Many apologies for missing last week’s episode of Rick and Morty. My absence was not a critique on the value of Morty’s Mindblowers, Salt Lake Comic Con was on the horizon and my efforts were concentrated on preparing for panels. Special thanks to everyone that came out to the Rick and Morty panel (what up, my glip glops?!), it was a hell of a time.

The show returned Sunday with The ABCs of Beth, a Beth centric episode (as the title suggests) that utilized the plot/sub-plot format most of the show has enjoyed. Returning to the usual format allowed for each member of the family to stretch their wings and it was nice to focus on some of the characters who have taken a back seat for most of the season.

The intro sequence tells us of an upcoming execution for a local man accused and convicted of eating his son many years ago. Beth relives the childhood trauma of losing her best friend Tommy to his cannibalistic father and the years of therapy it took to break her of the delusion that he had gone to live in Froopyland, the technicolor world of her imagination.

Upon hearing mention of Froopyland (and really at hearing the criticism of its naming) Rick sends Morty and Summer to their court ordered weekend with Jerry via transport bubbles, despite their protestations.

Wielding techno-magic chalk, Rick reveals that Froopyland is a real place, and opens a doorway there. Faced with the realization that her memories of time spent there were authentic, Beth berates her father for dumping her in a procedurally generated play land instead of spending time with her. Unable to admit his faults, Rick maintains that Froopyland was not created as a babysitter for Beth so that Rick wouldn’t have to spend time with her, but rather to protect the neighborhood from her psychopathic tendencies. A string of inventions are pulled from a box, seemingly created at an adolescent Beth’s request, and they range from harmless to terrifying.

Meanwhile, Morty and Summer arrive at their father’s fully expecting him to be a total Jerry, wallowing in his own sadness. Instead, what they find is a man who is put together, confident, and mildly telepathic. Which is when Jerry reveals he’s embarked on a new relationship with an alien warrior priestess.

Back in Froopyland, Rick and Beth search for the remains of Tommy who almost certainly starved to death in the intervening years, only to discover that the bouncy ground and breathable rainbow waters (making the landscape entirely safe for the unsupervised exploration of a child) have been invaded by vicious creatures. They quickly intuit that these creatures must be the hybrid spawn of Tommy who, in an attempt both to survive and placate his young libido, impregnated the synthetic creatures and ate them. The remaining creations (those less tasty) have created a society who now worship him.

Rick, complete with a robotic arm prosthesis gained after having his arm ripped off by vicious half-Tommy birds, and Beth are taken to see King Tommy. Rick quickly grows weary of their time in Froopyland, seeing no benefit to staying there and uses the chalk to abscond back home. Beth feels some responsibility for the impending death of Tommy’s father and returns to retrieve him in an attempt to stay the execution.

The rest of the episode goes off mostly without Rick’s help. Beth slaughters many of the inhabitants of Froopyland, rather than admit to Tommy that she pushed him into a pond of honey and trapped him there, showing that just like her father she is either unwilling or incapable of admitting her own faults.

Jerry finds himself overwhelmed by the intensity of his new relationship and lies, saying that Summer and Morty are offended by his paramore’s alien features in order to get out of the relationship. This results in her hunting them down so that she and Jerry can continue their romance. Jerry is finally forced to admit that not only is he racist, misogynistic, and cowardly, but that he is the one who wants to end their tryst, but only when Summer is on the brink of death.

This episode has cemented the realization that while Beth and Jerry seem to be most normal of the family, in fact they are the only ones incapable of facing their demons to the detriment of those around them. Rick, while tormented and entirely unhealthy, is at least capable of recognizing his ills, even if he won’t admit them to anyone else.

The episode wraps up with Beth and Rick creating a clone of Tommy (once again taking extreme measures in order to avoid admitting a mistake or even making a simple apology) in order to ensure his father isn’t executed for his murder. Despite the twisted turns that brought them here, it offers a warm family moment as the pair work together to solve a problem, giving Beth some of the father-daughter time she so craves.

In the midst of all this, Beth is forced to face the fact that she is very much like her father and ask herself what that means. In Rick’s closing monologue he tells her it means she can do whatever she wants, the universe is open to her and the only thing stopping her from being her best (or worst) self is her. Finally, he offers to create a clone of Beth, one with all of her memories and sentiments, that could pick up her life so that she is free to explore not just the universe but what it means to be Beth. She thinks for a moment, then says she knows what she needs to do.

