So, I didn’t break down last week’s episode on its own, but after episode 8 I think its a great time to talk about both and what they mean for the season and series as a whole. I wrote after the S4E6 premiere that the very overly-meta “Story Train” episode was both a good stand-alone episode and a message to the fans to stop asking for plot resolutions and let Harmon and Roiland write their show as they want. And the 2 episodes following have gotten back to the basics of Rick and Morty’s gags, with unique elements in each episode.

Episode 7 is titled “Promortyus”, a nod to the movie “Prometheus”, the prequel to “Alien”. Both the episode and that movie involve a species of face-hugging alien taking over the mind of a human host body. In the Rick and Morty episode, the face-hugging aliens are called the Glorzo. The episodes begin with Morty accidentally ripping the Glorzo off of his face and then taking Rick’s off. The pair then becomes aware of what is going on: the Glorzo are making a super weapon to help invade Earth and use all humans as Glorzo hosts there. As they escape on Rick’s ship the two begin a mass destruction of the Glorzo planet, destroying everything in their path. They comment on deciding not to destroy two tall towers, representing the World Trade Center. Rick states that his decision was to not go for the “low-hanging fruit”, not because he didn’t want to save people. They go on to re-enact a Pearl Harbor type bombing immediately after. Rick then states that with no guilt it feels so much fun, “just like Star Wars” is what Morty responds. Morty then hops into a gunner seat and continues to blast away planet Gorzo like he was in the Millennium Falcon.

When Rick and Morty finally return home, they realize they forgot Summer on planet Glorzo and have to return. As they head back to the Glorzo planet, Morty for one of the first times, questions the consequences of what they are doing, noticing the destruction left on the world. These “consequences” are an idea that “Rick and Morty” has not really dealt with but interestingly come up in this episode and the next. Rick then states why they never return to the same world once they have had an adventure there. Because they always cause so much destruction, Rick never wishes to return to a world. He brings up worlds from two season 2 episodes: Gear world and Purge world. Rick explains how they could have many adventures on these planets, but does not wish to deal with the consequences. Once they land and are seen, they are attacked. So Rick initializes a Gundam-esque suit up and he and Morty quite literally hack and slash their way to Summer. Summer, with a toothpick in her mouth preventing the Glorzo to latching onto her face has become their ruler. After getting captured but escaping, Rick and Morty escape with Summer and Rick plays a sort of brown note on Morty’s harmonica, causing all the Glorzo hosts to lay an egg out of their ass, killing them in the process, killing hundreds of innocents. As their ruler, Summer actually improved life for the Glorzo, showing them that they don’t have to reproduce a new Glorzo every 30 minutes, killing themselves and their host in doing so. That is, until Rick and Morty come back and genocide the hell out of the whole planet for a second time. The group returns home and reflect on whether they have learned anything. Summer says, “that we suck and everyone sucks”. Rick supposes that counts and they go inside and watch interdimensional cable. I want to touch on an idea that relates to this in a future blog after this season, so stay tuned for that.

Episode 8 titled, “The Vat of Acid Episode” expands heavily on the concept of consequences heavily with Morty’s character. The episode begins with Rick and Morty being doubled crossed at some kind of black market gem exchange. As Rick said to Morty to open the episode, “if things go wrong jump in the same vat of acid that I do.” Morty isn’t too keen on this idea and causes the pair to have an argument right from the beginning of the episode that continues throughout. When the aliens point their guns at Rick and Morty they jump into the acid pit and release the fake bones. After some funny exchanges between both Rick and Morty in the pit and the aliens outside the pit, Morty jumps out of the pit and shoots an alien, Rick then takes the gun from Morty and kills all three of the aliens. Then upon returning to the garage, the real heart of the episode begins. In an all out screaming match, Morty and Rick argue about whether Rick can create a device that acts as a save file for life. It starts as an argument over the fake acid idea. Morty says it was a dumb idea and Rick refutes saying no ideas are dumb. Morty replies “except all of mine?”. Rich then challenges him to come up with an idea for him to execute, and we arrive at the life save point device. You would be able to save life at a point and go back to it if shit hits the fan, like it always does in this show. Morty proclaims that Rick can’t do it and is just saying that its a dumb idea because he knows he can’t. But Rick, in what might be the angriest he has been in 4 seasons, is determined to prove that he can and is truly the smartest life form in the universe.

Thus, the device is made. Morty then begins to use it. In a silent 10 minute-ish arc, Morty’s use of the device is hilariously explored in the classic Rick and Morty style. Please go watch this episode multiple times, this part is awesome. There is so much to break down in these scenes including the serious long term relationship Morty gets into but ultimately is accidentally reset by Jerry. Upon returning to Rick in the garage, clearly changed, Morty learns a shocking truth. Morty thought that he was living life consequence free and comes to the realization that he feels no purpose in his life by doing this. However, it was never consequence free. Rich calls back to how he “doesn’t do” time travel, something the show creators have also referenced. This means, whenever Morty “went back” he was actually going into a different reality and switching places with that Morty, causing that Morty to die in their timeline and giving our Morty his place in that timeline. Rick, who turns out to not even be this Morty’s original Rick says he can merge all the timelines so that it was just one Morty (not at all sure how this works since it seems to contradict what Rick just had explained). A whole bunch of people are then suddenly at the garage including the police, drug dealers, grassroots activists and others that Rick names. He is told to come forward or die. Until low and behold, next to the garage is his way out. Yep you guessed it, a pit of fake acid. That Rick makes Morty admit is a good idea. An unbelievably cruel way for payback, only Rick Sanchez could pull it off.

The fact that both episodes mention and deal with consequences is interesting as again, other than a few instances the show does not deal with. In one episode, Summer and Morty do return to the Kronenburg world, but other than that worlds are almost never revisited. It makes me wonder if something is going to catch up with the pair, or if Morty is simply continuing his character development, which has already come so far from the innocent Morty from season 1. Although I just wrote two weeks ago about how the story train episode meant payoffs are not coming for a while, the consequences of their action idea is something I believe Rick and Morty will have to deal with more in the future. With now only 2 episodes left in season 4, I doubt we will see anything crazy with that until season 5, but after this season I will discuss what comes next more. Catch the next episode of Rick and Morty Sunday at 11:30!