天下制覇

Boy, we're just going to keep beating that drum, aren't we?

Impressions:

I can't say I was struck by any particularly introspective thoughts this time, unless you count "Man, every time I decide to cover a Western show, it immediately crawls all the way up its own ass." Granted, the sample size is approximately four, and Venture Bros was already halfway up its ass when I gave it a whirl. Still, how far away the last couple seasons seem when Rick had to use his wits and maybe a small firearm to get out of trouble instead of being able to put together a nuclear reactor/exosuit/fusion cannon/monster chariot with a length of dental floss and five seconds. And I'd be willing to bet dollars to donuts that they started out with Morty's speech about how terrible Beth is and then worked out the petty fight from there, because good lord, has Beth's character been reduced to practically an overt sociopath this season.

At any rate, still not the kind of light adventure from the previous seasons which is far more of what I liked, to say nothing of parody or even exploration of the gimmicks they introduced. I kind of felt like I liked this episode more than the last one or two, but thinking more about it and writing my thoughts out soured me a bit. They could've done a hell of a lot more with the immortality dome than some visual… chewiness, let's call it… and the obvious gag about kids merilly killing each other. Same goes for the Rick dumbification stuff. You'd think that'd be what would bring out a bunch of the stuff, but no… Just a little throwaway 20 seconds for Jerry to be a petty jackass as well. Deservingly, but with the theme of the episode (explicitly spelled out, multiple times) being how pathetic he is, but that makes him actually even worse than everyone else (somehow), I'm pretty certain that it was just thin justification that he deserves it, and I'm pretty tired of that attitude from it.