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The latest episode of Rick and Morty is called ‘Analyze Piss’ which is a reference to the movie Analyze This — and shockingly is actually connected to that, as much of it is about Rick trying to actually better himself through therapy with family therapist Dr. Wong. It all gets kicked off after Rick and Morty fail to defeat Mr. Nimbus (again) and then a weird dude shows up named ‘Cookie Magneto’ that wants to fight Rick.
After Rick drops a fun little The Tick reference Morty points out that maybe there’s some reason why Rick keeps getting targeted by ridiculous bad guys — like the suddenly appearing Mr. Calypso, an obvious reference to The Great Gazoo from The Flintstones. Although Rick is resistant to therapy, he is susceptible to Dr. Wong’s manipulation by asking ‘would you be interested in proving me wrong?’ thus appealing to Rick’s vanity and then asks for data, thus appealing to his science-based hyper-focus.
When the absurdly disgusting Pissmaster villain (voice of Will Forte) shows up to fight Rick, he suppresses his desire to destroy the dude long enough for Jerry to fight and then defeat the weird villain — gaining viral fame throughout the galaxy. There are some obvious jokes about BuzzFeed (which isn’t what I’d call relevant these days) or Jezebel (not as relevant as it once was) but they’re cute.
After that Jerry gets recruited by Green Lantern type aliens called the Galactic Orbship, and Jerry accidentally manages to destroy a planet of Space Hitlers (the Riddler Hitler was the absolute funniest part of this sequence). Rick brings this up in therapy and comes to the realization that maybe ignoring things might really be the right move — after an attempt to fight him by the ridiculous Mr. Stringbean gets intercepted by the similarly ridiculous Mister Buckles, Rick realizes he may have been ‘inviting trouble’ after all.
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But he seems to realize that asserting his power over the less powerful, even when they’re bad guys, was something that was giving him purpose. So he actually reaches out to the Pissmaster guy, and discovers the guy having taken his own life — the show actually completely plays this straight, having Rick failing to save him and feels awful about it. They even have the ‘if you need help’ message at the end of the episode.
Through a series of accidents and dumb choices, Jerry gets mad (because he’s so self-conscious about his sudden fame) and tries to take down the seemingly improved Pissmaster, as Rick has taken over the role and made him a disgusting hero. There is a great stupid joke here about Orphan Island, but it’s otherwise relying mainly on gross out jokes which isn’t really my favorite sort of thing.
At the end, Rick lies that he did it all to protect Jerry — but still admits the truth to Morty, who will no longer hold the secrets for him (and whatever happened to that memory fallout from earlier this season? I suspected that they’d barely reference it and that’s sadly what’s happened). The family is once again annoyed at Rick, but at least Rick really has been trying to change. There’s a weird sense of growth that he’s been making — it’s hard to imagine Season 1 Rick lying to protect Jerry.
The end tag is cute enough, but nothing particularly great or that funny — I was impressed by the sincerity of the episode but it was sadly slim on the legitimately funny moments. It’s been a bit of a disappointing season so far, to be honest, and it’s almost over — right now the show feels a bit of a mess, but I’m still willing to see how this season ends and if that’s a stronger note.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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