vraikessay:

Rick & Morty Recap: Mortynight Run
-Vrai Kaiser

Just look at the flowers, Fart.

The Recap: Morty’s
moral compass is rankled after watching Rick sell weaponry to alien mercenary
Krombopulos Michael. Not content to spend the money at the intergalactic arcade, Morty takes it on himself to first stop the assassination and
then rescue Michael’s target, ending up in a cross-space chase with the law.

It’s official. If you’re ever feeling particularly crushed
by the universe just look in a mirror and remind yourself, “at least I’m not
Morty Smith.”

The animation for this season continues to be high-quality
stuff, taking full advantage of those simple character designs to play fast and
loose with form, line, and composition (not to mention how well those
super-neon colors lend themselves to distinct, memorable environments). The
highlight is Fart and Morty’s psychedelic trip through well-masked genocidal
ideology – and if there’s anything that could make me appreciate a solid ten minutes
of fart joke riffs, it’s the unbound madness the visuals commit to during that
whole Moon Men bit – but the whole episode crams and amazing amount of detail
on screen without feeling overwhelming, and smartly breaks it up with those
space sequences to give the intense color palette a rest.

As with last week, Jerry steps just a bit more into the
realm of a sympathetic character. As much as we would all like to be Rick on
these adventures (or Summer at least), no doubt we all fear we’d end up being
Jerry. And that sentiment is tied up in the episode’s interesting subtextual
examination of how Rick sees the world, which spends most of the episode
pinging back and forth and doesn’t so much settle as it lurks, ultimately
unaddressed like that no doubt gamey final fart joke. On the one hand, Rick
doesn’t even bother explaining what’s going on to Jerry; on the other, he is
totally right about Jerry being too hapless to survive a literaly five minutes
outside of the daycare. Morty does the final crumbling bit of damage to the
spaceship; but it’s much worse than it might’ve been, because Rick hasn’t been
taking care of the craft over the years. Rick keeps harping on all that
collateral damage, yet at the same time (once it’s no longer an inconvenience)
seems genuinely jazzed that Morty’s “saving” someone. On and on, back and
forth, and it keeps the writing lively and tense in a way one rarely sees
outside of a full ensemble cast. I don’t know how sustainable in the long term
it’ll be to have every major character essentially revolve and develop in
regards to their relationship with Rick, but for now it’s fascinating stuff
(and even the show comments on this fact, with all those Rick-and-Mortyless
Jerrys, abandoned as having no purpose).

We’ve seen a heavy emphasis in these first two episodes on
testing the parameters of Rick’s morality (such as it is) – how his actions
might be justified or not in the present, and (by inference) how those views
might’ve come to exist in the first place. And the latter, so far, has come by
Morty being given the opportunity to more or less repeat what could easily have
been Rick’s mistakes – both a clever get-around to the loaded narrative gamble
of trying to “explain” Rick and a solid (if devastating) character arc for
Morty.

The show is currently holding onto a very precarious
balancing act: Morty knows little enough that we’re still learning along with
him, and it continues to be painful for us and him to suffer these horrific
realizations; meanwhile, as much as Rick’s view of the universe seems to
thusfar be the “correct” one, Rick himself has shown without a doubt that there
is a line he will not cross regarding family members (the Jerryboree form is
one of my favorite visual gags of the episode, and the check box for “Earth
Under Siege” seems to suggest even Jerry gets grandfathered in, as it were, to
Rick’s protection).

But sooner or later, in the next season if not this one,
that balance is going to have to shift. Or, as it’s so neatly personified by
the “Roy” segment, is Rick winning this game because he’s right, or because
Morty hasn’t figured out the rules yet? Do the rules of the show’s multiverse
necessitate a completely relativistic (or nigh solipsistic, in Rick’s case)
viewpoint? Was Fart being kept because of his ability to convert matter, or
because somebody else had figured out the whole “universe eradication” plan? Is
Morty doomed to become Rick, or is his arc taking him down the same path as the
Morty from “Something Ricked?” And while we’re throwing out questions that won’t
possibly be answered in the near future, is “C-137” the universe Rick started
season 1 in, the one he’s currently hiding out in, or another one altogether?

At the end of the day, this is arguably a retread of “Meseeks
and Destroy”: Morty wants to take charge of an adventure, and Rick has to bail
him out. But if that is true on the most brass tacks level, then it’s equally
the case that the script makes brilliant use of that comparison. Though it’s “only”
been 7 episodes since then, Morty’s stance has gone from trying to prove
himself to Rick to trying to do what he thinks is right without Rick. And Rick himself is simultaneously more vocal about
how he’d rather be anywhere else and yet much more hands on, hinting at the
higher stakes of what he’s allowed Morty to get involved in (and even that
seems to have been accidental). And while Morty was, as I’m sure all of us will
never forget despite our best efforts, victimized before, here his trauma is
the result of his conscious decision to take action he thought himself
incapable of. It’s one hell of a scene, stood somewhere between horrific and
poignant, and the fact that Morty shows no intention of telling Rick about it
makes me concerned for what’s to come.

Oh, and that “Never betray me” line? I think we’re going to
have plenty of opportunity to dig into that in the future.

Vrai is a queer author
and pop culture blogger; they’re still waiting for the inevitable towel homage.
You can read more essays and find out about their fiction at Fashionable Tinfoil Accessories, support their work via Patreon
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I missed the new episode last night!!!!