Review: Rick and Morty, "Night Family" | Season 6, Episode 4
A spooky, silly episode that’s worth waking up for
Is it me, or is Rick And Morty on a bit of a run? Four episodes into the season, and we’ve yet to see a dud; I’ve had my criticisms, but on the whole, everything has been gratifyingly solid, without any of the weird out-of-character swings the show has stumbled over in seasons past. Getting rid of the portal gun and forcing the writers to focus on the relationships of the core cast was a godsend, it turns out—without infinite possibilities, there’s time to hone in on what makes the series great. Which isn’t to say crazy shit isn’t worth doing in its own right, but it does feel like the change in the status quo helped to revitalize a creative team that wasn’t always doing its best work. All that, and “Night Family” gives us our first great high concept of the year, a doozy that manages to be suspenseful, unsettling, and very, very funny.
We open with a legit T.S. Eliot quote—I had to look it up, it’s from “Fragment of an Agon,” which is apparently part of one of Eliot’s…