天下制覇

And Training Day, and Brazil, and…

Impressions:

I feel like I should've enjoyed this episode more than I did. I can't deny that a large part is probably that it was another episode of how everything is crap upon crap upon crap. Another crushing dystopia where everybody and everything is horrible. I can't help but think back to the Jerry Daycare and how they made that a fun (still dystopic) place while still having the weird off-Jerrys and all the weird Jerry activities. A lot of it is also likely that I recognized the parodies they were doing right from the start, and they didn't do a lot to actually parody, just stick a Rick and Morty into those storylines. Was this supposed to be the improv episode of the season? Except they only got as far as four ideas? On occasion, there were smaller things, like the Morty street slang, but too much of it was shining a light on and dragging out the fun background weirdness that went with the past Citadel stuff.

Also, the Evil Morty thing was at 80% likelihood from the start, going to 172% the very moment someone said he was suspicious. I'm not sure I enjoyed a single second of the populist election thing. It's weird that they didn't try to satirize recent elections (American or European) more directly, but I don't think that would've helped. Just ridiculously low hanging fruit that they ignored, but didn't seem to do anything in its place. Real-world societal wounds notwithstanding, the obvious punchline to it would've been that Morties are half the population. It's the same Futurama used to elect Robo-Nixon, may his reign be glorious and eternal. It seemed to exist to serve continuity and little else. I've made my general distaste for that in this show clear, and it was no different here either. For all the lack of jokes to it, it probably should've been a background thing.