If one Rick and Morty is good, then an entire planet filled with Ricks and Mortys should be great, right?

SUMMARY

The Smith-Sanchez family is having breakfast when a portal opens and a Rick (Justin Roiland) appears, kills Rick, and steals Morty (Roiland). It then shows breakfast the next day featuring another Rick and Morty, revealing that the previous scenario happened in another dimension. Another portal opens and several Ricks enter, this time in uniforms. They freeze Jerry (Chris Parnell), but Rick and Morty (of C-137) agree to go with them.

They are transported to the CITADEL OF RICKS, a trans-dimensional organization of Ricks which has created a form of government overseeing Rick behavior across the multiverse. They bring in Rick C-137 to accuse him of murdering other Ricks across the multiverse, as he is one of the only Ricks who isn’t part of the Citadel. He denies it, but his portal gun is traced to all the murders. Rick and Morty escape the Citadel troops while Rick manages to identify the real murderous Rick. They follow his signature to a building composed of hundreds of Mortys that are being tortured, which apparently shields Evil Rick from detection. Meanwhile, a group of Ricks stays at the Smith house while searching for Rick C-137, including Doofus Rick, who bonds with Jerry.

Rick and Morty get captured by Evil Rick and his Morty. Rick finds out that Evil Rick plans to steal his memories and then kill him. Morty is taken to a room filled with Mortys who worship the coming of the “One True Morty,” which apparently will free them from their bonds. Morty leads them into an uprising to escape and rescue Rick, resulting in Evil Rick being killed by a mob of Mortys.

Back on the Citadel, Rick C-137, now exonerated, is given an apology and a coupon for a free Morty. Morty, who has been angry at Rick for the entire episode after Rick told him that Ricks keep Mortys around because Mortys are so stupid they act as psychic barriers, tries to get Rick to show some emotional growth, but Rick refuses. However, he immediately manages to get some in by pointing out that he’s the Rickest Rick, therefore Morty is the Mortyest Morty. It’s then revealed to the audience, but not Rick and Morty C-137, that Evil Rick was actually being controlled by another source… EVIL MORTY!!!

END SUMMARY

We already knew from “Rick Potion #9” that there were parallel Ricks and Mortys but this episode really drives that idea home. The Citadel of Ricks and the Council of Ricks appears to be derived from the “Council of Reeds” from the Fantastic Four comics, where Mr. Fantastic finds out that there are a ton of versions of him that work together and are mostly evil. Well, not so much evil as just dicks, which I guess makes the parallel a little closer. However, while the Council of Reeds works to, ostensibly, make the multiverse a better place, the Citadel of Ricks appears to just be a place where Ricks are thrown back into mediocrity and ruled over by a group of Ricks that are likely no more qualified to rule than they are. But, we’ll get into that more in Season 3.

The multiverse, too, is more thoroughly explored in this episode by showing the viewers, in a very short montage, a man ordering pizza using a phone while sitting on a chair, then essentially every version of that same situation with the nouns swapped, culminating in a chair ordering phones using a pizza while sitting on a man. It drives home the fact that, in a truly infinite multiverse, anything is possible.

The relationship between Rick and Morty is given some more significance as we’re told that Rick actually uses Morty to prevent himself from being found by some of the more threatening intergalactic authorities. Whether these are present in every dimension isn’t mentioned, but apparently the Galactic Federation exists in multiple dimensions, given that their agent Tammy was found in both the original dimension of the show (where she got Cronenberged) and also the new one featured in this episode. They also are revealed to have some level of interdimensional capabilities in the pilot, explaining why Rick can’t just go to another dimension to escape them. So, every Rick needs a Morty to give them peace, even the Rickest Rick.

