Review: Rick and Morty “Mortyplicity”

 

 

Overview:

Somebody is hunting down Rick and the Smith family. Thankfully, they only knocked off one of Rick’s decoy families that he stationed throughout the country. As the family attempts to hunt down other versions of themselves, they soon discover that they, too, were decoys.

On and on, decoys continue to kill each other off, while no family is sure if they are the real version or not. The misadventures escalate to the point where every family must face off in a final war. The last family standing can lay claim to being the original.

 

Our Take:

It would not be much of a season if Rick and Morty did not try their best to confuse the audience at least once. Although we can’t be sure if the show has any more brain melters for us, this episode delivered the best of an over-the-top convoluted plot.

Amazingly, the cold open managed to tell us what was going to happen without directly saying it. When Rick states that their plan for the day was to try and kill god, he never expected that his maker would be another version of himself. The even worse news for this introductory Rick is he is the first victim in every Rick on the planet trying to do the same thing.

The remainder of the episode is about playing with the viewer’s head. One family after another finds the same fate as the one before it, a horrible and brutal death. The entire time, leaving us to question who the natural family is and if we will ever get past the never-ending chain of decoys. That is until it reaches a point where it no longer matters.

As twisty as it may be, the episode does lay a foundation that the lives of Morty and Rick do not matter. Whether it is throughout the remainder of the season or seven seasons from now, if the titular characters are murdered, it can forever be played off that they were decoys. In fact, every time we visit these characters, it could just be another clone of an original that we have never met.

It is truly the beauty of this show that it contorts the theories of time and space into an endless world of possibilities that makes nothing and everything real simultaneously. Rick and Morty can and do literally everything because there are an endless amount of them across the world, in different universes, and throughout time. Canonically, the adventures are infinite.

It is hard to say if this is, in fact, season five’s version of Interdimensional Cable. Though it is referenced as the case within the episode, it is early in the year, and there is plenty of room for more rambunctious editions. The true heart of this piece was the mending between Rick and Beth after his disastrous mistake of cloning her and losing sight of who is his real daughter.

Speaking of Space Beth, she does make a noticeably brief appearance late in the episode. This may seem inconsequential but could also be setting the bar that Rick will now treat them both as his equal daughters.

Regardless of all the analyses, there is a lot to love about this episode. Rick alone has at least 30 on-screen deaths, never mind the rest of the family. Secondly, as predictable as the decoy ploy may be, the show found many clever ways to play with our notions. Finally, plenty of lovable side jokes help this show stand out, such as an entire horror-themed scene, a character who needs to be hunted, and a new show from interdimensional cable.

The hundreds of layers stacked upon one another made this an episode easy to love from the jump. As convoluted as the plot may be, it was enjoyable to fall into.  Thankfully, the story keeps you up to pace the whole way through. It would be hard to find anybody that did not enjoy being taken on this upside-down thrill ride, that is unless they hate fun.