Rick and Morty season 4, episode 4 recap: Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktim’s Morty

Rick and Morty discover there’s more to dragons and soul bonding than they realized. Jerry goes on an adventure with a talking cat.

In exchange for cutting class to fight robots with Rick, Rick promises Morty a dragon. Rick tries to back out on the deal because dragons are lame and for nerds who refuse to admit they’re Christian. Morty is insistent though, so the next thing you know he’s soul bonded to a dragon named Balthromaw (Liam Cunningham) on Rick and Morty.

Morty loves soaring around with Balthromaw, but Balthromaw just wants to sleep on his hoard until the age of man is over. Morty says maybe split the diff – 20 minute nap and then soaring? The dragon really does not like Morty. But when Rick goes to slay Balthromaw, they discover that they have a lot in common and start partying together.

When Balthromaw ignores Morty’s summons to hang out with Rick, Morty tracks him down just in time to see Rick and Balthromaw soul-bonding – which turns out to be a disturbingly sexual process. When Morty tears up his soul bonding contract in disgust, a wizard shows up to punish Balthromaw for slutting around. But since Rick is now soul bonded to Balthromaw, whatever physical punishment happens to him also happens to Rick.

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Rick, Morty, and Summer follow Balthromaw and the wizard to their magical universe and try to save Balthromaw. Rick has no power there because science doesn’t work, but Morty knows spells that can help them. It figures that Morty would have a higher status in Lame World, comments Rick.

Balthromaw is hanged for the crime of soul-bonding with multiple riders, but it takes like 78 years to hang a dragon and the effect on Rick is the equivalent of a really annoying cough. Rick is able to make a magic gun because there are no rules in the magic world, you can pretty much do anything. He turns Summer into a sexy arrow shooty lady and the three of them fight off orcs and things to save Balthromaw.

It turns out there are lots of dragons who have been exiled for the crime of multiple soul bonding. They live as outlaws is slut caves. The only way to break the soul bond between Rick and Balthromaw is to kill the wizard, so they and the slut dragons have a 10-slut soul orgy to form a huge magical power dragon. They soar into town, free the imprisoned dragons and kill the wizard, thus freeing all dragons from their soul bonds.

Balthromaw comes home with them and wants to still hang out with Rick, but Rick makes the excuse that he has to go check on Jerry, who has been texting him about his adventure with a talking cat. Balthromaw then tries to hook up with Morty, but Morty is really uncomfortable with how sexual things got and tells Balthromaw to go away.

Unrelated to Rick and the talking dragon, Jerry encounters a talking cat (Matthew Broderick). Jerry wants to know why the cat can talk, but the cat says that maybe it’s time Jerry stopped asking questions and started having fun. Jerry is inspired by this and immediately agrees when the cat tells him to buy them two first-class tickets to Florida. Oh Jerry…

They end up playing volleyball on the beach and having lots of fun until someone steps in some poop that someone left buried in the sand. It’s obviously the cat, but it gets blamed on Jerry and he gets kicked out of the group. Not long after, the cat gets kicked off the fancy yacht party for asking too many questions. How ironic.

The cat and Jerry end up stranded in Florida together until Rick comes to pick them up. Rick traps the cat in a force field so he can do a brain scan and figure out what his deal is. The cat says that Rick is asking too many questions and that the point of a talking cat is to have fun. Rick finds the insinuation that he can’t ask questions and also have fun condescending. He has a point, there’s no reason you can’t do both – unless of course, the reason the cat can talk is because of some terrible, horrific, genocidal, catastrophe.

Whatever it is that Rick sees, you know its bad when it’s so scarring that he nearly kills himself after seeing it. Jerry can barely function. Even knowing he had that creature in his home where he keeps photos of his parents is too much to think about. Rick tells the cat to run away and erases Jerry’s memory of the incident. He tells Jerry that the cat could talk because it was from outer space and that explanation seems to satisfy him.

Later, Balthromaw coincidentally meets the talking cat. He asks if there’s a reason the cat can talk. The cat says he’s ashamed of the reason, so Balthromaw doesn’t ask anything more. Instead, they decide to get something to eat and bond a little. The cat asks him how long it would talk him to fly to Florida.

What did you think of this episode of Rick and Morty? Be sure to tell us in the comment section below!