After an exciting opener on April Fools, people were hungry for more Rick and Morty. Nearly four months later we would return back to a weekly schedule of episodes. Rickmancing the Stone is the second episode so far and is the first of the weekly format for season 3. With all that said you may want to read my review for episode one, as I will bring up points from there. Now let’s get right into this Mad Max inspired adventure!

Rickmancing the Stone kicks off by showing everyone dealing with Beth and Jerry’s divorce. Morty is the only one trying to make any connection to Jerry while the rest go on the next adventure. From the start of this scene there’s a different vibe in the air. Everything feels quiet and sincere. There’s not a sense of randomness to the adventure, Summer wants to get away from the family and Morty wants to tag along. The episode very quickly becomes about each characters method of dealing with the divorce and how it effects them.

We are provided a Mad Max atmosphere with post apocalyptic cars driving around with homemade costumes. While it’s enjoyable to see in the show, it doesn’t become the main focus of the episode as I would have hoped. Very quickly we are shown that Summer has become very cold and Morty very over the top. My liking of this episode goes entirely to Morty this time, he forms a bond with an arm and kicks the shit out of people. But he does it out of fear and anger towards his Dad and the divorce. If it was another type of show and he wasn’t fighting with a huge arm it would be quite an emotional scene. It still does the job but the emotion becomes the after thought in this hilarious blood shed.

Summer gets up to her usual antics, she’s not praising Rick all that much after realising how much of a dick he is in 3×01. She starts to become independent of him and goes around with her new friends to kill people. I didn’t find her story that interesting this episode and I feel like we see too much of her sometimes, but that’s my opinion. Rick was also slightly uninteresting, he wants power, tries to get power, proves a point and goes home as he likes. Morty stole the show hands down for me, not only him but his robot counterpart keeping Beth company at home. There’s a moment where he gains sentience and it’s quite hilarious.

Thinking over this episode, I feel it’s enjoyable to watch in the way Rick and Morty always is. However there’s not many jokes to be appreciated, or there is and they just don’t hit the same marks as they previously did. Episode 1 was fantastic in it’s delivery of plot and comedy, so I was disappointed to see it step to the other side of the spectrum all of a sudden. To enjoy this episode you need to understand the point of the family drama while respecting the wacky sci-fi nature of the show. That will likely alienate a lot of the audience who are looking for catch phrases to yell and things about the government to say on Facebook.

Conclusion

The first time I saw this episode I was ready to rant about how the show had hit it’s peak and would never live up to the hype. While that has changed now, there has still been a lot of issues with the hype. Hype has made this episode worse by releasing 4 months after the first. If this had come on a week after episode then people would be responding differently. They would see this as a quick break after an explosive opening, but due to the release schedule this almost feels like the first episode of the series, hurting public reception.

Having seen the episode three times now I’ve begun to appreciate the finer details and jokes taking place. As an episode it’s on par for me with most of the entire first season. There’s always going to be some part in me that’s over-hyped and disappointing in the new episodes. However I’m starting to look past that more each week to just enjoy a show and not pick apart every detail that another episode did better. Saying that, this episode just doesn’t hit as much as I would have liked and sits at a very mediocre score.

I give this episode a 6/10