Here’s another final thought: on both occasions when Rick transferred his mind–from Old Man Rick to Tiny Rick, then Tiny Rick to Old Man Rick–the first thing he does is go on a slaughter–the vampire hunt when he becomes Tiny Rick, and then his clones when he becomes Old Man Rick again. Is this symbolic of releasing repressed rage? I mean, if the episode is about psychodynamics–the repressing and the releasing of mental content from and into consciousness–then the idea of going on a wild slaughter rampage could easily be symbolic of pent up unconscious content suddenly being released–especially if we go with the balloon analogy of psychodynamics.
Let’s compare these two videos:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uguHL3e-cY[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj1kTnfBXDo[/youtube]
…with this one:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyXktW0RI3o[/youtube]
Rick and Morty - S2E8 - Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate
It seems that an interdimensional cable episode is called for in every season. Even in season 3, Rick, in breaking the 4th wall, admits that they were supposed to have an interdimensional cable episode but settled for Morty’s Mind Blowers instead. We all remember the interdimensional cable episode of season 1 (or do we?), titled “Rixty Minutes,” and this is more of the same. The only difference in this episode is that the Smith family get to watch interdimensional cable in an alien hospital waiting room while alien doctors work arduously to cure Jerry of some kind of mutant bacteria that Rick kept in a pint of Cherry Garcia. This obviously plays heavily into the secondary plotline: Jerry’s struggle between his dignity as a philanthropist and his manhood (more on this below). As for the primary plotline, well, it ain’t much different than the first interdimensional cable episode… and I think I’ll take the same approach: go through the highlights of all the wacky and zany shit the multiverse has in store for avid fans of interdimensional cable.
- Man vs. Car
Basically like WFC except the competitors are a man and a car. The car always wins. No shortage of blood and gore in this one.
- Eye Holes
A commercial for Eye Hole cereal. It’s a little deceptive at first as it starts off like a scene from a soap opera. A couple of alien-like creatures, one whose name is Samantha, seem to be having a romantic evening sitting on the couch with some wine. Flaps of skin cover their eyes. The guy says: “Samantha, I need to know that you understand that I have a couple of eye-holes.” He rips off the flaps of skin to reveal a couple of eye holes. Samantha responds by ripping her skin flaps off to reveal eight eye holes.
Now, the anatomy of these aliens is rather complicated. First, it’s not clear why they have to rip their skin flaps off. Does it hurt? Will it grow back? Is this a regular occurrence with these folks? Second, their “eye holes” aren’t really just holes in their heads where their eyes should be, but empty fleshy sacks with openings at the front that seem to be burrowed into their face. Presumably, eye balls would fit into these sacks. Third, these eye hole sacks don’t even seem to be securely attached to their face. The Eye Hole Man, who comes into the scene in a bit, kicks them in the head and their eye hole sacks just fall to the ground. If these eye hole sacks are really a part of their anatomy, then I guess the flaps of skin serve to keep them in place. Fourth, even without eyes in the eye holes, they still seem to be able to see. Fifth, are they able to see even with the skin flaps? Or is seeing only an occasional thing with them, something they do only when ripping off the skin flaps is called for. Sixth, given that the guy wants to reveal that he has a couple of eye holes, it seems fair to assume that not all members of this alien species have eye holes. Further, given that Samantha has eight eye holes, it seems fair to assume that those who do have eye holes don’t all have the same number of eye holes. Seventh, they seem to get some kind of erotic arousal by cupping their eye holes together–the equivalent of french kissing I suppose–as this is exactly what happens next. As you can see, their anatomy is not only complicated, but seems radically unnecessary.
Then the Eye Hole Man breaks through the glass in the ceiling, lowering himself on a rope from his chopper, and yells at them through a megaphone: “I’m the Eye Hole Man! I’m the only one who’s allowed to have eye holes!” and then kicks them both in the head, knocking their eye holes to the ground. ← A weird thing to say for a man who seems to have regular eyes. I mean, in that sense, we all have eye holes… unless he means these weird fleshy sacks that would supposedly hold eye balls. If that’s the case, then the only sense in which he could “have” eye holes is… if they were a cereal!!!
And that’s what this drama turns out to be–a commercial for eye hole cereal. I suppose that makes the Eye Hole Man the equivalent of Lucky the Leprechaun or the Trix Rabbit–going around trying to get his “eye holes” back (successfully). ← And come to think of it, this might be the season two equivalent of Strawberry Smiggles.
Apparently, the Eye Hole Man is real. Rick says to Morty: “You gotta be careful, Morty. If that guy catches you with a box of his eye holes, he comes bursting in through a window and just starts kicking the shit outta you. But it’s worth the risk. They melt in your mouth, Morty. They’re delicious.” ← Suggesting that this has happened to Rick. It also makes one wonder: if the Eye Hole Man is real, what’s he doing in a cereal commercial? Is it like Gordon Ramsay doing cooking commercials?
- How Did I Get Here?
“The only show that makes you ask yourself, ‘How did I get here?’” says the host of How Did I Get Here. Morty notices a woman by the coffee machine getting coffee. She was a grotesque deformity on her face. Morty compares it to Worf from Star Trek but I think she looks more like those Martian mutants from Total Recall (the first one, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, not the retarded remake with Colin Farrell):
The host of How Did I Get Here announces: “Here’s our first person,” and all of a sudden, the lady is on the show. She’s seen standing on top of a lamp post freaking out about the fact that she has no idea how she got there. Morty notices she’s no longer by the coffee machine.
- Jan Quadrant Vincent 16
We all remember Jan Michael Vincent, right? (Don’t we?) Well, now there’s 8 of them… but there’s 16 quadrants… and Jan Michael Vincent can’t be at two places at once. ← That’s one hell of a springboard for an action movie, but there it is!
- The Adventures of Stealy:
Stealy is a stout little guy with extremely long arms–perfect for stealing things. It’s not clear whether he’s human or not, but he seems to live in a modern human world. He hosts The Adventures of Stealy, a show featuring him going around offices (and presumably other places) stealing things. He’ll do it surreptitiously, behind people’s back, or in plane sight, right in front of them. If anyone gives him any trouble, he simply puts them to sleep by covering their mouth with a sedative soaked cloth… and then steals the person. Then he makes his way back to the “quiet safe room” where his victims can’t get him. Then he tallies up all the items he stole. Each one is worth so many “brapples”. A bag of “bobbish” is worth 8 brapples. A “plumbus” is worth 6.5 brapples. Three crushed party cups (the red ones we always see Rick drinking at parties) are worth 15.5 brapples. For some reason, these brapples seem to be represented on the screen with different symbols for each item:
- Funny Songs:
A standup commedian asks members of the audience what they do for a living. Then he improvises a song that mocks them. There is no creativity in the song at all:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-8FHh_Jkig[/youtube]
Then he gets security to to beat the shit out of the audience member, sends dogs to sick him, and demons to take his life out.
- Lil’ Bits:
A commercial for Lil’ Bits, a restaurant for people with huge heads and tiny mouths. The food is tiny enough to fit right in:
The host of Lil’ Bits takes you on a tour of his restaurant, showing you all the scrumptious tiny meals you can eat. It ends with the host disturbing a man in the restroom as he tries to piss in a urinal.
- Opposite News / Cooking Things:
This one I find pretty funny. Opposite News with Michael Thomson is essentially a news show in which the news is reported by telling the opposite of what happened. For instance, Michael Thomson reports that “today, the Pope didn’t get killed.” ← But that’s not the funny part. We notice that Michael’s body is sloping off to the right side of the screen and he seems to be getting annoyed that he’s being tugged in that direction. ← That’s not the funny part either.
Rick switches the channel to find Cooking Things with Pichael Thomson, a cooking show also featuring a man whose body slopes off to the side of the screen, this time left. He too is getting tugged in that direction.
Pichael finally has enough and tugs Michael Thomson into the set of Cooking Things. That’s right, they’re Siamese twins joined together at the abdomen. The set of Opposite News was just to the left of Cooking Things. The divide between them was right at their abdomen.
They start bickering with each other, Pichael expressing a bit of jealousy that Michael was always the favored child, bestowing him with an honorable name like Michael and leaving Pichael with such a ridiculous name. It ends with Michael throwing his news report at Pichael calling him a piece of shit. ← That, I find hilarious.
- How They Do It…:
Remember when Stealy stole a plumbus from the office? Well, on today’s episode of How They Do It…, we get to find out how plumbuses are made (or is it plumbi?).
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBl5YL5_5d8[/youtube]
- The Personal Space Show:
I could never get tired of watching this one. The Personal Space Show is a show about a guy who just talks about how much he loves his personal space. After introducing the show, for example, he paranoidly looks around saying: “Woaw! Woaw! Hey! Who’s around me right now? Who’s around me?” Then he steps up to a platform and starts a slide show. He goes through 9 slides of more or less the same thing: expressions of personal space each phrased in slightly different ways:
ONE: PERSONAL SPACE
TWO: PERSONAL SPACE
THREE: STAY OUT OF MY PERSONAL SPACE!!
FOUR: KEEP AWAY FROM MY PERSONAL SPACE!!
FIVE: GET OUTA DAT PERSONAL SPACE!!
SIX: STAY AWAY FROM MY PERSONAL SPACE!!
SEVEN: KEEP AWAY FROM DAT PERSONAL SPACE!!
EIGHT: PERSONAL SPACE
NINE: PERSONAL SPACE
After the slide show, he decides that he doesn’t want his skin anymore because it invades his personal space. So he tears it off. The show ends with him just standing there skinless. He sways a little back and forth with a droopy look on his face expressing either faintness from the pain or disappointment in himself for what he just did.
Rick laughs: “What an asshole!”
Throughout the whole show, a banner passes on the bottom of the screen which reads: reddit.com/r/rickandmorty/c … omain_for/ ← This guy actually bought the domain and is asking folks what he should do with it. I like this suggestion by ChewiestOcean4:
“Its as simple as just making a list of 1. Personal space 2. Personal space 3. stay out of my personal space, etc.”
Alas, the site seems to no longer exist (if it ever did).
- Alien Olympics:
That’s not actually the name of this show–I just had to call it something; you remember those alien dudes in Mortynight Run? The one’s Jerry encounters down a dark alley who splat into some kind of oozy liquid? Well, Rick flips the channel to find what looks like their summer Olympics. One such alien dude runs towards a brick wall, takes a leap at it, and SPLAT!!! Turns into blue ooze all over the wall. Then another alien dude takes measurements of the splat (I guess the point is how much wall can they cover). He gives his thumbs up and a panel of 3 alien dude judges lift up their score cards to show ratings in an alien language.
- Octopus Man:
This one’s just lame. A half-man/half-octopus dude knocks on the passenger side window of a car. A shaved headed gangster looking dude with a scar over his eye rolls down the window.
The half-octopus man says: “I’m octopus man” and giggles in a childish, mildly insane kinda way. He explains that he’s a marine biologist who’s been bitten by an octopus. He gets in the car and they go driving. He claims that he now helps/saves people (kinda piggy backing off the spiderman theme). The car stops. Octopus man gets out and sneaks up behind a couple people walking down the street. He stabs them to death.
^ What’s with Roiland and his obsession with violence?
- Breaking News:
Remember how season one’s Interdimensional Cable ended with a different version of Jerry on Breaking News? Well, this season’s Interdimensional Cable ends with the current version of Jerry on Breaking News. He’s caught on camera in the operating room, pointing a gun at Mr. Pibbles who’s on the operating table getting surgery done. But that gets us into the secondary plotline, so let’s break from our regular programming and rewind to the beginning of the episode.
Jerry is sick. He’s being rushed to the emergency room in an alien space station hospital. He’s got a bad case of, well, “mutant bacteria” that Rick stored in a pint of cherry garcia. He looks awful:
After vomiting up copious amounts of disgusting green goop (reminiscent of the Exorcist), Rick warns: “Watch out for that stuff. It’ll stain if it gets on your clothes, and it’ll send you into a murderous rage if it gets in your eyes or mouth.” ← Obvious not just Jerry’s last meal.
The nurse reassures the Smith family that “Dr. Glipglop is the best in the galaxy.” Right then, Dr. Glipglop enters the room. Jerry projectile vomits on him. As Rick predicts, he goes into a short murderous rage before being incinerated by Rick’s gun (a parody on 28 Days Later?). Rick excuses himself: “What? Every hospital claims to have the best doctor in the gal-BELCH-axy.” Beth, annoyed with her dad, tells him to go in the waiting room.
So Rick, Morty, and Summer go wait in the waiting room. Rick takes the cable box, rips it from the waiting room TV, throws it to the ground (just like he did in season 1), pulls out the crystallized zanthonite (the pink stuff), plugs it into the cracked open cable box, and wires it back to the TV.
Nurse: Hey, what are you doing?!
Rick: A sequel.
Nurse: I don’t understand.
Rick: Yeah, me neither, we pretty much nailed it the first time.
On the screen suddenly appears, in big rock-like font, “Interdimensional Cable II”–sexy ladies twerking their asses all around it:
Rick flips through a few channels. They catch Man vs. Car and Eye Holes. Beth comes in texting on her phone: “I can’t believe you’re explaining alien cereal. We’re worried about Jerry,” to which Rick responds: “Well, you’re 39 years too late, or, you know, however old he is. Is he-is he 50? Jesus Christ, Beth, is-is Jerry 50!?”
