I know that when I thought “what would a Rick and Morty Thanksgiving special be like,” I never conceived of a country song about soldiers paying the price of freedom by turning into turkeys. That’s why this show is worthwhile, because it sometimes gives us the stuff we didn’t know we wanted. This isn’t one of the more complicated episodes of this show, but it has a surprisingly solid subtext about mythologizing the past. If you aren’t interested in that, though, at least you get to see Rick and the President of the US played by Keith David messing with each other again. Oh, and the funniest Polio joke ever, which, admittedly, is not a super competitive category.
Rick does this for a pardon, as opposed to, say, curing cancer or giving them the ability to turn lead to gold.
The episode starts with Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland) trying to steal the US Constitution because apparently Nicolas Cage was right and there is a treasure map on it. Morty accidentally destroys it, so the President tries to trap the pair inside of the house. Rick reveals that he plans to become a turkey and get a Presidential pardon, something he does periodically in order to avoid consequences. The President, aware of Rick’s plan, has a bunch of soldiers turn into turkeys in order to thwart it, then ends up turning himself into a turkey as well. However, during the turkey-based fighting, the President’s tracking chip ends up in a random turkey who is then turned into a copy of the President. The Turkey-President bribes Congress, very easily, into allowing him to start an army of turkey supermen. Meanwhile, Rick, Morty, and the Real President join forces with the troops from before and break into the secret Thanksgiving vault under the Lincoln Memorial. It’s revealed that Americans have been fighting turkey dinosaurs since before the 1500s, when two groups of aliens, who look like Pilgrims and Native Americans, helped defeat them. The aliens are revived to help fight the turkey forces while Rick and Morty stop the Turkey-President from turning all turkeys to humans and the President fights his counterpart. They win, but Morty says he doesn’t know how to feel about America now. The President then just tells him to feel thankful. Later, a marine who was turned into a turkey has blueberry related PTSD only for the other citizens to say they don’t want to cover his healthcare.
If we gave all soldiers these outfits, we’d have very few casualties.
Honestly, this episode is one of the most ridiculous joke episodes in the history of this show and that’s saying something. It’s like it throws out every ridiculous cliche while having a theme of undercutting Thanksgiving, American mythology, and the American Government. The first time I watched it, I thought it was a little underwhelming, but on rewatch I admit that a lot of the jokes really are pretty solid. Honestly, this episode might have my single favorite joke in Rick and Morty history when it is revealed that there is a giant half-spider FDR:
“He was a guinea pig for the polio vaccine. We asked ourselves: What walks the most?”
We have nothing to fear except for him.
The sheer brilliant absurdity of this line makes me smile every single time.
Overall, pretty good episode. It’s just supposed to be fun and, for the most part, it is.
Rick and Morty tries to prove that it is not, in fact, a show for smart people. They succeed.
I don’t know if this is the worst episode of this series, but I am willing to state that it is probably the least clever episode. The entire thing felt like the set-up to a Rick and Morty joke where everything is revealed to be a prank on Morty or something like in the “Vat of Acid Episode,” but instead it is just played straight. I think that might be either a set-up for something later on in the series or kind of a meta prank on the audience who, like me, would constantly spend the episode waiting for the clever twist. It’s not that they haven’t done linear episodes before, ranging from the miserable “Anatomy Park” to the absolutely amazing “Pickle Rick,” but this one really needed something to redeem it.
It begins with Morty sticking his genitals in a machine designed to catch horse sperm, so that’s not great.
The episode starts with Morty (Justin Roiland) meeting Beth (Sarah Chalke) at her veterinary office and seeing a machine that harvests horse semen. Morty then uses the machine to get off for a week before Rick (Roiland) steals a vat of the supposed horse semen to use in his war against the Cannibal Horse Underground Dwellers (CHUDs). Unfortunately, when Morty lies about having his semen in the container, it causes Rick to accidentally make Morty’s sperm gigantic and occasionally sentient. The sperm start attacking Earth and the President (Keith David) believes Morty’s lie about not knowing what happened. Rick and Morty join a pair of marines to find the sperm’s lair where Morty is captured by a talking sperm in a mech suit who reveals that Morty created them. Rick, disturbed by this revelation, helps Morty plant nukes in the sperm base, but find out that the sperm are heading to Vegas. Summer (Spencer Grammer) came up with the idea to have her egg enlarged to attract the sperm, only to have the credit stolen by a scientist working for the President named Shabooboo. Rick and Morty are captured by the CHUDs, but are saved by the revelation that Rick impregnated their princess. The CHUDs help Rick and Morty and the Army try to stop the sperm. They seem to succeed, only for a friendly sperm Morty had named “Sticky” to enter the egg, creating a giant incest baby that gets shot into space.
Yeah. Giant incest baby 2001: A Space Odyssey reference. Fun (except not).
This is a strong contender for the worst episode of this show so far. The plot is linear and not particularly interesting, beyond the intervention of the CHUDs. I admit horse cannibals who burrow through the ground were pretty funny. The only way they could have pulled this off something so straightforward was if the humor in the episode was really on point, but it definitely was not. The entire episode is mostly gross-out humor ranging from the giant sperm images to a literal incest baby. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have its moments. The scene of Beth telling Summer that she’s finally a woman because a man stole her idea and didn’t give her credit is pretty solid, even if that joke has been played out a lot lately. The line from the sperm queen about them not bringing a woman who can kickbox was pretty great. Rick finally admitting his addiction when he realizes that he impregnated a mutant horse was absolutely beautiful. Unfortunately, there just weren’t enough jokes to fill the whole time without making me think “am I really watching giant sperm right now?”
The horse people are pretty funny. Particularly the “burrowing horses.”
