Adult Swim
Last week’s episode of Rick and Morty was more about the difficulty and process of writing episodes of the show than it was about the characters having their own arcs, but the latest, ‘Promortyus’, was a lot more about people learning something, even if the lesson is a harsh one. The title is obviously a reference to Prometheus, the Greek deity that brought fire to humanity and uplifted them.
But it’s also a later reference to the concept of pursuing scientific knowledge at all costs, with often dread consequences — as in the subtitle to ‘Frankenstein” was ‘A Modern Prometheus’. Rick is someone that has usually been valuing knowledge and technology over all other things, the lives of others, and sometimes even himself. This episode showed yet another example of Rick only hurting himself and others because of his own actions.
The episode started (for the first time I believe) in medias res, in the middle of the tale with Rick and Morty somehow having facehugging parasites like the ones from Alien and no memory of how it happened. Of course, we know later that this was because Rick and Morty (ignoring Summer’s completely accurate warnings against it) decided to poke around with a bunch of ‘wet eggs’ for their own curiosity.
At first, the episode does a little trick by having Rick and Morty escape from the aliens while causing enormous destruction, explicitly saying that it’s great there’s no guilt about it ‘like Star Wars‘. But the hint of something more is there when the duo ignores an eerily similar structure to the Twin Towers but then they instead blow up a Pearl Harbor analogue. Without thinking more than surface level about it, they move on.
Sure, they have fun anime-styled battle suits with laser swords, but they think the parasites are just like the ones from Alien, without any real intelligence or sentience.
This leads to a funny moment when they realize they left Summer behind, setting up the reveal later of how she was ahead of the curve the whole time. When the pair find Summer, she’s the ‘Empress’ of the beings with their reference to the classic silly named ‘Glorzo’. But her own flashback reveals that her toothpick affect, which annoys Rick and Morty, saves her from being infected by the parasite.
Then she manages to easily convince the aliens to abandon their self-destructive life cycle of infection and death, building a new civilization in what seems like only a few days. The contrast between the approaches is pretty stark — although Summer obviously doesn’t want to stay there, her approach leads to a new civilization and creation, and Rick and Morty can only destroy.
The episode messes with us by having the Rick and Morty parasites connected in their history, and while the Morty-parasite becomes a de facto leader, the Rick-parasite becomes a ‘truth teller’ conspiracy theorist that cares more about biological imperatives than the good of society or the possibility of growth. The show pushes the line again by having the two parasites in love and making out, which technically is not incest since the aliens are not Rick or Morty, just infecting them.
But the show does like to make us uncomfortable and consider the repercussions of actions. Wanton destruction occurred, but the beings are sentient. Thus Summer’s summary of the lesson is everyone sucks, including them. It’s pretty dark, reductive, and not entirely accurate. Nothing here is easy, thus the absurd tag about Summer’s friend being into Jerry. How should we feel about any of this, really? Confused and conflicted, even while you laugh at it all.
Rick and Morty airs Sundays at 11:30 PM on adult swim.
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