“Rick and Morty” 2.6 “The Ricks Must Be Crazy” (8 out of 10) Created by Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon; Written by Dan Guterman; Starring Justin Roiland, Spencer Grammer, and Stephen Colbert; Run time 22 minutes; Originally aired 08/30/2015.
Thank the giant floating head, “Rick and Morty” is back. After a lackluster outing last week, this week’s episode “The Ricks Must Be Crazy” came full force to remind us why the show is worth sacrificing precious time to the TV gods.
What starts as a nice family outing with Rick and his grandkids to an alternate reality soon devolves into madness and mayhem when the trio leave a movie theater (for a film franchise of “Ball Fondlers”) and find that the battery in Rick’s ship is dead.
Rick and Morty shrink down and go inside the battery, leaving Summer to watch the ship and the ship to watch Summer. Summer has to convince the ship not to kill or maim everyone who comes within an arm’s reach in a world inhabited by average human beings, award winning ice cream, and giant telepathic spiders.
Meanwhile Rick reveals that the ship’s battery is actually a shrunken (insert bullshit sciencey words) universe in a box. Rick created the universe and waited for a world with life to develop. Then he visited them under the guise of a wise and benevolent alien and gave them the technology to create electricity which he siphons off to power his ship.
As always Morty is the voice of compassion and reason, he suggests that what Rick is doing is tantamount to slavery with extra steps, and as always Rick disregards him. When the duo discover the source of the energy problem, a scientist who has invented his own nested universe to power their world making Rick’s system obsolete, they begin down a fractal rabbit hole that risks their very lives, at least until the end of the episode.
This episode features a cameo performance from Stephen Colbert, as the miniaturized scientist and source of all the trouble, and he is as on point as he always is.
Despite what this may say about me psychologically, my favorite episodes are the ones with dark and depressing implications and this one delivers. While the problems presented to the titular characters are wrapped up in the span of the episode, it leaves us with some heavy implications regarding what Rick is willing to do to accomplish his ends, even if those ends are just getting down the street for ice cream.
You can catch the latest episode streaming on Adult Swim. New episodes arrive every Sunday night.