After an emotionally exhausting season, the viewers have earned a break. That seems to be the logic behind "Salute Your Morts," anyway, which presents a silly Morty and Summer adventure right before a potentially devastating finale. Unfortunately, I think the writers leaned a little too far in the opposite direction, leaving us with an episode that's a jumble of generic TV tropes coated in a glossy sheen of bright colors and designs.
The cold open reveals that Summer and Morty have become a couple of spoiled brats who mouth off to their parents, bring Rick's gadgets to school and wreak havoc on the student body. It's not clear if Morty's still lacking empathy from the events of the previous episode or if enough time has passed that he's just gotten cocky. Beth claims that Rick always bails the kids out when they get into trouble, implying that this behavior has been going on for a while.
Personally, I think the crew deliberately placed this episode right after "Rickuiem Mort a Dream" so that the audience can interpret it either way. In any case, we get the usual glimpses of the family's toxic dynamic: Beth and Jerry don't want to deal with their kids, and Rick doesn't want to deal with them either, so he decides to send them to an off-world camp for spoiled teenagers.
This seems like a setup for social commentary about the troubled teen industry, leading to a revolution with the teens taking over the camp. However, when Summer and Morty arrive, we discover this episode's twist on the sleepaway camp trope: the campers have already taken over and turned the property into a non-stop rager.
As always, the artists killed it. The team loaded the campground scenes with colorful aliens, detailed backgrounds and perspective tricks that made the canteen look three-dimensional. They also slipped in a lot of visual gags, so you'll have to pause the scenes to catch them all. Plus, we see some familiar species: I spotted aliens that could be distantly related to Bird Person, Squanchy and Mr. Poopybutthole.
In fact, the art was one of the most entertaining aspects of this episode. The writing itself was just OK--not bad, but not particularly compelling, either. In earlier seasons, even filler episodes like "Interdimensional Cable 2" still had wacky sci-fi plots that you couldn't find in any other series. Now, the show's starting to drift toward typical sitcom capers--the kids go to sleepaway camp, the parents get high while they're gone--and it doesn't have anything new to say about either one.
With the kids out of the house, Beth and Jerry decide to raid Summer's drug stash. They smoke a substance that looks like ordinary weed until they see the name on the label. It's every stoner's worst nightmare: "High Forever," a drug that could leave them permanently spacey.
I did like the brief scene where Rick calls for Beth and Jerry when he gets back, wanting to share a drink with them. We don't see all three adults hanging out very often, and it made me wonder what they talk about when they're not getting up to sci-fi hijinks. Still, I guess that doesn't make good television, so Beth and Jerry decide to blow off Rick to get high--and, later, find an antidote on their own.
They have some cute couple moments together on the way to the alien mall, although we don't learn anything new about the characters--Beth is smart and resourceful, Jerry's a dork, rinse and repeat--and they manage to stumble their way to a possible cure in an alien drugstore. The scene where they ring for an employee, only to learn that he's about to board a bus and then a plane, is genuinely hilarious and reminds me of early-season misdirections.
Aside from that, this is another storyline where the artwork carries the plot. I've always loved the colorful alien worlds in this show, and as a mall enthusiast, I enjoyed the glimpses of off-world languages, digital signs and surreal products. The artists excel at creating worlds that you feel like you could actually visit, even if they're only on screen for a few seconds.
When Beth and Jerry can't find a cure that works on humans, Jerry finally breaks down and calls Rick. To their surprise, he's also taken a few tokes of "High Forever." When he stumbles and falls to the floor, he laments, "Everyone wants grandpa's help, but nobody wants grandpa." And...I guess he's not wrong.
They've all reached the point of no return, and Rick, Beth and Jerry spend the rest of the episode high off their asses. When Summer and Morty get Rick to pick them up, they're disappointed to learn that he's too stoned to function, although his body does make the perfect weapon to take out the townspeople holding the camp hostage.
Honestly, the camp plot pretty much unfolded as I'd expected: Summer and Morty get tired of partying, the campers won't let them leave, they make a break for a nearby town, and chaos ensues. You could've had the same storyline play out on Earth without changing much. The only upside is that the kids have to make a call to Space Beth, which was a welcome surprise after we haven't seen much of her.
Beth and Jerry crying to Space Beth about their "throuple" in the end is also pretty entertaining. Yeah, what DID happen to that relationship? Are they still together? The show hasn't touched on it since season six, and Beth and Jerry are clearly missing their fun.
Aside from a few bright moments, "Salute Your Morts" falls squarely into "average" territory. The plot has a few twists, but it's heavily reliant on sitcom tropes that other shows have rehashed for decades. I wouldn't skip this episode on a rewatch, but I wouldn't feel hyped about it, either. This story could've dived into Rick, Beth and Jerry's shitty parenting, but since the episode quickly sidestepped this by making them stoned out of their gourds, I don't think any of them learned that much.
