They actually dropped a surpirse episode on April Fools. I love these guys. And it was a brilliant episode! I'm excited for the rest of season.
I'm really trying to find something negative to say about the season premiere just to balance all the amazing comments before mine. But alas, I cannot find a single one.. the show is amazing! It touched perfection and I cannot wait for the rest of the season
9 more seasons! hahaha I liked this Community "Six Seasons and A Movie" parallel
The creators of this show are just showing off now. This is by far the absolute best episode of Rick and Morty. We have Comedy, Evolution, Biology, Psychology, Danny Trejo, a super bad ass action sequence, drugs, morality, alcoholism, and poop eating all in one spectacular episode. And to top all that off with a bit of 1960s Batman after the credits. Television does not get better than this. "Jesus Christ" --Rick Sanchez
[7.5/10] What do I come to Rick and Morty for? Surprisingly thoughtful emotional material coupled with beaucoup sci-fi weirdness and sci-fi storytelling, and “Rickmancing the Stone” had that in spades.
Most of the episode takes place in a Mad Max-style wasteland, and while that setting already feels a little passe (that’s what you get for going a year and a half between seasons), it makes for a nice launching board for each of the characters to find their own way to deal with Beth and Jerry’s divorce.
My favorite of these is Morty’s. We’ve seen that Morty has deep-seated issues he doesn’t know how to process other than with rage and violence before (most notably in the purge episode) and so a Rick-injected murderous arm with a mind of its own proves to be just what the doctor ordered. It works for character development as whomping people in the “blood dome” helps him deal with his disgust at his dad’s lack of a backbone, but it also works for comedy, with the arm gesticulating and using sign language to try to communicate. Plus the heart-to-heart between them as the arm goes on a roaring rampage of revenge gives a nicely off-kilter texture to the whole thing.
Summer’s was less my favorite, but still good. Her dealing with her current issues with her dad by shacking up with the leader of the post-apocalyptic wasteland tribe (who was, I think, voiced by Joel McHale?) had some juice to it. (Their discussion about his mustache -- particularly the “hat on a hat” bit -- was especially funny.) The fact that Rick messes them up by bringing electricity and the same workaday B.S. of the real world is a fun twist, and Summer hugging her dad and appreciating his “this is all bullshit anyway” mentality is a nice bow to tie on the whole thing.
Rick is his usual amoral but story-driving self. I love his plot to try to create android to fool Beth. There’s something amusing about him trying to retrieve Morty and Summer despite his claims that there’s “infinite versions of them” because to find replacements would be more trouble than its worth. Plus the robots are hilarious, with Robo-Morty’s protestations that he wants to be “alive” and run through a stream being particularly funny in that pitch-black science fiction way that R&M does so well.
On the whole, this was a great episode to kick off the new season (aside from our April Fools Day preview) and to have the characters (and the show) process Beth and Jerry’s divorce rather than just move on like nothing happened.
(As an aside, I assume it’s Rick who’s causing the wind to whisper to Jerry that he’s a loser and having stray dogs chew up his unemployment check? Presumably to prolong this current situation and keep him from developing the stones to go after Beth again? Neat/characteristically horrible if so.)
[9.4/10] Really enjoyed this one. On the one hand, you have a just balls-to-the-walls Rick adventure. Him turning himself into a pickle, and having to climb to the top of the food chain by brain-licking his way to cockroach-based mobility, assembling a rat-based super-torso, and then make it out of the sewer is the kind of sci-fi weirdness I love from this show.
But then, Roiland & Harmon turn it up a notch, with Rick then finding his way inside some combination of Die Hard and Rambo, having to escape a secret and illegal compound run by a generic evil boss aided by a generic badass named “The Jaguar.” It’s the well-observed trope mashup and creativity that this show does well, mixed the inherent silliness that our hero is an ambulatory pickle. To top it off, it had the right details, like the enemy goons having superstitions about a pickle monster, and the Rube Goldberg traps Rick sets to defend itself.
The best part, though, is it’s not just empty violence or insanity for insanity stake. It’s a testament to how far Rick will go to avoid doing something he doesn’t want to do, particularly something he thinks is beneath him, and especially something he thinks might force him to confront the ways in which he’s created problems for his family.
