Rick and Morty: Rest and Ricklaxation
August 28, 2017 9:51 AM - Season 3, Episode 6 - Subscribe

After a particularly harrowing adventure, Rick and Morty take a much-needed break.
posted by prize bull octorok (51 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
"I want that kind of love, like that 'docking' kind of love, like penis in the foreskin kind of love, just like warm, just like..."

High school is different than I remember.
posted by wabbittwax at 10:23 AM on August 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


"Have you ever been peed on before? Oh my god. Yum."

yeah, way different than I remember.
posted by numaner at 10:54 AM on August 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


This was, for me, the weakest episode of the entire series and yes I made a FanFare post because I wanted to be mad on the internet about it and got impatient waiting. The traumatic decompression at the end of their RotJ knockoff adventure was funny but none of the other jokes landed for me. Everybody seemed to be acting slightly out of character. The toxic church/children's party just seemed ham-fistedly "edgy." Morty picking up adult women and getting a job on Wall Street seemed like a completely bizarre way to play out the results of his self-actualization. The toxic/non-toxic Rick dichotomy made no fucking sense to me. The whole thing felt like a crowdsourced fan script. Ooo-wee.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:02 AM on August 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


The toxic/non-toxic Rick dichotomy made no fucking sense to me.

That's the joke. Non-toxic Rick & Morty are just as bad as toxic Rick & Morty.

I found this episode to be surprisingly deep, and it will take me a few days at least to parse it.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 11:10 AM on August 28, 2017 [21 favorites]




This was, for me, the weakest episode of the entire series

I disagree completely! This episode is the best in season 3 yet IMO. The premise reveal is delightful, the consequences are interesting, and comedic, and we finally get to see a *little* bit of heart in Rick's character, instead of yet another drunken FU from the writers.
posted by Popular Ethics at 12:07 PM on August 28, 2017 [12 favorites]


Yep, this was the best episode yet for me.

Did anybody else think Morty wanted to be caught in the end ? I think he deliberately left the phone on so Rick could track him. He was bored with his new lifestyle.
posted by Pendragon at 12:31 PM on August 28, 2017 [15 favorites]


Did anybody else think Morty wanted to be caught in the end ? I think he deliberately left the phone on so Rick could track him. He was bored with his new lifestyle.

Yeah, agreed. His nonchalant reaction to noticing the call was still running made me think he did it on purpose.
posted by Ragged Richard at 12:34 PM on August 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


to me the fascinating part was once Rick revealed that the toxic parts were what THEY thought of as toxic. Rick thinks his emotional attachment to Morty is toxic. This is why their non-toxic version are just as bad. Because they are so screwed up they don't even know what about themselves is actually dangerous and what is constructive.
posted by miss-lapin at 1:51 PM on August 28, 2017 [24 favorites]


I'm pretty tired of the whole does-Rick-care-about-his-family-or-not question, which I thought had a perfectly fine lid put on it when Morty went through the dark ride that was built for Noob-Noob
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:57 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


A bit over does-Rick-care myself, but Morty's good side having no conscience because of years of exposure to Rick meaning that Morty has now truly internalized conscience being a thing for suckers? That's actually interesting from a character development perspective.
posted by Ryvar at 3:51 PM on August 28, 2017 [6 favorites]


Regular Morty isn't a bad guy at all - he thinks he's held back by his doubts and anxieties but it turns out constraints aren't always bad. Rick could use some more constraints, and I guess he has some self-awareness because Detox Rick appears to be an improvement in a lot of ways (except for the bit about his attachment to Morty which seems a little contrived). But ironically Detox Rick ends up having too much compassion for Toxic Rick.
posted by atoxyl at 4:01 PM on August 28, 2017


Also: the wife and I are pretty agreed that every Season 3 episode thus far has been an extremely solid B+ effort, with the exception of Pickle Rick's ending (holy shit) which is in contention with Rixty Minute's nihilist manifesto or Auto Erotic Assimilation's suicide attempt for best scene in the series.

