Why So Blu?

Rick And Morty: Season 5 (Blu-ray Review)

Its rather nice and refreshing to have Rick and Morty back in regular rotation on Adult Swim. It feels almost too good to be true. The fifth season of the show just concluded its terrific run and we’ll be heading into a sixth season in the next year. Warner Bros and Adult Swim are putting it out onto Blu-ray, which will also come with a collectible steelbook packaging. The release comes with a nice array of short featurettes and a digital code for every episode of the season. You’ll be able to pick up the complete season on Blu-ray when it arrives in stores, both online and physical on December 7th. If you’d like to order one, you can use the paid Amazon Associates link that follows this review.

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Season

The half-hour animated Adult Swim hit comedy series follows a sociopathic genius scientist who drags his inherently timid grandson on insanely dangerous adventures across the universe. Rick Sanchez is living with his daughter Beth’s family and constantly bringing her, his son-in-law Jerry, granddaughter Summer, and grandson Morty into intergalactic escapades.

At the start of every new season of Rick and Morty, I wonder if its ever going to let up. And I don’t mean bad or anything, just that it’ll feel a bit “regular”. And every single time I’m stunningly surprised at how shocking and freshly funny it comes out swinging. The show is relentless and finds new ways constantly to jab at science fiction tropes and build an ridiculous canon for itself that it holds to religiously to absolutely ridiculous levels of parody.

In the fifth season, we get more multiverse and doppleganger fun than we ever have before. They even go so far as to actually give us the full back story for Rick Sanchez. Its a bold move that could easily wreck or diffuse many shows, but not Rick and Morty. These writes actually pull this thing off.

One things that helps Rick and Morty work so well in these newer/later seasons is that they’ve slowly built an emotional core at the center of it all that isn’t abused or taken advantage of, but there to help service the story and make some of the most over the top and ridiculous things in it carry some weight. But lets not get too crazy, the show goes for cleverness and laughs and excels in them first and foremost. Its just now they excel here too.

Some of the best fun is wondering where Rick and Morty will go next. And, season to season, you never have any idea. Let alone, you never know where they are going from episode to episode. That’s the beauty and joy of the show that is key to its quality, and I hope doesn’t plan on changing any time soon.

Episodes

Mort Dinner Rick Andre

Mortyplicity

A Rickconvenient Mort

Rickdependence Spray

Amortycan Grickfitti

Rick & Morty’s Thanksploitation Spectacular

Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion

Rickternal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort

Forgetting Sarick Mortshall

Rickmurai Jack

Video

Encoding: MPEG-4 AVC

Resolution: 1080p

Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1

Layers: BD-50

Clarity/Detail:  Primarily 2-D animations with a flat color scene like Rick and Morty have no trouble shining on the Blu-ray format.  One might worry that all 10 of the 30 minute episodes and bonus features are crammed on one disc, but there’s no real sign of that harming the viewing. The image is vivid, strong and features plenty of details clearly done in the animation to go with an overall sharp image.

Depth: There’s a pretty strong, three dimensional, depth of field on display where the 2D and cgi animations marry. Character movements are smooth and feature no issues with distortion.

Black Levels: Blacks are nice deep, flat color. They do well in shadow and night, with good defined outlining helping to sharpen the image. No crushing present.

Color Reproduction:  Colors pop quite strong and this really has a nice vivid palette to display. There are wonderful glows and other bright moments from lasers, lighting and such.

Flesh Tones: N/A

Noise/Artifacts: Clean

Audio

Format(s): English 5.1 DTS-HD MA, French 2.0 Stereo Dolby Digital, German 2.0 Stereo Dolby Digital

Subtitles: English SDH, French, German SDH, Dutch

Dynamics: Ricky and Morty carries a nice 5.1 mix as the series has been known to have on these releases. Its a crazy as a blockbuster with the sound design and carries that weighted impact. Its a nice lossless mix that is balanced and thorough with its playful behavior toward the vocals, effect and music.

Height: N/A

Low-Frequency Extension: Blaster fire, bass drops, explosions, ship engines and much more really provide a nice pounce and bounce from your subwoofer.

Surround Sound Presentation: This is pretty playful and well thought out with effects and atmospherics really commanding the room and leaving no speaker unturned. Sound travel is quite dynamic and really whooshes back and forth across the room with a real grace and impact.

Dialogue Reproduction:  Vocals are clear and crisp with good characteristics of the actors’ diction being picked up with the mix.

Extras

Ricky and Morty: Season 5 comes with a redeemable digital code. This particular review copy came in the limited edition steelbook packaging which featured an episode guide sheet insert.

Fighting Gravity: The Making of Season 5 (HD, 9:16) – This goes over the challenges of making a season during a pandemic and the decision to tell Rick’s backstory and convincing Dan Harmon to allow it. There are also some moments revealed to be more emotional than you’d have thought on the surface.

Animation and Compositing (HD, 2:22) – A brief showcase on what compositing is and animation touch up and fixes that come in later in the process.

B-Story Generator Vol. 1 (HD, 3:04) – Dan Harmon and Rob Schraab go through a box of little post its that are B-Story ideas for episodes and they draw them and read them aloud. Dan picks a favorite and fleshes it out and has some storyboards to show some of them.

B-Story Generator Vol. 2 (HD, 2:49) – Some more drawing from the box.

Backgrounds (HD, 2:30) – This one covers the background animation and how intensive a process it actually is.

Coloring Rick and Morty (HD, 2:47) – Here’s a piece on the use of color in the animation and what goes into it.

Directing “Mortyplicity” (HD, 2:00) – A little bit of insight behind this episode about Rick’s multiple decoy families set about.

Directing “Rickmurai Jack (HD, 2:36) – This one goes over the challenges of putting together the multiverse in the show.

Season 5 Hype (HD, 1:52) – The creators hype up and joke about the Season.

Inside the Episode – These are really brief clips with folks like Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon giving a little bit of insight on the episode.

• Mort Dinner Rick Andre (HD, 1:45)
• Mortyplicity (HD, 1:45)
• A Rickconvenient Mort (HD, 1:58)
• Rickdependence Spray (HD, 1:53)
• Amortycan Rickfitti (HD, 1:35)
• Rick and Morty’s Thanksploitation Spectacular (HD, 1:30)
• Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion (HD, 1:25)
• Ricketernal Friendshine of the Spotless Mort (HD, 1:44)

Summary

Rick and Morty continues to run impressively unfettered through its fifth season with no signs of slowing up. The new Blu-ray release comes with your standard presentation, switching up the TrueHD for DTS-HD MA this time around. Extras are a  load of brief featurettes, but they really pack a lot of information and fun into all of them. The steelbook packaging for this particular release specifically really cool. This is a collector’s worthy show, as many will want to revisit it down the line, so pick it up when the time is right for you.

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