Rick and Morty: The Complete Fourth Season [Blu-ray review]

Rick and Morty: The Complete Fourth Season is the closest season to perfection. Sure, people loved Season 3 but it ended so terribly. I’ll give you a moment to reflect on how that finale started strong and ended on a Jerry friendly dud. Now that we’re back, let’s focus on a season that let the writing and concepts take center stage. Plus, they cast Matthew Broderick as a murderous cat. Learn all this and stay tuned for a video at the end of the review.

Did you like that? Our resident artist Matt Garretson made that Rick and Morty logo for us. I was working on a piece involving Summer shooting lasers out of her snatch, but I figured it would feel derivative after the Cuties coverage. So, what all is to be done about a season that got split up for reasons that don’t remain that clear?

Whether it’s the Vat of Acid episode or Snake Jazz, this was a season that got back to the Sci-Fi roots of the first year. Playing off the idea of creating a save point which was a tangent of the idea tackled in the season premiere, the show found something strong. Hell, it won the show its first Emmy. But, it also reinforced what makes Rick work.

Future Ant-Man 3 writer Jeff Loveness builds the episode around Rick’s commitment to a bit and Morty questioning it. Sure, the bit was going to work. But, Rick forces Morty into an alternate dimension to test the idea. What follows is a romance of a lifetime, newfound celeb status and a horrific tragedy on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. It’s how anyone should spend a Tuesday night.

What Roiland and Harmon manages to do with their vast team of writers is create Sci-Fi in the way Dude Bros create Philosophy. People who aren’t beholden to the rules of a thing stumbling int the mechanics of what makes these stories work. Think about The Twilight Zone. The first two seasons were cutting edge, then it started turning into episodes that couldn’t quite make Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Rick and Morty at its best works with these same premises and plays them with humor. After all, knowledge of multiple dimensions and ultimate outs begets trans-humanism. The act of even trying to make an animated sitcom out of a man who has effectively become a God is next level. Here’s hoping they keep up the good work.

Especially since Adult Swim killed Venture Brothers to help get this out faster.

The Blu-ray comes with featurettes, looks at the animation and just a ton of behind-the-scenes material. After talking with some of the YouTube commenters, I realized that I glossed over my favorite part of these discs. There were no commentaries! I guess making a commentary means Rick and Morty Season 5 gets delayed 6 months. So, it’s a well meaning compromise, I guess. Check it out if you’re a fan.