Rick and Morty – ‘The Ricks Must Be Crazy’

Few shows could make a story about powering up a car battery compelling stuff – but few shows are like Rick and Morty. ‘The Ricks Must Be Crazy’ is a layered episode without a weak moment, and it’s hard to see how the season will top this one.

Rick, Morty and Summer have gone to a parallel timeline to enjoy a Ball Fondlers movie – they attempt to leave, but Rick finds that his battery is flat. He takes Morty into the battery and reveals the horrifying secret of how it operates – he has created a miniature universe, which generates its own electricity and siphons off a portion for Rick. But it has evolved, and micro-scientist Zeep Xanflorp (Stephen Colbert) has developed his own miniature universe power. Rick realises that he needs to destroy this new universe in order to restore power to his car, but he comes up against someone as clever and devious as himself. Meanwhile, Rick instructs his car to keep Summer safe, and things swiftly turn violent.

I think we may have a genuine contender for the season’s best

‘The Ricks Must Be Crazy’ boasts a dense plot which, to its testament, remains easy to follow and really amusing throughout. I love it when Rick and Morty takes sci-fi tropes as building blocks, and then subverts them in genius ways, and that’s exactly what happens here. The main plot is complemented by a fantastic B-story, which sees Rick’s car attempt to protect Summer by any means necessary. We go to some wonderfully dark places here, and it’s delivered incredibly, leading to perhaps the most awful thing I’ve ever seen on TV. That Rick and Morty makes this hilarious is genuinely impressive.

We continue the characterisation of Morty as a jaded and frustrated companion to Rick, and it works well here. The look he gives Rick when his grandpa uses the same moral words he offered for an entirely selfish purpose is a great bit of animation – kudos to the animators on that. His frustration leads to him becoming the leader of a group of tree people, and he evolves from indignation to exasperation and wanting to go home. It’s a really interesting relationship – why bother playing by certain rules if they often pan out worse, and the moral choices rarely matter anyway?

On the back of the season’s weakest episode, I think we may have a genuine contender for the season’s best. ‘The Ricks Must Be Crazy’ takes all of the things that makes Rick and Morty special – genius storylines, a coupling of random and dark humour, strong character moments – and produces a brilliant 20 minutes of TV as a result.

Best lines:

‘Go go, Sanchez skis’ – the most random line in a clever episode is a very funny one

‘Ignore all random thoughts that feel… spider-y’ – Rick advises Summer on how to keep safe in a world of telepathic spiders

‘Science, huh? Ain’t it a thing’ – Morty’s uneasy small talk to prevent an alien suicide has the complete opposite effect

‘I masturbated to an extra curvy piece of driftwood the other day!’ – Morty is fed up of tree people civilisation

‘That was my daughter’s paediatrician!’ – this is how you mine humour from a very dark situation

One-off character:

Rick’s rivalry with Zeep Xanflorp drives most of the episode, and it’s really interesting to be someone face him on a near-level pegging. I don’t overly like Colbert, but his vocal performance here is really good, imbuing a lot of humour and fury into a one-off character. What Xanflorp fails to appreciate, however, is not that Rick is smarter – no, it’s that he’s willing to go a little bit further, and be a little bit crueller, than anyone else.

Post-credits scene:

Morty is in class and he hears a car horn – this is the stimulus necessary to transform him into a car. It’s a nice call-back to a joke earlier in the episode, and a genuinely funny scene.