[6.4/10] In my write-up for the last episode, I said that if the story had ended there, I would still be happy with it. Well, frankly, I kind of wish it had. I’m not sure what this season (series?) finale adds. I can admire the boldness it takes to devote your final episode to paying off a character’s emotional journey and tying up the themes of your season, rather than really propelling the plot in any way beyond where you left things in the penultimate episode. But in practice, “A Pain in the Back” offers the same points and ideas that the first nine episodes did, only in less subtle, less affecting ways. In fairness, mainline *Rick and Morty* is not above presenting mawkish mini-retellings of a character’s whole life in sequence. (The show went to that well as recently as “That’s Amorte” which aired less than a year before this episode did.) But the whole tale of Morty’s supposed best life felt so melodramatic and overly didactic that I just couldn't connect with it. The best I can say for it is that it at least helped make the otherwise confounding first episode of the series make *a little* more sense in context, and paid off the introduction of Frank from that episode. (In full candor, I had completely forgotten him.) But I don’t know. The idea of Morty finding Elle but his life still being marred by struggle and nervousness would have power in theory. In practice, though, the dramatization of these things is too cliched and overdone to really land with force. In truth, at one point, I was ready to give “A Pain in the Back” more credit. When it looked like Morty’s life had gone down the tubes, but it resulted in pure beauty and happiness for his wife and daughter, I thought the show might be making a tragic but poignant point. If this VR simulation meant to show Morty his best life results in him sacrificing his own happiness to ensure the happiness and satisfaction of the two people he loved most, it would be tough but beautiful. Instead, the story makes a last minute pivot to Morty showing up, and everything being resolved toward joy and fulfillment for one and all, with little of it being earned. Even if individual moments in these vignettes might land, and Morty resenting the role his well-heeled friend plays in their lives is a human response worth exploring, the broader whole plays like soapy nonsense, too exaggerated and hacky to work as well as it needs to. I take the point here, that a VR life is as arbitrary and finite as a real life, and that the only thing to do is find happiness and satisfaction in the places we can, to live a fulfilling life. That is the positive side of existentialism, and a more optimistic take on making meaning than the show has offered to date. But by having Elle basically announce not only her own enduring happiness but the moral of the story to the audience is artless and neuters the intended punch of the finale. There’s things worth holding onto here. Though it exists mostly in montage, the scenes of Mory and Elle’s courtship in what looks like New York City circa [*When Harry Met Sally*](https://trakt.tv/comments/325858) is heartwarming. Likewise, there's a certain moving melancholy to the glimpses of them reuniting at the bar together, and other collaged, if not fully random, images we see. And the fact that Morty has this big moving experience and Rick just tears the helmet off at the end and blows it off before telling him they’re going on another adventure feels very in line with something that would happen on the main show. But I have to admit, this is a bit of a disappointment for a show that started shaky, but eventually found its footing. I would still recommend this show, with all its confusing opaqueness and long path toward things falling into place. But in many ways, that's a recommendation for the story that ended in the last episode, with a soft warning not to expect much from this ending that feels more like an unnecessary postscript than the true resolution of the story.