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
Is this episode intentionally stupid? Here me out. This season has, so far, mostly been a series of really funny episodes that usually contain either great A-Plot and B-Plot interplay or, like Mortyplicity, an amazing premise that keeps surprising you. However, these episodes have been a bit harder to follow than some of the episodes in the earlier seasons, at least for people who don’t have great attention spans. So I think they might actually have made an episode that’s intentionally base and stupid so that the fandom that was complaining about the first few episodes would have something to grab onto. Dan Harmon is exactly the kind of guy who might troll the audience like that, perhaps even later calling this a “gas leak episode.”
I mean, Amazing Jonathan has great talent at doing bad jokes as set-ups for great jokes.
Overall, I give this episode an
D
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you next week.
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I know Rick and Morty often does pop culture tributes, but this might be my favorite one so far. Captain Planet, a show that ended in 1996, was a big cultural part of the 1990s and one that represented the hope and unity we believed would come as a result of the end of the Cold War. Unfortunately, in retrospect, it also was ridiculously naïve. The show’s central theme was that each individual working to stop pollution would save the world. While there are a lot of signs that bringing awareness about the environment has managed to mitigate some of the impacts, like flaming rivers and acid rain, people have pointed out that shifting the blame to individuals rather than the much-heavier-polluting corporations has limited the amount that recycling efforts can actually achieve when combating climate change. This episode only touches on that aspect, but, being Rick and Morty, it takes it in a hilariously dark direction.
And the most awkward makeout scene for 90s kids.
Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland) are buying t-shirts when they witness an acid rain attack by a supervillain named Diesel Weasel (Tom Kenny(?)), who appears to be a cross between Verminous Scumm from the Captain Planet series and the Biker Mice from Mars. Diesel Weasel is quickly defeated by eco-friendly superhero Planetina (Alison Brie), who Morty promptly, and successfully, asks out. Morty chooses to pursue Planetina rather than join Rick on their planned “apocalypse bar crawl,” where they go to three planets that are about to end in order to join in the orgies and debauchery that precedes such events. Summer (Spencer Grammer) agrees to join Rick instead, looking forward to the guilt-free orgy, over objections from Jerry and Beth (Chris Parnell and Sarah Chalke). Morty manages to find Planetina again and asks her out again, resulting in them hooking up. When Planetina’s formerly-teenage summoners call her forth at a convention, Morty is accidentally brought with her. This quickly agitates the now middle-aged “Tina-teers,” who kidnap Morty to kill him before selling Planetina to a rich man. Morty escapes and kills the American Tina-Teer (Steve Buscemi), before murdering all of the Tina-teers, freeing Planetina and moving her into the house.
Diesel Weasel is a great band name.
Meanwhile, Rick meets an alien named Daphne (Jennifer Coolidge) on the first planet and brings her along to the next two, much to Summer’s disappointment. Rick insists that what he and Daphne have is special. However, on the third planet, in the middle of the orgy, Summer gets fed up with Rick and saves the planet by destroying the asteroid that’s going to hit it. Rather than being elated, most of the citizens are upset that they have to go to work and live with the stuff they did when they thought they would die. Also, Daphne reveals that she wasn’t really interested in Rick, but was only staying with him to avoid her fate. Rick ends up admitting to Summer that stopping an apocalypse to make a point is something he would do and seems to respect her more. Back on Earth, Morty watches Planetina escalate her anti-pollution efforts from stopping fires to committing arson on politicians and murdering miners. Morty, horrified, breaks up with her. She asks him to reconsider and points out that he violently murdered the Tina-teers, but he refuses to take her back. She tells him off and leaves, with Beth comforting a crying Morty.
His giant Morty flower head is dying. Very sad.
This episode is one of the best A-plot and B-plot thematic connections in the series. Both involve the planet dying, but the former evaluates the slow death from climate change that we’re seeing on Earth and the latter involves the sudden and inevitable death suffered by planets undergoing natural cosmic ends. Earth basically ignores it and refuses to take any measure to stop it, with the Tina-teers even trying to sell their champion into sexual slavery. It seems to be a reference to the idea that people will sell out the future of the planet as long as it isn’t concretely going to affect them. Meanwhile, when death is inevitable, people seem to break into hedonism and are freed from the concerns of the future. While I think it’s more likely that a lot of people would try to spend time with their loved ones rather than in an orgy, I’m sure at least some orgies would break out. It’s interesting to note that Summer actually is the only one that saves a planet… but only does it out of spite. I also think that the aliens being pissed at having to go to work was hilarious.
The greatest hero of them all.
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
So, why does Planetina move from just putting out the forest fires to killing miners? Because this might be the first time that she’s actually been out of her rings for a prolonged period of time. The progression of Planetina’s actions is consistent with the idea that she is extremely naive at the beginning (possibly explaining why she would sleep with a teenager), and believes that the solution to pollution is, indeed, the individual. She unfortunately maintains that same belief in the individual, but starts to blame them for not doing “enough.” If she had shifted her focus to punishing the companies or corporate heads that cause most of the pollution, then maybe she could have had more of a point, but she wasn’t willing to break her genuine belief that only individuals can have an impact. So, rather than stopping pipelines or factories, she murders the workers who likely can’t afford to do anything about it.
This doesn’t seem eco-friendly, honestly.
Overall, I give this episode an
A-
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you next week.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
After doing a heavy clone plot last season that pulled from the season before, I thought Rick and Morty might be done with the idea of duplicates, if only because they’d played it out. I was incorrect. This episode pulls off the concept in a way that was not only different, but in a way that allowed for a brilliant narrative structure.
With explosions!
