And so, here we are...the finish line. The end of 2021. Only one more spot to fill out before we say goodbye to what is pretty much a very long year. I know that everyone said that the current year is considered the longest, but if you factor in the quarantine from 2020, time is pretty much non-existent. Let’s hope 2022 can be a good one, though that’s what we all said about 2021...yeah. But it’s time to present which episode and series will be taking home the gold medal for this year’s countdown. Coming in at number 1 and if you already haven’t read the title ready, it’s “Rickmurai Jack” from Rick and Morty.
Everyone right now is giving me the stink eye over how I rank the episodes for this countdown. They're giving me the stink eye over how the hell did Rick and Morty made it to number 1? This episode did that. This episode, the finale to Season 5, it did that. And we can almost all agree, "Rickmurai Jack" is where everything might have changed the game with this show. Yeah, call me out all you want on ranking this episode that high on the list, but let’s be real, I’ve saved this episode for last and looked through it when it first came out along with “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall”, it blew everything out of the park. Mostly with that episode, it did have Rick come to the realization that his partnership with Morty, whenever they go on adventures, doesn’t go well. Toxic to say the least and that realization causes him to head out from his home with the crows on his shoulders and head off to the depths of space to create his own adventures. Which the season would’ve ended there since it feels like a season finale with Rick leaving the Smith-Sanchez household and going on his new journeys...only to find out that there’s another episode after that one, which leads us to “Rickmurai Jack”.
Already starting off with Rick going through an anime phase with his two crows saving a village from anthropomorphic owls and an aged-up Morty, noticing how long Rick has been gone since the ending of the last episode. Though Rick pretending to be the anime protagonist in his own journey doesn’t last long once he comes face-to-face with Crowscare and the crows that he trained and partnered with from the last episode to doublecross him and for Rick to head back to Earth and revert an older Morty back to his canon age over at the Citadel and this is where things begin to really take its place on why I chose this episode to take the top spot.
The duo gets invited to a dinner with the President of the Citadel, i.e. President Morty, aka Evil Morty and man, the direction of where this episode is heading...imagine driving down on the road and once you enter the freeway, the speed begins to pick up. And it all began with Evil Morty restraining both Rick and Morty and requesting him to give away the information about the Central Finite Curve, the term that wasn’t even brought up since Season 1. And if that’s not enough, we get a bit of a backstory once Evil Morty injected a device onto Morty and showed him how the Mortys came to be, how Beth and Jerry first met, and all it took was the group of Mortys to be chained up and tortured. Hence, the Mortys that been surrounding the cave in “Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind” where we meet Evil Morty for the first time along with an Evil Rick.
So the Central Finite Curve is pretty much summed up as a set of multiverses where Rick if not, all Ricks reside and set themselves as the dominant being and it was created by Rick, C-137 Rick, i.e. our Rick in the heydays and we’ll get to his backstory soon on how everything came to be. But it was created by Rick, along with the creation of the Citadel, and of course, Ricks being the dominant being of each and different dimension within the Central Finite Curve. Evil Morty’s goal, revealed in the episode, wants to dismantle it. And it’s not a vague reason in him saying, “Oh, well I want to destroy it because I’m the bad guy and I like to do bad guy things.” His goal was for one simple thing, he just wants the cycle to end. Which cycle? The cycle of Rick being the dominant being and Morty being his lackey/stepping mule. He’s tired of the status quo. He’s tired of being mistreated. And not just him, but also all of the Mortys who just want to be free for themselves. Sure, the plan coming into terms and the payoff to the idea can be somewhat complicated regarding the worldbuilding, and despite how the show most of the time go through the sitcom rules with some episodes, mostly at the end of the season where you get some lore to pop on in once in a while. But the payoff was worth it and it took five seasons in silence, have the Citadel fall to shit after an abrupt battle with the Galactic Federation, only for Evil Morty to sense the turmoil and rebuild as an opportunity to take the leadership position to where we are now.
