Rick and Morty – Rick: A Mort Well Lived

Last week’s Rick and Morty began with a strong instalment, mixing some top-quality jokes with a bit of serialisation and proof that our investment in these characters is paying off. So, how do you follow it up? The answer is ‘Rick: A Mort Well Lived’, which fuses two of the show’s strengths – inventive sci-fi and movie parody – into another brilliant outing, revisiting one of the show’s incidental jokes and making it an essential story.

   In a sleepy little town, a group of teenagers loitering outside a store are approached by a man handing out flyers for a rally – it transpires that, inside the Roy game, Morty’s mind has been split among all of the NPCs after a terrorist attack, and Rick (as Roy) needs to get his grandson out before the game reboots or finishes. He’s supported in the arcade by Summer, who needs to buy him time to liberate Morty by doing a Die Hard and fighting off the terrorists. The only problem, Summer notes, that she’s 17 and hasn’t seen the film.

a brilliant and pitch-perfect Die Hard parody

   This episode continues in last week’s vein by introducing a touch of seriality, taking us back to the Blips and Chitz arcade first introduced in series two’s ‘Mortynight Run’. In a further call-back, Morty is once again playing Roy: A Life Well Lived. But whereas that game was simply a beautiful extended side-joke in the earlier episode, it is used to here to present an ingenious sci-fi storyline boasting a number of strong character beats. That the show pulls this off in its limited runtime is impressive, but that it does so alongside a brilliant and pitch-perfect Die Hard parody/interrogation is incredible. I know I’ve said this before in my Rick and Morty blogs, but the sheer amount of material the writers fit into an episode is phenomenal.

   There’s a lot of comedic mileage in the Roy game, as every character is Morty and an individual filtered through the lens of a 14-year-old boy, and it works so well. Writers Roiland and Harmon play with the fact that Rick’s attempts to get through to the billions of fragments of Morty are very reminiscent of religious and cult movements, but it soon evolves into another very clever character study. Because, if every single character is a single piece of Morty, then that means Morty’s every opinion of Rick is out there somewhere. A story that begins as sci-fi comedy becomes something emotional and bittersweet – I won’t ruin it, but the finale packs a punch and shows us just how much Rick has changed as a man.

Summer faces off against a Hans Gruber-esque alien

   In the Die Hard storyline, Summer faces off against a Hans Gruber-esque alien voiced by Peter Dinklage, who’s clearly having a whale of a time reciting the tropes of the shared cultural myth of the film to an adversary who could not be less interested. If you’re a fan of the film, you’re going to love this B-story – it’s equal parts affectionate to parodic, and I thought it was brilliant (I’m not too sure what those who, like Summer, haven’t seen Die Hard will make of it). Stay tuned for the genius post-credits scene, which I didn’t see coming but which is a total stroke of genius.

   ‘Rick: A Mort Well Lived’ is both an inventive one-off, and yet it’s likely to have ramifications moving forward as we continue the sixth series. Rick and Morty is a stunning show and, when it’s firing on all cylinders, it can be clever, action-packed, hilarious and heart-breaking all at once – this episode is an example of that, and one that will reward long-time viewers and those seeking a bit of parodic mayhem.