I still just found myself thinking “What is this crow bullshit? Why crows?” However, it never really successfully elevates itself above its initial inane premise. The idea of it is that this “two crows” thing is engineered to be a silly, one-off inanity, but then the joke becomes so much more as the writers sincerely explore the concept. The other half of this episode is about Rick replacing Morty with two crows, at first as a joke, but then he gradually comes to realize crows are actually cool and can teach him about empathy. It unfortunately brought to mind the episode with Planetina, perhaps the worst of season five, as in both episodes Morty realizes the person he’s spending time with ain’t so great because-shock horror-they’re cool with killing innocent people! Yes, Morty has a moral core, so it’s not like it doesn’t make some sense, but it’s just that, with the amount of people he and Rick murder out of petty anger or just by happenstance all the time, it feels like they need to sell his change of heart a little more. How Morty comes to the decision to sever his hand and connection to Nick is less well-executed. It’s all very clever, well-executed stuff, though, typing it out, it sure sounds weird. It’s also used smartly in the most effective dramatic moment in “Forgetting Sarick Mortshall” when Morty chooses to destroy his portal connection to Rick by placing his hand on a train track so that it’s severed off, and then drops the hand-portal into Nick’s thigh-portal to kill him. They get some good mileage out of it too, with some cool action sequences (like Jackie Chan!) and inspired moments like Morty making a dude eat shit, literally, by transferring the contents of a chamber pot by way of the hand/thigh portal system or when Nick takes control of the car Morty’s driving by sticking his hand through Morty’s portal hand. However, this portal in the hand thing feels totally new and fresh.
It’s unfortunate that an odd side effect of a series with a premise that allows for infinite sci-fi possibilities is that many concepts, no matter how much creative effort is put behind them, feel like retreads that fall into a similar category (e.g., the season premiere with its Narnia world that evolved at hyper-speed felt not entirely dissimilar from the sequence of Morty living an entire life in “The Vat of Acid Episode” which, in turn, felt not so dissimilar from that time he played Roy: A Life Well Lived).
Regardless, the inciting incident here of Morty accidentally getting portal juice on his hand, thus creating a portal in his hand that connects to Nick’s thigh is a really clever one.
Sure, it’s got Rick pissing Morty off so much that he goes off on his own anti-Rick adventure (with a dude fittingly named Nick), but, for the majority of the runtime, it’s not handled like it’s all that big of a deal. This first one is closer to a “normal” season five episode. Though they’re both about testing the strength of Rick and Morty’s relationship and the first does directly lead into the next by virtue of… crows… these really are two separate episodes with two different focuses and tones.