^ Not sure what that was all about–why would Rick jump from 39 to the ripe old age of 50… and then act all shocked as if it were a fact? ← What’s more odd about it is that I was 39 when I first saw that… and remember, I was stoned at the time… leading my fertile imagination to believe it was a statement about me (yes, literally a message directed at me)–a statement that I was Jerry. It really felt like a jab in the stomach. I don’t want to be Jerry.
Jerry awakens in his hospital bed looking just fine (except for a bit of drool dripping from his mouth–maybe a connection to Rick… but I doubt it). He looks around the room. “Where am I?” he says. He’s surrounded by a bunch of alien doctors. They skip any discussion about Jerry’s state of health or what transpired up until this point and get straight to Shrimply Pibbles, the galaxy’s most influential civil rights leader. They explain that Pibbles “was brought to this hospital’s emergency room where he is fighting for his life.” They go on to explain that Pibbles can be saved if they replace his heart with Jerry’s penis. They hype him up as a pretty important guy, putting Jerry between a rock and a hard place. If he agrees, he would be a hero but at the cost of his penis. If not, he gets to keep his penis but at the cost of his reputation all across the galaxy. In Jerry’s defense, one of the doctors argues, “he knows nothing of the genocides of Klorgon, or the tragic events of 65.3432.2314.” ← Presumably, events that Pibbles played a pivotal role in. A old alien man confined to a wheel chair and looking wise like Yoda speaks up from behind the crowd of doctors:
“And even if he did, he wouldn’t comprehend them. I’ve dwelt among the humans. Their entire culture is built around their penises. It’s funny to say they are small. It’s funny to say they are big. I’ve been at parties where humans have held bottles, pencils, thermoses in front of themselves and called out, ‘Hey, look at me! I’m Mr. so-and-so dick! I’ve got such-and-such for a penis.’ I never saw it fail to get a laugh.”
Jerry, unable to resist the urge for validation, jumps at the opportunity to be a hero: “Take my penis! Take it all! And tell Shrimply Pibbles that when the galaxy came calling, Jerry Smith from Earth didn’t flinch!”
^ So once again, we’re gonna have an episode where Jerry’s incessant need for external validation is not only challenged but drives him to do some pretty radical things.
Back at the waiting room, the rest of the Smith family catch snippets of How Did I Get Here and the Jan Quadrant Vincent 16 trailer, intensely enthralled by every minute of it.
Jerry, meanwhile, is getting his crotch marked up by a sharpie. The doctor is showing Jerry where he will be making the incisions. (For some reason, the supports holding up Jerry’s legs seem to be holographic.) The doctor seems to touch a sensitive spot as Jerry suddenly recoils and shouts out: “Ah! Ha! Ha! Oh, you know what?! I gotta-I gotta laugh at myself here! I’m having a little laugh at myself because I just realized I haven’t run this whole decision past my wife.” When the doctor asks him if he thinks Beth will be ok with this, he replies “Oh, absolutely. Beth is automatically on board, always, with every decision I make.”
^ Jerry is up to something here. He can’t go back on his decision to be the hero in the eyes of the galaxy–he wouldn’t be able to withstand the backlash to his reputation–so he’s going to get Beth to do it. That way, she can take the blame, not him.
After watching The Adventures of Stealy and Funny Songs, the doctor comes out, announces to the Smiths that Jerry is doing just fine, but then asks to have a word in private with Beth. He brings her to Jerry. Jerry explains the situation. Beth, understandably, and to Jerry’s satisfaction, blows up at the doctor, yelling “I bring my husband in for emergency medical treatment, he’s gone an hour, and now you want his penis…” As she speaks, she flips through a catalog of prosthetic penis replacements that the doctor hands her. She loses track of what she’s saying by some of the illustrations, a look of WOW replacing the look of scorn. Add to this the doctor’s words: “There are those that believe, Mr. Smith, that Shrimply Pibbles represents love between all life, that his fate will determine the fate of hundreds of billions of sentient life forms.” This, coupled with the catalog, is enough to turn Beth’s attitude around: “I mean, Jerry, you didn’t explain the full gravity of the situation.”
Jerry thought he had it in the bag–saying to the doctor while Beth, stunned by the images of prosthetic penises, flipped through the catalog: “Well, there you go. Sorry. I know it’s hard to understand, but on Earth, love comes first.” Another one of the many twists of irony featured in the series has Jerry’s plan yielding the opposite effect. Beth, now liking the idea of a new Jerry with a prosthetic penis, is on board with the idea of saving what might be the most important man in the universe. Jerry’s really got himself into a pickle here by way of his validation-starved ego.
An argument between Mr. and Mrs. Smith ensues:
Jerry: “Uh, well Beth, I don’t think your decision should be based on politics. Who could argue with a wife’s decision to keep her lover intact?”
Beth: “Well, I don’t think that’s fair at all, Jerry. At all. In fact, I think this whole paradigm has sexist overtones.”
Jerry: “Beth, can we talk about this privately?”
Beth: “You know, I think the bottom line is, Jerry, if you want to keep your penis, you should say out loud, ‘I prefer to keep my penis.’”
Jerry: “But Beth, what kind of man would say something like that if the universe needed his penis!?”
Beth: “Well, Jerry, what kind of wife would I be if I did anything to stand in your way?”
^ She makes an excellent point, a point that didn’t even register on Jerry’s radar. If she’s the one to halt the entire penis transplanting operation, then she’s the bad guy. Jerry simply needed her to say no to the operation so that he could get out of it without looking like an asshole, but he gave no thought to how that would make Beth look in the eyes of Pibble’s followers. If he can’t say no on the grounds that that would make him the villain, why can’t Beth?
Beth makes another good point when she calls Jerry out on failing to man up: “you should say out loud, ‘I prefer to keep my penis.’” ← This is not only a challenge to man up, not just a challenge to drawing out some internal validation, but to do the honorable thing if the intention is to get out of donating his penis anyway.
Up next on interdimensional cable: Lil’ Bits.
Graciously, the doctor gives Jerry one more chance to “use” his penis–by letting him beat off to some alien internet porn in the privacy of his office. (Why he doesn’t let him sleep with his wife is beyond me.) Before the doctor leaves, he says, “I forgot to mention: there are extensive medical records open on my desktop, but I trust you to confine your activities to the purely pornographic.” ← This did not need mentioning at all. Turns out those medical records are about Pibbles, and Jerry, after giving them a quick glance, realizes how he can leverage this information to keep his penis–some incriminating evidence against Pibbles, no doubt.
Rick, Morty and Summer enjoy a little bit of Opposite News with Michael Thompson followed by a bit of Cooking Things with Pichael Thompson.
One of the doctors, giving a crowd moving speech about Pibbles from behind a podium, introduces Jerry Smith. The crowd cheers.
“Hello everyone!” says Jerry, “Let’s hear it again for Shrimply Pibbles, huh? He’s a good guy, isn’t he? I’ve only just been learning about his accomplishment, from his march on Flirt Blurt Square to his ongoing battle with heroin dependency. He’s the best.”
The crowd cheers. Not what Jerry was expecting judging from the look on his face. Obviously, this is the dirt he thought he dug up on Pibbles. He tries again:
“Um… yeah… well, i-it occurs to me that his heroin addiction may not have been a matter of public record.”
A reporter alien in the audience speaks up: “You realize heroin makes up 10% of the atmosphere on Shrimply Pibble’s home planet.”
Another reporter: “His planet was destroyed by Klorgon death squads. He can’t live outside of it without breathing heroin.”
Jerry: “Right… I know that… I just think…”
Another alien: “This guy’s trying to get out of giving away his penis!”
The crowd starts to boo. Jerry looks around in dismay.
Next up on interdimensional cable: How They Do It: Plumbuses. Followed by: The Personal Space Show. And finally: Alien Olympics.
Jerry gets ushered off the stage. One of the alien doctors takes the podium: “Please, everyone, I have news about Shrimply Pibbles… word of Jerry Smith trying to weasel out of his penis donation has spread across the galaxy. Beings everywhere have come together to offer whatever little they have to help save Shrimply’s life.”
^ It could be said this is another twist of iron: if this great influx of humanitarian aid was triggered by Jerry weaseling out of his penis donation, then Jerry in fact saved Pibble’s life.
The doctor goes on: “Enough to pay for a brand new, state of the art, synthetic heart that will be even better than Mr. Smith’s pathetic penis.”
“Wait!” Jerry protests, “That was an option the whole time!!!” ← To be fair, even if it was an option, it seems it wasn’t an affordable one. Then again, they’re the doctors. Couldn’t they simply volunteer their time and donate the synthetic heart?
Beth: “Ok, Jerry, let’s head home.”
Jerry: “I can’t leave now! Everyone hates me!”
Beth: “Unfortunately, there’s no surgical procedure that can fix that.” ← Beth will drive this point home more clearly at the end of the episode. The point is that sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, and accept that people won’t like you for it. You could spend the rest of your life trying to get people to like you, or just wait a short while for people to get over their hate for you and forget you.
But does Jerry get this point? On the contrary, he deviously says to himself: “Or is there?”
Cut to the operating room. We see a bunch of doctors surrounding Pibbles on the operating table. There happens to be a gear person there:
Just an aside about gear people. I wonder if we’re supposed to take them as Easter eggs. If you recall, we had a couple encounters with Gear Head in the series–once in the Season 1 finally, and again in episode 2 of season 2. You might also recall the alternate timeline theory of episode 2–that is, the theory that says we weren’t following Rick and Morty C-137 in that episode (except in the beginning when Rick C-137 got his ticket). In other words, we were following a Rick and Morty who come from a universe in which gear people exist (unless they were visiting a different reality from their home reality, but there was nothing to indicate this). Now this doesn’t mean that gear people don’t exist in any other timeline, but that’s why I wonder about this. Maybe it does. Which would put this episode, the season finally of Season 1, and let’s not forget episode 4 of Season 3 (Vindicators 3), all in the same timeline as episode 2 of Season 2.
Jerry comes bursting into the room with a gun. Unzipping his pants, Jerry orders the surgeons: “I’m a good person. And I demand that you cut off my penis and put it in that man’s chest.”
Cut back to the waiting room: Octopus Man is on interdimensional cable. The scene ends with a bit of violence (Octopus Man stabs a couple of pedestrians), and Summer makes a comment:
“Does all interdimensional TV have to rely on juvenile violence?”
Then Morty goes on a diatribe: “Well, Summer, maybe people that create things aren’t concerned with your delicate sensibilities! You know?! M-maybe the species that communicate with each other through the filter of your comfort are less evolved than the ones that just communicate! Maybe your problems are your own to deal with, and maybe the public giving a shit about your feelings is a one-way ticket to extinction!”
Rick: “Geez, Morty. I take it Katherine Hefflefinger hasn’t texted you back yet?”
Morty: “I don’t want to talk about it.”
While mildly comical, this scene seems a bit out of place. Not sure how or if Morty’s outburst ties into the greater themes of this episode. I don’t think Katherine Hefflefinger is a real person–maybe some girl at Morty’s high school. In any case, we may be seeing the beginning of some dangerously repressed rage on Morty’s part as this will be the central theme in the next episode.
They’re interrupted by Breaking News streaming a live feed of Jerry attempting to take the doctors in the operating room hostage. “It’s gotta be from an alternate reality, right?” says Rick seemingly having learnt from the previous incident of a Jerry Smith appearing on Breaking News of some interdimensional cable channel. Security guards rush by casting some doubt on Rick’s words. They rush into the operating room. “Sir!!!” they yell at Jerry, “Put the gun down and step away from Mr. Pibbles!” Beth and Summer enter the room. Jerry pleads “I’m a good person,” almost as though begging everyone in the room to acknowledge his good side. At the same time, Beth points out that the “gun” he’s holding isn’t a gun at all, it’s the XP-20 XS. It starts to vibrate. Jerry drops it. Beth motions for Jerry to back away from Mr. Pibbles and come towards them. Jerry, still hellbent on proving that he’s a good person, drops his pants and says one more time “I’m a good person,” before racing towards Mr. Pibbles and leaping towards him (not sure what his plan was… lodge his penis into Mr. Pibbles’ chest and stay there?). The security guards open fire shooting 57 holes into Jerry’s body (Beth actually says 57 later). Beth and Summer scream in horror. Morty, watching on the television, looks in complete disbelief. Even Rick looks shocked.
So there’s one more interdimensional cable program to mention: Butthole Ice Cream Parlor. This is a ice cream parlor that dispenses ice cream through butt holes. Now, I think we have to presume they aren’t real butt holes, but orifices designed to look like butt holes. But there you have it: strawberry, chocolate, vanilla, and all kinds of flavors spewing out straight from a butt hole. This is the first thing Jerry sees as he wakes up in a hospital bed, apparently now completely fixed up. The whole family is standing around looking at him. After Beth explains what happened, Jerry responds: “All I wanted was for everyone to like me.” Then Beth drives it home: “Jerry, remember that time you left a comment underneath that youtube video and someone replied and called you a dumb ass so you replied and told them it takes one to know one and then you stayed up all night hitting refresh on your browser waiting for them to reply and then you fell asleep crying… this is like that; you can’t make people like you, you just have to wait for hating you to bore them.”
^ Some very wise words indeed.
