‘Rick and Morty’ Season 4 Episode 4 Recap: Dragon Tales

Rick and Morty usually spends its time parodying sci-fi tropes, but this week, it read some of the other books on the shelf. That sci-fi and fantasy share a section in the bookstore has long been a point of contention for certain sci-fi fans, and…well, that’s Rick in this episode. Rick is the one who thinks sci-fi is inherently good and fantasy is always lame. Of course that’s because it’s not where he excels. Rick prides himself on being smart, but in reality, he has a talent for one specific type of thinking. That talent serves him well in most situations, but in an area where things don’t come so easy to him, he lashes out.

That’s why he’s so against getting Morty a dragon. The episode opens with Rick and Morty completing an adventure that turns out to be nothing more than a pointless errand. For dragging him into such a dangerous situation for something that ended up not mattering, Morty demands Rick give him a dragon. Apparently Rick promised him one to get him to agree to this adventure in the first place. He was hoping Morty would let it go, but that’s not happening. Once Beth finds out about the promise, Rick has to follow through. He portals in a wizard who gives Morty a dragon and a book of spells for controlling it.

Having a dragon is awesome at first, but it’s basically a giant intelligent cat. All it wants to do is sleep on its hoard of treasure until the age of man has ended. Morty’s not ready to back out just yet, but having a dragon isn’t quite as cool as he thought it would be. What I like about this episode is that, even though Rick is a little bit right about dragons, it’s not for the reason he thinks. There’s no big “I told you so” moment, no Rick looking smugly into the camera because a plan of his worked. The reality of dragons turns out to be something neither of them expected.

Rick tries to slay the dragon, but discovers his treasure includes an old box of Ecto-Cooler and Small Soldiers-branded spin pops. Sadly, I don’t think we’re getting a Szechuan Sauce-style renaissance on the Ecto-Cooler. Nerds have been banging that drum for years and Hi-C hasn’t budged. Besides, I think Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon learned their lesson the last time they created demand for a discontinued product. No need to subject more retail workers to the worst of their fandom. Rick and the Dragon get along well. So well they start soul bonding. This is where the episode gets weird. Soul bonding is a thinly veiled metaphor for sex. As the episode goes on, the veil is dropped completely. I’ll give Rick and Morty this: It’s funny. If you’re going to build an entire episode around one joke, there are worse jokes to do it with. Each instance pushes the joke one step farther, and for a while, it gets funnier each time.

I just wish they hadn’t committed to this one joke at the expense of a more interesting one. The show introduces a super interesting premise when they go to the fantasy dimension to save the dragon. In this dimension, the laws of physics don’t work. Rick is entirely out of his element, none of the knowledge he’s built up over the years can help him. Instead, it’s Morty who thrives here. He’s a fantasy nerd, he knows how this dimension works, and he can use its rules to its advantage. Rick is helpless and Morty is capable. It’s easy to see why Rick has such disdain for fantasy. It’s something he doesn’t understand. I wish the show had done anything at all with that premise. It’s such a cool idea that could lead to any number of stories and jokes. It’s a premise that would be perfect for a show like Rick and Morty. Instead, it takes just a couple steps in that direction, cuts to commercial, then drops it entirely. I guess it just couldn’t wait to get to more dragon sex jokes.

Don’t get me wrong, the dragon sex jokes are funny. Rick, Morty, and Summer save the dragon and end up in the place where the rest of the slut dragons have been exiled. Each line grows more uncomfortably sexual to the point where neither Rick nor Morty can take it. Especially when Shadow Jacker comes out of his masturbation cave with his… um, staff. Yeah, this bit is hilarious. I just wish it hadn’t come at the expense of a much more interesting episode we only got to see part of. It even takes a progressive turn in its own strange way with Summer encouraging the slut dragons to revolt against the wizard and be free sluts in the sky. There’s no shaming here, just a soul orgy involving three family members to defeat a wizard.

The joke isn’t only funny because of the escalation here, though. A lot of fantasy does get uncomfortably horny like this. How many times have you been reading a fantasy novel only to find that you now know way too much about the author’s particular fetish? That’s what’s happening to Rick, Morty and Summer here, only they’re in the fantasy novel. It makes Morty so uncomfortable, he kicks the dragon out of his life when this is all over. The dragon keeps asking for one last soul bond, but Morty rightfully concludes that the joke has worn out its welcome by this point.

The best episodes of Rick and Morty are the ones that challenge Rick and his ideas about himself and the world. The show is usually very good about that. This wasn’t one of those. Not every episode needs to do that. At its heart, Rick and Morty is a goofy, raunchy sitcom. As long as the jokes are funny, it’s still a good episode. We’ve just gotten used to it being more than that. The show has a history of questioning its characters’ own assumptions about themselves and. Having two episodes in a row go this soft on Rick feels weird, especially after the season opened so strong.

That said, this episode was certainly stronger than the heist parody two weeks ago. It helps when the joke it keeps repeating over and over is actually funny. This week’s show was also helped by Jerry’s subplot, which was light and quick and hilarious. Jerry finds a talking cat in his bedroom that somehow has nothing to do with Rick. Every time Jerry tries to ask where it’s from or how it talks, it tells Jerry to just have fun and stop asking questions. They drive to Florida, where the cat turns out to be kind of a jerk. Not evil, just blaming its poop in the beach sand on Jerry. In the end, Rick picks up Jerry and the Cat to take them home, and decides to do a brain scan on the cat to get some answers. What they see is apparently so horrible they’re both terrified to be around the cat. They send it away and Rick makes Jerry forget what he saw. He still remembers, though.

The goofy, weird cat story is the perfect compliment to Morty’s sex dragon adventure. It’s a funny situation that gets super weird and it doesn’t have to be any more. I also like the dig at the people who tell you to just have fun and stop analyzing or asking questions of your entertainment. Almost like it’s saying asking for classic fun sci-fi adventures with no deeper themes is a little insulting to the audience’s intelligence. Interestingly, though this whole side-plot could be a throwaway gag, the show leaves the door open for the cat to come back. Right before Rick goes to pick up Jerry, he tells Morty “big season finale right there you know.” It could be setting something up. I’m guessing not for next week, though. Next week is the last of this season’s first batch of episodes. It feels weird to be almost done after so long a wait, but that’s just the kind of show this is. Even with a 70-episode order.

Rick and Morty airs Sundays at 11:30 on Adult Swim

• Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 3 recap
• Rick and Morty Season 4 Episode 2 recap
• Rick and Morty Season 4 Premiere recap