Review: Rick and Morty “The ABCs of Beth”

Fear and Loathing in Froopyland

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS BELOW)

Beth watches the news, seeing a report about Joseph Eli Lipnip, convicted of eating his own son, who was Beth’s friend from childhood. Beth had always tried to tell herself that he had simply gotten lost in an imaginary world called Froopyland, but now she has to face the truth.

That truth being that Froopyland is actually real, Rick made it so that he can get rid of Beth while he worked, and that Tommy is really lost in there. After years of therapy trying to rationalize it as her childlike imagination falls away, all Rick can think about is how ungrateful Beth is being for not appreciating his hard work. I mean, what other dad’s made a completely safe and colorful world for their children to have fun in, huh? We should all be so lucky.

Though clearly, that’s not the actual issue, that being that Rick basically gave Beth the world’s largest pacifier and basically gave her test run abandonment issues before the real deal abandonment started. And even worse, there’s some kid still trapped in here, and he’s alive and…humping, as Rick soon finds as one of the normally harmless creatures and its kids show up and starts tearing his arms apart while sporting deformed humanish flesh. Beth, showing off those genius’ daughter brains, quickly deduces Tommy (likely going through an odd sort of puberty) mated with the creatures while also some of their babies, killing two birds with one stone while eating and…yeah, the other thing.

She and Rick are soon rounded up Ewok style and taken to the now grown Tommy, voiced by Silicon Valley’s Thomas Middleditch (which is even weirder since a Verizon commercial starring him aired right before this episode started). He explains, in expository theater style, that Tiny Beth led him into Froopyland and, out of jealousy for his actually functional family, pushed him into honey and left him to die. He survived but ended up both eating and copulating with everything around him, creating the world they know today. And naturally, Rick bails and takes Beth with him.

Beth, feeling just a tad responsible, pleads with Rick to take them back and save Tommy, but if there’s one thing Rick knows, it’s when to bail. Finally, Beth puts her foot down about Rick being an awful father, but Rick throws back in her face that, in addition to not being his own daughter because of all the timeline stuff, she was apparently also kind of a weird and troubled kid (showcasing several cute but concerning gadgets that make me think there’s a spin-off called “Tiny Beth” we should be watching, including a pink sentient switchblade voiced by Tara Strong!) He of course owns up to him being a horrible dad and person, so of course the daughter of someone like that would turn out just as awful. Because Rick only cares about being right, and will even throw himself under the bus to make that point. But would Beth turned out nearly as messed up or asked him to make these things if he had simply been a regular supportive and present dad, or was this all meant to be? The episode doesn’t give us a clear answer, but Beth is determined to save Tommy to make things right.

This goes…not well, as Beth realizes she is just as poor at owning up to her mistakes as her dad is, but also just as good as fighting monsters as her dad is, so let’s call that a wash. What matters is that even though she was forced to kill Tommy, whose mind had regressed beyond help, Rick clones him and saves Tommy’s dad from the death penalty. In the aftermath, Beth tries to come to terms with what being part-Rick makes her. Evil? Deranged? Psychopathic? In Rick’s eyes, it’s worse, she’s just smart, like him. And despite being not an idiot, eventually, the universe will wear her down just like every other idiot. He tells her to take off, basically try finding herself in the infinite expanse of the multiverse, and he’ll leave a clone behind to take her place so that nothing she does has any consequences. After some soul searching. Beth reaches a decision.

BUT HEY ENOUGH ABOUT LET’S TALK ABOUT WHAT JERRY DID THIS EPISODE. Long story short, Jerry gets a rebound with a hot three-boobed alien huntress (voiced by Jennifer Hale), but after a lot of pushing by Summer and Morty, finally, realizes he’s in it for all the wrong reasons and breaks up with her. Not exactly as character driven as Beth’s story, but it is interesting that when either of them gets an episode this season, they still can’t get away from each other.

OUR TAKE

Can’t I catch a freaking break with this show? It keeps breaking my heart every other week. As mentioned, this is pretty much the first time Beth has gotten her own episode, just as Jerry only just got his first one a few weeks ago, and both are oddly similar in structure. Both see the two on an adventure with Rick where their individual problems with him quickly bubble to the surface, then he throws their inadequacies back in their face, they confront their issues and compromise about what they can and/or cannot change and move forward. Though in contrast to Jerry, Rick, despite his incredibly distorted ways of getting it out, actually gives a crap about Beth. Froopyland, making the gadgets, offering her the clone deal, and perhaps even leaving were all his ways of showing that. As he ranted to Jerry way back when, her being “Rick’s daughter” gave her options, and clearly he wanted the world for her at some point, but his growing cynicism and her shotgun wedding to Jerry got in the way. But despite all his deflection about blame, it’s clear he still cares. In his own way.

As for the ending, it is pretty much impossible to tell which choice Beth made, and even less likely that we’ll ever know. My immediate reaction was that she took the deal because I just expect this show to rip my guts out and destroy all my hope in people. But the truth is that Rick kind of checks out, for however long which might be good for Beth, and we don’t need to see it happen, just to know that she’s finally free.

The other option is that she stayed, deciding her life was enough and that she would become her own person by choosing not to do what her father would. That choice is admirable too, even knowing that, while suddenly, and taking twenty years, her dad did come back. For her.

But seriously Dan Harmon, get on that Tiny Beth spin-off!