We start off with Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland) planning to kill the Christian God, only for the two, Summer (Spencer Grammer), Jerry (Chris Parnell), and Beth (Sarah Chalke) to be murdered by squid-like aliens. It turns out these were a decoy family and their deaths alert Rick that someone is trying to kill him. While fleeing, Rick and the family are killed, which sets off yet another Rick’s decoy alarm. It turns out that this Rick built decoys, but built such a good decoy Rick that he, in turn, built decoys. This means that there could be hundreds or thousands of Smith-Sanchez families out there. This leads one Rick to decide to disguise the family as squids to take down the aliens, only to discover that the aliens are, in fact, just other decoys. Eventually, it’s revealed that each generation of decoys is just a little worse than the one before it, resulting in things like a nightmare looking Rick and a set of wooden people. The wooden Beth tries to start a civilization of decoys, but is quickly destroyed by squids, who are now firmly identified as other decoys. Finally, a Rick summons all the Ricks to a battle royale. Another Rick, observing this, has a breakthrough about how much he cares for his family. That Rick then kills the surviving Rick, only to be killed by a throw-away gag from the beginning of the episode. This triggers a decoy alert on the real Rick, who has been off-planet the entire time.
This Rick will haunt your dreams.
This episode’s brilliance partially comes from the fact that we never quite know when we’re supposed to follow the “real” Rick and Morty. Or, rather, that we never know who is supposed to end up being the protagonist for our narrative. Each time we watch some character try to break the cycle of dying, they ultimately just end up dying in a completely new way. When we finally see the “last” Rick defeat another Rick, declaring that he is a god and that the other is only made in his image, that seems like it has to be the real Rick. This is immediately hinted to be wrong because this Rick proceeds to admit that he loves his family and wants to change for the better. Naturally, this means he has to die so that we can continue with the miserable bastard we know and love. The theme for the episode was pretty blatantly stated in the beginning with Rick and Morty planning on killing God, because the rest of the episode is about various creations rising up against their creators. Appropriately, none of them ever kill the real creator, because he was up in the heavens the whole time.
The Star Fox final boss throwdown was excellent.
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
How do we know the final Rick is actually the “real” Rick? Well, the episode makes it clear that each Rick decoy is slightly less intelligent or less “Rick” than its predecessor. They even use the metaphor of doing a “copy of a copy.” This same idea of clone degradation was even brought up in the film Multiplicity, the source of the episode’s title. When a Rick manages to challenge and kill all of the other Ricks on Earth at the time aside from, apparently, one, that Rick even recognizes that the surviving Rick is the “Rickest” and therefore might even be the real Rick. This is based on the plausible notion that the closer you are to the original Rick, the smarter and better you are. When the other Rick manages to destroy him, that means that this is apparently the Rickest Rick on Earth. However, when he is killed, he sets off the final decoy alert for the Rick in space, meaning that Rick is the one who created the Rickest Rick, and therefore is the Rick. The word Rick has now lost all meaning.
Yo Dawg, I heard you liked Rick, so here’s some Rick in your Rick.
Overall, I give this episode an
A
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you next week.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
Morty accidentally creates a civilization dedicated to killing him.
I was genuinely worried that, after Adult Swim waited so long to renew the show and some of the episodes last season had mediocre reception, that Rick and Morty fans might have cooled towards the show. Well, if they weren’t happy about this episode, I’d be surprised. This was a quality start to the season that instantly got me psyched to see the rest.
Not just the squidmobile.
The episode starts with Rick and Morty trying to escape from another dimension while Rick (Justin Roiland) is mortally wounded and the car is damaged. As they start to crash to Earth, Morty (also Roiland) calls his crush, Jessica (Kari Wahlgren), and tells her how he feels, something that I am pretty sure he’s done before, but apparently this time Jessica, who has been warming to Morty, actually pays attention. She asks him on a date and, reinvigorated, Morty manages to land the ship safely. Unfortunately, he lands them in the ocean, which breaks a treaty with Rick’s never-before-mentioned nemesis Mr. Nimbus (Dan Harmon).
He’s Mr. Nimbus. He says that a lot.
Later, back at the Smith/Sanchez residence, Mr. Nimbus is coming over to renegotiate the treaty, while Rick sends Summer (Spencer Grammer) to secretly destroy the shell that gives Nimbus his power. Rick then starts the B-Plot by putting boxes of wine in a separate dimension where time moves faster in order to age it. Nimbus arrives, reveals he controls the police, and has his secretary invite a newly sex-positive Beth and Jerry (Sarah Chalke and Chris Parnell) to a threesome later. Beth and Jerry proceed to spend most of the episode deciding if they want that (spoiler: They do). Jessica arrives, but Morty gets distracted by being sent to the other dimension for wine. While there, the agrarian owner of a nearby house named Hoovy (Jim Gaffigan) helps him carry the wine and gives him advice about relationships, only for Hoovy to find out that decades passed in the few seconds while he was gone. His son murders him for abandoning his family, but Hoovy tells him it was Morty’s fault. Now, an entire society slowly builds up around killing Morty every time he comes through the door, which, to Morty, is every few minutes, but for them is decades or even centuries. After one group tries to murder him with catapults, Morty returns with Rick’s technology and destroys the entire kingdom, but accidentally leaves some of his weaponry. The Hoovians use this to develop a warrior who can survive the time dilation. He attacks, but Jessica kills him with a corkscrew, sucking her through the wormhole. Morty follows after her and finds that the entire civilization has now become robotic and that they froze Jessica in time. They capture Morty, but he manages to open the portal with Jessica. Rick sees them fighting robots and tries to save them, but it turns out this civilization is built to beat Rick’s gadgets. It looks like they’re doomed until Mr. Nimbus arrives and destroys the robots with water. Unfortunately, Jessica, having glimpsed time itself, He and Rick seem to make up, until Summer returns with the magic shell, revealing the deception. Nimbus then has Rick arrested and bangs Jerry and Beth.
This is when they start domesticating animals, I guess.
