'Rick and Morty' Season 4 Episode 7 proves Summer's versatility amid some hilarious political commentary
Spoilers for 'Rick and Morty' Season 4 Episode 7 'Promortyus'
In the latest episode, Summer (Spencer Grammer) is finally back. We saw her for a few minutes in a hilarious inclusion of the Bechdel Test. Summer and Beth (Sarah Chalke) drink tea and fight off dangerous female scorpions with the powers of the time of their months - you see, as the Bechdel Test involves women characters not talking about anything but men.
In this episode, Summer is Empress of the Glorzos. After their arrival on the planet, Rick Sanchez and Morty Smith (both voiced by Justin Roiland) had both gotten distracted by some very wet eggs, which led to aliens taking hold of their bodies (a take on the Aliens franchise). Summer remains Summer because of a toothpick in her mouth, which by the way, is her thing now.
Summer, who intends to change things around here, revamps the entire civilization - constructing buildings, roadways and changing their way of life and evolution. 'Promortyus' also had a fair share of political commentary. A joke on 9/11 and Pearl Harbor, seemed especially hilarious because the duo was in the process of destroying that civilization.
We are then given a flashback of how exactly it is that Summer, Rick and Morty find themselves on this planet and her rise to being the empress, which is particularly the most exciting part of the episode.
But could it be that the show is losing its edge? It is evident that the top-rated animated series has long discarded its original form of storytelling, which at least had character arcs, for an anthology format that has no strings attached. With its previous episode, returning to screens after a long hiatus of almost six months, the creators even proved that the anthology format is boring to work with. In a serious meta episode, it showed how redundant the narrative was.
Over the run of its course, 'Rick and Morty' abandoned the foundations it laid for itself for a more timeless narrative that doesn't threaten its creative space with redundancy. Without change, 'Rick and Morty' could fall prey to its own ambition and perhaps this is the change that is inevitable.
At the same time, Jerry Smith (Chris Parnell) and Beth have been underutilized in this season, which we would ideally have not preferred. While the episode has a strong start, it loses its zest coming to a sorry end.