Jerry takes those wise words to heart: “You know, you’re right. I shouldn’t be motivated by other people’s opinions of me.” But they don’t really sink in. Rick says “All right guys, let’s go home,” to which Jerry replies “If it’s all the same to you, Rick, I’d like to go to the zoo… with my family.” Everyone scoffs at the idea. Jerry relents: “Ok, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, we’ll go home!”
^ I think that’s supposed to be Jerry once again caring about what other people think of him. But if so, it’s kind of a poor example. He could go alone to the zoo, but he said he wanted to go with his family. And if they don’t want to go, what the hell can he do about it? Dragging them along is not the same as simply not caring what they think.
The post-credit scene has Jerry sneaking into Rick’s cupboard in the kitchen and sneaking some of his “eye holes”. Then the eye hole man comes crashing through the window on a rope and lands on Jerry’s shoulders pounding him on the head. He screams through his megaphone: “Give me my eye holes! Give me my eye holes!” The rest of the family (Morty, Summer, and Rick) come rushing in. Summer and Morty try to tear the eye hole man off Jerry while Rick just leans back looking disappointed at Jerry for going into his cupboard.
This also might be a hint that we are looking at an alternate timeline to C-137. I mean, I suppose there would be nothing inconsistent about C-137 featuring the eye hole man, but knowing Roiland and Harmon, they would usually make realities featuring odd or zany characters or aspects other than C-137 (like the Eric Stoltz reality). So this might be taken as a further sign that we weren’t following C-137 in this episode.
=========================
PHILOSOPHICAL INSIGHTS
Unfortunately, this episode of Rick and Morty didn’t offer a lot in the way of deep philosophy. The only thing that stands out is Jerry’s incessant need for external validation, so let’s elaborate on that:
How far would you go to be liked? Would you amputate a part of your body to be lauded around the galaxy as a hero? Would it make a difference if refusing to do so meant letting the entire galaxy down? Most of us probably watch this episode thinking Jerry a complete twerp, but it’s always easy to say this from the side lines. Put yourself in his shoes–if you refuse to donate your penis (or vagina or whatever) then not only will you be known throughout the galaxy as a selfish prick who cares more about himself than peace and harmony across the galaxy, but you could be responsible for warfare and death upon possibly millions of beings across the galaxy. Tougher cookies to chew than it seems at first, isn’t it? And what about taking Beth’s advise? How easy would it be to wait for people to stop hating you? Is that actually good advise? In Jerry’s case, probably. He’s enough of a nobody for people to eventually forget about him. But does it always work that way? Don’t some nobody’s become infamous for something embarrassing or terrible they’ve done? And couldn’t they go down in history as “that guy”? All these considerations would weigh upon one’s mind when placed in a sticky situation like that which Jerry found himself in in this episode.
FINAL THOUGHTS
There are a few episodes in the Rick and Morty series in which Jerry gets to experience the ultimate pinnacle of fame and glory, two of which are M. Night Shaym-Aliens! in which Jerry wins an award for “Hungry for Apples” and Something Ricked in which he becomes a celebrity to the Plutonians. This could have been a third, but the intent seems to have been to force Jerry to struggle for fame and glory rather than have it fall into his lap, and for him to fail miserably. On the other hand, he failed miserably in the other two cases as well. In M. Night Shaym-Aliens!, the simulator shut down, causing the ceremony and the award itself to disappear right in front of him. In Something Ricked, Jerry actually manned up, choosing to surrender his fame and glory for his son. And I suppose in this episode, he actually did get to enjoy, for a brief moment, the same fame and glory (the pinnacle of which would be his speech at the podium), but lost it in an attempt to weasel out of having to give up his penis without giving up his fame and glory. ← Out of the three, this is probably the most sordid way of losing fame and glory and probably the most deserved. In M. Night Shaym-Aliens!, Jerry simply had no choice. In Something Ricked, he did the honorable thing and really didn’t deserve to be despised by the Plutionians. In this episode, however, his attempts to demonize Mr. Pibbles was not a cool move, and not only earned him the hate of everyone in the room and across the galaxy, but lead him down a path of desperation and insanity. I don’t know if he deserved to be shot in the end, but one can only hope he learned a lesson about allowing his need for external validation to take him to extreme ends.
I’m also second guessing my theory that the presence of a gear person indicates an alternate timeline. Again, this theory says that there is only one timeline that features gear people, which would mean that the timeline we were following in Mortynight Run is the same timeline we followed in Ricksy business and Vindicators 3, but this also means that any episode in which the big crack surrounding the Smith’s house exists, the one caused by teleporting the entire house to an alternate dimensions during the house party, is part of that same timeline. And we see that crack in A Rickle in Time and in Auto Erotic Assimilation, the latter being the very episode I insinuated, with my theory of Urban Patoi Jerry, was a return to dimension C-137. ← So that destroys that theory. Of course, it’s possible that in both realities, Rick and Morty threw a house party during which the house got teleported to another dimension, but if we’re gonna say that, why not say it’s possible that in both realities there exist gear people? At this point, I’m satisfied to put that theory to rest.
Rick and Morty - S2E9 - Look Who’s Purging Now
On a leisure cruise through space, Morty tells Rick how nice it is to be travelling with him. Kind of a sentimental moment. Rick concurs, talking about how “it’s nice to get back to the basics after a pretty intense mixed bag of a year,” sort of signaling that we’re reaching the end of the season. Then an alien bug hits the windshield. Rick turns on the wipers, smearing bug guts all over the windshield. He realizes they’re out of windshield washer fluid and heads to a nearby planet to pick some up.
They land in a small rural town where the locals are cat people:
I understand that, generally in the Rick and Morty series, Roiland and Harmon want to make extraterrestrial beings look like aliens, but in this case they don’t. They look like cats. And I suppose I’m not one to say what aliens are supposed to look like… but they’re cats. And I don’t even know what the theme of cats (if that’s indeed what they’re supposed to be) has to do with this episode, but maybe I’ll come up with a theory in the course of dissecting this episode. And this is not to mention the fact that they speak perfect English… which is what we all expect from an alien species that has had no contact with Earthlings.
But trying to look past the English speaking cat people, the setting is like a scene out of a Steven King movie: small town, southern US accents, religious folk. From the ship, Rick asks one of the locals if they have any wiper fluid. The cat man points him to the general store, and then warns that they’ll want to be gone by sun down. When Rick asks why, he explains: “Sun down’s when the festival begins… for millennia, our society has been free of crime, war, living in perfect peace.” Rick starts up in excitement: “Oh! I know what this is! You’ve been able to sustain world peace because you have one night a year where you all run around robbing and murdering each other without consequence… [turns to Morty] It’s like The Purge Morty, th-that movie The Purge?.. I’ve been to a few planets with the same gimmick. You know, sometimes it’s called the cleansing, or the red time. There was this one world that called it just murder night. I-I-It’s a purge planet. They’re peaceful, and then, you know, they just purge.”
I was gonna watch The Purge in preparation for this installment, but unfortunately it’s not for rent. You have to buy it. And I’m certain it sucks. Definitely not worth $10. So here’s the trailer instead. Enjoy!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0LLaybEuzA[/youtube]
^ A glimpse into your future, perhaps?
Morty, riding his usual moral high horse, expresses his contempt for such an idea. Rick concurs: “Yeah… wanna check it out?”
So in this episode, they’re gonna check out the purge, and as you can probably guess, get stuck here and consequently take part in the purge. And the underlying philosophical theme of this episode is that of balancing morality with suppressed rage. If there is a question to summarize this theme, it is this: does attempting to live a moral life (ex. Morty) result in repressed violent and murderous impulses that sooner or later need to be purged? This will be another episode much like Mortynight Run in that Morty, at first, is all preachy and morally staunch only to break down later and go completely against his initial moral attitude, learning a valuable lesson in the process. But there are some differences too. For one thing, it’s not as clear in this episode that Morty learns anything. There’s a brief moment at the end when he tells Rick “I guess you were right, I’ve got a lot of repressed stuff I need to deal with,” but then Rick assures him that his rage most likely came from purgenal, a chemical in a candy bar he ate. Second, whereas in this episode, we could say Morty turns out to be a hypocrite, we can’t so much say that in Mortynight Run; in the latter episode, Morty simply realizes he made a mistake, and goes against his initial intentions in order to rectify that mistake. Morty may have been naive, we could say, but that’s different from hypocrisy.
Morty tops off the windshield washer fluid while Rick chats with an old timer sitting in his rocking chair outside the general store. The washer fluid is on the house he says and throws in a couple candy bars. The contrast between the kindness of these folks and the psychopathic rage which is about to ensue is intentional. The sun is almost set and Morty is eager to get out of Dodge.
They finally take off. Rick has the brilliant idea of sticking around a while to watch the purge. Morty thinks it’s an outrageously idiotic idea, but it’s Rick’s ship and he pulls rank.
Morty: “You’re the worst! This planet is the worst! How can you be into this?! You know, people are going to kill each other.”
Rick: “So what? Y-y-you’re trying to sit here tell me th-belch-th-that there’s a video online with someone getting decapitated, you don’t click on it?”
Morty: “No! W-Why would I do that? You do that?”
Rick: “I don’t. Because it would bore me. I see shit like that for breakfast, Morty. But if you don’t do it, I say it’s because you’re afraid of your own primal instincts. So you stuff 'em down and-Oh! Oh! Shh, shh, it’s starting.”
This is another common theme that rears its head in philosophy sometimes–the notions that murderous rage and lust for violence is a “primal instinct”. This is subtly different from the aforementioned theme of repressed rage being the result of living a moral or civilized life. The latter would seem to imply that murderous rage and the lust for violence aren’t primal instincts per se but what happens to otherwise innocuous instincts (relatively speaking) when constantly kept in check and deprived of release–instincts such as freely venting to someone who upset you or getting relatively mild revenge on someone who pissed you off. We must be allowed to release these feelings on a regular basis–somehow, someway–so that they can be satisfied when they are small and require little in the way of repercussions–otherwise, they eventually burst from the cage we keep them in and become murderous rage and the lust for violence. Perhaps the truth is a combination of these two. Perhaps we should say that when repressed and compelled to build up, these feelings and impulses don’t thereby cease to be primal instincts, but rather become the accumulation of our primal instincts after they have piled up and can no longer be contained. Perhaps what Rick meant when he told Morty that he stuffs his primal instincts down is just the ordinary everyday primal instincts of wanting to stand up for himself or lash out at the things that annoy him. The stuff most normal people do. Perhaps it’s a statement about how over the top Morty is about following the moral path, of always worrying about the right thing to do (as opposed to how we all just want to murder and shed blood but are too afraid to admit it). Rick’s statement may not even have hinted that there is a raging psychopath inside Morty, just that his aversion to murder and carnage is a consequence of his excessive morality. I mean, I think most of us would agree that murder and blood shed are horrible things, and hopefully none of us would partake in it, but what about Rick’s question: would you click on a video of someone being decapitated? I mean, it’s not the same thing as committing murder or violence yourself–not by a long shot–and I think there would be at least a bit of curiosity in most people. Would you click? Morty says he wouldn’t, but I don’t think we ought to be surprised should we find him to be in the minority.
Turns out, however, that Rick may be a little too in touch with his “primal instincts”–after taking in the spectacle of blood and gore below, watching the blood as it splatters on the windshield, Rick admits to maybe having gorged a bit too much: “Man, I think my eyes were bigger than my stomach on this one, Morty,” and then pukes out the side of the ship. ← Is this another one of the many contrasts between Rick and Morty in the series? Morty being the one too much in denial of his primal instincts, Rick being the one too much in touch with them?
Just then, a cry of fear catches Morty’s attention. A young cat-girl around the same age as Morty is trying to fend off with a torch a group of older blood thirsty cat-men. She’s caught between them and a huge bail of hay. She’s dressed a bit like Alice in Wonderland. She looks terrified.
She’s surprisingly good looking for a cat person.
I find it odd that these guys are killing indiscriminately. I mean, I think the idea of releasing pent up rage is that you get to take revenge on people who pissed you off, or you don’t like, or just annoy you. These guys are killing each other completely arbitrarily. What did this girl ever do to these guys? It kinda raises the question: are these supposed “primal instincts” that we all repress deep down inside built on anger and hatred, or do we all hide a indiscriminate thirst for blood for its own sake?
After purging a little himself, Rick says, “All right, Morty. L-let’s get outta here.”
“W-w-wait, hold on,” says Morty, “W-w-we have to go down there.”
Rick responds with the “non-interference policy,” which supposedly everyone in space follows. Morty blackmails Rick threatening to tell his mom about this. Rick replies, “You little turd.”
It’s interesting that just a few seconds ago, Rick threatened to purge Morty if he told his mom. Now Morty seems to be calling his bluff… and it worked.
It’s also noteworthy that the only time Morty’s interested in interfering with the purge is when a cute young cat-girl is in trouble. This could have been just as valid a reason to interfere for any of the other victims down there, but because this one strikes a cord on Morty’s libido, it all of a sudden matters. I suppose there is this one difference in the case of cat-girl: she seems genuinely to want to escape, actually screaming for help, and is not trying to purge upon anyone else. But she can’t be the only one on this planet, and it’s definitely obvious that Morty is thinking like all young adolescent males think.
