This week — and I swear I’m not joking here — Jerry develops an app with Rick’s alien intern that threatens to destroy the world and Rick spends the entire episode trying to find out who pooped in his secret toilet so that he can plot to destroy him.
I’m rather used to this show going to weird places, but this episode hit a brand new weird place when Rick’s nemesis was sent to poop heaven. Seriously, I watched this episode last night and didn’t write the review just then because I was still processing what exactly the heck I had just watched.
Well, I’ve thought about it and, yeah… it’s funny, of course. Rick and Morty is rarely not-funny so I do have to, naturally, rave about the consistency. It’s also extremely weird and non sequitur which is just a bonus.
First of all, we have to look at the more “normal” (relatively speaking) adventure of Morty and Jerry as an app threatens to destroy the world. While the parallels and homages to V were amusing, I enjoyed the deeper implication that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship and even the littlest thing like snoring or picking one’s toes on an airplane can derail any partnership. I also enjoyed the swipes (pun intended) at all dating apps who basically just sacrifice you to an emotionless algorithm.
Taka Watiti is always a win in my book as well.
Secondly, the strange tale of Rick and his private toilet. It’s always nice when Rick and Morty shows us a side of Rick that we don’t often see. A man who is as nihilist as humanly possible finding a place of solitude, peace, and contentment where he can poop in peace was rather… I don’t want to say beautiful, but it was as beautiful as anything with Rick’s psychology can be.
It may say scary things about me, but I can understand why Rick would be so obsessive about protecting his planetary potty paradise from strangers. What I found most interesting, though, is the begrudging respect and acceptance that Rick eventually shows the man… how Rick was taking the basic baby-steps to invite the man into his world, disguised as passive-aggressive foolishness. Again, as I have said before, deep down under his bluster and his apathy, Rick Sanchez is an extremely lonely man and seeing him let down his guard – or at least begin to let down his guard – and accept someone as a friend was a new side of him, and made the ending of the episode even more tragic.
I could honestly analyze this episode for hours but I’m sure you don’t want that and I don’t really want to spend all my time typing up an overblown and probably wrong breakdown. What I will say is that it was a lot of fun to see Rick and Morty do an episode where the A and B plots were seemingly unlinked, but shared the same theme of examining how much relationships have the potential to wreck you.
Jason Gaston 