Thursday, March 14, 2019

Rick and Morty: Pickle Rick

Rick wants to get out of going to family counseling (therapist voiced by Susan Sarandon) so he turns himself into a pickle. He built a Rube Goldberg style anti-pickle serum device to inject him ten minutes after the family leaves for family counseling but his daughter notices it and takes the syringe. That dooms Rick to staying in pickle form.

Later in counseling Rick's daughter expresses no concern for her father being a pickle. He's the smartest man in the universe, he can take care of himself.

The viewer is thinking, "Oh man, this episode is going to be a total drag because what can Rick do as a pickle? It's too limiting."

A cat jumps up on the work bench and starts pawing at the pickle. Rick say something like, "everyone knows cats see pickles as snakes." And viewers are reminded of all the YouTube videos of cats jumping straight up from the sudden sight of a cucumber when their owners sneak one on them when the cats are preoccupied eating. Actually, only about half the cats react alarmed and the other half play with the cucumber.



The Rick-pickle rolls out onto the driveway. It suffers in the sun. It rains. The Rick-pickle is flooded into the sewer. A cockroach comes along and climbs onto the Rick-pickle.

Rick's pickle face eats the cockroach  and takes cockroach parts unto himself. Now Rick-pickle has made himself Rick-cockroach-pickle. 

The transformation is cartoon excellence.

He uses his enhanced cockroach-pickle body to build traps to kill sewer rats and further body enhancements to aid in killing more rats. Rick is a cockroach-pickle killing machine. 

Now he takes a rat brain and rat parts, hands and legs, and creates a super enhanced rat-cockroach-pickle killing machine. 

The transformation is mind-blowing cartoon excellence. The action progresses magnificently fast. The viewer wonders how did the writers get from A to B to C through the whole f'k'n alphabet to Z so quickly? The viewer (me) backs up and watches again to pick up the parts that were missed. It really is impressive cartoon writing.

Rick-rat-cockroach-pickle exits the sewer by rocket power up through the pipes into some random building that turns out to be a foreign agency housing a ruthless government agency head. Rick-rat-cockroach-pickle kills the agency head's henchmen one by one, sometimes two at a time. The action is fantastic as he moves through the building to get at the leader. 

Meanwhile Rick's family is in family counseling and that allows an entirely different set of situational cartoon writing. The segues back and forth between plot and subplot are jolting in tone while both have the same extremely strange cartoon style of intense cynicism. 

Rick-rat-cockroach-pickle eliminates all of the henchmen and goes for the leader, the most malevolent and cynical of them all. The agency head unleashes his most violent prisoner. Rick-rat-cockroach-pickle kills the lead agent and destroys the embassy. It's shown in the helicopter that Rick-rat-cockroach-pickle had teamed up with the violent prisoner for their mutual escape, they of kindred spirits.

Rick-rat-cockroach-pickle joins his family in family counseling. The therapist takes Rick's condition as ordinary therapist material. Rick-rat-cockroach-pickle explains why he disrespects therapist in one of the most beautiful deconstructions written for cartoons. Their dialogue is stunning. 

YouTube [rick pickle]












The writers explain the episode to fans.


4 comments:

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

That's a lot of cats who are startled by cucumbers.
I'll give it a try.

MamaM said...

Rick wants to get out of going to family counseling

Where the whole thing starts--with Rick choosing the pickle version of avoidance, deflection and stonewalling.

MamaM said...

Actually, that's where the post starts. Whatever is motivating Rick to respond to his family and their situation with avoidance rather than open, honest conversation is where the whole thing starts or at least hinges.

MamaM said...

Human creativity sure is something. Able to be used for good or ill, with the difference difficult to discern at times.

Pickle Rick sort of nails it. To use his words, we are all capable of inventing, transforming, creating and destroying which can lead to splendidly stunning, and terrifyingly stunning outcomes.

While the post and vids are longer and more than I can take in now, I appreciate this intro to Pickle Rick.