“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!