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Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
He came, he saw, he conquered…and the world has not been the same since then. This week’s Rick and Morty — Season 5 Episode 4 — is titled, “Rickdependence Spray”. Producer Nick Rutherford serves as the writer, while Erica Hayes serves as the episode’s director.
In this spoiler review, I will discuss and analyze the details of the episode. Please beware if you have not seen it yet.
Plot Summary
As I predicted, it has been long since we’ve seen Beth Smith (Sarah Chalke) at work as a horse surgeon. One evening, she is finishing up a shift at the St. Equis Hospital so she and her son, Morty (Justin Roiland) can see a Marvel movie. While at work, Morty sees a horse breeding mount connected to a barrel of 100% pure horse semen. Before leaving, the teenage boy notices there is an open cavity for a member to enter.
One week later, Morty’s scientist grandfather, Rick Sanchez (also Roiland) takes this barrel back home. He declares to use it to destroy “that race of underground-dwelling cannibal horse people that we’re always fighting,” the CHUDs. Moments later, the semen is tested with Sanchez’s technology, and Morty’s millions of sperm come alive.
Matters only get worse from here, as the family is recruited by The President of the United States (Keith David) to hatch a plan to rid the planet of the sperm. Hours pass of not giving enough credit to the women and eventually encountering the CHUDs. Soon, Summer Smith (Spencer Grammer) comes up with a plan to lure them out of Earth using an enlarged piece of her egg.
Chris Parnell appears in the episode as Jerry Smith. In other appearances, Michelle Buteau voices the Sperm Queen, while Kyle Mooney plays a sword-wielding man named Blazen. Christina Ricci plays both CHUD Princess Ponietta and Sports Illustrated model, Kathy Ireland.
Adam Rodriguez, Lee Harting, Tom Kenny, Maurice LaMarche, Nolan North, and Nick Rutherford also have voice roles.
Discussion
First of all, let me just say… I did not see any promotional material for the episode, so I did not know what I was getting myself into. This episode is sick and cringeworthy, and the fact that it made its way to an animated television channel is the funny part. I don’t know how Rutherford, staff writer Siobhan Thompson, and pretty much every other crew member were able to get this on there. I would say that I’m speechless, but here I am writing a spoiler review on this episode. The teleplay calls for just the most outlandish writing and storytelling that I’ve seen so far, including jokes about semen, sperm, masturbation, and just about anything sex-related.
Some Popular Culture References
To explain it in better terms, I will provide my interpretation of how I perceived the episode. The fact that there were a couple of allusions to the Marvel Cinematic Universe implies we are looking at major blockbuster filmmakers and their works.
- Rick tells his grandson, “Everyone can change their nature, Morty. It’s what defines our species”. He then goes on to cite Robert Downey Jr.’s way of getting sober in order to take on the role of Iron Man.
- The episode looks like it combines Zack Snyder’s vision of the DC Extended Universe (and Army of the Dead) and Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming film, Dune. In this Rick and Morty narrative, we have sperm on the loose as if living matter come more alive, like zombies. The overgrown sperm are seen ridden like worms, such as the sandworms in Frank Herbert’s novel franchise.
- James Cameron’s Aliens meets Avatar where the CHUDs are another species of living organisms to mate with. The sperm have the heads like the Xenomorphs, and of course, both emanate from a reproductive substance.
- Okay, so one promotional material I did see was a poster for the episode, which pays homage to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws.
- Other famous cult classic works in the media are mentioned. Rick is frozen solid like Harrison Ford’s character in the latter half of the original Star Wars trilogy; he even calls himself “Handjob Solo”. A character named Amazing Jonathan rips out a sperm cell’s “heart,” as shown in Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn. (And how do you happen to have a horse-figure character named Ponietta, which is a swear word in Spanish??) The hunt for the sperm in the first act of the episode is reminiscent of part of Mortal Kombat X‘s plot…coincidence?
- Lastly, the episode’s title is a parody of Independence Day, a film about otherworldly entities. We might as well reference another Will Smith film about worlds within worlds, Men in Black, while we’re at it.