Getting Susan Sarandon to play the counselor is a complete coup, and the writing is perfect, as Dr. Wong quickly teases out exactly what’s wrong with The Smiths’ family dynamic, Beth deflecting the real issue, and the kids being cautious but wanting to identify the problem. It’s the show coming clean about its psychological perspective on its characters, which could be a little too direct, but feels right with the tone of the episode.
After all, Beth idolizes her father and so justifies everything he does despite the fact that, as Dr. Wong points out, he doesn’t reward emotion or vulnerability and emotion and in fact punishes it, making Beth worried to call him to the carpet for anything lest he run away again. And Dr. Wong’s also right about Rick, the way he’s caught between his brilliant mind as a blessing and a curse and incapable of doing the work to be good or get better because it’s just that -- work, which bores him.
But what’s great and also terrible is how that accurate diagnosis doesn’t change anything. Morty and Summer both meekly suggest that the school-mandated session was helpful and they want to do it again, and Rick and Beth completely ignore them, the same way they ignore all their problems and opportunities to make things better, when their status quo is unpleasant but comfortable and more importantly familiar. It’s another episode that shows how well this show knows its characters and their hangups, while inserting fecophilia gags to lighten the tone, and a gonzo set of action sequences that actually manages to dovetail with the deeper, darker message of the episode.
It’s all part of the amazing balancing act that Rick and Morty pulls off on a weekly (or at least biannual) basis, and this installment stands out for its frankness about the problems facing two of its main characters, its creativity in dramatizing them, and the sadness of the rut they allow themselves to be stuck in, dragging poor Morty and Summer down with them. But hey, the Jaguar saves the day in the tag from the Con-Chair-To, so there’s hope yet!
When will this show stop F'n blowing my mind?!?!?!
I feel like all the R&M superfans will refuse to ever try therapy thanks to this episode - and sadly a lot of them could probably use it.
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK NOT ONLY GOD BUT ALSO JESUS FOR THIS FUCKING AMAZING EPISODE
TOTALLY WORTH THE WAIT
Did I just saw Rick and Jerry f*ck? hahahahaha
[9.0/10] I don’t know how Rick and Morty keeps doing it, but somehow the show continually finds new ways to combine insane sci-fi weirdness with deep and meaningful character introspection, and I can’t get enough of it.
At the same time the show crafts and adventure where Rick and Jerry turn a visit to a resort and theme park into a snowballing bout of murder attempts and changing alliances, the show also explores both the strain Rick placed on Beth and Jerry’s marriage, and Jerry’s own unassumingly weasely ethos.
The former comes in the form of an inventive resort setting with an “immortality field.” Maybe I’m just not deep enough into sci-fi, but I love the concept as a setting that not only makes for a natural place Rick would take Jerry (at Morty’s behest, naturally) but creates an interesting conundrum for the plotters trying to take out Rick. (Plus it creates one dark as hell joke from two little kids playing together.) The show certainly has its fun with the concepts, and setting a murder attempt there on a roller coaster that dips just outside the field is superb.
The great escape part is fun too. Everything from another alien forest full of crazy creatures, to a cruise line that makes dangerous people dumber rather than preventing them from boarding is inventive as all get out. Plus, the “time-preserver” sequence is the sort of Lynchian madness we haven’t seen much of from the show, but which featured some insanely creative sequences as well.
And in the midst of all this, there’s a great exploration both of who Jerry is, how Rick sees him, and what Rick’s done to his life. The high point of that is Rick’s speech to Jerry that his son-in-law plays it off like he’s prey but that he’s really a predator, attaching himself to people and bringing him down. It makes sense that Rick would see him that way, and it’s revealing of Rick that as much as he pretends his reasons for busting on Jerry are because he gets in the way, there’s a part of him that does it to defend his daughter, whose life he thinks Jerry ruined. Rick caring about things always manifests in weird ways, but that what makes him interesting as a character.
Hell, I like Jerry, and there’s something about a guy whose only crime is being “unremarkable” being treated so shabbily by pretty much everyone that feels wrong. But he’s also not a great guy himself -- a small, petty man as Principal Skinner might say. Still, his indecision about whether to let Rick die, coupled with his feelings about Rick squeezing him out and hurting his marriage, make for very rich, complex material in a pairing we don’t get all that often.
