3x10 The Rickchurian Mortydate

[7.3/10] Far be it from me to turn my nose up at the imaginative, scifi-fueled tete-a-tete between Rick Sanchez and a president voiced by the inimitable Keith David. But I have to admit, this was a bit of a disappointment as a finale. Too often, “Rickchurian Mortydate” gets lost in admittedly inventive and amusing dick-wagging contests between Rick and the president, and doesn’t spend enough time grounding it in Rick or the Smiths’ personal issues or character flaws like the show does at its best.

The Beth story certainly does though. There would be an existential horror to wondering if you’re a clone, and there would be so few ways in Beth’s situation to reliably determine whether or not you are. But her story finds the beneficial side of that magnificent ambiguity in the prior episode. It doesn’t really matter to Beth whether she’s the “real” Beth or not. Being this Beth, being someone who loves her husband and her family, makes her happy, and in a nice counterpoint to last season’s finale, she’s willing to put up with not having her father around if she can preserve that.

What that means for Rick is that he’s not the center of the universe, or at least the Smiths anymore. Morty, the grandson who tags along through all of his adventures, is willing to tell his grandfather to leave him alone so that he can have a happy family once more. And contrary to the ultimatum from the Season 2 finale, Beth is willing to pick Jerry over her dad.

That leaves Rick unable to enjoy his victory over the President of the United States and the onslaught of toys and weapons and other technological doo-dads the Prez has assembled to be able to combat him. It makes Rck’s victory hollow, to where he’s willing to sacrifice his victory, the respect that comes from having bested the leader of the free world, in order to be a part of the Smith family once again.

He sees the rest of the Smiths’ happiness and tries to spit on it, to tell them that it doesn’t matter, but it does to them, and though he has trouble admitting it, it matters to him. They’re happy and whether that’s flawed or fake or just one petal on the swirling sunflower of infinite multiverses, it’s their pleasant and fulfilling subjective experience and they couldn’t care less if it’s unimpressive from a cosmic standpoint. While Rick, who’s achieved the most of what could be achieved from a cosmic standpoint, debases himself to have a piece of that, to be proximate to it, when he has all the talent and ability to just jump to some other universe if he wants to.

Maybe I liked the episode better than I thought. Part of it are too indulgent. Rick and Morty being blasé about their adventures evokes a sense of ennui in the writer’s room (or at least from credited writer Dan Harmon who’s not been shy about expressing when his passion for a project is waning.) That colors the hijinks between Rick and the President trying to one-up each other. None of it’s bad, but it’s Rick and Morty going through the motions. A crazy techno-fight here, a hilarious vulgar aside there, a well-placed pop culture riff some place else. (The South Park reference is particularly exemplary this week.) None of it’s bad, it just doesn’t hit the transcendent highs the show is capable of when it’s at the top of the game.

But the Beth story comes closer. Jerry reminiscing about the first time he kissed Beth is the most endearing, relatable, and understandable Jerry’s seemed in the whole series, and it’s enough to make you want to root for this pathetic man to get back together with his wife, and to understand why they made some modicum of sense in the first place. And Beth realizing that whether she’s real or not, she wants to like that night, to be happy with where she is, is a subtle but powerful statement from the show.

I don’t hesitate to say that Season 3 has been the best season of Rick and Morty yet. It’s been as consistently creative and inventive as any prior set of their adventures, and the level of emotional depth and self-examination the show’s engaged in on a weekly basis is nothing short of remarkable. From the surprise season premiere, to the infamous “Pickle Rick”, to toxic versions of our heroes, to Wire-inspired adventures, the show has continually topped itself with the places it’s willing to go and how well it goes there.

But “Rickchurian Mortydate” isn’t quite the perfect capper to so much greatness. It fits well enough as the culmination of a lot of things the show has been wrestling with this season: Morty wondering whether he needs his grandfather in his life, Jerry figuring out his place in the world in relation to his father-in-law, and Beth taking some time alone and figuring out who she is, whether or not it’s really who she is. It all comes together in the family deciding to reject Rick, and Rick sacrificing, in his own sideways way, to not be cast aside. That’s strong stuff, but at times, the finale of the show’s best season so far is more interested in laser-coated mayhem than that deeper, emotionally complex material that marks it as more than just a collection of wacky escapades.

Ah well. Still damn good. I’ll see you all in however long it takes for Mr. Poopy Butthole to grow a big Santa Claus beard. Don’t just screw around in the mean time!