getting to the same level of tedium as the latest season of Solar Opposites. It's not hard to tell that the show has given in to the mainstream, as it tries to play "safe" when it comes to pushing boundaries. Because of this, the main storyline became incredibly boring. By the way I really don't care about what happened to Rick before and the whole chasing for the culprits, because it's just weird for a series like this to have such heavy narratives and serious emphasis on character development.

Judging from the tedium of the first episode, Rick and Morty is on the verge of being led into an unfavourable position: becoming a source for memes that only fans of the series know; becoming a show that gets praised by its fans simply for filling up its own plot holes. The second episode shows the series' creative bottleneck: solely relying on the generation of fast and shallow ideas is not enough to aid in the deeper discussions on existence, life, and love.

Season 7 Ep1 is a hard miss… the worst season opener and one of the worst episodes ever in my opinion. While I understand that it's a flashback, it really wasn't funny at all and there wasn't much depth to it. The kind of high-quality, witty humour this series is known for was missing, it almost felt like one of those mediocre AI generated adult cartoons. Yes it feels more intimate now that Rick sounds like he is talking to you, but the real Rick always talks as if he is having conversations with himself. That unique characteristic of Rick is gone! I hope that the later episodes can return to the series' roots, otherwise it's ruined for good.

Justin deserves a lot of credit for the resounding success of Rick and Morty. This cartoon series has always been my top personal favourite. While I don't watch a lot of cartoons, nothing I've watched come even close. The unique voice-overs and the absurdity in the story can never be forgotten. No one can imagine the kind of awe I was in when I first clicked on this cartoon while huddling in my bed covers during the winter of 2017. I was once so obsessed with it that I watched every single episode ten times.