The B-story is not nearly as deep, but pretty darn great too. It has its own spate of weirdness, with Summer trying to make her breasts larger with one of Rick’s transforming rays and ending up gigantic and, thanks to Beth’s assistance, also inside out. That, coupled with the “tech support” guys being three little dudes who live in the machine and trick her into letting them out, makes the science fiction-y and comedy sides of the story spectacular. (The same goes for Beth’s bizarre “hoof collage”)
But there’s also some good character stuff there too. I’m kind of loving the direction the show’s taking Morty this season. He’s showing his own dark side (see how he treats Ethan), and he’s become the character on the show with the most perspective, being able to identify how his mom is acting like her father in her refusal to ask for help and arrogance in her belief that she can just solve the problem without engaging emotionally. Beth turning herself gigantic and inside out to comfort Summer about her body issues is a bizarre but hilarious way to resolve the story to boot.
Overall, another stellar outing from Rick and Morty that makes me lament we only get five more weeks (maybe?) of this awesome show.
Definitely the deepest episode of the show. As deep as many of the Rick and Mortys are, this one has so much to think about that it is the Jupiter of all other episodes, in terms of depth. "You DO know me." You must watch this episode multiple times.
All that stuff you comment about the depth and the psychology of this episode is nice and all, but please don't forget:
"Have you ever been peed on? Oh my God...Yum!"
[9.0/10] Not since The Sopranos has there been a show on television so devoted to examining the psyches of its characters. I feel like I need to rewatch this episode five times to truly unpack everything there is to glean from such a dense, psychologically complex episode. If there’s been a consistent theme to Season 3, it’s been digging deep into what makes the show’s main characters tick, what makes them who they are, and “Rest and Ricklaxation” both literalizes that (by separating its title characters into their constituent parts) and plays it out in fascinating, emotionally-wrenching detail.
The impetus for that is Rick and Morty going into a psychological toxin-clearing chamber at an intergalactic spa. The catch is that the chamber doesn’t just free you from harmful it elements, it removes those elements, personified as “booger” versions of you, and keeps them trapped in a chamber. So while the real Rick and Morty are feeling happier and more relaxed in the real world, the concentrated toxic parts of them are caught in the chamber working frantically to get out.
The initial results seem predictable, if a little twisted. Toxic Rick is even more hateful and self-aggrandizing than Real Rick. He’s constantly touting his own genius, constantly belittling Morty, and constantly lashing out at the world. Toxic Morty is entirely self-hating and debased, little more than a subservient wart of a person accepting any and all abuse.
What’s interesting is that it seems to flip the good/evil dynamic in Healthy Rick and Healthy Morty. While Healthy Rick feels compelled to rescue their toxic counterparts once he knows of their existence, Healthy Morty likes his own happiness and is constantly resisting any attempt to set things back the way they were under a the guise of not questioning it.
Now splitting protagonists into their good and evil sides is nothing new. (Lord knows the Star Trek franchise returned to that well time and time again.) But the twist, and the thing that makes the episode really stand out from the pack, is that the divergence point for “healthy” Rick and Morty isn’t some arbitrary definition of toxicity, it’s what they themselves view as the toxic parts of their being.
Which leads to all kinds of interesting complications, not the least of which is that Toxic Rick isn’t just some personification of bad, and Healthy Morty isn’t some noble personification of good. It’s a brilliant, fascinating choice to depict Healthy Morty as this honest but heartless, manipulative douchebag. The things that Morty sees as toxic in himself -- his self-doubt and self-loathing -- weigh down an overconfidence and disregard for others’ that, left unchecked, turn him into an uberpopular, successful stock broker, but one who doesn’t really care about anything else or anyone.