Credit to the Crew
Robbie Erwin serves as the art director, with Jason Boesch as his assistant. Carol Wyatt works on color supervision. Kendra Melton, Brent Noll, and Vance Caines lead the episode’s character designs, prop designs, and background designs, respectively.
Major props to the huge crew that the leads assemble, which look to be larger groups than in the first few episodes of the season. Here, we have Rufino Roy Camacho II, Phylicia Fuentes, Samantha S. Gray, Eugene Huang, Dan O’Connor, Douglas Einar Olsen, Dik Pose, Fill Marc Sagadraca, Jason D. Warnesky, and Steve Yurko. Lauren Andrews serves additional storyboards.
For character design, we have Kari Kipela, Marisa Livingston, Carlos Ortega Madden, Justin K. Noel, Elisa Phillips, Wilder Rees, Maya Shavzin, and Orlando David Velez. April Eriksson and Allen C. Tam design the episode’s props. In background design, we have Chris S. Bolden, Rafael “Rafa” Hurtado, Alex J. Lee, Joey McCormick, Tommy Scott, and Monica Smith.
Anthony Alfonso serves as production manager, while Emi Chan and Elora Lyda work on design clean-up. Nick Reczynski works on the animation’s editing, while Lee Harting edits the overall episode.
Performances and Character Developments
All the actors perform terrifically, however, in terms of character development, my goodness. Last week, I wrote about how the characters are returning to their roots from previous seasons. Although, I don’t necessarily mean this in the “reduce, reuse, recycle” type of way like the prior episode to this one. Then again, that’s what plot continuity means, doesn’t it? As I predicted, eventually we get to see Beth Smith working as a horse surgeon again because we haven’t really seen her on the job since Season 1 (or 2). Of course, never did I conceive that her career would land herself, her family, and the planet in this predicament.
Beth Smith and her daughter Summer Smith are not given nearly as enough credit for their ideas as do the male characters of the episode. The plot focuses on fragile masculinity and their ignorance of femininity. In fact, I’d add that the episode critiques the world’s socio-political influences on women’s bodies as opposed to men’s. For example, why is the President of the United States for Morty’s “shame incarnate” but against aborting “a giant incest baby”? Rick and Morty‘s screenwriters have done an excellent job at shedding light on Beth and Summer in this manner, that their voices do, indeed, matter.
Morty has created another monstrous child. Like last week’s “A Rickconvenient Mort,” Morty is working his way to be an independent adult. Although, I should argue that he does not plan this well. In Episode 107 – “Raising Gazorpazorp,” he starts a family of his own, which doesn’t work the way he expected. Perhaps, this current episode is Morty trying to prevent a family, to begin with, and still, it doesn’t work the way he wants.
Similarly, Morty gets this from his grandfather, Rick, who’s encountered versions and copies of himself from different universes and DNA, etc. Rick and Ponietta have conceived a human-horse child, which is just almost as monstrous as the “giant incest baby” shot up into space.
Final Thoughts
I am utterly in shock that this episode made its way to network television. Although, I shouldn’t be so surprised since the co-creator of NBC’s Community is a part of this Adult Swim series. The writer is just blast-phemous with its explicitly sexual rhetoric of cum commentary (cum-mentary) and jerk-off jokes, including a sperm cell that Morty named “Sticky”. If I have to end this review on a much tamer note, I should call upon the writers’ brutal honesty and whole-hearted bravery. Cum all ye faithful, joyful, and triumphant. The fictional version of Kathy Ireland tells Morty, “Always be honest. Sometimes it will hurt people, sometimes it will help, but always be honest”.
“Rickdependence Spray” is a little too honest, so how mad should we be about it? If anything, this looks like a more special episode of the series than some of the others I’ve seen. And if it just so happens that it gets nominated for an Emmy, what are we to do?
The first four episodes of Rick and Morty Season 5 are now on Adult Swim, and stay tuned for our review of the mid-season finale episode next week!
Do you plan to see this new season? If you’ve seen these first few episodes of the season, what are your thoughts? Let us know! For more animation, adventure, comedy, fantasy, and science-fiction-related news and reviews, follow The Cinema Spot on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!
Managing editor & film and television critic with a Bachelor's of Arts in English Literature with a Writing Minor from the University of Guam. Currently in graduate school completing a Master's in English Literature.
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