And if we think about this a little deeper, we might point out a connection to the Freudian concepts of the “life wish” and the “death wish”. The life wish and the death wish are Freud’s concepts of the two major impulses that drive human nature. The death wish–the desire to kill your competition–is one side of the strategy for surviving; and other side–the desire for sex and reproduction–compliments the first. These two are usually expressed in terms of hate and love. And in this scene of Rick and Morty, it could be said that Rick is being driven by his death wish–the desire to see others brutally maimed and destroyed, perhaps vicariously satisfying some deeply routed hatred–while Morty is being driven by his life wish–the desire to save another out of love or affection.
Rick squashes one of the three cat-men with his ship. He gets out, shoots the second one, and the third one flees. Morty reassures the girl that they aren’t gonna hurt her and introduces himself and Rick as tourists.
More cat people come over the hill. Rick gets out his gun and starts shooting them. He gets a rush out of it:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhqDYcsxuqk[/youtube]
This is so reminiscent of Mortynight Run–the way Rick points out the irony of killing a shit ton of people just to save one life–kind of like the way they killed a shit ton of gear people just to save Fart (who turned out to be a threat to all carbon based life in the end). It also brings up an interesting question: does the number of people you kill matter if it’s for the sake of saving a life. The trolley thought experiment comes to mind: is it justified to allow the five people to be run over by the trolley in order to save the one person? On a purely utilitarian analysis, the answer is obviously no. But what about on the basis of innocence versus guilt. ← This extra twist changes the question somewhat–as if to say the five people on the track are all serial rapists whereas the one person is innocent of any wrong doing–and in this scene, it’s much the same. They aren’t merely killing a bunch of people to save one life, but a bunch of guilty people (at least for the night) to save an innocent life. And then there’s the question of Rick’s enthusiasm: if you have to take out a few lives to save an innocent person, should it be pleasurable or should you do so reluctantly? Should anyone care how Rick feels about it? And is he taking pleasure in the killing itself or simple the opportunity to do something few people ever get to do at all. I’ve often asked myself the same question: if I could murder someone and get away with it, would I? I don’t think I would, but there’s always that curious side to me–willing to try anything at least once to see what it’s like, or to be able to say I did it.
In any case, while we can dig out some deep philosophy from this scene, it’s meant to be a parody, more or less making fun of what Morty got them into.
Morty offers to protect Arthricia (who introduces herself as such) in their ship. So that’s what they do. They get in their ship and wait out the purge safely above the blood bath.
Morty tries to start some small talk with Arthricia. He asks about whether it took the cat people time to ease into the purge or it started all at once. Arthricia says it took some time.
Quite late into the episode, we cut to the secondary plotline (which eventually will merge into the primary plotline). It’s quite simple. It features only Summer and Jerry. Summer’s lying on the couch doing something on her iphone. Jerry comes in and asks:
“Watchya doin? Watching some TV? Playing on your phone?”
Summer: “Is that a real question?”
Jerry: “Making conversation.”
Summer: “Are you? What part of that gives me anything to work with? My choice is to say nothing, be sarcastic, or bark ‘yes’ like a trained animal. It’s not a conversation, you’re holding me verbally hostage.”
Jerry: “Ok, ass face, I’ll go in the kitchen.”
Summer: “Hey dad. [Jerry: yeah]. Watchya doin? Going into the kitchen? [Jerry: OK]. Yeah, you like that? [Jerry: Screw you.]”
Now, Jerry’s always good for a laugh. It’s always fun to walk all over him and make fun of him. He’s an easy target. But it seems obvious some cockroach crawled up Summer’s ass. The episode doesn’t go into what that might be, but it just as well might be Jerry himself. A simple conversation starter like “watchya doin?” may, in all other circumstances, be innocent, but in this case, Jerry’s up to something. And we’ll find out later. For now, we can only surmise that Summer must have somehow sensed it.
Morty asks Arthricia another boring purge question. She says she’s tired of answering purge questions. A moment of awkward silence follows. Arthricia suddenly blurts out “My nana! My nana! We have to save her!” They land by an old abandoned shack. Rick, in a suspicious tone, asks her, “You just now remembered your nana exists?” Accepting her questionable reply, they (Rick and Arthricia) exit the ship and go into the shack. Rick brings his gun. Morty stays behind in the ship. After a few seconds of silence, Morty sees a couple laser blasts shoot through the roof. Then Arthricia comes out with Rick’s gun looking all bad ass. She points the gun at Morty in the ship and tells him to get out. Morty, with his hands in the air, exits the ship allowing Arthricia to get in. Before taking off, she says, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. But that’s not really worth anything tonight, is it?”
After Arthricia abandons them, Morty runs into the shack to find Rick on the ground with a laser shot through his liver and flames all around. “Morty!” he says, “The amish bitch shot me!” He points out the fact that without his gun, the ship, and his portal gun (which was in the ship), they’re like the rest of the cat people. Morty helps Rick to his feet. They make their way out of the burning shack as Rick says “She got me right in the goddam liver, Morty. It’s the hardest working liver in the galaxy, Morty. Now it has a hole in it.”
More cat people come over the hill. Rick, being too incapacitated, pushes Morty to do something. As one cat person charges towards them, Morty raises his arms in the air and shouts, “We come in peace!” Rick says, in a despairing tone, “Oh my God.” He then pulls out a small device from his lab coat and throws it at the cat person charging towards them. It completely disintegrates him upon impact. Rick pulls out another device from his lab coat and shouts to the rest of them: “There’s more where that came from! You wanna get purged, you bring it! Drop-belch-Drop your shit! Drop it all!” They drop their weapons. Rick then tells Morty to get their weapons, and that he only had one of those devices; the object he’s holding now is a box of tic tacs.
Jerry makes a second attempt to get on Summer’s good side. He brings in a box of crackers. “Are you ready to be nice to me?” he asks. “In exchange for crackers?” says Summer. Summer calls him out on his antics: “Dad, get a job. You’re trying to create drama because you’re bored.”
Then the “space phone” rings from underneath the couch cushions. Summer reaches in to get it. It’s Rick. He and Morty are in a shack (possibly the same one that was burning earlier). Rick, in typical scientific fashion, is preparing something chemically. Morty is looking out the window watching for purgers. Rick is on what deceptively looks like a regular old cell phone.
What happens next is so typical of what happens when you need immediate help from someone but you have to explain your situation to them first. They become distracted by the questions and confusions that your explanation invokes and completely forget that you need help now.
Rick: “Hey Summer, it’s grandpa. I need you to do me a favor.”
Summer: “I can barely hear you.”
Jerry: “Who is it?”
Rick: “Morty and I are on a planet that’s purging. I need you to-”
Summer: “A plan that’s what?”
Rick: “We’re on a planet that’s purging, Summer, purging! We lost my car and my gun and we’re in a purge!”
Jerry: “Oo, is it Taddy Mason?”
Summer: “Like the movie The Purge?”
Rick: “Yes, I need you to take-”
Summer: “That movie sucked.”
Rick: “Oh my God, hold on!” Rick drops the phone on the table and puts it on speaker. They hear:
Jerry: “It’s not Taddy Mason?”
Summer: “Dad, who the fucked is Taddy Mason?”
Anyway, while still having the conversation (and while Jerry and Summer argue about who Taddy is), Rick applies his chemical concoction to his wound and heals himself, bellowing out in a bit of pain in the process. In reaction, Summer puts them on speaker.
(Realistically, it should take years, depending on where cat planet is, for the signal to travel to and from each phone… but then again, most of Rick’s technology is based on reality hopping, which includes teleportation within a single reality. Maybe the signal just goes through a portal.)
While the conversation continues, a cat person barges through the door with a pitch fork:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzUn7nqFiXk[/youtube]
^ Too much in that scene to write it all out.
Rick tells Summer to go find a red box in the garage with a key pad on it, and to take the box outside and enter the code on the key pad. Before she leaves to do so, Jerry questions, “Is it just part of growing up to hate your dad?” “I’m ignoring you,” Summer replies.
^ Jerry is really being made out to be pathetic in this episode (more so than usual) and it keeps getting worse with every scene. And don’t forget, Jerry’s up to something.
Rick and Morty make their way to a lighthouse:
Morty, still on his moral high horse, reminds Rick that he’s not willing to purge anyone. Rick admonishes: “Morty, if we’re gonna survive tonight, you’re gonna need to harness your repressed rage,” to which Morty snaps, “I don’t have any!!!” “Spoken like a person with repressed rage,” Rick says.
^ This is a bit of foreshadowing. Morty’s lid is about to blow, and what transpires in the lighthouse will be the trigger.
They ring the door bell. An unarmed old cat-man opens the door. “I take no part in the festival,” he says, “If you desire to kill me, I only ask you do it quickly.” They tell him they’re only here to send a beacon from the top of the light house. The cat-man agrees so long as Morty listens to his tale.
While Rick sets up the beacon at the top of the light house, Morty and the cat-man sit on the main level. There are candles lit and the sounds of a crackling fire can be heard. The cat-man opens a rather large book while Morty chows down on one of the candy bars the old man at the general store gave them. The cat-man’s tale reads like a long and boring movie script:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyMO_uw_TfY[/youtube]
Summer makes her way into the garage followed by Jerry nagging here about talking to him. She’s cognizant enough to realize, in here own words, that Rick and Morty’s situation takes slightly higher priority than Jerry’s situation of being unemployed and bored. She pulls the box off the shelf, sits it on the garage floor, punches in the code, and watches as the box opens up:
^ This sophisticated contraption is the beacon seeker–particularly the orb sitting atop. It fires up, making machine-like noises while smoke spews out from several orifices. “Look,” says Jerry meanwhile, “I’m your father, and I love you, is all I’m saying. I’ll leave it at that.” ← Not quite true as we shall see later. The orb suddenly takes off, bursting a hole through the roof. “Oh, he might have said to take it outside,” says Summer (he did).
Rick, atop the light house, puts together his beacon, an odd contraption put together with various random gadgets (I see a frying pan, a fishing road, a clock, and a funnel, among several other miscellaneous items), and attaches it to the railing:
^ Not sure where he got all the parts (odd that the cat people have very similar accessories to us), but if he can make an intelligence amplifier for Snuffles out of random kitchen trinkets, I’m sure he’d have no problem building a beacon out of whatever the cat people have to offer.
(I also find it funny that he’s building a beacon atop a light house, which itself is a kind of beacon.)
Meanwhile, Morty is bored to tears listening to the cat man’s dull script. He finishes it.
Morty: “Wow.”
Catman: “Yeah.”
Morty [insincerely]: “It’s… G-good job. Good job.”
Catman: “You liked it?”
Morty: “Of course I did.”
Catman: “You didn’t laugh at the scene in the bar.”
Morty: “I… thought it was funny but… I wanted to hear the rest.”
Catman: “D’you have any thoughts? Notes?”
Morty: “Nope. I-I j-just enjoyed it. That’s my note. You know? Please write more.”
Catman: “Seems a little insincere.”
Morty: “What? No!”
Catman: “You don’t have to mollycoddle me. I want to improve my writing. Tell me your real thoughts.”
Morty: “All right, well um… I’m not a huge fan, personally, of the whole three weeks earlier teaser thing. I feel like, you know, we should start our stories where they begin, not start them when they get int-”
Catman [stands up]: “Get out.”
Morty [recoiling]: “Um… what?”
Catman: “No, I’m sick of this. You bang on my door, you make me help you, I share something personal with you and you take a giant shit on it.”
Needless to say, catman won’t let them put up the beacon anymore. Both go upstairs. Catman tells Rick to tear down his beacon, calling Morty a shitty person. Rick, at first, blames Morty. Then Morty explains what really happened.
At this point, Morty is about to explode. In response to catman’s defensiveness, Morty shouts at him: “Did you want me to weep with joy?! It’s terrible!!!” When catman motions to take down the beacon, Morty pushes him back: “No! Stop! That’s not fair! Just because you hate your own writing doesn’t make me a bad person!” Then pushes him down the stairs. Catman lands at the bottom dead, blood pouring out his nose and the back of his:
“You like that?!” Morty tops it off, “You want me to cut to three weeks earlier, when you were alive?!” “Woaw, Morty,” says Rick, “You just purged.” Morty looks at his hands in realization of what he just did.
Then the beacon starts beeping. A woman’s voice is heard from it: “Beacon arriving.” Rick turns around to tend to it. “Ok, time to go,” he says, as if nothing happened.
At this point, I’m wondering if catman represents the opposite of all the others. Whereas all the others are extremely polite and harmless all year round by virtue of repressing their rage, and then let it out one day a year in a violent blood bath of death and carnage, catman seems to let out his rage in little mini-bursts whenever they arise. His overreaction to Morty’s criticism could be seen as just this. Normally, when we ask a person to criticize our work, we expect that we’re going to have to hold back a bit of rage–we expect that we probably will take some measure of offense to the criticism and therefore muster the strength to take it as constructive and helpful. Catman doesn’t muster any strength–he just let’s out whatever aggravation is provoked within him. But this is probably also why he takes no part in the festival. By letting out all his rage in little mini-bursts whenever it arises, he has no need to let it out once a year in a massive explosion of psychopathic violence.
As we see, however, this is not necessarily a good thing. If the rest of the cat people represent one extreme, he represents the other. While it can be agreed that repressing one’s rage to the point of needing a purge night once a year to let it out is unhealthy, so is reacting with offense to every little bit of constructive criticism that comes your way. Doing that, one does not give one’s self the opportunity to grow. Despite what he says, catman will never improve his writing.