We, as the audience, don’t see the end result of that decision. Instead, the scene cuts to Morty and Summer returning home. Beth and Rick join them at the table and the four of them enjoy pizza (pilfered from a neighboring universe in which daylight savings was never invented and their favorite pizza joint is still open).

This episode has continued the theme of season three in forcing Rick, at least in some small measure, to face up to the trauma he has caused his loved ones just by being around them. And in so doing, Beth became a more whole person, gaining something that even years of (misguided) therapy could give her. In a truly unusual moment, Rick even admits to caring about her, despite being unable to crystallize exactly what the cause of that love is. And does something selfless in offering her a way out, an action that gives him no direct benefit other than knowing one way or another that his daughter will be the happier for it.

At the episode’s close we’re left wondering if the Beth at the table is the true Beth or a doppelganger. We may never know and, in the end, as Rick is wont to say, it doesn’t really matter.

we’re left wondering of the Beth at the table is the true Beth or a doppelganger. We may never know and, in the end, as Rick is wont to say, it doesn’t really matter.

Be warned, here be spoilers.

After taking a week off, Rick and Morty is back with The Ricklantis Mixup. The opening intro scene, as well as the title of the episode, are a calculated misdirection. The episode itself features none of the fabled city and only barely includes Rick and Morty C-137.

Instead, while the characters we’ve been following for most of the series travel to the lost city for a much needed vacation, we go through the proverbial portal to the Citadel of Ricks, or what’s left of it, to see firsthand the aftermath of its destruction.

What we find is a city in the midst of painful rebirth. The assassination of the council at the hands of Rick C-137 during The Rickshank Rickdemption has had lasting effects. The remaining inhabitants of the citadel are prisoners, unable to access or use portal guns. Many of them, Ricks and Mortys alike, thrust into roles outside their station or ability.

The citadel is holding an election to select a new President. In the running is a Morty, a foil on the nightly news (anchored by increasingly mutated versions of Rick from neighboring realities), he is expected by all within the citadel to be summarily defeated.

While the election takes center street in the narrative, in the meandering byways are glimpses into the outskirts of life in the citadel. One subplot that follows two police partners, one a Rick sensitive to the needs of the Morty population, the other a hardened Morty, flips the script on the usual relationship these characters have, regardless of their native reality. Another subplot follows a group of four Mortys, in a nod to Stand by Me, as they leave Morty school (instructed by a Snape-esque Rick, where they learn how to be good little disposable sidekicks) in search of the Wishing Portal in hopes that they might change their fortunes. The third, and final, subplot follows a Rick working in a candy factory where he helps to manufacture candy crafted from the neural secretions of a captured Rick as memories of happy times with a young Beth are replayed on a loop in his brain. Scenes like this, the enslavement of one Rick by other Ricks for something so insubstantial as creating candy, tell us more about the character than any monologue could. The fact that seeing it on screen is accompanied by a knowing nod, not the shock and disgust it deserves, is telling.

All of the citadel is waiting for the next Rick to rise up and take control when a campaign debate goes sour. The Morty candidate delivers a compelling speech about the real problems in the citadel and about the power of the people. It might have fallen on deaf ears had the ordinary power structure remained intact, the Mortys outgunned by their Rick counterparts. But in a society where disenfranchisement is equal opRicktunity, the notion that the one percent are outnumbered, hits a cord with everyone.

In the wake of such positive response, Morty’s campaign manager expresses his disbelief and is fired, only to later be presented with a file containing secrets about the true nature of the Morty candidate. Secrets we aren’t privy to but that push the campaign manager Morty to murderous action. His attempts to kill the Morty candidate do not succeed and after a failed assassination attempt, the Morty Candidate is elected as the new President of the citadel, inspiring the populace to rise up against their oppressors.

Never missing an opportunity for social commentary, the episode is a very thinly veiled allegory for social and political strife around the world today, perhaps specifically in the United States. The Morty candidate promises hope to a population that has none and they grab on with both hands.

What they don’t know, what they can’t know, is that this isn’t any ordinary Morty. When a governing committee of Ricks, meant to aide the President, makes it clear that they have no intent of abdicating power to a Morty, President Morty has them killed.