It’s a deranged echo of Inside Out’s thesis that negative emotions are vital and valid and help make us stronger individuals. There is something so frighteningly recognizable about Healthy Morty, between his offhand quips about his food being organic to maxims about saying important things face-to-face that reveal a deeper soulless beneath despite all the crowd-pleasing pablum. Toxic Morty isn’t a pretty sight or an encouraging reflection of the real Morty -- he’s deeply unhappy, horribly self-defeating, and outright declares that he wants to die. But the idea that these are the things keeping Morty from becoming a wide-eyed, smiling little monster is one of the boldest and darkest takes this show has offered on one of its main characters.
But that’s only half the impact of the twist. The other, and arguably more foundational reveal in the episode is that Rick really does care about the people in his life, at least Morty, but he views that as toxic, as “irrational attachments” he’d rather overcome. It’s striking in that it answers one of the basic questions the show has been teasing out forever now -- whether despite his protestations to the contrary, Rick loves his family. “Rest Ricklaxation” suggests that he does, but it’s something he hates in himself, which explains how and why he’s always trying to disclaim any such affections.
Rick may acknowledge the other parts of his personality as “toxic.” He admits narcissism, of disregard for the rest of the universe in favor of his own brilliance. But without that, without the parts of him he views as holding him back psychologically, he only has a general care for the world, about the impartial welfare of all, without any personal attachments to his grandson or anything else. The episode digs into who Rick and Morty are, what they hate about themselves, and the people they become without that, which tells you so very much about the show’s title characters.
Meanwhile, amidst all this deep psychological examination is an episode that just works on a nuts and bolts level. The conflict of reconciling toxic and healthy versions of Rick and Morty propels the episode nicely. Seeing a Rick-on-Rick battle throughout the Smiths’ house is thrilling with plenty of creative turns. Healthy Morty’s quiet psychopathy builds and builds keeping a comedic hum the whole time. And there’s even some amusing social commentary as Rick’s toxicity ray covers the globe and Morty’s restaurant acquaintance yells out “sea cucumber!” The main event of “Rest and Ricklaxation” is the show boring into the mental processes and damage of its protagonists, but it keeps the tension and the excitement up for what could otherwise be an overly cerebral exercise.
Like nearly all sitcoms must, it then returns things to the status quo. But while for most shows that’s a return to normalcy and sanity, for Rick and Morty it means returning those two characters to the fraught place where they began the episode. One of the most harrowing scenes in the entire series is the two of them sitting in Rick’s craft in the intro. Morty cries; Rick screams in anguish and admits he wasn’t in control, and the episode doesn’t turn away from the unnerving distress and damage these two individuals have accumulated over the course of their adventures.
This is what the combination of good and bad in Rick and Morty gets them. There’s the sense that both need that balance, to keep them tethered and, in different ways, to keep them caring about people, but the results of that cocktail -- of self-glorification and self-loathing, of brash confidence and debasement, of personal fulfillment and global concern -- doesn’t create a pretty picture for our heroes either.
h-O-L-Y S-H-I-T. They did it again. This show is on another fucking level, man.
This fucking episode, man might be the best ever. I'm literally speechless.
So layered, so many call backs to real life politics. Rick/Morty analogues for racerelations. Equal Pay, Globalisation of companies. That whole wafer storyline. Fuck. I need to watch this again. No wonder they gave us two weeks to wait for this. So fucking worth it.
Instant best episode of the series, imo.
[9.5/10] At some point, I am going to stop being surprised by Rick and Morty’s brilliance and just expect it, but the show is still at that point where I suspect it’ll be good every week, but it still manages to blow me away each new turn it takes.
I take “The Ricklantis Mixup” to be Season 3’s answer to the improv episodes from the prior two seasons -- a change of pace that allows Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland to play around in their amazing sandbox of a universe for a bit without feeling the need to develop or advance their main character. In that, they give us an episode that doesn’t have Rick or Morty or any of the other main characters, and yet has all the Ricks and Morties, in glorious, The Wire-esque splendor.
And The Wire really has to be the touchstone for an episode like this. Where else are you going to find something that addresses the challenges of cops and criminals, the rise of an charismatic and unexpected leader, the frustrations of blue collar working who feels like the system is holding him down, and the difficulties of four schoolchildren to make their way in that world. Hell, throw in a Hamsterdam, and you have all five seasons of that superlative show, filtered through Harman and Roiland’s dueling deranged perspectives and deposited into one twenty-two minute chunk. That’s an amazing achievement, the sort of praise I feel like I’m throwing out all too often for this show, but it keeps earning it.