I also wonder if a similar contrast exists between Rick and Morty. As we have seen earlier in this episode, Morty represents the extreme of too much repressed rage. Could it be said, therefore, that Rick represents the other extreme? Letting out his rage in little mini-bursts whenever it arises? We know that Rick doesn’t stand for criticism, even if it’s constructive, especially from Morty. Rick is certainly rude, cynical, and bitter at almost everyone, but he is also quick to forgive and forget, to go with the flow at the appropriate times. He doesn’t hold grudges. He invited members of the Council of Ricks to the house party in the season 1 finally. Rick says at the end of Vindicators 3: “Morty, 20 people try to kill me every week. I end up getting high with half of them. I mean, check it out, Gear Head’s here.” We’ll even see Rick forgive Arthricia for shooting him at the end of this episode. Is this because any resentment or hard feelings he might hold for someone, he lets out right then and there? And is therefore able to forgive and forget right away?
Summer’s work is done. The beacon seeker is on its way. She now has time to give Jerry some attention:
Summer: “Dad, what’s going on? What’s the deal here?”
Jerry: “I just wanted to spend some time with my daughter. You’re growing up so fast. You used to be my little girl.”
Summer [giggles]: “Yeah.”
Jerry: “Remember when we used to go to the playground and I’d push you on the swings?”
Summer: “Oh, you could push me higher than all the other kids.” ← Summer is really soaking it up now.
Jerry: “You were so small and cute. I thought you were gonna fly right off into the street.”
Summer [more giggling]: “I used to pee my pants.”
Jerry [puts his hands on her shoulders]: “I know. And now look at you. You have a job. You’re making really good money. You’re not paying any rent so you have plenty of disposable income.”
Summer [smile drops]: “Oh God, dad, please don’t. [holds bridge of nose]”
Jerry: “I just need a few hundred dollars to get through the month. I have some interviews coming up. Something’s gonna come through, I can feel it.”
Summer [walks out]: “I’m going inside.”
^ So there it is, the punchline. All this time, Jerry’s main objective was to borrow money from Summer. This is the pinnacle of rock bottom–when your own wife won’t give you money so you have to ask your daughter instead–and in such a manipulative way too–buttering her up with sentimental memories of when she was little, getting pushed on the swing by her daddy.
I’m curious to know what Jerry needs the money for. If it’s anything important (like finding a job), I would think Beth would be thrilled to let him use some money from their joint account (if they have one) or just give him some money (if they don’t). Since he’s coming to Summer, I have to assume he’s going behind Beth’s back, meaning she wouldn’t approve of whatever he needs the money for.
Summer seems to have allowed herself to be a bit duped. Her initial reaction, earlier in the episode, was to blow Jerry off before he even had a chance to butter her up. She somehow detected his ulterior motives. But here, she’s suckered into fond memories and a moment of warm fuzzy feelings between her and her dad, meaning that she must have temporarily forgot not to trust his motives. But it also shows that she wasn’t brushing him off earlier just to be sassy; at least when Rick called on the space phone, she was simply tending to higher priorities. But once those priorities were out of the way, she gave Jerry her undivided attention… and paid for it.
Rick and Morty make their way away from the light house (presumably to give the beacon seeker some open space to land?). Rick tries to console Morty about his recent kill, reminding him that it’s the purge, and all’s fair in love and war (or just war), but Morty’s still not having any of it. Then, the rest of the cat person clan show up, all bloody and carrying deadly weapons. They’re greeted by the old timer they met at the beginning, the one who gave them the candy bars. The cat people surround them.
Then the beacon seeker finally shows up (not sure why it targeted them rather than the beacon up at the light house; maybe when Rick said “time to go,” he meant they could take the beacon with them). It lands right in front of them and opens up into two flat discs with a rod jutting up vertically between them (yes, it’s quite phallic sounding). Rick steps onto one of the discs and presses a button at the top of the rod. Beams of yellow light project from a red bulb also atop the rod and scan Rick’s body, leaving a suite of robotic armor covering him:
Morty does the same:
Rick then fires a missile out of his arm, killing about 5 people, and follows it up with a series of bullets fired at everyone around him.
I mean, if you’re stranded on a cat planet in the middle of a purge, what else would you want a beacon to bring you? Certainly not an escape pod or maybe a portal gun. No, you want a highly sophisticated, technologically advanced, bullet shooting, missile firing, rocket equipped suit of armor with which to purge everyone back. Makes you wonder how many times Rick’s been in situations where this is exactly what he wished he had. Not to mention it’s equipped for two people. Was he thinking ahead to one of his misadventures with Morty?
Morty, of course, is still hesitant. A bunch of cat people surround Morty, throw him to the ground, and try to butcher him with their pitch forks and scythes. It has no effect, of course, since Morty’s suit of armor is thick steel, but it certainly has an effect on Morty’s rage. He becomes visibly angry; it boils up to the point when he can’t stand it any longer. He leaps to his feet, grabs a cat person and rips his head off, then, like Rick, starts firing into the crowd around him as Feels Good by Tony! Toni! Toné! plays in the background (not bad for someone who doesn’t even know how to use the suit).
After the blood bath is over, Rick steps up to a panting Morty from behind, “Geez! Wow, Morty! Now you’re getting into it. Never expected that outa ya.” He pats him on the back as if he’s all proud of his grandson.
Then they take off to find their ship (literally, they take off… with rocket thrusters at the soles of their feet). They look like some kind of superhero duo, as if Iron Man had a mini-me.
Rick discovers his ship crashed into an old store in town. When he tries to point it out to Morty, he finds Morty down on the ground shooting up more cat people. And when I say shooting up, I mean really letting it all out. It’s like the initial burst of purging he engaged in near the light house let loose a torrent of rage that just can’t be contained. Rick lands behind him, making remarks like a commenting spectator. “I uh–burp–think uh–burp–think those people were just hiding,” he says. And: “Ok, Morty, now you’re just shooting corpses.”
Rick finally decides to step in: “Ok, buddy, all right, that’s good. Good job. Time to go home,” as he rests his hands on Morty’s shoulders and ushers him away.
They head towards the ship. They find Arthricia crawling out from behind the ship. She either just crashed or she was out cold for a while. Rick aims his arm (with the embedded gun) at her ready to shoot. She begs for her life and explains that she never intended to harm them and that she’s trying to end the festival. When Rick asks her to explain, she says:
“I was going to use your ship to destroy the rich assholes who run our society and save my people from the horrors of this yearly festival.”
^ Wow, now there’s a twist I didn’t see coming.
Morty’s having none of it. He wants to kill Arthricia.
Rick: “Geez, Morty, purge it down a little.”
Morty: “Purge! Don’t purge! You’re sending me mixed messages, Rick!”
Rick: “Morty, y-burp-ou’re acting like a–burp–frickin’ lunatic. Calm down.”
Morty: “Screw you, Rick! I’ll purge you too, you old rickety piece of crap! This has been a long time coming! I’m gonna rip your fucking guts out, smear them all over your face! I ain’t takin’ no shi-” ← Rick zaps him with a laser out of this wrist (like Spiderman’s web). Morty falls unconscious.
Well, one can hardly blame Morty. What should one expect from a person who’s repressed their rage for so long and it suddenly all comes bursting out? Moderating it is a skill that hasn’t had the chance to be exercised.
Rick resumes his attention on Arthricia: “Ok, s-sorry about that. Now, where are these rich people?”
^ This seems to come out of nowhere. I haven’t seen The Purge, as I said, but I’m guessing there’s some kind of government elite or maybe a secret society that controls the purge and keeps everyone brainwashed into thinking it’s a good idea. Or maybe in the sequel (there’s 4 of them if you can believe it). In any case, I’ll bet it was planned out well in advance and fit into the plotline seamlessly–with a nice lead up to it–or something to kick it up a notch if it was introduced in one of the sequals. In this episode of Rick and Morty, however, it almost seems like something they tacked onto the end when they realized the plotline, up to this point, was too short. As a matter of fact, it kinda takes away from the underlying theme of this episode–that of purging one’s repressed rage–and replaces it with something like social conformity–that people will do whatever they’re brainwashed to do, no matter how horrific or abhorrent.
But on with the story…
“To another successful year of the festival,” says the catman at the head of the table, “Pitting poor people against each other for thousands of years.”
^ It’s not clear whether the existence of this elite is common knowledge to the ordinary cat folk or they operate in secret. The guy said they’ve been doing this for thousands of years. That’s a long time to be doing it out in the open. Arthricia certainly knows about their existence, but how she knows is not mentioned.
In any case, after the catman’s toast, Rick and Arthricia kick down the doors (or Rick does at least). Feels Good is playing in the background (presumably out of Rick’s suit of armor). Arthricia is now wearing Morty’s armor suit. Morty is still unconscious, strapped to Rick’s back with ropes, being worn like a back pack.
They approach the old catman. Rick explains themselves:
“Here’s the deal. I’m not here to judge. I’m just a guy from another planet, but this girl is one of your poor people and I guess you guys felt like it was ok to subject her to inhuman conditions because there was no chance of it ever hurting you. It’s sort of the sociopolitical equivalent of, say, a suit of power armor around you. But now things are evened out sooo… Arthricia?”
Rick backs away, allowing Arthricia to step in and begin on of the best scenes in the episode:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PbwqwndVOY[/youtube]
^ Note the clip at the end of Morty strapped to Rick’s back unconscious, swaying back and forth like a rag doll. It’s almost as if to say Morty’s missing out, like if he hadn’t lost his cool with Rick, he’d be having a whole lotta fun right now (though someone would have to go without a suit; maybe Rick would let Morty and Arthricia do the dirty work while he waited outside, giving them some bonding time).
They’re back at the village. The morning sun is rising. Arthricia thanks Rick for helping out. Rick tells her: fuck you for shooting my liver, but otherwise seems to have completely forgiven her… an example of how his mini-bursts permit him to forgive and forget. He then makes his way over to Morty who’s now awake. He tells him now’s his last chance to make something happened between Arthricia and himself (this almost counts as bestiality). So Morty approaches her:
Morty: “H-Hey Arthricia? Um, maybe I could-”
Arthricia: “Y-I have a boyfriend.”
Morty: “Okay.”
Arthricia: “I’m not trying to be rude. I just… I don’t want to lead you on.”
Morty: “I-I-I understand.”
Arthricia: “I mean, thank you so much for helping in the festival but… sigh… I have a boyfriend, and sigh he just-”
Morty: “Okay, okay, you can stop saying it. I took it okay the first time and now you’re just r-repeating stuff.”
Arthricia: “Oh, I’m sorry.”
Morty: “It’s okay.”
Arthricia: “Oh, you’re so sweet. I just–oh–but I can’t.”
Morty: “Yeah, you’re still doing it.”
^ Every nice guy’s nightmare.
Rick has a few last words with the surviving locals. They talk about how it won’t be easy building a new society from the ground up. Rick makes a very simple suggestion: if you need something, you get it. One guy mentions that he needs food. Another holds out a loaf of bread and says he’s got food but it’s for him. At the suggestion that he make extra food, he asks who will take care of his kids as he makes all that food. Another pipes up and says he’ll take care of his kids for extra food. Needless to say, a crude sort of bartering system seems in the birth throws. But it doesn’t make it too far before their inability to agree on terms erupts in the same kind of violence and butchery as the night before. Then one of them calls for the group to stop. He suggests designating a period of time in which they can get all their rage and hatred out of their system. And thus they come full circle.
Well, not quite full circle. If the purge night was previously orchestrated by the rich elite (in secrecy?), it’s now orchestrated by cat folk themselves. Not sure if there’s a subtle message here on Roiland and Harmon’s part–namely that people will do only that which they know–but it certainly counts as one of the many twists of irony in the Rick and Morty series exemplifying the futility of trying to make things better, or striving to achieve any goal at all. For all Arthricia’s efforts (and those of Rick and Morty), toppling the rich aristocracy did absolutely nothing to end the senseless tradition of the purge.
On their way home, Morty fesses up to the fact that he has repressed rage. He tells Rick he feels bad about what he did. Rick pulls out a candy bar and tells him not to worry: the candy bars they ate in the “first act” (he literally says “the first act”, breaking the fourth wall as he sometimes does) contain “purgenal”, a chemical that heightens aggressive tendencies. They take that to indicate that Morty’s violent outburst back on cat-planet wasn’t the real him. His character is “totally protected” in Rick’s words. Rick throws the candy bar to the back of the ship. The camera zooms in on it to see a label that reads: NOW PURGENOL FREE.
The post-credits scene: Jerry is sitting on the living room couch playing on his iPad while wasting energy by leaving the TV on. Beth comes in the room: “Jerry, what is Taddy Mason LLC and why is our phone bill $700?” Jerry, taken by surprise, has an incredibly guilty look on his face. All of a sudden, from the TV comes: “Hey, are you bored, lonely, just looking for a friend? Call me, Taddy Mason”:
Jerry fumbles around looking for the remote. He looks under the couch, on the table, by the TV, he starts look for the controls on the TV. All the while, Taddy Mason gives the whole spiel, how he’s a friend for hire (almost like an escort service), how it’s only $1.99 a minute, how he’ll even call you on a regular basis. Beth hears it all. Finally, in desperation, Jerry pulls the plug on the TV.
Beth, looking at him grimly, says: “Jerry, get a job.”
^ I guess that’s what Jerry needed the money for.