In the final scene, accompanied by the song For the Damaged Coda by Blonde Redhead (the same song the plays at the end of Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind) we’re shown dozens, perhaps hundreds of bodies being ejected from airlocks into space and, at the last second, the body of campaign manager Morty floating near the files that reveal, too late, that the new President of the citadel is none other than Evil Morty.

The Ricklantis Mixup is proof positive that Rick and Morty is more than just high flying science fiction shenanigans. Mega seeds planted in season one are just now bearing fruit. There is a greater narrative being slowly built behind the scenes, one that will have heavy implications for the characters we’ve come to love, even while they’re cavorting with mermaids, none the wiser.

I should have known.

I should have known and I should have been prepared.

Last week’s episode of Rick and Morty left me wanting but they never miss the mark twice.

Rick Sanchez and his painfully (but hilariously) dysfunctional family returned Sunday with episode five of their third season, The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy.

Teasers of the episode promised that this episode would break the usual structure and instead focus on a Rick and Jerry adventure.

Jerry has been missing, for the most part, from the season, after his schism from the family in episode one. The implications of the impending divorce between Beth and Jerry have had rippling consequences throughout the family. While the show has forced the characters and viewers to question their role in an uncaring multiverse, this season has forced them to question their very identities and, somehow, that hits heavier.

Vindicators 3 showed us a Morty who was finally ready to take charge of his life, taking the lessons learned from Rick and molding them to fit his own worldview. Using this newfound confidence, Morty requests that Rick take Jerry on an adventure to help enliven his spirits.

Fearing that Jerry would be unable to survive even the lightest of Rick’s usual haunts, he takes the most fragile man in existence to the safest place he can think of, a resort destination complete with an immortality field. But even in the safest of places, Jerry can’t help but get into some trouble.

Patrons of the resort, adults and children alike, leisurely kill one another, then laugh and embrace when the victim is revived. After a hand-dryer malfunction (which is SO Jerry), Jerry finds himself pulled into an underground resistance intent on killing Rick for having taken over the resort from its previous leader. But how?

It turns out, a popular ride called The Whirly Dirly (a rollercoaster so homicidal it could only exist in this location) dips just outside of the immortality field on its way around its track. All Jerry has to do is get Rick to ride it and the assassins will do the rest.

Jerry is, at first, reticent about killing his soon to be ex-father-in-law but, Rick being Rick, it doesn’t take long for the ire to build and the machinations of murder to sprout.

Despite Jerry’s best laid plans, Rick survives the assassination attempt (as if there was any doubt), completely destroying The Whirly Dirly and the immortality field in the process.

Jerry and Rick are left in a dangerous alien wilderness and it doesn’t take long for Rick to put the pieces together and plant the finger firmly at Jerry.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Summer is dealing with the abandonment of her boyfriend for a more well-endowed classmate and uses one of Rick’s many inventions in an attempt to enhance her own features.

Of course it goes terribly wrong and Summer is transformed into a hideously grotesque version of herself. Morty wants to call Rick, commenting that this type of scenario seems firmly within Rick’s wheelhouse, but Beth won’t let him. She seems more determined than ever to prove herself on an equal playing field with her father. In her attempt to prove her own intelligence she makes the situation much worse, all the while proving that her own psychological failings are more important to her than the physical and emotional well being of her children.

The best moment of the episode finds Jerry waste deep in an alien snake, being quickly devoured, and begging Rick to save him. “You took my family,” he screams. And that’s when Rick unleashes the full force of his hatred.

We’re treated to a devastating and fully convincing argument from Rick about Jerry’s true motives and his uncanny ability to suck the life and potential out of everyone around him, simply by existing and being so completely pathetic. We see the light leave Jerry’s eyes as he realizes the truth of what Rick is saying, all while being swallowed.

Never fear, though, Jerry and Rick make it off planet alive and Beth comes through for Summer in the end. Everyone seems to have gained some appreciation for each other. However short lived it might be remains to be seen, but by the time the credits roll, everyone has learned a lesson and has been made the better for it.

That is, except for Morty.

The final post-credits clip implies some dastardly activity from Morty off-camera. While he seems to be the only character taking control of their situation, Morty seems to be heading in a particularly dark direction.