I’ve repeatedly said that Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland somehow have mastered the art of A-plot and B-plot interplay. This episode is that same interplay done almost as well as Meeseeks and Destroy. We have multiple plots running, but by playing between the Hoovians developing a civilization around killing Morty and Rick’s attempts to negotiate a truce with Nimbus, we only see the funny or interesting parts of the stories but we also never feel cheated out of anything. It lets the show shortcut around everything that isn’t worth showing. Possibly the best sequence is watching a prince get exiled for claiming that Morty isn’t real, get manipulated by a cult leader, lead a revolt to take over the kingdom, and get immediately betrayed by the cult leader, only for Morty to emerge and kill everyone. The Cult Leader, hilariously talking about how God isn’t real and that he made lies his power, is shocked when Morty emerges, with his last words being “I was wrong! God is real!” This entire sequence takes 90 seconds. It’s literally a Cliffsnotes version of what could easily have been an entire fantasy novel and it’s basically just to make a few hilarious jokes. It’s textbook Rick and Morty, even roping in the concept that most civilizations develop out of fear of invasion rather than a desire for enriching lives.
That’s why you don’t stand where the portal is, Jeff.
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
Why does Mr. Nimbus control the police? Well, as we see, he doesn’t “control the police” in the sense of being a powerful figure or a politician with influence, he can literally tell them to do what he wants and they do it instantly. It’s similar to Aquaman’s control of sealife. He conveys this by telling the first ones we see to “Fight,” then “F*ck,” then “Flee,” three of the four f’s of evolution (along with feeding). Well, I think it’s supposed to suggest that police are some kind of sea life. This makes sense when you remember that Atlantis is real within Rick and Morty and that Atlantis was described in Plato’s Republic as the ideal and original city-state or “polis,” the very thing from which the term “police” is derived. In other words, Police are derived from Atlantis, so police are under Nimbus’s control. Or it’s a reference to Fish Police, the short-lived CBS animated series designed to compete with the Simpsons that relied heavily upon innuendo and adult language which sometimes is said to have opened the door to shows like South Park and Family Guy. But, let’s be honest, nobody remembers that show.
Not the worst thing cops can do on your lawn, but… pretty bad.
Overall, I give this episode a
B+
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you next week.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
Rick and Morty do a Star Wars episode and there’s an invisible truck.
SUMMARY
Beth Smith (Sarah Chalke) is the leader of the rebellion against the Galactic Federation, which has apparently rebuilt itself after Rick destroyed their currency. Rebel Beth learns that she has a bomb in her neck and, realizing she’s a clone, returns to Earth to kill Rick (Justin Roiland). Rebel Beth confronts Rick, who reveals that the other Beth also has a bomb in her neck, and doesn’t say which is the original. The Federation follows Rebel Beth to Earth, with Tammy (Cassie Steele) leading the attack on the Smith/Sanchez family at Dr. Wong’s office (Susan Sarandon) after thinking that regular Beth was her. Rick saves Beth and Jerry (Chris Parnell), but when they meet Rebel Beth, both Beths are pissed at him. Rick gets bailed out by an attacking Tammy, who captures both of the Beths and tries to kill Rick.
Even Rebel Beth loves Shoney’s.
At the same time, Morty (Justin Roiland) and Summer (Spencer Grammer) have been fighting over the use of Rick’s invisibility belt. Summer finally gets it just as the Federation arrives, but Morty convinces them that he has psychic powers and steals their ship. They arrive in time to save Rick, who then kills Tammy. They all go to rescue the Beths from the Federation. Summer and Morty destroy the planet-busting laser as Rick battles Phoenixperson (Dan Harmon). The Beths attempt to save Rick (so that they can kill him), but are defeated. Jerry arrives, using the invisibility belt and Tammy’s corpse to distract Phoenix Person, giving Rebel Beth an opening to stop Phoenix Person. Back on Earth, Rick reveals that he doesn’t know which of the two Beths is the original, but literally no one cares anymore. Rick then plays out the memory, which reveals to him that Beth asked Rick to decide if he wanted Beth to be part of his life. In response, Rick cloned Beth… then had a computer randomize the two so that he never knew which was which. He sadly mentions that he’s a terrible father, tries to talk to a still-angry Birdperson, and then sits, alone, in the garage. Jerry then drives an invisible garbage truck, which is marketed as a “new franchise” until he runs out of gas.
END SUMMARY
At no point would I have predicted this as the finale of this season, and I almost think that the show deserves credit for keeping the audience on their toes. Rather than being a mostly self-contained episode like the entire rest of this season, which, aside from “Never Ricking Morty,” seemed to go out of its way to avoid continuity, this episode went ahead and resolved a handful of different lingering plotlines. As of now, there’s pretty much just Evil Morty and the Citadel left outstanding as far as prominent canon threads go.
Tammy did live longer than most bureaucrats against Rick.
It’s probably all the more fitting that the episode that decides to try and continue/resolve a bunch of canon threads contains a bunch of references to Star Wars, a franchise famous for A) having a ton of plot threads that carry through generations of stories, B) having a ton of fan theories that get shot down by the actual canon later, and C) having a notoriously toxic fanbase. Aside from the title, the episode also has nods to Star Wars’ policy of having absurd but memorable names (by mocking Beth’s common name), the Death Star’s weak point (by having a planet remover that advertises no fatal design flaws), the presence of “fight chambers” where action sequences have space to happen, and, of course, having a close friend being brought back as a cyborg to fight an old man to the death. Rick even says that the entire ordeal feels a little Star Wars-ish, where good and bad are fairly unambiguous and cliches abound.
It was foreshadowed just a month ago that Tammy would be in the Star Wars one.
This episode felt a lot more like a “classic” Rick and Morty episode, and a big part of that is that this episode didn’t seem to try and be so meta about the fanbase or the future of the show or dealing with the realities of having to keep commercial viability alive. This episode just focuses on telling a story that has great jokes and a suggestion of much deeper workings behind the scenes. In particular, I thought the episode did a great job of doing the kind of fast, multi-level jokes that add to the rewatchability of the series. For example, when Morty spies on Summer using infra-red goggles to see her while she’s invisible, he says “to catch a predator,” which references both the show about catching perverts and also the movie Predator (since Predator sees in infra-red), but the show moves on before you really think about it. There’s also Rick’s line when he’s almost killed by PhoenixPerson where he says “I never thought this was how I’d die. We’re nowhere near Venice and you’re not a dwarf in a raincoat.” The line is funny, but it’s also a reference to the movie Don’t Look Now, which famously ends with Donald Sutherland stabbed to death by a serial killer in a raincoat. The joke here is that the movie’s theme is that preoccupation with death and loss leads to death and loss, which is the opposite of Rick’s policy of just moving on from everything. Also, there was a Pokemon battle involving a clown lion and I don’t think that was given enough screen time.
