Review: Rick and Morty “The Ricks Must Be Crazy”

Overview (Spoilers Below)

Something’s wrong with Rick’s car battery, so he and Morty go inside the battery leaving Summer in the car by herself.

While Summer is fending off transients and the local police force with various levels of self-defense derived from Rick’s ship, Rick heads into a mini-universe that is living inside of his battery. The mini-verse features an advanced civilization that sees Rick as sort-of a God and even features an alien-scientist named Zeep. And guess what? Zeep has his own mini-verse, and he takes Rick and Morty there. This world has an advanced civilization too, and while they have a scientist named Kyle that seems to be walking the same road as Zeep and Rick before him, he isn’t quite there yet and instead kills himself when he learns the truth about everything. Rick and Zeep start arguing over this very same thing, but with no way of getting back to their homes, they solve their issues in a more primitive way.

After a few months, Summer is still trapped in the car, and Morty brings together his very own civilizations. That said, he wants to get out, so he brings Zeep and Rick together to bring about some sort of common ground to get the fuck out of this mini-verse. Turns out, the two scientists have a lot in common and are able to put aside their differences and get back to Kyle’s lab, but the reconciliation is short-lived and the two fight their way back to Zeep’s world. Rick’s able to ditch Zeep, but just before he’s able to get back home, Zeep returns and a fight between the two scientists ensue. Rick is able to fight off Zeep, and head back to his world and treat the kids to ice cream in a country where a peace accord between humans and spiders exists.

Our Take

A lot was made about Stephen Colbert’s guest appearance on tonight’s episode of Rick and Morty as Zeep, but I think Nathan Fielder deserves props for playing ‘Kyle’, because I think of the two the latter character seemed to have a little more heart and I’m actually kinda upset we didn’t get to see more of him. In any case, the battle between the two scientists was an exciting one, and I honestly can’t remember a time when Rick was this evenly matched and had to get down and dirty.

Possibly the funnier of the two plots, Summer trapped in Rick’s car. The levels that this plot escalated to were just out of bounds. We go from a rather extreme but quick and probably illegal way of keeping Summer safe to legal ways that were just as out of control. A peace accord with a spider colony? Well, that came outta left field. The ship creating family members that had passed on and just rolling them out at the officer’s feet? Holy fuck. Paralyzing and killing transients doesn’t seem so crazy now, does it? Oh, by the way, shout out to Rick’s ship for hurling insults at Summer. Everything she said killed and it was great.

That’s not to say this week’s episode didn’t have a few flaws. Near the last act of the episode, the back and forth between both plots were so quick that I honestly felt Zeep was somehow going to make it to Earth and involve himself in Summer’s plot. That didn’t happen, and now that I think of it, it would’ve been difficult to explain, but the flashbacks and forth were so quick it would’ve seemed a likely conclusion. Also, Morty joining up with the local tribe sounds like it could have been a lot of fun, but it lasted all of 30 seconds and as such, served no logical need.

Thankfully, these gripes are really minor, and the aforementioned guest stars did such a great job at bouncing off of Rick that alone is worth the price of admission. Rick could’ve just gone to a Meineke or called AAA during this whole ordeal, but that would not have been a Rick and Morty episode.