Rick and Morty: Season 5 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Rick and Morty: Season 5 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 6, 2021

When Rick and Morty: Season 4 showed up in my review queue a little over a year ago, we were already well into things like Covid quarantines, and for those of us in the Pacific Northwest, quarantines further exacerbated by raging wildfires which made even going outside something of a challenge due to deteriorating air quality. As such, the series provided a much needed palette cleanser and its scabrous humor probably helped more than it otherwise might have to dispel some of the thick emotional clouds that were at least as disturbing as the opaque and possibly virus infused smoke hovering out of doors. There aren't any wildfires this time around (at least that have affected my little corner of the world), but this fifth season of Rick and Morty offered me much the same sort of release, delivering at least a few hearty laugh out loud guffaws along with a regular assortment of smaller giggles and delights. Kind of similarly to what I mentioned in our Rick and Morty: Season 4 Blu-ray review, this season gets off to a slam bang start, with one of the year's goofiest and funniest episodes, and if all of the subsequent adventures of Rick, Morty and the Smith clan don't always reach the same giddy heights, almost all of them have moments of hilarity and actually some surprising emotion and even pathos at times (albeit sprinkled liberally with f bombs).

For reviews of the four previous seasons of Rick and Morty, please click on the following links:

Rick and Morty: Season 1 Blu-ray review

Rick and Morty: Season 2 Blu-ray review

Rick and Morty: Season 3 Blu-ray review

Rick and Morty: Season 4 Blu-ray review

One of the kind of inherently hilarious things about Rick and Morty is how it revisits the same ideas and even plot tropes, Groundhog Day style, and yet manages to repeatedly find new ways of generating often manic comedy out of "tried and true" premises. How many times has any fan of Rick and Morty seen various characters meet their demises, over and over again? Well, in true "hold my beer" fashion, this season is at it again not just in the season's premiere episode, which sees a supposedly mortally wounded Rick being tended to by Morty, but the season's second episode, which is built around yet another hall of mirrors conceit where multiple versions of the Smith clan are all out slaughtering each other, believing the "others" to be "decoys" that Rick has created because -- multiple versions of the Smith clan are all out slaughtering each other.

Aside from the less than permanent apocalyptic fervor of more than one episode, Rick and Morty continues to rather smartly skewer various science fiction elements, often to genuinely funny effect. The premiere episode is a wonderful case in point, where the often hapless Morty thinks he's saved Rick (and probably himself) from imminent death, only to realize he's set a whole new chain of disasters into motion due to him crash landing in the ocean, which is ruled over by Rick's supposedly longtime nemesis Mr. Nimbus. An attempt to negotiate a treaty between Mr. Nimbus and Rick throws a curve ball into Morty's unexpected success at getting longtime objet d'amour Jessica over for a date, but the real hilarity actually develops from Rick's attempt to ply Mr. Nimbus with properly aged wine, which leads to Rick "stashing" it in an alternate dimension where time moves much more rapidly in our world, a dimension that Morty has to repeatedly pop into to retrieve the alcohol. Suffice it to say that Jeff Loveness' script brings a delicious subterfuge to ideas of the passing of time that are at least somewhat relativistic.

The second episode in a way provides a template for what turns out to be one of this season's most startling developments, namely finally giving Rick a more detailed backstory. There's some interesting if fairly brief analysis of this decision in a supplement included on this disc, but the upshot is that very much like the whole family killing other versions of itself in the second episode, there are infinite multiverses of Ricks who may have murderous intent vis a vis the other "versions" of himself. It's all often intentionally perplexing yet with just enough of a hint of metaphysical logic to make it pass the sniff test, but what's so interesting about it is how it newly informs the audience's understanding of the often beyond objectionable character.

Rick and Morty: Season 5 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Rick and Morty: Season 5 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Warner Brothers Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is another wonderfully inventive season from a pure design standpoint, though there are just a few curious anomalies that pop up in some of the episodes that may point to the somewhat unusual production strategies that have been necessary due to the pandemic. The episodes are all typically very brightly colored, with bold primaries beautifully suffused and a range of everything from pastels to otherworldly combinations of hues looking nicely vivid and free of any problems like banding or macroblocking. Line detail is generally quite good, but vis a vis that mention of "anomalies", those who like to keep track of such things may want to pay attention to things like lines defining the walls of the Smith house, which on occasion look just slightly unfinished. The glut of effects work that typically informs each episode looks precise, and some of the visual representations of rather arcane concepts are quite inventive.

Rick and Morty: Season 5 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Previous seasons of Rick and Morty have featured Dolby TrueHD 5.1 tracks, but this season switches over to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1. This is another very winning set of audio presentations, with virtually every episode providing nice opportunities for sometimes calamitous immersion, and with a surplus of fun and often quite funny effects work that can pan and swirl around the listener like an out of control carousel. The series' fun score (with a theme that suddenly struck me after all of these years as blatantly Doctor Who like) also wafts comfortably through the side and rear channels. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout (and I have to say for those who might like a bit of "alternate" humor, just toggle over to the French and German language tracks now and again to get a taste of the show in those languages). Optional subtitles in several languages are available.

Rick and Morty: Season 5 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Fighting Gravity: The Making of Season Five (HD; 9:16) is a really fun set of Zoom like interviews with various crew members, who discuss the challenges of writing the season during the pandemic, when the writers couldn't be in the same room with each other.


• Animation and Compositing (HD; 2:22) is a brief look at some of the technical side of things.


• B-Story Generator Vol. 1 (HD; 3:04) features Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon discussing a hilariously low tech way they arrive at ideas for subplots, along with some of those very subplot ideas.


• B-Story Generator Vol. 2 (HD; 2:49) offers more of the same.


• Backgrounds (HD; 2:30) is another brief look at some of the design elements.


• Coloring Rick and Morty (HD; 2:47) features more of the technical crew discussing the series' palette.


• Directing Mortiplicity (HD; 2:00) features Lucas Gray.


• Directing Rickmurai Jack (HD; 2:36) features Jacob Hair.


• Season 5 Hype (HD; 1:52) features Dan Harmon and other cast/crew members along with clips from the season.


• Inside the Episode features shorts devoted to each episode, typically featuring some very brief interviews with various production cast and crew:

  Mort Dinner Rick Andre (HD; 1:45)

  
  

  Mortyplicity (HD; 1:45)

  
  

  A Rickconvenient Mort (HD; 1:58)

  
  

  Rickdependence Spray (HD; 1:53)

  
  

  Amortycon Grickfitti (HD; 1:35)

  
  

  Rick & Morty's Thanksploitation Spectacular (HD; 1:30)

  
  

  Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion (HD; 1:25)

  
  

  Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort (HD; 1:44)

  
  

  Forgetting Sarick Mortshall (HD; 2:04)

  
  

  Rickmurai Jack (HD; 2:02)

Additionally, a digital copy is also included.

Rick and Morty: Season 5 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Rick and Morty continues to be both unabashedly un-PC and inarguably hilarious, but what is really interesting about this season is how heartfelt it turns out to be, even if it begins to introduce some pretty dark elements. Technical merits are solid, and the supplementary package very enjoyable. Highly recommended.