Clown-lion-Unicorn should have a fun name, like Purrliacci.
I also love that there is still a running meta-commentary about character arcs throughout this episode, particularly with the Beths and Morty talking about it. Every character completes an arc throughout the episode, ranging from Beth (and Rebel Beth) finally not needing Rick’s approval, to Morty and Summer resolving their differences to work together, and even Jerry’s puppeteering managing to save the day. Rick, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have completed an arc, but finally begun one when he actually recognizes that he’s a bad father. He’s said that he’s terrible before, but this time he seems to actually have bonded with Beth enough to realize that what he’s done is beyond the pale.
Rick flinched, because now he’s in a vulnerable position. Fun times.
Overall, a really solid episode that still leaves me wanting more Rick and Morty. I also really appreciate that the episode ends on a sad, somber image of Rick, alone, drinking. Except for the pitch for Jerry and the invisible garbage truck which is amazing.
Wow, I forgot how emotionally devastating this show could be.
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
First off, I’m going to go ahead and call myself out. I was totally wrong on how they resolved the clone thing. I thought that Rick wouldn’t allow a clone to remember the choice being offered to Beth at all in order to prevent some kind of Blade Runner scenario, but instead Rick picked a third option: Not knowing which one is the clone. I assumed that Rick would want to avoid giving the non-clone an existential crisis, but it turns out that Rick just didn’t care. Instead, it turns out that Beth asked Rick to make a decision about what he wanted with their relationship, meaning that rather than being about Beth finally living out her potential, this entire clone saga was about Rick deciding if it was better to have a daughter who’s fulfilled in her life or one who is in his life. In true Rick fashion, he just cheated and said “Both.” Then, he not only declined to find out which one would be the “real” Beth, but apparently wiped his memory of making the clone in the first place. So, if even Rick didn’t know which one is real, what were the two devices in the necks for? After all, if the plan was just to keep Rebel Beth from coming back and revealing the whole thing or to kill off Beth so Rebel Beth could take her place, you’d only need one device.
Hey, at least he didn’t use it to get out of therapy.
Well, there are three possibilities:
The first is that they’re just a backup. If one of the Beths was killed, then the memories go to the other Beth and now the surviving Beth gets to know that she lived out the other one’s life and now knows which life is better and thus would get to choose which one to continue.
The second is that it was just a warning to Rick. If the device had stayed in Rebel Beth’s neck, then when they got too close, it would alert Rick so that he could figure out a way to resolve the whole situation.
The last, and sadly most likely, is that it really is a bomb. It was set to go off whenever Rebel Beth came back and would kill one of the Beths so that Rick’s actions wouldn’t be uncovered. If Beth dies, Rick doesn’t have to explain to Rebel Beth what happened, because she thinks the home Beth was just a clone she could replace. If Rebel Beth died, then Beth would never need to know she’d even existed. Basically, either one could die and Rick would be fine. The problem is, how would Rick decide which one could live? Well, the bomb probably was just set to kill the one that Rick would like the most.
Overall, I give this episode a
A
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you whenever the show starts again.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
Rick screws an entire world. Yes, in that way, too.
SUMMARY
The Smith/Sanchez family are going camping, much to the delight of Jerry (Chris Parnell). Summer (Spencer Grammer) and Morty (Justin Roiland) are upset because they’re missing out on drugs and video games, and it’s revealed that Rick (Roiland) only came because he’s ghosting a former lover. Summer steals his phone and it’s revealed that Rick’s ex says she’s pregnant. Beth (Sarah Chalke) forces Rick to go raise his kids, which are revealed to be the children of Gaia (Kari Wahlgren), a sentient planet. Rick denies that the kids are his, but when they come out looking kind of like him, Beth demands that he raise them. Rick and Beth work together to build a society, literally engineering it, for the clay people.
I love that they’re driving a car that’s clearly from the 70s.
Meanwhile, Jerry tries to convince the kids to go camping on Gaia, but Summer tells him off because he doesn’t want to camp, he just wants to feel useful. Jerry wanders off, only to be sucked into Rick’s and Beth’s new city, where he is summarily kicked back out with the other “unproductives.” After showing the rejected clay people how to camp, he becomes their leader. The kids discover they have NO survival skills and almost die, until they find a crashed spaceship. They believe that the spaceship’s panels resemble a video game controller and Summer starts inhaling a drug which she believes is the collected knowledge of the dead aliens. The pair vow to show their parents what “video games and partying” can do.
That’s right, just inhale random alien glowing substances.
After Rick and Beth manage to get the clay civilization to space travel, it’s revealed that the kids are not Rick’s, but instead the offspring of a Zeus (an alien species, apparently) named Reggie (Rob Schrab). Reggie ends up giving Jerry and the unproductives divine power to revolt against Rick’s city, so Beth and Jerry fight while Rick goes to fight Reggie in space. Rick is about to lose the fight when Morty and Summer activate their ship, revealing that they were completely wrong about everything they thought they knew about it, and crash it into Reggie’s brain. Reggie’s giant corpse drops onto the city, which leads Gaia to erupt and kill most of her offspring. Jerry saves Beth from dying and Rick and the family head home.
END SUMMARY
This episode seemed a lot like those clay creatures that formed the basis for the plot: Not quite done baking. Parts of it are amazing, other parts of it just feel like filler that no one could figure out a joke for. While they do a great job with the A-B-C-Plot interplay that I respect this show for, there’s not much to say when the C-plot (Morty and Summer) is really just a set-up for a deus ex machina later.