The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy continues down the path set up at the beginning of the season, that simply being in proximity to Rick brings the worst out of everyone. While being around Jerry might arrest your development, being around Rick mutates you into a shadow of your former self, sometimes literally, always figuratively.

We’re still waiting for Rick to have to confront the demons he’s created.

Episode six of Rick and Morty airs this coming Sunday on Cartoon Network.

Another Sunday, another episode of Rick and Morty. Our titular heroes return in Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender.

Maybe it’s just coming down from the series high that was Pickle Rick but Vindicators felt a little hollow. The episode opens with a literal call to action from the Vindicators to save the universe from the villainous Worldender.

Rick refuses to answer, forever planting his feet in the dirt, maintaining that he will save reality only when and if he feels like it, that’s when Morty invokes the right to choose one of every ten adventures, producing a punch card which Rick stamps with little fanfare.

The duo arrive on an intergalactic station and are greeted by a team of unlikely heroes who are a shallow skewering of the superhero genre that’s taken over Hollywood.

We’re given Supernova, the apparent leader of the Vindicators with the power of a collapsing star, CrocuBot who is exactly what he sounds like, Million Ants, also exactly what it sounds like, and Alan Rails with the ability to control a ghost train and a tragic dead-parents backstory. The crew is rounded out by Maximus Renegade Star-Soldier, a wise cracking Star Lord type and Rick’s opposite.

Morty sees the Vindicators as more than just superheroes, they are his personal heroes, and something that he sorely needs as his faith in Rick fades with every episode after his break out from prison.

Vindicators 3: The Return of Worldender has all of the trappings of what makes Rick and Morty great, clever jokes and animated violence, but it lacks all but a little of the substance that usually elevates the show above shock humor for its own sake. It’s wearing Rick and Morty’s clothes but is really three dogs in mech suits beneath a lab coat.

That isn’t to say there aren’t some noteworthy moments. When Star-Soldier first arrives, he calls Morty by name, to Morty’s delight, and follows it up by saying “I never forget a kid.” Perhaps a not-so-subtle callback to the darker moments of the last time Morty chose an adventure and encountered King Jellybean in a seedy bathroom.

Perhaps the episode’s most memorable moment is toward the end, after Rick has defeated Worldender before the Vindicators ever get the chance and, in a drunken fit, puts them through a series of Saw-like puzzles in order to prove beyond any doubt that he doesn’t respect them.

Morty spends the episode solving the puzzles with little effort, he has Rick figured out, at one point lamenting that the point of a particular puzzle was that none of them are special. “That’s kind of always his point,” Morty says.

The final puzzle demands that the Vindicators place the only part of them that Rick values onto a pedestal. Morty believes it’s a cruel joke, that there is nothing they could place there that would save them because Rick doesn’t believe they have anything of value.

This is when we see that rare glimpse of emotion and humanity in Rick, he suggests, rather sheepishly (not remembering anything he’d created in the previous night’s blackout) that they put Morty on the pedestal. That perhaps, while he was drunk, he became sentimental and that Morty might be the one person within the Vindicators that he values.

Morty steps onto the dais and is treated to a macabre, theme-park ride ending with a video from Rick which appears to confirm his love for Morty, only to have the rug pulled out when it’s revealed he is talking about a throwaway character the Vindicators left behind at HQ.

Overall, Vindicators 3 sits somewhere at the bottom of the barrel, somewhere near Get Schwifty. While both episodes may have some meme-worthy moments, they’re mostly forgettable among the larger grouping of stellar outings the show has had.

If anything, the show serves to cement the theme that while Beth has doubled down on her adoration of her father, Morty and Summer are beginning to see the holes in his facade. Their relationships are eroding.

Maybe this means that sometime, before season three ends, Rick might have to face his most difficult challenge to date, his own flaws.

It’s been hours since I finished watching this week’s episode of Rick and Morty and my mind is still settling. Oh look, there goes my hippocampus, whirling past the brainstem for the forty-third time, holding up its middle finger.

I should have been prepared, it’s not as if the show is typically grounded, but I wasn’t. I’d spent months wondering at the adventures Pickle Rick might get into during his tenure as a briny, shrivelled cucumber, but I couldn’t have imagined.

