[Rick and Morty] "Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat". S04-E01

[Ubiquitous]

I had two big fears going into the Rick and Morty Season 4 premiere. One was
that the show would no longer have truly interesting premises that are
conceptually complex. The writing could have easily gotten much lazier, and
doubled-down on the memes and gags that have always been the veneer of its
success. Mr Poopy-Butthole and “Wubba-Lubba-Dub-Dub” are fun, but they’re not
what keeps me coming back. What keeps me coming back are episodes that test
the boundaries of the definition of slavery, or episodes that walk through
what our best selves and worst selves would discuss if they ever met face to
face, and how each trait would end up in each self. That’s the stuff only
Rick and Morty can pull off.

The other big fear I had would be that the writing would get lazier, and
settle into a pattern of storytelling and plotting that might not have any
flaws to speak of, but is clearly paint-by-numbers. This is a different fear
from the first one. Each episode could have a different complex theme from
the one before it, but they might all still follow the same pattern: Rick
starts an adventure, Morty has misgivings, Rick sweetens the pot, Morty tags
along but screws the plan up, Rick almost rage-quits but the stakes are too
high, etc. We’ve had slight glimmers of this before, and it was a legitimate
fear that after two full years away—and with the added comfort of locking in
seven more years of employment—the edge of the writers might have worn off.

Thankfully, the first five minutes of Sunday’s season premiere handily
dispelled both of these fears. The conceptually complex premise appeared
nearly immediately. Rick and Morty are on an alien planet mining a very
special kind of stone out of the ground. When you’re holding them, these
stones have the power to show you how you’re going to die, given the course
of action you’re currently on. Crucially, because you can change your
decision-making while you’re holding this stone, your visualizations of how
you will die will change as you alter your actions. You can just cycle
through all your possible actions until you start seeing the way you want to
die.

It’s an interesting concept. And, even better, it’s a concept that ended up
having consequences: Because of Morty altering his decisions while holding
the stone, it caused Rick to die. For real. And just as a reminder, we’re
still in the first five minutes of the show. Not only is this an
imaginatively developed, conceptually complex premise, but it’s also
consequence-driven storytelling that’s willing to chart its own path, away
from the norm.

This device of the stone is contrasted by this episode’s other plot device
that runs parallel alongside the stone: Rick’s interdimensional internet of
things, which allows him to re-spawn in an alternate universe after his
death, with essentially infinite backups in case he doesn’t like the universe
he just spawned into (even if each new universe is randomly selected). These
two plot devices expose for us the limits of ego-centric utilitarianism,
which we can look at in a couple of ways. One version of utilitarianism might
be always orienting your goals to their very final pay-off. Just like Morty:
he’s playing the long game and is in it to win it. But on the other hand,
then you’re missing out on life while it’s happening. By the end of the
episode, Morty is essentially brainwashed and can barely even recognize
Jessica when she’s talking to him. As Rick, however, is respawning in
dimension after dimension, he is doing nothing but living in the moment. Rick
fighting fascists and eating larvae might be the most in-the-moment Rick
we’ve ever seen.

Another way to view this episode’s utilitarian comparison is over the idea of
community. As Morty becomes fixated on the idea of dying with Jessica, he
slowly loses all community he has in his life. First, he causes himself to
lose Rick, then he loses his class and his town, then he even loses Jessica
herself when she asks him to go skinny-dipping. This is finally symbolized
when he’s literally out in the desert, alone. Rick, on the other hand, has
nothing but community. He first has a community with (multiple) families of
fascists and then has community with a much nicer family of wasp-people, who
ultimately help him get home. This is finally symbolized at the end of the
episode when Rick is willingly hanging out with his family on the driveway.
Rick has only rarely done that before, if ever. So, believe it or not, Rick
actually ends up symbolizing the hero in this story.

He tried to save Morty from his own impaired driving, ultimately to the point
of death. He then refused to live in fascist universes, trying to openly kill
one fascist, then actually killing himself when got sick of the next set of
fascists. He exhibited openness to new things when he made friends with a
wasp family whom he had literally nothing in common with—symbolized by the
grotesque larvae dinner—and that ended up paying off, when he rode Wasp-Rick
to victory and ultimately saved the day, just like a white knight.

Alternately, Morty exhibited quite a bit of malice and vice. He willingly put
Rick’s life in danger as they were flying, he then refused to bring Rick back
to life when he had the chance to. He forgot about his studies and eventually
killed dozens, if not hundreds of people. All simply because of his warped
desire to be with Jessica. And this warped desire was symbolized by his final
transformation out in the desert, which turned him into a monster—just like a
dragon that needed to be slain.

Take Morty’s arc together with Rick’s arc, and you have a very new kind of
Rick and Morty episode! Morty, instead of being the innocent victim and voice
of reason, is the story’s corrupting element and an example of temptation’s
perils. And Rick, instead of being the amoral Meiser with the mind of a
genius, ends up actually being the one who suffers the most, and in the end—
when they’re talking in the driveway—he pretty much forgives Morty for not
reviving him.

So there we have it; the first episode of Rick and Morty Season 4 is in the
books. Conceptually rich premises, innovative storytelling, consequence-
driven plotting, fully developed and surprising character arcs, and a couple
funny jokes along the way. Season 4 is off to a promising start. If that’s
not enough for you, then you need to loosen up and enjoy life while it’s
here. C’mon, let’s go skinny dipping.


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