So at $1.99 a minute, that means Jerry spent $700 / $1.99 = 350 minutes = 5.83 hours (almost 6 hours) talking to Taddy Mason for the month. Jerry, apparently, needs a friend like a junkie needs heroin.
Never did figure out the cat theme, but to distract us from that question, here’s Tony! Toni! Toné!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfoxsfhi-kk[/youtube]
PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHTS
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The consequences of repressed rage: This episode of Rick and Morty takes the Freudian picture of the psyche to heart. It supposes that rage, or any natural impulse for that matter, is an energy that can be contained in the unconscious by defense mechanisms like repression. Freud compared this process to steam being pumped into a boiler which, when the pressure becomes too high, would blow its lid (like Morty shooting corpses). Is rage like steam that one has to blow off? And when it is repressed, is it “stored” like a permanent reservoir of emotional energy that builds up pressure the more it accumulates? If it is, then the more we repress our rage, or any emotion for that matter, the closer we bring ourselves to exploding, and the more violent the explosion when it finally happens. On the other hand, this episode might have the wrong idea. Maybe rage and other emotions naturally dissipate over time, regardless of whether we repress them or not. Maybe the boiler we force them into allows them to “leak” out in small quantities through little cracks in the structure. Maybe our rage and other emotions need to be constantly stimulated in order to stay alive. Or maybe our response to stimuli exacerbates with repeated exposure. Maybe it’s not that our rage is “stored up” but that we respond stronger every time a thing annoys us, like our brains realize that our first response obviously wasn’t enough. In any case, it is a real phenomenon. We’ve all experienced it. We can only tolerate so much. We take, and take, and take, until we’ve had enough and then we explode. How this works, the details, the exact nature of this phenomenon, is much less certain.
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The consequences of unrestrained raged: We also saw in this episode what the consequences might be of unrestrained rage. We saw this with the light house keeper and we see this all the time with Rick. Both immediately let off steam at the slightest stimulation. The consequences seem to be less murderous rage, a weaker impulse to violence. This would be just the inverse of the previous point (the consequences of repressed rage). Sure, there are frequent annoying mini-bursts–the lighthouse keeper’s intolerance of Morty’s criticism, Rick’s disrespectful treatment towards Morty about almost everything–but it also permits those around them to not feel their lives are threatened. The lighthouse keeper welcomes Rick and Morty into his lighthouse peacefully. Rick, while unquestionably abusive to Morty, never wanted to beat or kill him like the participants in the purge did. So it stands to question: does letting out one’s rage in frequent mini-bursts prevent one from wanting the occasional major purge?
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Does fighting amongst ourselves keep us in poverty: This is a question that seemed to slip into the episode after Arthricia introduced the rich elite. The discussion among the cat people near the end seemed to imply that violence was an alternative to a free market economy, that they had been participating in the festival for so long, a free market economy was a foreign concept to them. This further implies that all their rage was based on each one’s unwillingness get what they want from each other, to participate in a give-and-take dynamic. The windshield washer fluid, recall, was “on the house”. Rick told them, recall, that “if you need something, you get it.” Could it be that this is what the rich elite were orchestrating? That the means by which they “pit poor people against each other for thousands of years” was by making them believe that taking what they want is an unforgivable evil and giving freely is a moral imperative? The idea, then, is that if anyone got what they needed from someone else, it would be by shear coincidence, not because one asked for it or others somehow knew that one needed it. This, therefore, might sew the seeds of hatred and resentment over the fact that one rarely gets what one needs from others, and this supposedly builds up a rage that must be purged once a year. If so, this strategy would seem to have prevented the regular cat folk from becoming self-sufficient in creating their own wealth–that is, by forming their own free market economy. Many questions were left unanswered after introducing this plot twist: for example, did the rich elite provide for the poor cat folk? Was it like a welfare system? Keeping them just at the level of sustenance? Or did the one sided constant giving suffice to supply everyone with what they needed despite that no one asked or paid for anything. If this instilled repressed resentment amongst the cat folk (mind you, this is my conjecture, not Roiland and Harmon’s), why didn’t the cat folk simply lash out at each other whenever it became too much? Who convinced them to save it for the festival, and why? And how did the rich elite convince them to give freely and never take what they need in the first place? In any case, it reminds me a lot of the Democratic party of the United States–maintaining a welfair state amongst the poor disenfranchised and keeping them there by maintaining violence and crime amongst them rather than trade and business. ← It would seem, then, that if fighting amongst ourselves doesn’t keep us in poverty, a rich elite with just those plans might.
Rick and Morty - S2E10 - The Wedding Squanchers
Sitting around the breakfast table, Jerry tries to impress the family by enlightening them about the trick to eating cereal: “The trick to cereal is keeping 70% above the milk.” Beth responds by telling him to get a job. There’s a knock at the door. Rick prompts Jerry to get it. Jerry obeys. In comes this grotesque looking pink blob floating in the air:
It seems half organic, half robotic, and all gross. It hovers into the kitchen saying, “Delivery for Rick, Morty, Summer, Beth, and Jerry.”
“It’s like the intergalactic version of UPS but less off putting,” says Rick. Why a machine that transports deliveries has to be half organic is never explained. Rick reaches under one of its slimy flaps and pulls out a robotic egg:
“Oh, shiiit!” celebrates Rick, “It’s an eggvite from Bird Person.” He cracks it open. Out pops an animated hologram of Bird Person and Tammy announcing their wedding:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YBIt287Iew[/youtube]
Rick proceeds to chuck it in the garbage while Summer gleefully expresses her joy that her good friend Tammy is getting married (two a middle aged half-man/half-bird from another planet). Rick sits back down as “courier flaps” asks if he wishes to RSVP or send a gift. Rick responds with a firm No! “Weddings are basically funerals with cake,” he says, “If I wanted to watch someone throw their life away, I-burp-I’d hang out with Jerry all day.”
Beth urges Rick to reconsider:
Beth: “Dad, you have a friend that’s getting married. That’s a big deal.”
Jerry: “It’s a big deal he has a friend.”
Rick: “What do you know about friendship, Jerry?”
Courier flaps: “Confirmed. Shipping Jerry.”
Courier flaps sucks up Jerry (more like slurps up) and departs out the front door.
In response to Beth asking where it’s taking Jerry, Rick says, “I assume planet Squanch, 6 thousand light years across the galaxy.” (The Milky Way galaxy is 53 thousand light years wide.) “T-T-That’s-That’s insane!” bellows out Morty. Rick responds: “Yeah, I know, now we have to go to the wedding.”
This episode, the last of season 2 (and the last I’ll write about), is about friendship, trust and betrayal. Rick learns several valuable lessons by the end, the least of which is who his closest connections are, and what that means. What does it mean? Throughout all two seasons so far, Rick’s been quite an asshole–insensitive, abusive, closed off, and in denial about the slightest suggestion that he cares. It becomes evidently clear in this episode that the reason for this is that Rick suffers fear of betrayal. But when he learns who his true loved ones are–and what love means–he learns the betrayal he was so afraid of is worth going through for the sake of those loved ones. This gives way, for the first time in the series, to a moral calling on Rick’s part–a moral calling that beckons Rick to put his family ahead of his own self-interest.
The whole family, sans Jerry, are flying in Rick’s ship, dressed to the nines for the wedding… all except Rick who, of course, wears his familiar lab coat, blue shirt, and brown pants. They land on planet Squanch.
It must have taken them a little over 6 thousand years to get here, so they’re understandably tired. Or maybe not. The only way they could have gotten here in reasonable time is if they traveled through a portal. If anyone’s seen the season 3 debut, you know that Rick’s the only one who knows the technology of interdimensional travel, so we have to assume that courier flaps, if it indeed traveled through a portal to get to Earth and then back to Squanch, could not have hopped between dimensions. This means that planet Squanch, as well as Bird Person and all his friends, live in the same universe as Rick and the Smiths. If we can assume the Bird Person and the Squanchy we see in every episode are the same Bird Person and Squanchy, that links the universe of this episode with that of Get Schwifty and Ricksy Business.
Squanchy welcomes them to planet Squanch, and introduces himself to Beth who hasn’t seen him before. Beth gets a crash course in how to speak Squanch. You basically use the word “squanch” at least once in every sentence. The listener infers what you mean by the context. So Beth tries it: “I squanch my family.” They all look at her as though she said something appalling. “Stop saying it! Gross!” says Squanchy (of all people). He then invites everyone to cock-squanches.
Courier flaps then shows up and spits out Jerry (so the rest of the family beat him obviously). Jerry, covered in goo, stands up. Beth, who stays behind, throws a tuxedo on him and tells him to change.
The wedding is much like any other scene in the Rick and Morty series featuring a large gathering of aliens from all over the galaxy (like the house party from the season 1 finally):
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfbNWwVbt0I[/youtube]
The buildings look a lot like those on Bird Person’s home planet (as seen in Get Schwifty). I wonder if Bird People and Squanches (if that’s what they’re called) share the same planet.
The Smiths meet up with Tammy. Tammy and Summer scream as they hug each other. Tammy shows off her huge acorn ring (it’s literally a ring with an acorn on it). “It was Bird Person’s grandmother’s. She fought a squirrel for it.”
Then Bird Person shows up. He’s all dress to the nines as well (as far as Bird People go):
Bird Person: “Rick, I am pleased you and your family could witness my melding with Tammy.”
Beth: “Our pleasure.”
Rick: “Yeah, I just hope you got a pre-meld.”
Morty: “Rick!”
Rick: “What?! It’s just a practical way of making sure that when she’s done with you, you can get one of your balls back.”
Beth: “Jesus dad.”
Morty: “He’s just grumpy from the flight.”
Rick: “Oh, I-I-I was happy on the flight. [walks away] I’m grumpy from the landing.”
^ It seems Rick not only doesn’t like weddings, but being at one takes a major toll on his mood. It stands to question whether it’s being at a wedding or being at Bird Person’s wedding.
But Rick’s not the only one. Beth is going through a few motions as well: when Jerry starts networking with an alien (introducing himself as an advertiser), Beth rags on him for it:
Beth: “Jerry, stop networking, we’re in space.”
Jerry: “Jerry, get a job. Jerry, don’t look for a job at an alien wedding. I don’t get you.”
Beth: “This is the closest I’ve ever gotten to this part of my father’s life. I don’t want to blow it.”
Jerry: “I get it. I’m cramping your style.”
Beth: “You say you get it, but I’m scared you’ll keep doing it.”
^ I’m not sure who has the bigger stick up their ass–Rick or Beth–but it seems the stick comes from two completely different places; with Rick, it comes from being at this wedding; with Beth, it comes from her yearning to get closer to her father and feeling threatened that Jerry will ruin it. (And for the record, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to network at an alien wedding considering this is probably not the last time the Smith family will encounter aliens, particularly once they’re connected through Tammy and Bird Person’s marriage.)
Tammy’s parents approach them. Beth suggests: “Look, here’s some humans you can practice on.” But does Jerry make a good impression? Well, just watch:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AduWheQV-UY[/youtube]
^ Jerry may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but he isn’t this dumb. He’s being an ass on purpose. Maybe it’s to spite Beth, or maybe he’s taking Beth’s words to heart: they’re at an alien wedding so don’t try so hard (though I think her point was it makes more sense to network with humans than aliens). In any case, he’s going out of his way to make a bad impression. Beth sends him to the corner to talk to nobody.
Morty approaches Rick at the bar. He gives him a little pep talk to try to lighten him up. He accuses Rick of not being very supportive of Bird Person on his big day. “Bird Person’s big day, Morty,” says Rick, “was at Blood Ridge, on Glapflap’s third moon, against the Gromflomites. This… this is a losing battle.” ← A little bit of background into Rick and Bird Person’s history. Morty responds with some fairly mature advice: “What do you think’s gonna happen if you open yourself up a little bit? I mean, look around. This is your family and friends all around you, you know? Take the day off. There’s nothing to run from. Nothing to fight.” ← It’s a really good point. This is one of the rare moments in their adventures together when there’s nothing to be upset about. If there’s any occasion when Rick should be happy, enjoy himself and be sociable, this is it. Rick does look around the place, scoping out all his friends and family, watching as they have a good time, indicating that he is thinking about Morty’s advise, but as usual, he blows it off with a snide insult about lame advise he knows nothing about.
While Morty tries to work through Rick’s issues, Beth works on her own with Bird Person.
Beth: “Ah, sounds like you and my dad have a long history together. Wish I could say the same.”
Bird Person: “The road your father and I walk together is soaked deeply with the blood of both friends and enemies.”
Beth: “Must be nice. Um, I used to have to draw him into family photos with a crayon.”
Bird Person: “The war in which we fought is far from over. We live our lives in hiding.”
Beth: “I guess I should be happy for you? I mean, great, you guys got to hang out. I hope you had a blast.”
Bird Person: “The galactic government considers us terrorists. It’s unwise of me to share these details but I’ve become inebriated.”
Beth: “I don’t know if you can appreciate what it means to grow up without a father but-”
Bird Person: “The guest list at this wedding includes 17 of the federation’s most wanted. We have committed numerous atrocities in the name of freedom.”
Beth: “Aaand during that time, I don’t suppose he ever mentioned his daughter. [A squanchy-like character walks by with hors d’oeuvres.] Are those baby quiches?” [Beth takes one.]
Bird Person: “Night crawler pate. I should prepare for the ceremony.” [Bird Person walks away.]
