Adult Swim
As usual, spoilers ahead for the latest episode of Rick and Morty.
I begin to struggle with Rick and Morty, because it’s original and funny in a way it’s hard to remember seeing before. I suppose the early seasons of The Simpsons and Futurama are a good comparison, but this is the right sort of show for the new modern era. It builds on the cartoons and pop culture of the past, from story ideas to animation styles to sci-fi appropriation and subversion. The latest episode took a classic idea, the “clip show,” and went nuts with it. The clip show has been around since before television, when old school radio serials did it to save money and recap those who had missed episodes (much easier to do back then).
Several shows have played with it, the first I can recall being The Simpsons with their “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular,” which had already aired clips, unaired deleted scenes, and an amusing wrap-around from character Troy McClure. But the first I can remember that used fake clips was the South Park episode “City on the Edge of Forever,” an early one with the classic blend of nonsense, profanity, and pop culture appreciation. Dan Harmon (the co-creator of Rick and Morty) even did it himself in the episode of Community “Paradigms of Human Memory,” which was also quite clever. And now he’s done it once more.
In “Total Rickall,” the episode starts mysteriously with the gang sitting around the table chatting with “Uncle Steve,” Jerry’s brother we’ve never met before. So far, nothing particularly weird, except that Steve keeps talking about how he’s lived with them for a while. Odd, but the show’s used alternate universes before, so it’s mostly just a bit of strangeness. Another bit of oddness is that Steve speaks it sitcom cliches, the most hackneyed and hack of comedy lines. Then Rick comes into the room and immediately realizes something’s not right and shoots Steve, much to the horror of the Smith family.
And then Steve collapses in the form of a hideous alien monster. Rick explains it, a truly high concept sci-fi rigmarole of an idea. There are these bizarre alien parasites that can change people’s memories to seem as though they’ve always been a part of their lives. This lets them reproduce by introducing new parasites in new memories, which in this case are represented by the classic “flashback” device. A great idea for a silly episode of Rick and Morty, and then the show keeps it going with a weird looking little banana man that seems like he most obviously is one of these parasites. Rick proclaims, “Thanks Mr. Poopy Butthole, I always could count on you.”
That’s the first trick. The second is that suddenly the credits include Mr. Poopy Butthole in every scene, including the slightly lower quality animation from last season in the credits. That’s the second trick. But the family begins to remember other people they knew (that they never knew), including a hilarious set of cliched characters drawn from a hundred different shows. Some classic voice over artists even show up, like Tara Strong, Kevin Michael Richardson, and Tom Kenny. From the overly Brooklyn tough guy who proclaims, “I’m walkin’ here,” to the delightfully sincere British butler Mr. Beauregard, at least they’re all people. But quickly we get more people, like a pencil that talks (Pencil Vester) and the Reverse Giraffe. It’s a great excuse for the team behind the show to basically use every character design they never could easily use because they are simply too stupid or cliched.
Because the cliche is the third trick. Things escalate and the terror increases, because everyone starts accusing each other of being fake, including the real people we know. Strangely enough, Mr. Poopy Butthole never joins in. Jerry has a particularly tragic arc with Sleepy Gary, who has become Beth’s new husband and his secret gay lover. When you parse it, you realize it’s a way to look at how Jerry and Beth continue to be terrible for each other in so many ways. Beth says importantly to him, “You’re a parasite, but you’re real.” That’s basically his character in summation.
The wonderful twist (that doesn’t completely hold up) is that the parasites can only create positive memories, which is why they spread so easily. So when Summer recalls her drunken mother accidentally hitting her with a bottle, she knows she’s real. When Beth remembers Jerry abandoning her in a car, he’s real. And Rick and Morty have plenty of bad memories to go around. But this is the last trick, because it’s not really so simple. Rick may be right about the parasites, but it’s all a set-up for the one hit in the gut.
When Beth realizes she has no negative memories of Mr. Poopy Butthole, she shoots him – and he bleeds real blood and doesn’t turn into a parasite. He was, however improbably, real. We were so busy following along with the obvious cliche that the whole point of the episode hits us like it hits Beth. Reality and fantasy are close, and happy memories cloud our negative ones. But the difference isn’t positive or negativity, it’s truth versus lies. The parasites all tried to get the family to open the blast doors and let them out, but Mr. Poopy Butthole never did. We were so caught up in the fantasy of the clip show conceit we don’t realize the real trick is on us.
Got ya, you felt something about the most ridiculously named character ever.
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