By Opinion & Editorial Editor James Mellen

This is my Rick and Morty Season 4 premiere review. This episode was titled “Edge of ToMorty: (it’s like tomorrow if tomorrow was Morty) Rick Die Repeat”.  

     The episode revolves around Rick and Morty going to a foreign planet in an attempt to farm death crystals. Death crystals, for those unaware, are rocks that allow Morty to see the way in which he is going to die. This cause of his death is constantly fluctuating however because the death crystals operate on statistics.  

During the introduction to the plot of the episode, one of the best jokes is run. Morty asks if the death crystals are going to kill him and Rick responds, “You’re thinking of bullets Morty”. Showcasing that classic Rick and Morty comedy that we have all come to know.  

Morty grabs this death crystal and sees a reality in which he dies with Jessica, his high school crush, at his bedside telling him she loves him. Morty becomes obsessed with having this future be the one that actually happens. In order to try to make that happen, Morty kills Rick in a spaceship accident.  

 This is not the end of our favorite anti-hero because Rick has a cloning vault (think back to the tiny Rick episode) and hologram that allows Morty to clone Rick. Morty refuses to clone Rick because it would lead to him dying somewhere other than next to Jessica. 

   After this point the episode splits into two sub-plots. One plot where Morty is trying to live life in a way that will allow him to die with Jessica, and another plot where Rick continues to get cloned in different realities. The first plot is so, so much better than the second. 

   Morty goes back to high school, where his normal anxious character is replaced with reckless abandon. Morty, filled with newfound vigor, wanders head first into a fight with a bully who plans on actually killing him. The only way for Morty to avoid this is by stealing Rick’s weapons and fighting the bully. Of course, due to Morty’s use of advanced alien technology, the police, and then the military are called on to stop Morty who has become an all-powerful super warrior. 

     There’s something inherently funny about Morty’s high school and the way that Rick’s technology interacts with this familiar educational environment. This setting alone has made Rick and Morty episodes better than similar episodes with a similar gimmick (think Pickle Rick vs Tiny Rick).  

 There aren’t a whole lot of one–liners that particularly give this half of the episode comedic relief, but it’s mostly funny and interesting on its own. Rick is able to stay a part of this half of the episode through the Rick hologram that spawns upon Rick’s death. The hologram has some pretty funny jokes, including one where the hologram makes other Rick holograms in order to have a protest about Morty not cloning Rick. 

    Jumping to the other side-plot that is going on at the same time as Morty’s misadventures, Rick gets cloned into a different reality. A reality that is mostly the same as the rest of the Rick and Morty universe. But in this reality, everyone is a fascist. Rick is then cloned into another reality where everyone is a shrimp. However, when Rick reveals that the last reality was a fascist reality, it is revealed that that the shrimp are also fascists. The Rick goes to another reality where he is a teddy bear but also fascist. This joke hits the mark the first time you watch it, but it has basically no re-watch value because the joke isn’t actually funny on it’s own. The joke functions as just a cheap gag. 

    Overall the Rick subplot doesn’t dictate most of the episode, so it’s pretty funny. I would give “Edge of ToMorty: (it’s like tomorrow if tomorrow was Morty) Rick Die Repeat” a strong 7.