It opens, as most episodes of Rick and Morty do, with the insanity already dialed up. Rick is a pickle right out of the gate. Morty has questions, and for good reason, Rick rarely does anything that isn’t part of some larger plan. The rest of the family joins the titular characters in the garage and it becomes evident that Rick has turned himself into a vegetable in order to get out of family counseling.

You might ask yourself why Rick didn’t just jaunt off to another dimension, making himself scarce at the preordained time, if he didn’t want to go to therapy. The answer, dear viewer, is the same for Rick as it is for all the rest of us, where would be the fun in that?

Rick’s plan is simple, or as simple as a Rick plan can be. Just above his slender green frame, he’s rigged a needle filled with a serum that will turn him human once again. The string is near scissors, rigged to a timer, set to go off just after the family leaves the house.

The timer goes off, the scissors cut the string, and gravity does the rest… or, it would have gone that way, but Beth takes the needle, takes the kids, and leaves Rick to his own devices.

“You should just stay here and figure out how to stop being a pickle.”

Words that will haunt me for the remainder of my days.

Rick does figure out how to stop being a pickle in what amounts to one of the most experimental and enthralling half-hour’s of television I’ve ever seen.

There are cats, flash floods, roaches, rats, and foreign dignitaries, all of whom fall beneath the iron mind of Rick Sanchez on his quest to become human once again.

Rick is backed into a corner, you might say he’s literally in a pickle, and that’s when he’s at his best. You haven’t seen genius and cunning like this since Rick took down the galactic government.

Somehow, Harmon and Roiland found a way to up the stakes for Rick, even when they are smaller, both figuratively and literally.

This is the Rick Sanchez we’ve come to love, the Rick who will burn the world around him, and everyone in it, just for a little excitement.

Rick, don’t ever change.

Rick and Morty Season Three is streaming on Adult Swim.

Airing only Rickshank Rickdemption would have been a hollow season opener so Adult Swim made the wise decision to drop two episodes of Rick and Morty today. Episode one aired for anyone who hadn’t seen it during its temporary debut on April 1, with episode two Rickmancing the Stone airing directly after.

Season three spoilers ahead.

What’s happened so far- we learned that Rick’s motivation for being arrested in the season two finale wasn’t completely selfless. It was a part of his master plan to get inside the headquarters of the intergalactic government and take it down from the inside. Rick John Malkoviches himself inside the heads of a series of aliens with increasingly high security clearance, making his way up the hierarchy and taking a shit in alien bodies along the way. His plan culminates in transporting the prison into galactic HQ and collapsing the economy. Rick simultaneously dismantles the Council of Ricks. The galactic government removes their presence from Earth and Rick is able to go home. His final coup has him removing Jerry from the family so he can pursue his endeavors unburdened.

Rickmancing the Stone puts us back into Rick and Morty proper. Rick, Morty, and Summer return from an unseen adventure through a portal and into the garage. Jerry stands in the driveway, his meager belongings packed into a moving truck. Morty tells his father goodbye but Summer disregards him, feigning apathy in her parents’ divorce.

In an attempt to shift the conversation to anything else, Summer requests an adventure and Rick is happy to oblige, landing the trio on a Mad Max style planet chock full of radiation, mutated marauders, and glowing rocks that Rick wants to further his goals.

What’s continually impressive about Rick and Morty is the creators’ ability to tell engaging science fiction stories while sliding social commentary into every nook and cranny.

Summer- “Rick, didn’t you say you needed my help on an adventure immediately, somewhere else- I don’t care- even if it might kill us?”

Rick- “I did not, but if you’re really that alienated, I’m as willing to exploit it as the next guy, church, army, or olympics gymnastics trainer.”

What follows is the Rick and Morty we’ve all come to know and love. Summer embraces the darkness, Morty goes all Idol Hands on a whole mess of Death Stalkers, and everyone learns a lesson before the credits roll. Except for Rick, but what are you gonna do?

Episodes one and two of Rick and Morty season three are streaming right now on Adult Swim.

UPDATE- at the time of this writing, only one episode had aired. Episode two, Rickmancing the Stone has dropped and it’s glorious.

We thought this day might never come. We wondered if maybe the first two seasons were perhaps the delightful hallucinations of a fever dream. Maybe we’d awakened to a disappointing reality in which Rick and Morty didn’t exist and all we had were the memories of animated existential crises slowly fading until all that remained was the dull ache of what might have been. Until, finally, on this most hallowed of days,  our heroes have returned and the sun shines over the kingdom once more.