Fortunately, the fandom will trampoline it into being amazing by blind devotion.
The A-Plot about Rick and Beth starting a civilization around Rick’s presumed offspring is definitely the best part of the episode and, honestly, I wish they’d spent a little more time on it. Some of the lines about how they’re trying to manipulate society through emotional engineering, like diverting teachers into playwrights by just spanking them more, are freaking hilarious. Although, as a lawyer, I should object to the line about bypassing the ethics tube, I have also been a lawyer long enough to know that this joke has been earned by other members of my profession. I also thought the “pachinko” style sorting to determine if the people believe in flat Earth, round Earth, or Middle Earth to be random and amazing.
Lucky Middle-Earth believing crowd.
The B-Plot of Jerry being the leader of the unproductives is a joke that practically writes itself. In the Season 3 premiere, Jerry is only successful in the new alien-dominated Earth because it was dependent upon bureaucracy so redundant that Jerry doesn’t even know what he does. He even gets into the situation because he tries to skip a rock and hits himself. Then, once he has power, he refuses to allow anything to evolve because any progress is a threat to him. It’s a reminder that while Jerry is mostly a character that exists to be humiliated by Rick, he would be just as much of a dick as Rick is if he had any of Rick’s intellect or drive. I particularly love that, as Rick points out, when Jerry gets a literal staff of divine power, he only conjures up plagues from The Ten Commandments. He doesn’t even try to create clothing for himself, he just rips off the Bible… or, let’s be honest, he rips off a movie. Rick would probably have used it to power a bong capable of smoking a planet.
Jerry, destroying progress, like usual.
Summer’s and Morty’s plot is really only funny in the sense that they’re so dumb that they think partying and video games can help them pilot a spaceship. But, it’s like Abraham Maslow said: “[I]t is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.” I do also like the fact that they literally ex a deus with a machina, which is f*cking funny. Aside from that, though, the time spent on their adventure feels like a waste.
The Titans would have won if they had spaceships.
The highlight of the episode, though, has to be Rick literally challenging a god to a fistfight. Rather than do a ton of elaborate special effects or smite-and-countersmite, it just turns into an old-school slugfest, which is an amazing subversion. While it feels a little similar to the same thing from “The Ricks Must Be Crazy,” I think this one works better because Rick is also defending his kids from a bad father, meaning Rick is actually in the right, for once.
WHY ARE YOU JUMPING? HOW ARE YOU JUMPING?
Overall, not the best episode, but not the worst. I will say that I laughed my butt off at “Planets Only.”
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
This season is not making these easy. Okay, so, why would Rick agree to go and raise these kids in the first place? Yeah, sure, Beth was going to yell at him, but what else is new? However, I think he realized that, as the show has gone on, he actually does care about what Beth thinks of him and knows that going to Gaia will give him a chance to bond with her. The evidence for this, aside from him being uncharacteristically complimentary of her during this endeavor, is that when the Zeus shows up, Rick doesn’t just take it as an opportunity to bail. Instead, Rick asserts that at least he stepped up and therefore all of the kids, and their civilization, is part of his family. This means Rick is trying to actually be a good dad for once, something that Beth will appreciate. It’s part of the payoff from “The ABCs of Beth,” where Rick tells Beth “[m]aybe you matter so little that I like you. Or maybe it makes you matter. Maybe I love you….” Rick isn’t quite as cold and dead inside towards Beth as he wants people to think, so spending an episode to make her feel happy isn’t a stretch. That’s probably why, when she’s mad at him at the end of the episode, Rick quickly lashes out by throwing her parenting under the bus.
Overall, I give this episode a
B
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you in a week.
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I take a look at the new series by the co-creator of Rick and Morty.
SUMMARY (Spoiler-Free)
Planet Shlorp was a perfect utopia until the asteroid hit. 100 adults and their “replicants,” which is to say children, escaped into space along with a pupa (Liam Cunningham), which will one day destroy the planet they land on and create a new planet Shlorp. Korvo (Justin Roiland) and Terry (Thomas Middleditch) and their children Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone) and Jesse (Mary Mack) land on Earth and, after living there for a year, are still having trouble adjusting to Earth life. Also, Yumyulack keeps shrinking people and forcing them to live in a small prison run by the Duke (Alfred Molina).
The pupa’s in the Baby Bjorn.
END SUMMARY
I can’t help but look at this show as an example of what Rick and Morty would be without Dan Harmon. The answer appears to be “still hilarious, but without structure.” This show is a lot more freeform, similar to the episodes of Rick and Morty that Roiland performed on weed, but that doesn’t change the fact that the show’s off-the-wall nature allows it to produce a lot of unique situations. Since the show feels a little less predictable and formulaic, the jokes tend to be harder to guess and that tends to make more of them land. The animation style is also similar to Rick or Morty, but with less random genital duplication.
The pupa in the background is frequently hilarious.
The show tends to have an a-plot involving Korvo and Terry as an “odd couple,” a b-plot with Yumyulack and Jesse learning about being children on Earth, and a c-plot involving the shrunken prison. However, it doesn’t have the amazing a-plot and b-plot interplay that Rick and Morty so often excelled in. Instead, we usually see the plots just shifting from one to another and then back, pretty much picking back up where they left off the last time it was featured. Still, the subplots are usually funny and the loose continuity makes the c-plot in the shrunken prison cumulative, which allows for some more serious character development.
It’s less Mad Max and more Mad Min. I APOLOGIZE FOR NOTHING!!!
Overall, the show’s pretty solid. It doesn’t have, so far, any of the sort of existential commentary and insight of Rick and Morty, but it’s funny and that’s really all you need sometimes.