Overall Season 3's not their best work, and leans too heavily on violence to fill screen time between jokes when they can't think of anything funny to say that also advances the plot. But in general? The consistency we've seen thus far is actually pretty remarkable, and there hasn't been an episode either one of us felt was crap in the slightest (admittedly aside from Interdimensional Cable 2 and Raising Gazorpazorp there aren't a lot of episodes I'd classify as 'bad').
posted by Ryvar at 4:07 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


This was, for me, the weakest episode of the entire series and yes I made a FanFare post because I wanted to be mad on the internet about it and got impatient waiting. The traumatic decompression at the end of their RotJ knockoff adventure was funny but none of the other jokes landed for me. Everybody seemed to be acting slightly out of character. The toxic church/children's party just seemed ham-fistedly "edgy." Morty picking up adult women and getting a job on Wall Street seemed like a completely bizarre way to play out the results of his self-actualization. The toxic/non-toxic Rick dichotomy made no fucking sense to me. The whole thing felt like a crowdsourced fan script. Ooo-wee.

A lot of episodes this season had at least one joke that seemed out of place or just... off, tonally. The weird sex talk here, a bunch of stuff in the Pickle Rick episode - I don't remember the others offhand but there were several. Nonetheless I thought this was one of the best/funniest episodes of the season overall.
posted by atoxyl at 4:09 PM on August 28, 2017


I loved this episode and it was a great companion piece with "Pickle Rick". If "Pickle Rick" was about the dangers of avoiding what you need to get your head straight, then "Rest and Ricklaxation" is about the dangers of taking shortcuts in that process. It's easy to assume that, say, medication, or having all your toxic parts drained out of you is all you really need to feel better, but that's only part of the job. As others have pointed out, at least one part of it is figuring out what's actually toxic about you. That's the work, the boring, annoying, difficult, non-adventure based work of getting better.
posted by SansPoint at 4:12 PM on August 28, 2017 [12 favorites]


Pickle Rick's ending

This is memorable but otherwise I have to say that was the one episode that really fell flat for me. Just weirdly little that was funny in it.

It's interesting how controversial these are. This most recent one and the early premiere are the ones that seemed the most "classic" R&M to me. The others are pretty solid overall when I think about them though. There are just a few bits this season that seem "off," plus absolutely this:

leans too heavily on violence to fill screen time between jokes

and sometimes it seems like they can't make up their minds about which way they want to go with the characters, but I don't care too much about that.
posted by atoxyl at 4:20 PM on August 28, 2017


Not sure if this is deep or trite, or just a reflection of my own upbringing, but Morty's Jekyll / Hide dichotomy seemed to sort of reflect bi-polar disorder. Toxin Morty is depressed, suicidal, anxious and I guess is kinda into pottery. "Nontoxic" Morty is confident, incredibly optimistic, talks a LOT, impulsive, driven by sexual desire, although still a bit naive.
posted by pwnguin at 5:13 PM on August 28, 2017 [9 favorites]


First off, yes, it's unambiguous that Healthy Morty left the phone on intentionally. I'll come back to that.

My primary thought is that this is an extremely meta episode pointed directly at the Metafilter (or, more pointedly, AskMetafilter) set who thinks the show is hilarious but asks why it has to be so dark and abusive ("Are we not beholden to our own toxins?"). The fundamental message as I see it is that, yes, I could theoretically believe in the sanitized version of the world that that you do, but, if I did and was still a genius, I would immediately set about trying to believe in a shittier version of the universe.

Tied up in this is the realization that the show is telling us that Morty is also a genius (though maybe a bit less of one, since it takes him longer to come around).
posted by 256 at 5:23 PM on August 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


to me the fascinating part was once Rick revealed that the toxic parts were what THEY thought of as toxic. Rick thinks his emotional attachment to Morty is toxic. This is why their non-toxic version are just as bad. Because they are so screwed up they don't even know what about themselves is actually dangerous and what is constructive.