The episode can roughly be broken up into those four stories, but what makes the episode more than just the sum of its parts (and what earns its Wire comparisons) is how interconnected those stories are, both literally, since they’re connected by the Citadel are all affected by the ecosystem that’s developed after our Rick destroyed the place, but also thematically, in the way each protagonist of each story looks at a bad situation and wants change, and gets it, but gets something unsatisfying or unpleasant or worse than they bargained for out of the process, with plenty of dead bodies floating among the garbage and blasted out the airlock.
That’s clearest for Candidate Morty, trying to win the presidency of The Citadel on behalf of The Morty Party. There’s something aspirational, almost West Wing-esque about Candidate Morty, as he gives soaring, Obama-esque speeches about dissolving the lines of division between Ricks and Morties and make The Citadel something better for all. That makes it seem particularly terrible when his former campaign manager, another Morty, tries to assassinate him. The move turns out to be all for naught since Candidate Morty survives and becomes President, in something that seems like a chance to turn around this mixed up place.
Instead, it’s revealed that Candidate Morty is the evil, eye patch-wearing Morty we met back in Season 1. It’s the perfect, knife-turning twist for the episode -- a reveal that the Carcetti-esque beacon of hope for a city in turmoil is a guy running on unifying rhetoric to pursue his own Carcetti-esque ambitions (well, maybe a touch more intergalactically evil than Carcetti’s). All of that hope, all of the communal joining together and believing that things can change just puts a tyrant into power, and holy hell is that one of the darkest things an already dark show has put forward.
Then there’s Factory Worker Rick, who seems older and more haried even by Rick standards, gazing out of subway cars, seeing wealthier and cooler Ricks succeed ahead of him, and sighing. He works at a factory that makes wafers out of the satisfaction an old fashioned “Simple Rick” enjoys when reliving the experience of spending time with his daughter (a subtly revealing bit in and of itself).
Things hit the fan when he goes postal, killing his boss and co-workers, and getting into a hostage standoff with the police. There too, the show capture a certain backbreaking ennui to this place, that even (and maybe especially) a locale populated by geniuses leads to this sort of dissatisfaction, disaffection, and anomie. And this story has just as cynical an ending, with Factory Worker Rick believing he’s won, only for the Wonka-esque Rick who runs the factory to capture him and use that feeling of freedom and satisfaction to fuel his new deluxe wafers. I mean, my god, if that is not the peak of devastating, existential irony on this show, I don’t know what is.
There’s also Rookie Cop Rick, who’s paired with Grizzled Cop Morty. More than the other stories, this one feels like it’s riffing on a sea of tropes ripped right out of the Training Day playbook. There’s plenty of political and social commentary baked in through how even Grizzled Cop Morty looks down on his fellow Morties as “animals” or how Rookie Cop Rick tries to give himself up to his brethren for the difficult choices he’s made and gets let off the hook. But it has less impact since it feels like more of those tropes played straight (or at least, as straight as can be possible given the insane circumstances) than something truly new and subversive.
Still, this is the part of the episode where the show gains strength from the crazy details of the world it’s constructed at The Citadel. The entire concept of a wild Morty club where Morty’s dress up in costumes, dance for one another, and use bad math, or of a series of news anchors from the same hierarchy of subuniverses, each of whom has it worst than the next, or just the concept of Morties who’ve been turned into lizards and Ricks adopting rural affections is bizarre and hilarious and head-scratching in the best ways.
That comes through in the episode’s final story, which sees a quartet of young Morties, soon to be assigned to a new quartet of Ricks, go out in search of a fabled “wish portal” that could change their lives. The sorriest among them is Cool Morty, who has an experimental drama chip that allows him to make things “sad and a little boring,” and who’s been through Rick after Rick. Here too, there is that sense of existential dread, of things never changing, the permeates the proceedings. Cool Morty’s suicide is unexpected and lives up to the sadness his experimental chip portends, but it’s made worse that the supposed change his dive into this sci-fi wishing well effected is the hollow one President Morty offered.