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Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland) go to a shady criminal exchange and, when it goes awry, Rick tells Morty to jump into a fake vat of acid which has air hoses and fake bones. Unfortunately, the gangsters end up standing around talking for a long time, finally annoying Morty so much that he kills them out of frustration. Rick gets angry at Morty for criticizing his idea about the vat of acid and Morty gets angry at Rick for never taking his ideas seriously, specifically an idea for a “save point” which allows someone to reload reality from the last save point. Rick ends up building the device, which Morty proceeds to use to wreak havoc and live out every urge he has without consequences. However, he ends up meeting a beautiful young woman with whom he has a great relationship… until Jerry deletes the whole thing by accident and Morty ends up ruining the next attempt.
I’m surprised that the Mountain Dew isn’t burning their eyes.
Morty apologizes to Rick and says that he learned a lesson about living without consequences. Rick then reveals that there WERE consequences. Rather than using time travel (the thing Rick hates), Rick’s device worked by shunting Morty to parallel universes… after murdering the Mortys that already occupied them. Morty, horrified at his suicidal genocide, asks Rick to fix it, so Rick offers to collapse it so that there is a universe where Morty did everything that was undone by the save point, but that means that everyone he wronged will be there. Morty agrees, and finds an angry mob hunting for him. Rick gives him an out in the form of the exact same vat of acid that he used at the beginning. Morty ends up faking his death with the acid and Rick takes them back to their original universe (having put the mob in another one so that he wouldn’t have to move).
END SUMMARY
This episode seems a little out of place because it is the eighth episode of a season, but isn’t this season’s anthology episode. I dunno if the order change was part of the message of the sixth episode that Rick and Morty is going to keep changing and trying new things or if the network reordered them a bit or if the fact that the anthology was the eighth episode of the other seasons was just coincidence. However, we do get the montage of Morty using the “save point” in hilarious ways, which satisfies my rapid-fire joke requirement.
Including having a bar called “Pour Decisions.”
The fact that the “save point” montage is so long (clocking in at a solid 7 minutes or ⅓ of the episode) is impressive because it tells two completely separate narratives in two different, but overlapping, styles and never feels either rushed or slow. For comparison, the two snake montages in “Rattlestar Ricklactica” combined are shorter and, if I’m being honest, they start to wear thin by the end of the second time-travel one. It’s interesting that the montage is a combination of the typical Groundhog Day “living it up” sequence (and later a multiple suicide sequence), an Up-esque “falling in love” sequence, and an Alive-style survival sequence, somehow linked together flawlessly. It should be tonally jarring, but thanks in large part to a masterful use of non-verbal storytelling and music cues, it works.
I feel like this is a South Park reference, but maybe that’s a stretch.
Similar to many of this season’s episodes, there is an underlying theme of being slightly concerned for the future of Rick and Morty and through them the show itself. Morty is shown slowly growing less amused and less impressed by Rick’s antics and inventions, starting with the self-parking car and extending to the vat of fake acid. This is similar to how, over a long enough show, the audience can start to be less interested in a character’s development, particularly if a seemingly intelligent character, like Rick, makes a seemingly stupid decision… like a fake acid vat. He defends it by saying that there are no bad ideas, but Morty, as the fan surrogate, basically says that they should use one of his ideas. So, in response to Morty’s attitude, Rick creates an extremely enjoyable adventure that ends with a major existential crisis and somehow makes the seemingly dumb idea not just relevant but brilliant. This seems like the show telling us that even though we might seem to see problems showing up in Rick and Morty, we need to give them the benefit of the doubt and trust that it’s going somewhere good in the end. I also like that, as Rick said to Morty, “the world [knew] when [he tried] to hurt [him],” a reminder that you do NOT mess with Rick Sanchez.
This isn’t even his good gun. This is just the ladle gun.
Honestly, a solid episode of the show. I’m feeling more confident about this show’s future as the season goes on.
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
I realize that a lot of theories in this show boil down to “Rick’s lying,” but that’s what’s happening in this episode as well. Rick is lying to Morty about how the “save point” works. Rick states that every time that Morty resets the world, a Morty who was doing the same thing at the same time would die and then Morty would take over their timeline. However, there are a few things that indicate that it probably does NOT work like that and that Rick actually just resorted to either time travel or, more likely, just reorganizing the universe back to an earlier state, because Rick is basically a god when motivated.
Behold the One True Morty. Wait, we did that already.
First, Rick kills Morty before announcing that the device worked and brought Morty back to life by operating the device himself. If this device worked as intended, then Rick would have shifted himself into another dimension where he didn’t kill Morty in order to reset the save point (as the operator), meaning that Rick would have had to kill another Rick and take his place. Given that THAT Rick would also have just built a “save point,” it seems inconceivable that Rick wouldn’t have something in place that would prevent him from being murdered by an alternate timeline as part of building the device. Otherwise, half of the Ricks would be dying in order to be replaced by another Rick at that time. Second, if Rick really was just killing a mass number of Mortys the entire time, then a bunch of OTHER Ricks were likely to show up and be pissed at him. If there are an infinite number of Ricks and Mortys that are playing out multiple timelines and Rick is ultimately combining all of them into one reality, then all of the Ricks from those timelines would either have combined (which we didn’t see) or they’d be showing up trying to claim the Morty. Third, you can’t collapse all of the Mortys, because a LOT of them died. If you collapse those into Morty, then, well, a lot of people should be confused as to how Morty did anything or is still standing. Lastly, Rick tells Morty “let’s go home,” but he just told Morty that he wasn’t that Morty’s original Rick before the collapse, saying that it doesn’t matter because “every Rick has a vat.” If this Rick and this Morty weren’t from the same universe, then Rick wouldn’t have needed to take Morty to another universe before wrecking it, he would just have let Morty wreck his original world and then Rick would go back to HIS original world. Instead, Rick picked another Earth.
Also, what did he do
Given the fact that Rick is lying about the save point, it seems more likely that, rather than having the device do alternate timeline jumps and collapsing them back into one, which would require merging many, many universes, Rick just had the device monitor all of the shitty stuff Morty did, then reshape that Earth so that it was in a state identical to if Morty had done it. In other words, Rick comes up with an elaborate escape scenario to fool Morty… just like the vat of acid was supposed to work in the beginning. God, I love this show.