Beth: “Like talking to a brick wall.”
^ Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Beth is so obsessed with getting daddy validation that she blocks out everything Bird Person says–even when it is about her father–as long as it’s not what she wants to hear. It must be nice that the road her father and Bird Person walk together is soaked deeply with the blood of both friends and enemies? She guesses she should be happy that they live their lives in hiding? She hopes they had a blast? The narcissism at this party is unparalleled.
The ceremony is set on a beach before the evening sun. It sets on the ocean horizon right behind Tammy and Bird Person. Squanchy is marrying them (who knew he was a priest… or maybe a justice of the peace). The ceremony is rather uneventful. They both have their cheesy vows, “squanch” replaces every second word, and by the sounds Tammy makes, the kiss is really wet and sloppy. Rick, quite inebriated himself, let’s out a disinterested belch at their vows.
Next comes the reception. There’s a creepy looking man walking around the room taking photos with his eyes. That’s right, he appears to be a cyborg whose eyes are cameras. He says to an alien dude: “I am not staring at you. I am a cyborg photographer. Just act natural. This is a candid shot. I don’t require a camera so-” He gets cut off by the alien dude and walks away. ← Might seem like a trivial detail to note, but one thinks twice about this when one knows what comes next.
Rick stands up to make a toast. He clinks his glass: “Uh, hi everybody, I’m R-burp-ick. You know, when I first met Bird Person, he was-”
He holds up his notes which literally read: “(trail off) (crumple up notes) (Ad-lib)”
Rick goes on: “Listen, I’m not the nicest guy in the universe… because I’m the smartest. And being nice is something stupid people do to hedge their bets. [grabs glass of champagne and moves to middle of room.] Now, I haven’t exactly been subtle about how little I trust marriage. I couldn’t make it work and I can turn a black hole into a sun. So, at a certain point you gotta ask yourself: what are the odds this is legit, not just some big lie we’re all telling ourselves because we’re afraid to die alone. Because, you know, that’s exactly how we all die… alone. [Smith family grumbles in embarrassment and aggravation] But… but… here’s the thing… Bird Person is my best friend, and if he loves Tammy, well, then I love Tammy too.”
Applause all around. Beth grabs Jerry’s hand and looks into his eyes lovingly. Squanchy tosses his “Rick’s BFF” bracelet on the table.
“To friendship, to love, and to my greatest adventure yet: opening myself up to others!”
^ There’s a lot of philosophical content packed into that speech. Let’s unpack it.
Is being nice something we do to hedge our bets? Particularly because we’re not as smart as we could be? After all, we can all recall numerous occasions when we had certain unflattering thoughts about a person but held back because it would be rude to say. For example, if you think someone is fat and ugly. We hold back saying it because to do otherwise would get us into a whole lotta trouble. There are also things we’d like to do that would be considered rude or cruel, and perhaps illegal–like stealing–but we don’t because we would get in trouble. But how would being smart change this? Obviously, Rick is saying that with enough intelligence, one can get away with anything. One can dodge backlash by making the other person feel stupid (like Rick does to Jerry). One can dodge the law by coming up with clever ways to outsmart law enforcement.
(Also, having seen the Season 3 premier, I now caught on to how Rick admitted to being the smartest man in the universe; if the Glomfromites weren’t kidding in the Season 3 premier, then neither is Rick.)
Rick talks about marriage as a sort of crutch–something we do, not because we fall in love, but because we don’t want to die alone. If this is true, then it really doesn’t matter who we marry–someone we like, someone we hate, someone who’s completely incompatible with us–so long as it’s somebody. And I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen marriages in which this seemed to be true. People settling for one another, people accepting partners that are far from ideal… and then hating each other throughout the entire marriage–resenting and despising each other–all so they won’t die alone. Dying alone, then, is worse than not being in love. And it may even be futile. According to Rick, we all die alone regardless. At least one of us does anyway; unless we die at the same time, the other gets to have us at their bedside as they pass away.
Rick says how he hasn’t been subtle about how he distrusts marriage and how he couldn’t make his first marriage work. It’s funny, not only how he can turn a black hole into a sun (which any physicist will tell you is impossible) despite not being able to make a marriage work, but how he uses the word “trust”–and ends his speech with “opening up”. It’s like the one thing he’s not good at–the one thing he’s mentally retarded at–is trust. It seems then that the reason he’s so closed off to everyone is not because of some high intelligence horse his ego is on but because he’s scared of being hurt. He describes “opening up” as his greatest adventure yet–implying that it is the most perilous–as if escaping near death at the hands of the gromflomites is child’s play thanks to his extraordinarily high IQ, but opening up to people is the real challenge. He seems to be saying that if Bird Person, the one he trusts the most in this world, is able to open up (as demonstrated through marriage), then maybe that makes it ok for him to open up too.
(You might even note how Rick wasn’t even ready to call Bird Person his best friend at the beginning of this episode → Morty: “[Bird Person]'s Rick’s best friend.” Rick: “Uh, l-let’s not get carried away, Morty.”)
And just as Rick opens himself up to Tammy like this, he’s betrayed:
Tammy responds: “Thank you. Rick, that was beautiful. Gosh, I look around this room and I think, ‘Uh, Tammy, you’re a high school senior from the planet Earth and you’re marrying a 40 year old Bird Person? Like, whaaat?’ [crowd laughs] But then I think, you know, in a lot of ways, I’m not a high school senior from the planet Earth. In a lot of ways, what I really am is a deep cover agent for the galactic federation, and you guys are a group of wanted criminals and this entire building is, in a certain sense, surrounded.”
Not sure why she had to carry around her ID on her wedding day. I think being surrounded by gromflomites would be evidence enough. But let’s think about this a little further. Tammy, whom we met in the Season 1 finally as a drunk high school teen at a house party, turns out to be a deep cover agent for the federation. She can’t be more than 18, and must have known Summer for at least enough time to become good friends with her. The only other time we’ve met her was in Get Schwifty when Morty stumbled onto Bird Person’s home planet and she told us she likes bird cock. That’s quite the stunt to pull off considering how difficult it must be to fake being a high school student, best friend to Summer, and lover to Bird Person, but I suppose the galactic federation selects only the best. And what does she get out of it? Assuming she’s human, and not some cyborg or alien shapeshifter, the federation must have approached her and offered her a deal she just couldn’t refuse. It’s not clear, however, what that might be.
Before everyone can get over their shock, Tammy pulls out a gun and shoots Bird Person.
Rick screams: “BIRD PERSON!!! NOOOOOO!!!”
Then gun fire opens up on both sides–the federal agents (Tammy and her “parents”) and a handful of the rebels (including Squanchy). Joining the agents, a squad of gromflomites break through the glass ceiling and start firing. Then more rebels join in while others run for cover.
The Smiths, with Rick, hide behind a knocked over table. Rick prepares his portal gun for a quick escape. Tammy stops him with her gun: “Drop the portal gun.” Rick obeys. She tells him to slide it to the middle of the room. He does, but not before flicking a switch on the gun that starts some kind of timer. As the gromflomites approach the portal gun to pick it up, it blasts a plasmic bulb of that green portal energy and sucks the gromflomites into (presumably) another dimension (kind of like the Ghostbusters trap).
The blast is so blinding and loud, Tammy has to take a second to rub her eyes and get re-oriented, dropping her gun in the process. We can hear the ringing in her ears.
Rick makes a run for it. He dashes across the room, grabbing a gun from a gromflomite who just got shot, and hides behind what looks like the band’s stage (one instrument in particular looks like a bunch of ball sacks; and apparently impenetrable to laser blasts. ← Like to have me one of those).
Squanchy approaches Rick, tells him to get his family out of here and that he’s got this. Rick takes off. Squanchy removes a tooth which turns out to be a capsule containing a liquid. He swallows the liquid and transforms into this mammoth hulk:
He then starts tearing up the place–swatting gromflomites into the wall, crushing things, and pinning Tammy to the ground.
Rick gets his family to follow him. They run into a flying Winnebago (having something to do with worms). Tammy’s parents chase after them. It’s now evident from the scars on their faces that they’re cyborgs, much like the one taking pictures with his eyes:
The Smiths manage to fight them off and escape the gromflomites.
Cruising through space, safely out of harms way, the Smiths have a friendly conversation inside the Winnebago…
Jerry: “Uh, Rick, is there anything you’d like to tell us about your relationship with this previously unknown galactic government?”
Rick: “All the important points seem pretty clear, no? They think they control the galaxy, I disagree. Don’t hate the player, hate the game, son.”
Jerry: “How could you be so dishonest with this family?”
Rick: “Oh, oh, should I have been more honest and open and loving like, oh I don’t know, my now dead best friend, or your daughter who was BFFs with an intergalactic narc?!”
Summer: “Hey, Tammy was cool!”
Rick: “And now we know why!”
Summer: “Because of you!”
Rick: “Fuck you Summer! And fuck the government! And fuck me for letting my guard down which I will never… do… again!”
So it’s pretty clear from this speech what Rick puts the blame on whenever something like this happens: putting his guard down. It seems pretty out in the open now: Rick is closed off because he fears betrayal… from both friends and loved ones and those who pose as such. Recall the post-credit scene from M. Night Shayman-alien–when Rick had a knife at Morty’s throat accusing him of being a simulation. Rick seems to have lived a life in which being vulnerable and open to others is the most mal-adaptive thing one can do.
And what he just experienced must be a harsh reminder of that if anything is. If I’m right that Bird Person’s trust in Tammy vicariously made Rick feel more comfortable investing trust in Tammy, then seeing Tammy shoot Bird Person to death right after he expressed his trust must have been the ultimate betrayal.
Rick then tells his family that they can’t go home… ever. When they ask why, he tells them that the galactic federation is now looking for them: “Look, anyone who wants to go back to Earth is free to go back to Earth, but here’s what’s gonna happen. Alien bureaucrats are gonna arrest you. They’re gonna put the inter-galactic equivalent of-burp-jumper cables onto your nuts and/or labia, and hook them up to an alien car battery until you tell them where I am. Which I guarantee you you’re not gonna know. Which I guarantee they won’t believe. So who’s home sick? By applause. Ladies? Anybody?”
Summer starts crying. She asks where they’re gonna live. Rick reassures them there are other planets hospitable to life besides Earth. He even disses Earth: “Fuck Earth. You realize our planet’s name means dirt, right?” He pulls out a gadget, like a mini-computer, and speaks into it: “Computer, how many planets in the Milky Way are at least 90% similar to Earth.” The computer comes back with 765. Then Rick asks how many are outside federal jurisdiction. The answer is 3.
Rick seems surprisingly pleased. He even says: “Our cup runneth over,” and compares it to a shopping expedition: “Now who wants to go shopping for a brand new mother fucking world!!!”
Rick is doing what he always does when things get fucked up beyond repair–bailing on his world. Except this time he doesn’t have his portal gun. So he must opt for another world within this one.
Three isn’t such a large selection when you’re planet shopping. You’re bound to be disappointed by at least a few of them. For example, this is how the first one turns out:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMtShnoOvck[/youtube]
Second one turns out to be Cob Planet. Why? Because everything’s on a cab of corn. Everything seems decent at first–trees, blue sky, comfortable temperature–and then Summer discovers strawberries on a cob (literally strawberries growing on a corn cob); and Morty discovers flowers on a cob. Beth looks off to the horizon and discovers mountains on a cob (literally whole mountains jutting out of giant corn cobs).
Rick notices crows on a cob landing in a nearby tree. He picks up rocks on a cob, which has bugs on a cob crawling on it. He inspects it with a magnifying device and finds atoms on a cob:
^ The nucleus looks more like white chocolate chunks on a cob rather than protons and neutrons, but who am I to say what protons and neutrons are supposed to look like, let alone when they’re on a cob. One thing I’m more certain about is that atoms on a cob, at least here on Cob Planet, are about 32 times smaller than ordinary atoms. In the image above, it indicates the magnification at 1650 to the power of 100, which is roughly 5.6 x 10^321, or .56 x 10^-322 of a meter. A typical atom is between .5 x 10^-10 and .1 x 10^-10 of a meter. So much smaller than an atom.
So the entire planet is made of things on a cob–right down to the very atom. ← This seems like something Roiland and Harmon would make up for an entire reality Rick and Morty might visit with their portal gun–you know, a dimension where everything is on a cob–not just an isolated planet in C-137 (or whatever dimension we’re following now), but who’s to say there isn’t a universe out there in the Rick and Morty world where just one planet is made of things on a cob. One of the main premises of Rick and Morty, after all, is that if there can be a reality featuring X out there (and with an infinite number of universes, there is every reality out there), why can’t it be this one? Another possibility is that Cob Planet was originally from a universe in which everything came on a cob but somehow got sucked through a portal and ended up here–whether that portal was created intentionally by an intelligence or was a freak accident of nature is anyone’s guess. But I think the most probable scenario is that Roiland and Harmon are trying to make this as similar as possible to Rick’s reality hopping adventures with his portal gun–driving the point home that this is how Rick deals with his problems.
In any case, Rick decides that this is incredibly dangerous and urges everyone to leave: “GET IN THE GODDAM SHIP!!! EVERYTHING’S ON A COB!!! THE WHOLE PLANET’S ON A COB!!! GO!!! GO!!! GO!!!” They take off.
Two down, one more to go.
