Rick & Morty S01E07 Review: The One With Gender Politics

Rick and Morty, Season 1, Episode 7: Raising Gazorpazorp

Ehhh... not my favourite episode. The first couple of minutes was hilarious enough. We go from Rick haggling with some alien in some random store about some random science thingamabob or other, while Morty tries to 'trick' Rick into buying an obvious sexbot. Rick totally knows what Morty is doing, and then we cut to how the family is reacting to Morty's very, very enthusiastic sexy times with the sexbot... only to later freak out and panic when "Gwendolyn" transforms into a sphere and turns out to have a completely functional birthing system, creating this bizarre little alien baby with arm-ears. That whole plot hook of Morty basically being a parent because he fucked a sexbot is... it's kind of out-there, but the subsequent plot that the episode goes through ends up being nowhere as interesting. 

The Morty storyline feels like it worked a bit better. Morty has to raise "Morty Junior" after insisting that Rick not vaporize the fruit of his loins, and while Rick and Summer go off on their little adventure to figure out the planet Gazorpazorp, Morty ends up basically going through parenthood in a single day as the alien grows up quickly, showing some particularly horrible tendencies like having "damnation" be its first word and consistently focusing on death and destruction. Morty tries his best to keep and corral his destructive son, essentially keeping him locked up in the house by telling him that the air outside is poison. Morty Jr. quickly grows up to be an angry rebellious teenager, and when he discovers that his dad's been lying to him all this while, ends up going on a rampage until Morty calms him down and convinces him to channel his impulses into something constructive, like writing. And then Morty Junior sort of bounds off and leaves the family, with the moral is that you do your best at raising a kid, but you'll inevitably fuck up and the kid will blame you? or something? 

Jerry and Beth certainly play a hilarious set of backseat parents, giving contradictory advice while also tsk-ing and blaming Morty for every failure he makes as a parent, while also not helping him at all, being completely condescending and stuff. Beth and Jerry, though, clearly have a lot of their own issues to work out with, with Jerry ranting about how Summer's "going to end up stripping for attention because she was denied it", while Beth accidentally lets slip and angry retort that Jerry should stop filling the baby with his insecurity or he'll "turn it into Morty". These two really need some counseling. 

There are some fun jokes about parenthood and everything, but I think this is the first episode in the season that made me feel "yep, it's more of the same zany humour". The scripting is still neat and it's not a bad episode, but I guess it's to Rick and Morty's credit that the show manages to feel fresh with every episode for more than half of the run of its first season. 

It's in this episode that Summer finally manages to score a large amount of screentime for once, after being treated as being just-kind-of-there in the preceding episodes and, it's... not the best outing. There is some subtle hints here and there that Summer's trying to prove to Rick that she, too, can be as fun a grandchild as Morty, and Rick has been dismissive (although never cruel) of Summer in the few times we've seen them interact earlier in this season. They arrive on the planet Garzorparzorp to investigate where Morty's sex-bot came from, and it's... it's kind of m'eh? The 'mystery' that Rick and Summer go through to investigate what's going on in the planet isn't particularly interesting, and the revelation that the population of Gazorpazorp is basically two super-duper exaggerated extremes of the male and female strereotype is interesting but ultimately ended up just dragging on and on. 

The jokes don't necessarily work, either, even if the concept is neat -- the episode just felt confused as it rushes on from "Summer wears a burqa!" to "Summer is respected by the Gazorpazorp women!" to random jokes about gay men making good fashion, fart jokes, passive aggressiveness, silent treatment, and a woman's refusal to admit they're wrong. Or something. I dunno. Some of the jokes landed, some of the jokes didn't, and as a whole I'm just sort of underwhelmed? I did like that they really do commit to the gag and make both men and women, taken to their extreme, ending up as being pretty damn horrible. But I dunno. Rick and Summer's interactions are fun enough but beyond the novelty of it being Summer's first excursion and they gave her kind of a win in negotiating their return, it's very underwhelming.

I did like the conversation between Rick and Summer at the end, though, where Rick notes that this entire adventure was for nothing since they didn't solve the problem of Morty Junior, but while Rick staunchly denies his feelings about "any epiphanies about gender politics"... but clearly likes Summer enough to not treat her with open scorn and contempt. I do like the dynamic between the two where they trade verbal barbs at each other, but this certainly is not the best first outing for good old Summer. There were a lot of neat little jokes in this one, though, which I did like. 

Random Notes:

• The post-credits scene is an adult Morty Junior being interviewed for his new book and talking about how his childhood abuse ended up being one of the inspirations of writing his book. 
• Another joke I thought was funny (because I have the mind of a juvenile teenager) is Beth and Jerry arguing about what to do with Morty's intense masturbation, whether they should interfere with puberty in case it stunts Morty's growth, and how Beth notes that they're only going to intervene if Morty continues to... do things when Rick enters his room. 
• Seriously, though, Jerry ranting about how his daughter's going to end up stripping for attention is pretty... pretty odd of a line. 
• It's brushed off quickly, but the very disappointed look on Morty's face when Beth accidentally lets slip the whole "you're going to turn it into Morty" is pretty sad.
• "Dada?" "Damnation!" "Um... dada?" "Destruction, domination!" Baby Morty Junior is way too adorable and they turned him into an older kid a bit way too quickly. 
• Jerry: "Life is effort, and I'll stop when I die!"
• It thankfully was instantly averted thanks to Rick's laser gun, but Summer almost being raped kind of felt like it came out of nowhere and went by so quickly that I'm not sure what the point of it was. 
• I have no fucking idea what the whole Marmaduke creator joke was all about, and that whole sequence fell flat on me.