Season three of Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon’s cartoon masterpiece, Rick and Morty, is finally here. For those of you who missed the April 1, event in which the first episode was streamed on a loop for twenty-four hours, this was your opportunity to pick up where season two left off.

The second season ended on a mix of emotions. On one hand, we finally see the first cracks in Rick’s impenetrable shell. He exposes himself, for the good of his family, and gets himself locked up in an intergalactic prison. For a character who usually thinks only of himself, who is willing to cast anyone close to him beneath a runaway train just to get what he wants, we finally see that maybe he really does care about them. It left us wondering what was next for the titular characters and their family. The future, for Rick, was uncertain.

This week’s episode opens and immediately it seems that things are looking up. Rick is reunited with his family as they sit around the table of a chain restaurant. But things quickly get weird when Rick commands Jerry to fold himself several times. It becomes clear that Rick has not escaped prison. He’s still in the hands of the intergalactic government and they’ve invaded his mind in search of the secret of his portal gun.

An actual photo of how it feels to be watching Rick and Morty again.

Meanwhile, back at home, Morty and the rest of his family exist under the bootheel of that same government, subsisting on a literal diet of pills. Things have never been more dire, and that’s saying something considering the dark places the show has taken us over the last two seasons.

Over the next twenty minutes, Roiland and Harmon weave a tale that shows the true genius of our geriatric, alcoholic hero as he reveals a masterful plan to take down the system from the inside, allowing himself at long last to pursue his true goal, the reclamation of McDonald’s Mulan Szechuan sauce.

The events of Rickshank Rickdemption set in motion a domino effect that will impact not just Earth but the entirety of the multiverse. Things, from here on out, will never be the same.

If you haven’t yet seen this episode (I realize the odds of that are slim) it is currently streaming online at Adult Swim.

The true season premiere will take place next week when we get to see the first, as yet unseen, Rick and Morty content. If the show’s track record is to be trusted, and we have no reason yet to doubt them, it’s sure to be ridiculous and wonderful. Stay tuned.  

Bonus:

Rick Sanchez isn’t the only thing released from a dimensional prison today. McDonald’s, after pressure from the internet hive-mind (and assuredly recognizing a good marketing opportunity when they see one), sent the show’s creators a half gallon of Szechuan sauce and promises limited availability to other lucky folks. 

This episode features Tom, Tyson, Nick, Lucas, and Jon

Is there TomFlix customer service? Let’s talk about Iron Fist! Lucas and Tyson haven’t watched it, and Nick didn’t finish it. Jon finished it in 48 hours and it was a trial of patience. Tom flip flops on his opinion of Iron Fist. Fight scenes with tons of cuts = not a great actor. Iron Fist is the worst of the series so far. All the plots and characters that aren’t Danny Rand are worth watching. It ties together the Defenders universe…hold on I literally had to pause the podcast because Jon said he didn’t like Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones? BRB I need to go on a walk to cool off.

OK I’m back.

Kong talk! Spoiler alert: the gorilla is actually normal sized, the people are shrunk. It was funny, evenly paced, Jon considered it a perfect film. Not his favorite, but well put together. Actual spoilery talk about Kong so tune out for a bit if you haven’t seen it, Rebecca.

The guys talk (again) about how going to theaters sucks and the future of the movie-going experience.

Jon and Tyson try to explain Legion and no one knows what happened in the show, despite having watched it all. Consensus: Great show, no idea what happened in it.

Not a joke, first episode of season 3 of Rick and Morty premiered on April 1! So much Rick and Morty talk!

Listen now on iTunes, Google Play, or Stitcher

Be sure to check out our sponsors: The Bohemian Brewery and Watchtower Cafe!

As always, thank you very much for tuning in! If you like what you hear, please leave us a rating on your preferred casting service. You can contact any of the podcasters via their Twitter handles, or get at Big Shiny Robot directly.

I’ll never forget the day I put on a virtual reality (VR) headset for the first time, it was on September 4^th.  I got the chance to go hands on with ‘Rick and Morty Simulator- Virtual Rick-ality’ on the HTC Vive from Adult Swim Games and Owlchemy Labs at Pax West 2016. I placed the headpiece up to my eyes and, quite suddenly, found myself in a wholly other world.