That’s the rub of this one. Even in this fantastical world of brilliant scientists and their boy sidekicks, there is a kaleidoscope of pain and false promises that stretch through everything. All the geniuses, all the good-natured moppets in the world can’t change that when thrown together into their own dysfunctional society. That Rick and Morty has the chutzpah to explore that society for an episode, and to deliver that message, just speaks to the boldness and off-kilter storytelling we’ve come to expect, and to make it all as funny as it is quietly devastating, is a near-miracle. Rick and Morty keeps delivering them on a regular basis.
This show just does not stop! The creativity is abundant and overflowing with pure awesomeness! Gah!
[7.6/10] Well, I guess I was wrong about last week’s episode replacing the improv-based interdimensional cable eps we’ve gotten previously. But I enjoy this entree full of bite-sized adventures for our heroes. It’s a throwback to Harmon’s “clip show but with new clips” bit from Community and fun to see the mini-stories thrown out rapid fire.
I particularly liked the opening pair of stories. Morty mistaking his new guidance counselor for a scary moon man is the sort of Bailey School Kids schtick with a Rick and Morty twist that really tickled my fancy. By the same token, turning the usual “humans trapped in an alien zoo” routine into a Contact-based hoodwinking is entertaining.
But I also really enjoyed the fact that Rick didn’t just zap away the memories of things that were too heavy for Morty to take; he zapped away his own minor mistakes, like the phrase “taken for granite,” not to mention things that implicate his family members, like Beth choosing Summer over Morty in her alien Sophie’s Choice scenario.
While most of the stories were amusing in that black comic way the show’s mastered, it feels like they’re all another brick in the wall of Morty getting tired of Rick’s bullshit, and the rest of the family’s bullshit too. The twist that both Rick and Morty lose their memories and have to use the vials to figure out who they are revitalizes the premise a bit, but also leads to the bleak realization that after seeing all that stuff, the pair want to have a suicide pact.
It’s played mainly for laughs, with Summer barging in on them and refueling their memories in a desultory fashion like she’s had to do this dozens of times, but like most episodes of the show, it finds the humor in something that, at its core, is pretty damn dark. (And then “no wonder you guys fight all the time and are always behind schedule” sounds like a not so veiled bit of self-commentary about Harmon and Roiland, which is a little discouraging.)
Overall, it’s a fun, rapid-fire premise for an episode that allows the show to deliver its humor and demented scenarios in quick hit format, but which still uses the form to offer a commentary on its two core characters, what they’ve seen, and the frustrations and vanity and ego that drives them to want to end it all. The fact that the show can wring comedy from that is just another pelt on the wall of its achievements.
beth please become more and more like rick we love you both
[8.1/10] Ambiguity can be both frustrating and brilliant. There is a natural impulse in most people to want to know the answers, to resolve the unknown, but the unknown is also a part of life, and if a television show can harness that, use it to make meaning, it can hit outstanding notes. David Chase knew that with The Sopranos , his protégé Matt Weiner knew it with Mad Men, and Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland seem to know it with Rick and Morty.
Because the last thing you’re likely to think about when you flip off “The ABCs of Beth” (if you’re not reflecting on the amusingly self-aware answering machine gag) is whether or not Beth replaced herself with a clone and left to go mount the universe. Rick and Morty is a show that usually delivers answers, even if it’s content to delay them for months or, in the case of Evil Morty, even years. But maybe some questions shouldn’t be answered.
I think that’s the point of “The ABCs of Beth.” Rick gives his daughter two options: either she can create a painless substitute that will carry her current life forward while she prowls the galaxy in search of meaning or adventure, or she can live her life as is, knowing it’s what she actually chose with clear eyes and real alternatives on the table. The Beth we meet at the end of the episode could be either -- the content clone or the real, happy Beth who’s satisfied at having picked this rather than having it forced upon her.
That’s the cinch of the episode. For many of us sitting home, we have similar choices, even if they’re not quite so fantastical. We can radically change our lives, pursuing abstract principles and goals at the expense of all that we know, or we can go forward with how things are, finding comfort and joy in the day-to-day. There are multiple paths to happiness, Rick and Morty seems to posit, or at least multiple paths to wholeness, and which path you take there isn’t necessarily evident or comprehensible to an outsider observer. But it starts with accepting who you are and what you want.
