YMMV / Rick And Morty S 4 E 6 Never Ricking Morty

• Bizarro Episode: Even for this show, the episode is confusing enough that a second (or third) viewing may be required to make sense of it.
• Broken Base: This is one of the most divisive episodes of Season 4, if not the entire series. Fans are split on whether it is an example of the show at its most clever and sharp, with elements like making Dan Harmon's trademark Story Circle into an actual part of the episode's plot and skewering both unrealistic fan and network expectations for the show, or an example of the show at its most pretentious and overwrought, with things like the meta-humor being too aggressive to be funny for a lot of fans, as well as the common interpretation that the episode was saying that the show was just going to be a random sci-fi comedy and nothing else going forward, disregarding all of the serious plot threads previously teased, like the return of Tammy, Phoenix Person, and Evil Morty, and seemingly mocking any fan that cared about the show following through with such plot threads. This was not helped by the fact that Solar Opposites debuted on Hulu five days after this episode premiered, and despite seemingly being the Denser and Wackier of Justin Roiland's two cartoons, had a surprisingly emotional and intense subplot involving the characters in "The Wall," culminating in the first season's penultimate episode, which, coming off of the heels of a Rick and Morty episode like this, and debuting the same weekend as "Promortyus," another Rick and Morty episode not liked a whole lot by a lot of fans, unintentionally made Solar Opposites seem like it was being set up to be a Superior Successor to Rick and Morty. This was mostly alleviated when the last three episodes of Season 4 of Rick and Morty aired, which were considered a major step up by most of the fans that didn't like the previous two episodes, with Tammy and Phoenix Person returning properly in the Season 4 finale, although the fact that Tammy was disposed of so quickly in that episode, along with Phoenix Person beginning the process of being reverted back to Bird Person, has led some fans to fear that Evil Morty's return in Season 5 will end up being a similar Anticlimax that would mock the fans that had been hyping Evil Morty up for so long (though these concerns were also assuaged once said episode, "Rickmurai Jack", actually aired).
• Common Knowledge: Rick tells Morty about the Bechdel test as testing "female agency" in a story. That, however, was never the test intention, the test was about lesbian women having little to no visibility and feeling alienated by society. Ironically, this means that Morty's story, being about his mother and sister, is actually against the original purpose of the test.
• Reality Subtext: The common interpretation of the episode is that the show had just been renewed for a whopping 70 episodes/7 seasons/7 years - an absurd scenario for nearly any TV series, much less an animated sci-fi comedy on cable TV. The episode is basically a transparently metaphorical look into the writer's room - where the writers are struggling with the massive episode order, the restrictions of Dan Harmon's story circle, the lack of female writers in the first several seasons that made it more difficult to focus on Beth and Summer, and the temptation and indecision on if this gigantic episode order would give them either the opportunity or responsibility to be less episodic and more serialized with a Myth Arc. Ultimately, the message when considering the Season 4 finale was to stay the course with the season 1-3 formula (loosely speaking - 9 episodic stories a season with a Once a Season serialized episode).

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