Overall, I give this episode an
A-
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you in a week.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
Rick and Morty deal with facehuggers and genocide.
SUMMARY
Rick and Morty (Justin Roiland) suddenly regain consciousness on an alien planet where they have facehuggers attached to their heads. They kill the facehuggers, finding out that they are the Glorzo, and then discover that they’re attempting to use Rick’s ship for some master plan. Rick and Morty instead use the ship to fight their way off of the planet, committing a number of mass-casualty attacks, including an intentional Pearl Harbor reference (although avoiding replicating 9/11). They get home, but then realize they left Summer (Spencer Grammer) back on the planet. They go back to rescue her, only to find out that she’s now the new goddess of the planet and does not have a Glorzo on her face.
Ridley Scott has declined to comment.
Summer fills in what happened to the pair, explaining that they fell under the control of the Glorzo, but she was spared because she had a toothpick in her mouth. She convinced the Glorzo to stop their cycle of latching onto people’s faces and then dying after 30 minutes as they lay eggs, instead developing a peaceful civilization. It turns out that most of the stuff Rick and Morty destroyed were dedicated to spreading peace throughout the galaxy. The Glorzo capture Rick and Morty, but Summer tries to save them, resulting in all three being captured. Rick has Morty play a tune on his harmonica which forces all Glorzo to lay an egg, killing them and destroying their entire civilization. Upon returning home, Rick and Morty both think they’re going to lay eggs, but instead crap their pants in front of Beth (Sarah Chalke). Meanwhile, Jerry (Chris Parnell) takes up beekeeping, something that makes Summer’s friend Tricia (Cassie Steele) want to bang him.
END SUMMARY
Sorry for the delay, hopefully the next release will get to me on time.
This episode is basically the opposite of what the last one was. Rather than a dense, complicated, experimental, and medium-challenging episode, this was just a fun, fairly straightforward (albeit mildly non-linear) episode about Rick and Morty just reacting to a situation. The only “twist” is that Summer had technically already solved the problem before they actually got there, meaning that their mass destruction of the Glorzo civilization was, in fact, pointless slaughter. Apparently the writer of the episode described Rick and Morty as the villains of the entire saga because of this.
They do at least start doing it in a fun way.
The core of this episode is the moral issue of what a species is permitted to do in order to survive and how that shifts as the species “evolves” both culturally and literally. The Glorzo originally believe that they cannot live longer than thirty minutes, forcing them to constantly kill new hosts in order to perpetuate their life cycle, but once Summer points out that they don’t HAVE to do that, they immediately try to move towards a more peaceful species. Unfortunately, Rick and Morty end up taking inadvertent advantage of this, which allows them to escape being controlled and then murder the majority of the planet. This leads to one of the Glorzo to remark “this is what we get for evolving?”
Of course, Summer only did it as part of a long con to save Rick and Morty…
The question, though, is whether or not the Glorzo were actually the bad guys to begin with. After all, they HAVE to take over hosts in order to exist. They have to kill those hosts in order to reproduce. Even after Summer reforms them, that hasn’t really changed, they just do it at a slower pace. The episode kind of side-steps it, but eventually the species would have to still kill their presumably still-aging hosts eventually and spawn the next generation. But are humans any different? We cannot really survive without killing something, at least a plant, for either food or shelter, so are we immoral? Well, from the point of view of the tree that’s getting cut down to build a gazebo, hell yes, but from our point of view, it’s more complicated.
Albeit, we seem to finally agree that doing ti to sentient creatures is bad.
However, the show takes it a step further with Glorzo Rick’s Plandemic-esque insane rant about how it is only natural for the species to kill their host pitted against Summer’s plans to try and progress the Glorzo beyond their natural biological needs. This is the kind of debate that humanity has engaged in for centuries, about whether we are okay with upsetting the “natural order” of things in the name of building a civilization that doesn’t necessarily agree with our Darwinian origins. After all, we don’t need the biggest and the strongest to hunt for us anymore, since the smartest and the most innovative can come up with solutions that don’t require hunting. In a fun mirror of many advocates of the more Spartan or “natural” lifestyles on YouTube and other media, Glorzo Rick is revealed to mostly be a total hypocrite, as he himself is not willing to actually just lay the egg and die like he advocates.
And yet I still prefer him to multiple actual pundits.
This isn’t the best Rick and Morty episode, but it is never boring and it does have some actual interesting points to it.
JOKER’S THEORY CORNER
Since the Rick and Morty plotline doesn’t have a ton that seems to be unexplained or lingering, my theory this week actually concerns Jerry. Why is Jerry taking up beekeeping? Well, three reasons: First, so that he can make a statement about how he has a right to exist and that he has dreams that would blend in with the theme of the other plotline. Also, bees have lives that are driven almost entirely by biology while still creating elaborate structures that can become extremely complex “societies.” Even if the subplot only has a few lines in the whole episode, this show’s still good about at least making sure there’s a cosmetic or thematic relationship between the plots. Second, it means that the B-plot is a literal Bee Plot, humor that is just the right kind of terrible and hilarious. Third, beekeepers are supposed to be extremely long-lived. This rumor started as far back as ancient Greece, but was further supported by Fred Hale, Sr., the world’s oldest man (until he died over a decade ago). I think that Jerry believes that one of the only ways that Jerry thinks he can get rid of Rick is to outlive him. Which, let’s be fair, is probably true.
Or because it lets you relive American Beauty, which REALLY does not age well.
Overall, I give this episode a
B
on the Rick and Morty scale.
Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub, I need a drink. See you in a week.
If you enjoy these, please, like, share, tell your friends, like the Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/JokerOnTheSofa/), follow on Twitter @JokerOnTheSofa, and just generally give me a little bump. I’m not getting paid, but I like to get feedback.
The Joker On The Sofa 