Adult Swim
The latest episode of Rick and Morty is called ‘One Crew Over the Crewcoo’s Morty’, but honestly that’s just a lot of silly puns about the word ‘crew’ because it’s all about heist nonsense. The episode seemingly starts with Rick and Morty off a grave robbing adventure only to discover that the crafty thief Miles Knightly (a Freddie Mercury lookalike voiced by Justin Theroux) has gotten there first.
Of course, as we discover by the end of the episode, Rick’s plan all along was to hurt Morty in a subtle way to get around Beth’s admonishing about ruining Morty’s dreams. So the plan is to disillusion Morty’s story ideas about heists which means we have to assume it’s all Rick planning it all, murders etc. Meaning when you delve into it just a bit, Rick is killing billions to ensure Morty doesn’t care enough about his own dreams and thus will stay with him indefinitely on their classic ‘Rick and Morty adventures’.
Morty ends the episode staring off into nothing while Rick gives us, the complicit audience that enjoyed all the silliness, a big wink. We share in the blame to hurt Morty, because we keep watching and rooting for Rick to win. It’s our fault too.
So wait, what’s that about a lighter episode than usual?
Well, until you start breaking it down like that, it’s a pretty fun episode of Rick and Morty. Rick starts to develop a series of escalating heists, with a lot of mind control courtesy of the Heist-o-tron. Conversely, Rick decides to use the Randotron to fight back against the Heist-o-tron that has taken on a mind of its own. Then you get the dark, hilarious image of a giant robot destroying a planet by pretending to be a pizza delivery man. It reminds me of the darkly comic webcomic The Perry Bible Fellowship, which is a compliment.
I always find it funny how language evolves into our weird modern usage. That ‘-tron’ suffix derives from ancient Greek meaning ‘of an instrument’ or similar, like our old friend the electron. Colloquial usage is modifying a word to turn into some sort of machine, like Calvin & Hobbes’ phantamatron.
Here, we double back with explanatory flashbacks over and over again, revealing the ‘real’ heist all along. It’s essentially too much to keep track of without writing extensive notes, including a weird, unsettling cameo by Elon Musk as ‘Elon Tusk’. More importantly, impeccable voice legends Pamela Adlon and Maurice LaMarche also played voice roles, and you probably didn’t even notice because that’s why they’re legends.
Adult Swim
All throughout, we get the classic ‘heist-style’ music stings expertly delivered by composer Ryan Elder, who I always like to give shout-outs to. Of course, as it’s Rick and Morty, everything is buried in layers of meta-subtext, with the Heist-o-tron literally programmed to explode after the right number of reveals is met. I did like its WarGames paraphrasing of ‘The only perfect heist was one which was never written’, which is actually also a meta-comment about how much the show’s creators despise heist stories.
Deep within the meta-commentary and hyper-amusing back and forths, we see the truth of the matter that Rick is desperately afraid to lose Morty’s companionship and thus sabotages his potential future. Yes, of course there’s a joke thrown in about Netflix buying any pitch, but it’s easy to see rewatching that scene that Morty is devastated by the cool idea he thought he had.
So Rick’s heist was to make Morty feel like an idiot all along while also telling us, the audience, that heist movies and stories are inherently silly. You have to appreciate that sort of layering. It’s an interesting episode to dive into, one that I think most people might have missed some of the nuances of, but that’s Rick and Morty for you — there’s always more than you realized.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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