So, why is our Rick the Rickest? Well, he tells us himself: he’s the only one who is completely unafraid to risk himself to maintain his individuality. Or, at least he is now that the Artist Formerly Known as Rick is dead (and, let’s be honest, the Prince version of Rick probably gave zero f*cks). Granted, in the future, this will become obviously untrue, since there are at least one or two other Ricks who also don’t seem to belong to the Citadel (as far as we know). Still, the point is that C-137 Rick’s enough of a rebel to rebel against the rebellion. Most “nonconformists” just buy a Che Guevara shirt and ignore the irony that counterculture tends to directly resemble culture; Rick Sanchez burns down the Hot Topic and the Gap at the same time and makes his own clothes out of the ashes. How does he make clothing from ashes? He’s Rick f*cking Sanchez.

I also have to give credit to this episode for having three of my favorite pop-culture references in the show so far: “The Machine of Unspeakable Doom” is a reference to the Asimov story “The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use” but with the very Rick and Morty addition that the machine stabs your balls, the comic promoting Mortyism called “The Good Morty” is a reference to Jack Chick’s famously zealous Chick Tracts, and, my favorite, where a pen, notebook, and coffee cup fly through a portal, having come from a completely different show, Gravity Falls. The latter three objects get lost through an interdimensional portal by “Grunkle” Stan Pines in the Gravity Falls episode “Society of the Blind Eye.”

Doofus Rick and Jerry is also a great B-plot, because Doofus Rick is the only Rick who can empathize with Jerry’s constant feelings of being put down, unimportant, and incompetent. Of course, Doofus Rick is only those things in comparison with other Ricks, whereas Jerry is… well, Jerry. However, Doofus Rick seems to compensate by being nicer to people, while Jerry is usually just kind of a jerk. Regular Rick later says that “being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets,” which suggests that maybe that’s why Doofus Rick does it, realizing that even if he is picked on, by being nice to people he sometimes gets positive connections, like with Jerry. Perhaps the most notable example is when Doofus Rick is shown Jerry’s coin collection and tells him that what matters is that the coins have value to him. Jerry is used to having people crap on all of his stupid ideas, so being told that his actions can be valid just because they made him feel better is a positive reinforcement that Jerry clearly doesn’t get much, and which Doofus Rick probably craves for similar reasons.

JOKER’S THEORY CORNER

So, people had a lot of theories on this episode. Since Evil Morty later comes back, several of them are still very much up in the air. A big one is that Evil Morty is actually Rick C-137’s original Morty, explaining why he wanted to absorb Rick’s memories rather than just killing him like the other Ricks. Rick’s statement about a Morty getting too smart for their own good also indicates that he has dealt with a “smart Morty” before. Also, Rick has been gone for a decade, has only just been back for one year, but apparently needed a Morty to help cloak him during the time which is unaccounted, suggesting he had one previously. But, if you wanted those theories you could just read another Rick and Morty blog. Instead, here’s one of mine on “The Morty Shield.”

The reason why the “Morty Shield” that Evil Morty was using to hide from the Council of Ricks is so poorly constructed is not because Evil Morty couldn’t have come up with Rick’s idea for producing the same effect with five Mortys and a car battery. In fact, the Morty Shield wasn’t actually used for creating a cloaking effect at all (you can’t track Evil Rick’s brainwaves since he was already braindead), but was instead a ruse to get the Council of Ricks to ignore the question of why a Rick would stockpile so many Mortys. If “Evil Rick” had just been capturing a ton of Mortys for no discernable reason, then the Council might have investigated before re-integrating all of those Mortys, which might have exposed Evil Morty. As it happened, Evil Morty was able to blend in and, as we now know, create a massive Morty surplus that caused dissent within the Citadel, allowing him to seize power. I think he originally was planning on doing it through rebellion and sedition, but Rick’s actions in the beginning of Season 3 gave him an easier path through election.

LEAVING THE CORNER

Yet another great episode in a row. This part of the season is really a hell of a high point.

Overall, I give this episode an

A

on the Rick and Morty scale.

Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you in two weeks.

PREVIOUS – 9: Something Rick-ed This Way Comes

NEXT – 11: Ricksy Business

If you want to check out some more by the Joker on the Sofa, check out the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time or the Joker on the Sofa Reviews. 

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