Back to the Termintator’s Future with Snakes

Rick and Morty Season 4, Episode 5 Review- Rattlestar Ricklatica

I can sum up the mid-season finale of Rick and Morty with three words: time-traveling snakes. If that sounds dumb, it’s supposed to. The people behind Rick and Morty took the dumbest idea possible and ran it so far into the ground that it comes out on the other side as this hilarious, timey-wimey story. I loved every minute of it.

Space Snakes

So, Rick gets a flat tire in space and has to pull over to fix it, and tells Morty to stay in the ship. Being Morty and a teenager, he gets out anyway. Next thing he knows, this snake in a space suit comes up and bites his ankle. While Rick makes a cure, he finds out the dead space snake came from a planet of billions of snakes ready to tear into each other. Given the fact that their snake astronaut’s first instinct upon meeting an alien race was to bite their ankles, it’s clear they suck. They make good jazz music though.

Morty thinks he should do the right thing and fix his screw-up, though Rick says they’re too dumb to be worth saving. Again, Morty does it anyway and replaces it with an Earth snake. Big mistake, as the space snakes figure out its not from their world. So they invent time-travel to kill Morty or something. I don’t know, it’s Terminator with snakes.

Terminator with Snakes

Like I said, it’s a dumb concept, but Justin, Dan and their team knows its a dumb concept and go with it. In my opinion, it’s the kind of plot where trying to look for meaning makes it less enjoyable. My advice is don’t think too hard on it and enjoy the ride, courtesy of Morty.

Eventually, the only way to get out of this nonsense is to create a big timey-wimey ball. So Rick gives the snakes time-travel in the fated year of 1985 and waits for them to screw up and get the Time Cops on their case. Thus the problem solves itself.

Jerry Goes Up

While this whole thing’s going on, Jerry tries to set up the Christmas lights. Since he’s Jerry, Rick makes his body lighter than air and his shoes heavy enough to keep him on the ground. However, because he’s Jerry, he manages to screw even that up, and ends up floating in the sky.

I normally don’t like most Jerry subplots, but this may be an exception. Seeing Jerry try not and fail not to look stupid, yet refuse Rick’s help to one up him, is funny. Somehow, the man manages to survive all of that, and finish setting up the lights. However, given the fact that he caused an airplane to crash, I can see why Rick hates him.

Great Wrap Up to the Year

There’s no telling how long we’ll be waiting to see the second half of the season. However, given how awesome this episode was, I can wait and listen to snake jazz. Rick and Morty closes the decade as one of the best cartoons on TV, and this episode proves that. Like the ouroboros, this episode’s so dumb it comes back around to be funny. As for Morty, he learned a valuable lesson: stay in the freaking car.

I give “Rattlestar Ricklatica: a 4.8/5. Don’t Mess With Time!

Stray Observations/Favorite Quotes

• “I am the Jesus Christ of Christmas”
• “Resistance is mouselike”
• “Unless it’s possible for Jerry to f*** up wearing shoes. …oh crap, he’s gonna die.”
• Did anyone else notice the “Back to the Future” poster with Snakes?

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