That’s the noteworthy parallel “ABCs” draws between its outstanding A-story and its less-inspired B-story. Both Beth and Jerry spend much of the episode attempting to deny who they are, blaming unfortunate events on family members, rather than owning them, accepting that the consequences are a product of their own actions.
For Jerry, that means accepting that him dating an alien huntress is a pathetic attempt to make Beth jealous. It’s an interesting way to mirror the two stories, but Jerry’s half of the episode just isn’t as strong. Maybe it’s the hard-to-watch way his kids just bust on him constantly (not that he doesn’t deserve it). Maybe it’s the divorced dad humor that’s pretty tepid, even if it’s spiced up in Rick and Morty’s intergalactic fashion. Maybe it’s that the ultimate twist -- that the huntress ends up going after the Smiths, only run into her ex -- is amusing but predictable.
Jerry’s part of the episode isn’t bad or anything. The bubble gun is enjoyable. Jerry’s barely-sublimated space racism and smugness is used for amusing effect. And there’s some more frank exposing of Jerry’s true colors. But it mainly feels like Rick and Morty needed something for the rest of the cast to do while Rick and Beth hit the high notes, and little that happens in Jerry’s dating life, however explosive, can match it.
But really, who could match the horrible realization that not only was your childhood fantasy land real, but that your childhood friend is still stuck there in it. There’s so many endlessly interesting things that spin out from the unveiling of “Froopyland.” I’d be lying if I said that the reveal that Beth’s friend survived by “humping” the fantastical creatures and then eating his own children didn’t gross me out, but Rick and Morty manages to wring the humor from even that with its bizarre little forest creature play about it.
Stronger still is the emotional and character material. For one thing, we learn that Rick created this fantasy land for his daughter. He claims it’s a practical measure, something to keep her occupied and to keep the neighbors from getting suspicious. But as the Citadel episode hinted with its Rick wafers, there’s a part of Rick that really does care about his daughter, even if it means he shows it in weird ways like creating deranged toys, or letting her help him clone her childhood friend, or giving her a way out of her family.
For another, we learn that Beth, despite her seemingly greater morals and guilt and issues with her dad, is just like him. That’s been a subtle thread throughout Season 3, with particularly resonance in “Pickle Rick.” Beth admits it herself, realizing how she denies the utility of apologies, and elides her own mistakes and past by casting those things as simply how others interpret her greatness. Her unwillingness to face that she pushed her childhood pal in the honey pit, and her then getting into a bloody confrontation with him, is an odd form of self-acceptance, but also a cathartic one.
It leads Beth back to the choice that represents the crux of the episode. If you are the daughter of Rick Sanchez, the miserable, amoral, genius, do you go out and try to ride the universe until it gets tired of bucking you, or do you try a different way, a way that finds happiness in being a part of your family, in doing the everyday. It’s the clearest suggestion yet as to what choice Rick himself made when he left Beth and her mother all those years ago.
But as much as they have in common, Beth is not her father. She feels enough guilt to want to save her friend’s dad from death row, to look at those pictures of her family on the fridge and feel the wistfulness of the thought of leaving him. We just don’t know if that’s enough to change her mind.
Maybe we shouldn’t know. I bet dollars to donuts that one day we will, that the “real” Beth will come floating down in Season 5 and cause some story sparks just like Evil Morty and the Cronenberg Universe Smiths did. But regardless, the force of the ambiguity is clear. There are different ways to live, different ways to try to make your peace with who you are and what you want out of this universe. What we choose, and why we choose it, can be opaque, even to ourselves, and the art that reflects that vagueness, that uncertainty, can be all the stronger for it.
Harmon on EW.com: "I don’t want to poison the well but the finale is a great episode that we finale-ified when we realized we weren’t going to be able to make 14".
I guess that explains why this felt a bit rushed. Solid episode nonetheless.
oh man this episode was intense
An entire episode without Eleven and I honestly haven't missed her… Her storyline might be the less interesting for now…
Dustin and Steve: the team-up I never knew I wanted.
