Review: Rick and Morty ‘Total Rickall’

Spoilers Below:

After getting a bit of a mixed bag quality-wise for Rick and Morty thus far this season, it would behoove the show to follow up last week’s strong showing with another.

Then again, when is it not a good idea for a show to have a strong showing?

“Total Rickall” began with the family eating dinner with visiting Uncle Steve, who was revealed by Rick to have been an alien imposter the entire time. Several other suspicious characters popped up as well, instilling false memories in everyone’s heads, and eventually being eliminated by Rick. But then the number of extra characters grew exponentially and started to become accepted by all of the others, and no one was certain which folks were real anymore. Everyone then turned on Rick, and just as Morty was about to kill him, he realized that the people with strictly positive memories were the aliens, and everyone else needed to be destroyed.

They were, with only Rick, Morty, Beth, Jerry, Summer, and Mr. Poopybutthole remaining. Beth, only remembering positive thoughts about the latter character, shot him, but it was revealed that he had been part of the family all along.

In Case You Missed It:

1) Summer got called out a lot this week. The best dig came from Rick: “We all got pinkeye because you won’t stop texting on the toilet!”

2) Nice throwback humor by Rick at the expense of some far-out characters: “What is this, ‘90s Conan?”

3) Rick’s chef apron read: “SUCK MY D_ _ K.”

4) Breaking the Fourth Wall Part 1: “Shoot, now it’s like a Where’s Waldo page. Can you find me? Check out all these zany characters. We’ll be right back after these messages!”

5) Breaking the Fourth Wall Part 2: “Nintendo, give me free stuff!”

6) Rick’s Vietnam army helmet read: “Murder Patrol.” Frankenstein’s Monster’s read: “Kiss my grits.”

7) One of Rick’s supposed catchphrases was: “AIDS!”

8) My favorite part of this episode was the fact that Mr. Poopybutthole was added to the opening credits.

When I said last week’s “Auto Erotic Assimilation” was reminiscent of the near-perfection achieved almost every week last season, I was saying it was pretty darn close. When I say it this week, it’s because it was just as good as – if not better than – a lot of those installments.

Let’s break it down.

At the core of any good Rick and Morty is a really creative plotline, usually combined with some sort of pop culture reference. “Total Rickall” had as intricate of a story as you’ll find in any cartoon, while also being an obvious nod to the 1990 film Total Recall (and its more recent reboot.) The key to the success, however, laid in the execution.

What started as a simple premise, soon spiraled into complex chaos, with everything eventually reaching the breaking point. In this way, the episode was a lot like “Meeseeks and Destory,” but obviously the actual details were entirely different. If anything, the plot of last night’s episode was most similar to last week’s show – since they both involve imposters replacing real people – but the premises were very much dissimilar.

This is a sort of trademark for Rick and Morty. Since everything revolves around Rick and his inventions and vast knowledge of the universe, there can be as many made-up beings and objects and places as the writer’s want. And a lot of the humor lays in the approach to this insanity. We the viewers are presented with at least one character that is totally comfortably with almost every zany detail (Rick) and the rest of the regulars are becoming less phased with each passing episode. (This week everyone had the false memories to lull themselves into complacency too.) Fans are then faced with a barrage of randomness every week, and just have to smile and shake our heads at the utter madness being presented. This week had an endless cast of additional characters being paraded across the screen, with names and identities for all. And just when everyone watching though they knew what the episode was getting at (Mr. Poopybutthole is an imposter that is successfully fooling the whole family), the rug is pulled out from under us after Beth shoots him – leading to one of the biggest & longest laughs of the series.

“Total Rickall” also made fantastic use of cutaways, not just for simple jokes, but for ridiculous memories that obviously never actually happened. Not every one landed, but there were enough so that it didn’t matter. In fact, there were so many, it looked as if Justin Roiland was just making up some of this shit as he went along. Remember season one’s “Rixty Minutes” with the countless weird TV channels? That was this but with people & thoughts presented in tons of cuts. Family Guy was always the king of the cutaways, but with the show’s dip in quality over the past few years, and the (possibly related) decrease in flashbacks, the king is dead – or at least dying.

Long live the new king.