Rick’s backstory was one of the highlights from this episode as both he and Morty make their way downstairs. As what he dubs it the “crybaby backstory”, it gave us some answers while creating new ones. So, remember that scene from the Season 3 premiere where you have a young Rick watching his wife and daughter blown to bits with his own eyes? And there was a random portal that dropped off the bomb that killed his family? Well, after being the only survivor of the blast and having gotten through a downfall in life is where Rick decides to build himself a portal gun and go through the different dimensions in search of the Rick responsible for his family’s death. But each time he killed a random Rick from a different dimension, he was unable to identify that the random Rick was the Rick he was searching for. Creating the Citadel of Ricks as a peace offering after going on a murder spree on the various versions of himself and even crash landing onto the dimension where his daughter is alive and well and even form a bond with Morty. So I guess in a way, this may have changed the structure of the show after witnessing Rick’s past. No cop-out. No rushed direction that would ruin it. That, as well as the previous episode, “Rickternal Friendship of the Spineless Mort”, with Rick trying to restore Birdperson back to an organic being and also from the dead, you have to give Harmon, Roiland, and the rest of the crew on what they’re doing with this season and also the series in general...sometimes.
But the ending to what is already a roller coaster of an episode was mind-blowing and fantastic to the core. The suspense, drama, action, animation, the music choice with the remixed version of “For the Damaged Coda” in the background as the Citadel crumbles into dust as Rick, Morty, and the various Mortys that were working underground to make Evil Morty’s plan go into action make their escape while Evil Morty makes their way through hyperspace and finally did the deed in ending the Central Finite Curve. Finally ending the cycle. Finally free from the shackles of being Rick’s lackey. I don’t think that this might be the last we’ll see Evil Morty after finally achieving his goal by breaking the cycle and destroying the curve, especially with 40-50 episodes left from the 70-episode order that the show picked up years ago. And we all know that the show would go back to the usual wacky hijinks that we all know to love/hate...
But man, what an episode. An absolute gamechanger from start to finish when it comes to the series courtesy of this exact episode. Sure, the beginning of the episode with Rick going through an anime protagonist phase with the two crows wasn’t going to last long and we all knew that Rick is going to crawl back to Earth once the crows doublecross him when coming toe-to-toe with Crowscare, but I don’t blame them on what they’re doing at the start of the episode. Pretty much in my opinion the calm before the storm. And man, the entirety of the episode with Rick and Morty trying to resolve their issues while taking on Evil Morty was spectacular and the cast and crew weren’t holding any punches from the revelation of Evil Morty’s goal to Rick’s backstory in how everything was set up from the Citadel to the end of the episode with him, being Evil Morty, finally got what he got in ending the Central Finite Curve. Again, I feel like this won’t be the last we’ll see Evil Morty knowing the episode order the series picked up years ago but...fuck, what a way to end the show’s fifth season and knowing that we don’t have to wait that long for the sixth season to air in the summer of the new year, while we might be heading back to the usual sci-fi hijinks the show is known for, but we can all agree that this episode may have changed the game and the show, regardless of going back to the typical formula, might never be the same again. And so, that’ll do it for the Top 12 Countdown of 2021 with “Rickmurai Jack” from Rick and Morty taking the number 1 spot for the year.
What is also coming to an end, 2021 itself. Sure, this isn’t like with 2020 where we had to endure with a lot of shit every five minutes...though 2021 might have taken a dookie on the last day with recently deceased Betty White and only a few weeks before turning the big 100, like what the fuck?! But yeah, 2021 was a struggle from the ice storm and having to wait for an episode of Bob’s Burgers for numerous amounts of weeks into the new year and also not to mention that there’s a pandemic that is still going and it will stick around into the new year, I guess it wasn’t too bad. I mean, I was busy, busy, busy with the episode reviews, artwork, character discussions, and now this with the countdown to close out the year. And it’s hard to believe that once the final countdown is released, it’ll already be 2022 (though it’ll already be 2022 on the other side of the world).
And it’s also hard to believe that next year, 2022, will mark 10 years, TEN freaking fracking YEARS since I’ve started the yahoo201027 page. Sure, it’s been struggling. It’s been a hassle from timing to...well, everything to be honest. The brief period of burnouts and have to go through four different workstations, i.e. laptops to get everything for you guys to at least enjoy. Sure, it’s nothing like with YouTube because I’m not a YouTuber. I would do that and expand but the cost for equipment and wishing to not get a copyright strike, but for doing this for 10 years with little to no traffic from the site to the social pages like Tumblr, Twitter, and Instagram with little to no financing to keep things alive...you would call it sad, but I’ve worked my butt off to get where I am now. And I guess none of this wouldn’t happen without the people who are close to me as friends and family even though I’m an introverted fuck and of course, you. The readers and the people over on the internet for supporting me during those past 10 years.
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