Adult Swim
The expansion in Rick and Morty of the supporting characters has been a boon for new and interesting storylines, but there is a hidden danger. It’s a difficult thing to balance everyone together, and sometimes characters get short shrift. This week there were no bad subplots, but one was quite a bit more clever than the other. As per usual, the plots are divided without any real connectivity or continuity, with just the barest hints of meaning or thematic resonance. I found it amusing that Rick as the writer claims no overriding theme, which is clearly untrue, more like the obvious theme isn’t the theme.
We see two plots, one based on Beth and Jerry’s marriage problems, like in the season two opener, and the other a mild adventure between Rick and his grandkids Morty and Summer, also like in the opener. The secret theme is meaning versus futility, which is the secret theme of the series as a whole. Rick presents himself as a pure nihilist, ultimately uncaring about anything because nothing matters compared to the hugeness of the multiverse. But he does care, perhaps even more than other versions of Rick. As we saw last season, this Rick is an iconoclast even among other Ricks. So that’s the point, but it sneaks up on you.
A McGuffin is presented, that someone at the school is clearly a vampire. So Summer reasons that Rick can superscience a way to become a teenager temporarily to infiltrate the school and help them find the vampire. Although Rick initially eschews the idea, with Morty quick to agree (his reaction is telling, watching for what his grandfather will do). This is the secondary theme, something we’ve seen a bit the “will Morty become Rick?” Morty has gone back and forth between idealism and horror, fatalism versus nihilism like Rick. That’s the theme of this subplot, with a sub-theme that’s actually about how Summer is the more perceptive and intuitive one of the grandkids by far. Rick suddenly appears as the jovial, fun loving “Tiny Rick,” a white-haired version of himself as a teenager.
The contrast is funny but also immediately worrying. He’s almost too supportive, which implies something is wrong, which of course it is. After they kill the vampire gym teacher at school (Coach Feratu) off screen, it seems like that’s it, until Tiny Rick jumps at the first opportunity to stay younger a bit longer. At first it seems like a nice gesture, but the fear of growing old is a better reason. A hilarious moment occurs when Morty explains to Jessica that Rick is his grandfather in a cloned teenage body, and she’s cool with it. A neat subversion of the way this sort of silly thing would be hidden as a lie in lesser shows.
Each time Rick does something artistic, he talks about his older self dying in the garage and wanting to escape. Each time is funny and incongruous, especially the “Oooh let me out, this is not a dance” that’s immediately copied by the other students. I laughed hard at that one. But there’s something there, the artistic, uncontrolled side of Rick presenting what’s really going on in his mind. Although Summer realizes right away something is wrong, eventually Morty does too, but he’s willing to let it slide to hang out with his love interest Jessica. After Summer gets Rick kicked out of school (a very Rick-like move), he fires back in hurt.
It’s that core of emotional connection that strengthens the characters on this show, because it makes the comedy stand out more when we care about these assholes. Rick and Summer each do something to bring Tiny Rick back to his senses in a way they can, Morty with force and violence, Summer with depressing music. Tiny Rick begins to cry at the pointlessness of existence and switches back to his older body, immediately killing his younger version. In case the message of nihilism isn’t obvious enough, he then proceeds to kill off his other clones, the “dead copies” of himself littering the ground. We’ll get back to that.
In the other subplot, Jerry and Beth are sent to couples counseling on a bizarre alien world, par for the course. Everything is foreshadowed, of course. In the beginning of the episode, Jerry complains that Beth is a “mean, unfair monster that always hurts me.” When Morty asks Summer if their parents are going to divorce, she replies, “I think it’s okay to dream Morty,” which is a pretty dark thing to say. It means she thinks they should divorce but won’t, a terrible thing to realize about your parents. The concept is amazing sci-fi nonsense: each person at marriage counseling gets a physical manifestation of their partner as a way to demonstrate the underlying problems in the marriage.
We see a few aliens with their own monstrous fighting avatars, but that’s just a prelude. Jerry sees Beth as a Geiger-esque monstrosity with an evil brilliance and horrid ferocity, while Beth sees Jerry as a purely subservient worm-like creature. Instead of fighting, Monster-Beth uses Worm-Jerry to escape captivity, leaving the head therapist to shout in horror “they’re co-dependent!” It’s incongruous and therefore funny, yet it hides the secret truth of how co-dependence in a destructive relationship can lead to misery and pain. The theme here isn’t nihilism exactly, but there is a pondering about trying to work past difficulty or give up. That’s the connective tissue to the other plot.
Eventually things get wonderfully bizarre, as Monster-Beth captures the real Beth to use her mind to create an endless army of Worm-Jerry monsters. She hisses at Beth that she is the form that Jerry sees, a super strong and smart version, despite being horrible. A point of progress. Another comes when Jerry comes to save the day, leading to the second version of Jerry, manifestations that looks just like him, because she’s now seeing him as he actually is. When he becomes more heroic, muscular and idealized versions of Jerry jump to fight, leading to a hilarious moment when a smug Jerry announces he’ll save the day. And then a bunch of new Jerrys appear, self-congratulatory and wearing Jerry t-shirts.
But it still seems impossible to fight against the Monster-Beth, until Jerry gets a brilliant idea to summon the version of Beth in the head of one of the idealized-Jerry heroes. And then a magnificent goddess-Beth appears and saves the day, an acknowledgment of Beth’s ego about herself. It’s cynical yet touching. Sort of like Rick and Morty as a show.
At the end, Jerry compares their stories because of “dead versions” of themselves, which Rick dismisses as purely cosmetic and not thematic. He’s right, but the theme isn’t about abandoning worse versions of yourself, it’s about embracing the best version of yourself, whatever that is. The episode paradoxically ends using nihilism to support the idea about caring about something, which is pretty great. Another great episode.
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