The final planet seems pretty decent. There’s mountains, lakes, trees, grass, clouds in the sky. They land on the night side of the planet. All seems great until the sun rises:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gico4C2NkwQ[/youtube]
^ Again, like something from another reality. This time, the oddity is with the sun, not the planet, and again the same implications apply: might be from a universe in which all suns scream and somehow made its way through a portal… but probably not what Harmon and Roiland were thinking.
They opt for Tiny Planet.
The scene cuts to a view of the entire planet with a little shack planted at the top. Not sure if it was there the whole time or they built it. Inside the shack, a TV is setup receiving signal from the galactic federation. They’re watching gromflomite news. The reporters tell us that Earth is now a part of the federation and is open to tourism. Summer shuts it off.
Rick walks in all dressed for winter. He’s carrying a flag with an R inside a circle.
Rick: “Do I smell bacon?”
Beth: “Yes, we discovered a species of tiny pig off the coast of New Australia about 30 yards East.”
Morty: “Or 300 yards West.”
Summer: “We’d offer you some but we hunted it to extinction for breakfast.”
So Tiny Planet is 330 yards in circumference, almost the length of 3 football fields.
Rick announces that he’s making an expedition to the South Pole to do some exploring (which explains his winter attire).
Now that Rick’s gone, Jerry wants to talk about their situation. Morty preaches about the ethics of talking behind other people’s backs, but Jerry insists. ← I’m on Jerry’s side with this one: they do need to talk about their situation, and it’s best to do so when Rick is not around. Rick would just take control of the conversation and steer it in his own biased self-interested direction.
Rick’s expedition to the South Pole takes him through forest, jungle, desert, rain and snow fall:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CmYfcDdqco[/youtube]
^ Notice the mountains in the background. If this planet is really only 330 yards in circumference, those mountains can’t be more than a few feet high.
Rick discovers an ice cave. He crawls in saying, “Things just keep on getting better.”
^ Rick seems to have an overly optimistic view of their situation. Saying “Our cup runneth over,” when discovering 3 Earth-like planets outside federal jurisdiction. Dissing Earth as a planet named after dirt. Calling their situation “a blessing in disguise.” Shouting “Now who wants to go shopping for a brand new mother fucking world?!” And now this. I think Rick’s in a bit of denial. He knows he’s responsible for the mess he got his family in and doesn’t want to admit he really fucked them over. So he thinks of it as a blessing in disguise. It’s not his fault that Tammy turned out to be a narc or that the federation crashed the wedding. Hell, he didn’t even want to go to the wedding, and if it wasn’t for Jerry getting sucked up by courier flaps, they wouldn’t have. But the bigger picture of entering back into their lives and keeping this huge secret from them… who knows what his intentions were; if he wanted to escape the galactic federation by blending in to a modern family in the suburbs on Earth, it seems he had the opposite effect: dragging his family into the tangled web of his affairs with the galactic government. And now he’s faced with a moral challenge: keep his family in hiding with him, or give himself up in order to save his family.
Rick stumbles upon the planet’s core. It isn’t much, just a whirlpool of lava about the size of a hot tub. He shimmies his way around it. All of a sudden, he overhears Jerry’s voice. He climbs the wall into a small chamber. The ceiling is actually the floor of the log cabin. He listens in on the conversation:
Jerry: “I’m just saying, we keep acting like there’s only two options, but there’s not. So yes, if we went back to Earth, so long as Rick was out there, they’d want to interrogate us. But, and this is purely hypothetical, what if we turned your father into the government.”
Beth: “Jerry, so help me God, if you ever bring this up again, no more bacon.”
Jerry: “There already is no more bacon! This world sucks! Our lives sucks! Why are we doing this for someone that would never do anything for anyone but himself?”
Morty [sappy music starts]: “That’s not the point dad! We love Rick… f-f-for the most part.”
Summer: “Yeah, you don’t love people in hopes of a reward, dad. You love them unconditionally.”
Beth: “That’s very good kids. I’m proud of you.”
Jerry: “So let me get this straight. For the rest of your lives, no matter how much it hurts you, no matter how much it destroys our children’s future, we’re gonna do whatever Rick wants whenever he wants?”
Everyone: “Yes!”
Jerry: “WHY?!?!”
Beth: “'Cause I don’t want him to leave again you dumb asshole! [begins to cry]”
While he can certainly be accused of being insensitive to Beth’s feelings, I’m with Jerry on this one. Saying yes to doing whatever Rick wants whenever he wants no matter how much it hurts the children and destroys their future, only because you’re afraid to lose him, is incredibly immature and irresponsible. On the other hand, turning in a family member (although I don’t think Jerry considers Rick “family”) in order to live a better life than the one they’re facing on Tiny Planet might be considered equally immature and irresponsible. Rick may be reckless, irresponsible, and a horrible influence on the children, but Morty and Summer have grown a strong enough bond to their grandfather that they’re willing to treat him as anyone would treat a family member–sticking with them through thick or thin. Still, Rick, overhearing all this, knows the gravity of the situation he got them into. He hears Jerry’s reasoning and he hears Beth’s response–that the only reason she’s willing to put up with him and the situation he got them into, the only reason she’s willing to drag the kids along for the ride–is because she doesn’t want to lose Rick again. This confronts him with a dilemma. He could take advantage of his family’s willingness to jump into the fire he’s presented to them, continue to eek out a survival here on Tiny Planet, or he could take Jerry’s words seriously and do what’s right for his family–hand himself into the government. This is the moment when his denial breaks. He flops onto his bottom from his crouched position and gives into the undeniable truth, a look of despair overcoming his face. He knows what he has to do.
Morty plays frisbee with himself. He throws the frisbee towards the horizon and it literally comes back on the other side. He doesn’t seem to be having too much fun–a look of boredom or even depression on his face (for obvious reasons).
Rick comes up to him and says he’s going over to the Gloppy Drop system to get ice cream (if this is one of those metaphorical references to ice cream–representing taking pleasure is false realities–then it’s convenient that Rick whips this up as a lie–he’s not going for ice cream because he’s facing up to a harsh reality). Morty asks, in a rather eager tone like an excited puppy, if he wants him to come with, needing his brain waves for camouflage. Rick says he’ll be fine. Morty calls him out on abandoning them: “Rick, I can handle it if you go, but you’ll break mom’s heart, and I won’t forgive you for that.” Rick just leaves.
I think this conscientiousness on Morty’s part is what sets him apart from his father. That Rick’s abandonment of the family matters to Beth doesn’t even show up on Jerry’s radar. But with Morty, not only does it show up on his radar, but what matters to his mother matters to him as well.
The rest of the episode is kinda touching, so I think it’s worth posting a clip of it:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NKqCyRG-kk[/youtube]
If there is one redeeming moment in Rick Sanchez’s life, this would be it. Rick is not known for his altruism, but when he is altruistic, it shines through with a blinding light.
I guess he’s not as cynical about the galactic federation as one might at first think. If he trusts that his family can have a “normal life” on Earth as a reward for handing him in, he must trust that the galactic government is loyal to their word. Perhaps he understands that the galactic government is not evil, just overly bureaucratic and coldly mechanical.
Then there’s post federation Earth–boy, did the federation sure set up shop quickly. I mean, how long were the Smith’s gone for? A day? (the six light years thing was just a joke.) Also, not sure how they got Jerry’s identity from his DNA. Even if they somehow got a hold of his DNA (a hair follicle, dead skin), how could they link it with the person without Jerry being their to confirm it? And what makes Jerry so sure his new “job” isn’t just to pay off the debt he incurred from the (supposedly complimentary) pills he so complacently swallowed. The robot never said it was permanent. But then again, we find in the season 3 debut that Jerry does indeed get a pretty cushy job that pulls down 6 figures (whether that’s in dollars or fed credits isn’t clear, but 6 figures is still greater than the 4 figures of 7000 fed credits). So even if he is being stupid now, he should consider himself extraordinarily lucky.
I wonder if the Smith’s realize what Rick did. We don’t hear much of the conversation after the gromflomites bid the Smiths good morning on Tiny Planet, so it leaves one to question how much they reveal about why they’re there. In particular, I wonder if they let out that Jerry Smith reported Rick, and if so, did Jerry play along? I doubt it because his family doesn’t seem to be fuming mad at him. Also, in the season 3 debut, Beth tells Summer: “Stop saying his name! He abandoned us,” which indicates that the Smiths still think Rick simply ran out on them again.
Rick gets taken to prison. There we see another humanoid robot taking his mug shots, saying exactly the same thing as the one at the wedding: “Sorry, I am not staring at you. I am taking your mug shots.”
And the gromflomites who bring up a list of all the things Rick is wanted for:
Notice that the “wanted for” wording is in English but the list is in an alien language (gromflomite?).
So it seems like Rick, for once in his life, does the right thing for his family–and WHAT a thing to do–definitely not in his own self-interest. On the other hand, we always have to be suspicious of Rick’s supposed altruistic acts. They often turn out to hide a hidden agenda. In the season 3 debut, for instance, Rick tells Morty that turning himself in was all part of his master plan to bring down the galactic government (as well as the Citadel of Ricks). As he says to the head gromflomite after transferring his mind to the gromflomite agent, “Well, I’m just a dumb ass bug, but it’s possible Rick knew he’d be interrogated at this facility where we not only keep our most wanted, but our most sensitive data. Anyone here with level nine access could burp I don’t know, collapse a government.” ← This could have been conjured up in the moment (he certainly wouldn’t want to reveal anything about his family to these guys), but it would make more sense, knowing the genius that Rick is, that he would be plotting a way to bring down the government as a means to saving himself and his family rather than just turning himself in to rot in a high security prison. Whatever his motives are, they’re certainly more than what they seem from the season 2 finally.
And of course, it just wouldn’t do the season 2 finally justice unless Mr. Poopy Butthole gave us a review in the post-credit scene and whetted our appetite for season 3 (I wonder if the fact that he was watching the season 2 finally has any implications for which reality we were following in this episode–for one, it wasn’t the reality featuring Mr. Poopy Butthole). Here it is:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfQ7t6IbF_A[/youtube]
PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS
Opening one’s self to others: Is opening one’s self up to others a foolish move or a healthy one? Are we better off always being suspicious of others and relying only on ourselves, or are we better off nurturing strong healthy connections with others? Personally, I think we’re far better off opening ourselves to others, but we do have to be smart about who we open ourselves to–good friends and loved ones are ok, telemarketers and scam artists not so much. But Rick Sanchez lives a much different life than most of us. Rick can’t even bring himself to trust his own family. When you live in a world where a flirty teenage skank turns out to be a deep cover agent for a galactic government, things can get a lot more harry. But this is quite the atypical world to say the least. If you’re Rick Sanchez then maybe you shouldn’t open yourself up to others–not even friends and family–but if you’re living in the ordinary world of real life, then it’s a fair bet that you’re better off opening yourself to friends, family, and loved ones.
Connecting with others–selfish or selfless: If Rick’s central issue in this episode is his distrust in others, then Beth’s is wanting connection, specifically with her father. But both do it for selfish reasons. Rick harms his family in his stubborn insistence on distrusting everyone. But he eventually rises above it by sacrificing himself for his family. The only time Beth sacrifices her need to connect with her father, however, was in Autoerotic Assimilation when she stood up to her father about having secret underground lairs beneath the garage. In this episode, she clearly admits to putting her family in harms way because she doesn’t want to lose Rick again. So the question is: is wanting connections with others always an act of love–i.e. done for selfless reasons? Or can it be selfish and possibly harmful to others–even to the one you want a connection with? And if it causes harm to the one you want to connect with, is the connection even possible? Does true connections with others require total honesty and sensitivity to the other’s needs? I think it does, for anything else only drives a wedge between you and the other, and makes connection all the more difficult.
Love–unconditional?: Summer says, “You don’t love people in hopes of a reward. You love them unconditionally.” But how much can you love someone who, in Jerry’s words, “would never do anything for anyone but himself?” The idea, I suppose, is that real love is not affected by the things the other person does–the way a parent might love their children, for example, despite how much the children might abuse their parents. When it comes to family, one can understand the mechanism–there is a deeply ingrained instinct to look out for members of your own family. What they do or what they say doesn’t change the fact that they are family and carry your genes. This would certainly explain why Jerry has such a tough time understanding why his family would go through all the trouble of sticking by Rick’s side. But even as families usually go, it bears questioning how realistic Summer’s statement is. Certainly, there comes a point where the abuse overpowers the love and eclipses it with sentiments of animosity and resentment. We know that Morty certainly has gone through his fair share of mood swings with Rick. His statement to Bird Person in the season 1 finally, “I’m sick of having adventures with Rick,” sounds as if Morty is about ready to give up on Rick. Is this love showing its conditional nature, or just the storms it must sometimes weather while holding sway like a stone? What would happen if the Smiths all of a sudden found out that Rick is not the person he claims to be? What if, for example, he turns out to be one of the parasites from Total Rickall? Would they still love him then? I would think not. But then that means that their love for him is conditional on Rick being who he says he is. Or is this the crux? When we say we love someone unconditionally, do we mean for who they are? If they turn out to be someone different, is it like the person we loved disappeared? If this is the case, then Summer is saying she loves Rick despite knowing that he would never do anything for anyone but himself. By the same stroke, Jerry is saying he can’t love someone like Rick. In the finally analysis, perhaps love is always conditional on at least who the person is.