Maybe it was something I ate, maybe not. It started off with a VR-view of Rick’s garage-laboratory. I found out that I was a Morty clone and was immediately instructed to wash Rick’s clothes in the garage. Rick insulted me on how slow I was at performing the task, and once I was finished, I was shot in the face and sent to Purgatory. What is that ringing noise in my ears? (I thought) There is a phone in Purgatory ringing?!? I picked it up. I couldn’t quite here the message since I didn’t position the phone to my ear properly. I assume it said something like “You Effed up, try again”. I was immediately transported back to the garage and told to get a package out of the driveway using the Meeseeks box located at Rick’s crafting station. I pressed the Meeseeks button and a ball appeared. I grabbed the ball, threw it on the ground, and a virtual Meeseeks appeared. Then…a wild storm starts and Rick tells me to pull the lever to activate the blast shields around the house. I do this and a portal appears in front of me. Rick urges me to go through it. I walk through the portal onto a platform in the middle of space only to see Rick and Morty on a different far away platform with Rick shouting and promoting ‘Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality’. If that wasn’t enough awesome I was told to look down and I was standing on the edge of the UNIVERSE!

The Adult Swim hit show ‘Rick and Morty’ has taken over this world, and very soon the virtual world will also succumb to antics. The demo was brief but left me affected. For better or worse, I’m not sure. However, being a gamer pretty much all my life and being content with the new generation of consoles I still wanted to experience a new way of playing games, that felt significant and a generation leap forward. ‘Rick and Morty Simulator: Virtual Rick-ality’ was that for me. Be excited! There are a lot of things on the horizon that will soon become a reality.

Listen to Cy Wise from Owlchemy Labs break it down here:

 https://soundcloud.com/poppundits/rick-and-morty-simulator-virtual-rick-ality-hands-on-wcy-wise-1

“Rick and Morty” 2.7 “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez” (8 out of 10) Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon; Starring Justin Roiland, Spencer Grammer, and Chris Parnell and Sarah Chalke; Run time 22 minutes; Originally aired 09/13/2015.

Tiny Rick!

In the most recent installment of “Rick and Morty” a vampire is discovered at Morty and Summer’s school while Jerry and Beth have marital trouble (surprise). Rick, being his usual charming self, tells Jerry and Beth to either fix their marriage or get divorced already and sends them to couples therapy on another planet with a one hundred percent success rate.

While they’re gone Rick transfers his consciousness into a younger version of himself in order to infiltrate the high school and kill the vampire.

Luckily the vampire premise was short lived as I was immediately concerned we were in for another lackluster episodes. I’m looking at you giant floating head. I saw WHAT YOU GOT, and I wasn’t that impressed.

Tiny Rick is inexplicably and incredibly popular with the kids at school and Rick stays inside his adolescent clone in order to help Morty and Summer with their prospective crushes while the real (read: drunk, depressed, and curmudgeonly) Rick literally begs for help from within his fleshy prison.

This might be the first episode wherein I enjoyed the subplot more than the main one. While the exploits of Tiny Rick were entertaining and would have been sufficient to put the episode above some of its lesser peers on its own, the adventures at couples therapy were surprisingly, more exciting.

Jerry and Beth undergo a procedure that manifests their perceptions of one another as artificially created, but very real, life forms. Jerry imagines Beth as essentially a Xenomorph with her face, and she imagines Jerry as a frightened pink slug. The two entities form a symbiotic relationship and threaten to kill everyone in sight. The way the episode plays with their perceptions as the episode progresses is inspired and of course, Beth and Jerry find a way to love one another again, at least until Morty graduates high school.

One of the most satisfying moments comes at the end of the episode after Rick’s consciousness is transferred back into his real body and he bursts into a gleeful violent rage. The best moments are when Rick throws caution (and societal cues) to the wind and lets his true psychopath out.

Now, I don’t have a doctorate and I’m not really qualified to diagnose psychological problems but I’d venture a guess that happily perpetrating a naked axe murder blood bath qualifies.

I’ll miss you Tiny Rick, we hardly knew ye.

You can catch the latest episode streaming on Adult Swim. New episodes arrive every Sunday night.

Tiny Rick!