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The latest episode of Rick and Morty is called “Benthic Twinstinct” which is obviously a play on Basic Instinct and is more obviously a reference than usual — the twin Beth storyline is really what’s driving everything this episode. Although we do have a bunch of little jokes that keep popping up, mainly the video game runner, but it’s ultimately about Beth and Space Beth figuring things out for themselves.
My least favorite episode of Rick and Morty was the so-called ‘incest space baby’ one which I felt was mostly unfunnny and had a very pointlessly gross storyline — although they didn’t actually have any physical incest occur, because this isn’t Game of Thrones right? Well, not anymore, because now we’re seeing it happen — and Rick and Morty didn’t invent the idea of a person hooking up with their clone, and I’m actually surprised it took them this long to bring it up.
The show doesn’t even remotely get into the moral implications of it, but Space Beth and Beth both share the same exact DNA and also have entirely different minds that started with a shared history. For many years the Internet has debated the ‘incest versus masturbation’ question about something like this, but it’s not like one of these women is using a device, they’re both sentient adults. So I feel like it’s inarguably incest, but at least they can’t have kids and at least they’re both adults, which is unlike the incest baby episode (they even make a reference to it this episode, and Morty is suitably chagrined, as should the show’s writers be).
This episode is also superior in its thematic underpinnings, which is about Beth actualizing herself and Jerry actualizing his truth about their relationship. It’s also about the connections between Beth and her father, as Rick admits that essentially he’s done the same thing with some other version of himself and even helps protect her lie (not that it helps for long).
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Summer and then Morty catch the Beths together and naturally have a very negative response, which is trying not to think about it. That part is more than reasonable, and all of the little video game jokes were a lot of fun. The whole ‘realistic’ version of things led to some pretty funny moments — I liked the ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ moment of Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 struggling to lift his enormous sword.
We also get one of the rare explorations into Jerry’s psyche, as we see a flashback to him in high school admitting he’d love to be torn apart by Beth Sanchez. But he also ‘takes control’ in his own way, by protecting himself as a giant pill bug that Rick gave him the power to perform. It’s a classic ‘metaphor as reality’ idea, and he then takes further control by interrupting the two Beths before they erase their memories of their dalliance.
This goes even further by him ‘permitting’ the two to hook up in front of him, which suddenly escalates into a surreal throuple/cucking situation much to the chagrin of the rest of the family overhearing downstairs. That part was pretty funny, and it was something that did weirdly make sense for the characters at this point.
Although I’m still a little conflicted on the incest angle in general, it did at least have a story point here, and we had some legitimate points to be made about how you view yourself and one’s capability to love or be ‘attracted’ to oneself. Self-love isn’t a bad thing, even when you apply the bizarre sci-fi filter to it. So I suppose I liked the episode overall, even if it didn’t really address what happened last episode with Morty, as I was worried about. I guess we’ll see how the rest of the season addresses that little plotline as we move forward.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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