There’s a side of Rick and Morty that tends to come as a surprise. It’s employed on occasion, only when you least expect it, and when it packs the most punch. We’re talking about the beloved series’ emotional core. It isn’t always on display, but when it is, whew – it’s effective.
The sci-fi comedy is all about brash humor and outlandish plots – and we all know it does that stuff so well. But the show’s knack for realistic and moving emotionality might actually be its greatest strength.
In fact, last week’s episode, “Unmortricken,” reminds us just how good the artists behind the animated series are at crafting beautiful, and often tragic, emotional set pieces that shine a light on the depth of humanity and what it means to exist in this world. It’s just the latest example in a seven-season history of gutting scenes, some of which are accompanied by the absolute perfect songs possible for the moment. Perfecting these kinds of moments is something of an art unto itself, and folks, the Rick and Morty crew has still got it in this regard.
Existential Crisis Turned Emotional Release
With an episode as intense and important as “Unmortricken,” there was bound to be an element of emotionality to tie the events together. Over the course of the 25-minute odyssey, Rick C-137 (also known as our main character Rick) and Morty discover that Rick Prime – the Rick who invented portal travel and killed Rick C-137’s wife Diane and daughter Beth – has rebuilt the Omega Device. The super-weapon kills all versions of its target, like Diane, for example. Needless to say, finding Rick Prime has been a major goal for Rick, so it packed a major punch when Rick not only captured Rick Prime, but killed him with his bare hands.
The result of that triumph comes in the form of a trance that overtakes Rick C-137, rendering him nearly catatonic at the idea that he finally overcame his greatest foe – the one who, essentially, made him the man he is today. A montage unfolds, which sees Rick processing the notion that the far-off accomplishment he built his identity on is complete, and it’s underscored by the soft stylings of Mazzy Star’s “Look on Down From the Bridge.” The song’s inclusion is a punch to the gut because of the tone it sets, but also because it previously accompanied another tragic moment: when Rick and Morty bury versions of themselves from dimension C-131 in the sixth episode of Season 1. There, the music accompanied a montage of Morty processing the reality of a multi-dimensional universe, a concept he was unaware of until that moment. The two scenes mirror one another, and they bolster the impact of each other even years later.
“He is now the one who is existentially isolated,” series co-creator Dan Harmon revealed in a recent interview with Variety about Rick’s crisis of self. “He is the one that doesn’t feel like he fits in the universe around him. Which puts him on the same level as a 14-year-old boy learning there’s multiple universes 10 show-years earlier.” Both scenes rely on what it means to be changed by circumstance, and they’re memorable in their reminder that we can be deeply affected at any time by things we don’t necessarily see coming.
Truth in the Absurdity
So far, Season 7 has been banking on these types of emotionally present moments. In Episode 4, “That’s Amorte,” Rick deceives the family once again when he starts family spaghetti nights, only for the pasta to turn out to actually be the guts of human-like entities who die by suicide on their home planet. In order to stop a major clash between the many planets trying to get their hands on the mass-marketed spaghetti, Rick strikes up a plan to enlist someone willing to sacrifice themself so he can synthesize their pasta and stop the chaos. To do this, he recruits an old man who has been living in pain and hooks him up to a euthanasia machine that plays through the crucial memories of his life sequentially before he passes on. And here’s where you need tissues.
The old man’s story is one of love, loss, regret, and redemption, showing us in mere minutes his adolescent relationship with his true love and how he lost her. It takes us through his downfall, where he wallows in his sorrows through alcohol and women. But it also brings us back around to his reconnection with his love in adulthood and how they ended up marrying, spending the rest of her days together. All of this—this touching montage choreographed with grace and understanding—is underscored by a delicate cover of Oasis’ “Live Forever” sung by a beautifully-voiced female artist (a choice that feels almost omnisciently perfect in how it tugs at your heartstrings, as if they saw how it would play out with audiences in a crystal ball).
Most of Rick and Morty’s most emotionally resonant moments feel like that, and unsurprisingly, there’s a reason for it. The intention behind these scenes is to find the truth in the absurdity of a series like this, to align it with the real world it inhabits. Take, for instance, the in-world arcade game “Roy: A Life Well Lived,” a plot device that bears a striking resemblance to the euthanasia segment in Season 7’s Episode 4. In the second episode of Season 2, “Mortynight Run,” Rick introduces Morty to a game that takes the player through the life of a character named Roy, from boyhood to, well, whenever the player inhabiting Roy dies. Morty’s run of the game starts with young Roy telling his mother he had a nightmare that an old man put a helmet on him, and then it’s off to the races. With a stirring orchestral track behind it, Morty’s Roy becomes a promising high school football star and marries his high school sweetheart. He ends up a carpet salesman who beats cancer and revels in his greatest achievement before his accidental death: doing his best despite all the odds stacked against him.
Sure, it’s a set-up for a joke, as a lot of R&M set pieces are. But it’s poignant and real, too. The writers certainly knew the effect it would have—and the creator of the show isn’t blind to the strength of these segments either. In a recent interview with IGN, Harmon spoke about the tragic aspects of the series, and how they are crucial for the show’s special brand of comedy to function.
“I always cheat and go for the funny bone. It's to make up for, to amplify the funny bone that you take out. So the darkness has to be there,” the Community creator explained. “You have to write what you know, making an autobiography. This guy [Rick] is tragically alone. No amount of superiority is ever going to make him happy. I mean, those are really dark themes that belong in, like, a Jackson Pollock biopic. All the funnier that they should be presented in a cartoon about a mad scientist.”
Tragically Alone
There is potentially no greater example of this than the final scene of the fourth episode of Season 2, “Auto Erotic Assimilation.” After reuniting with a former flame—a hivemind female entity named Unity—Rick thinks he’s found the perfect love and life. He even dismisses Morty and Summer when they try to get him to return to Earth with them, opting to stay with Unity and restart their life together. But she disappears when he goes to the bathroom, leaving behind a note explaining that they can’t be together because they are too alike, and Rick’s ability to change people but not himself is a one-way ticket for his partner’s suffering. She, however, makes it clear that she loves him and wishes they could be together, and this leaves Rick devastated. In the episode’s last few minutes, Rick builds a suicide helmet as he drinks himself further into misery, but he passes out before the helmet can burn through his skull.
The scene, which is aptly scored by Chaos Chaos’ cinematic and heartbreaking song “Do You Feel It?”, is easily the show’s saddest moment to date, giving the audience sobering insight into Rick’s yearning and desperate heart.
Rick and Morty isn’t built to have these kinds of moments all the time, but when they do appear, they work because they’re used to illustrate the fallout Rick leaves in the wake of his own hubris, or to highlight the humanity present inside a cosmic universe that far exceeds human comprehension. These moments intrinsically tie us to the series, and they become the reason why we connect with the characters. After all, despite its funny facade and sci-fi lean, Rick and Morty is, at its core, a show about people—and people feel. They will always feel, no matter how many intergalactic battles they fight or aliens they mind-swap with. They will always feel, and that’s what makes them lovable. That’s what makes them human in a universe full of cosmic unknowns.