I agree! I liked the conceit of the detoxifier: toxicity is an internal concept, so therefore it's how the user defines it. For Rick it's overweening self-destructive confidence and caring about others, for Morty it's self doubt and... caring about others. We don't really have anything to base it on (since we don't see any other characters go through the machine), but I guess it says something about our two titular protagonists that they see the positive quality of empathy as being toxic, along with qualities that the audience recognize as being toxic. In the end that turns Morty into a regular old sociopath (like the kind that we find in political and business offices), and Rick into a sort of coasting sociopath (someone who's easy going and laid back, but will definitely fuck you over if you get in the way of his convenience).

I think that what makes this episode a success, for me, is that it gets a bit into the overarching story of Rick's will-he-won't-he self improvement, but does so in a way that's self-contained. A little Twilight Zone style story where you could swap out Rick and Morty for two more generic characters, and it would still be an interesting experiment in dark Sci-Fi.

Anyway, one overarching aspect that I liked was the idea that Morty (and, not seen this episode, but Summer too) is becoming more like Rick. He's a lesser genius, to be sure, but if you remove empathy, then he's a lot like his grandfather. And, importantly, we can maybe guess that Morty is actually starting to think of that sort of unmitigated power as a POSITIVE, since the detoxifier removed empathy from his character as if it were an undesirable trait.

Edit: on preview, what 256 said.
posted by codacorolla at 5:29 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


I guess it says something about our two titular protagonists that they see the positive quality of empathy as being toxic

We would think that was positive!
posted by 256 at 5:33 PM on August 28, 2017


I actually thought that Morty left the phone on so that Jessica could hear how happy he was and how much his girlfriend likes him.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 7:35 PM on August 28, 2017 [5 favorites]


I actually thought that Morty left the phone on so that Jessica could hear how happy he was and how much his girlfriend likes him.

But he said at the beginning of the convo that he knew Jessica was just stalling to give Rick enough time to track him down. Jessica hearing the conversation with the girlfriend might have been a bonus, but he was clearly giving in to being retoxified.
posted by Etrigan at 7:51 PM on August 28, 2017 [3 favorites]


The toxic/non-toxic Rick dichotomy made no fucking sense to me

What really? I thought this episode was really well done, including the way the definition of "toxicity" came down to the user's (obviously messed up) self-understanding of what that was.
posted by kenko at 8:08 PM on August 28, 2017 [1 favorite]


to me the fascinating part was once Rick revealed that the toxic parts were what THEY thought of as toxic. Rick thinks his emotional attachment to Morty is toxic.

Yep. I get being over the "does Rick care" question, but honestly that question's been settled, and it was a really smart choice to finally nail it down for the people that didn't see it beforehand in this way. To show that yeah, he does care, and he regards it as one of the worst things about himself, lumping it in there with his alcoholism and narcissism. He sees it as getting in the way of his best self. Just like Morty lumps his conscience in with his fear, probably at least in part because he can't tell where one stops and the other starts.

I also understand the criticism that it hasn't been quite the laugh-a-minute that it has been, but what they've done this season has been far more interesting and engaging to me. I got a few good laughs in at Pickle Rick and this one, certainly not as many as I did at "Interdimensional Cable", but what they're doing now is far more gripping and real. I like both of those sides of the show, and I'd like to see more of the lighthearted stuff too, but they're exploring some shit right now, and they're doing a good job of it.

In a way, this show is like the anti-Leftovers. "The Leftovers" took a little over a season to figure out that the best way to tell their sad and dark story was by leavening it with humor and weirdness. "Rick and Morty" is going the other way, starting with something weird and funny and seeing what they can do with the humor and the message when they drop some sobering reality in it.
posted by middleclasstool at 8:30 PM on August 28, 2017 [14 favorites]


This episode just confirmed my theory that the entire series is a metaphor for therapy and psychoanalysis.
posted by mynameisluka at 10:20 PM on August 28, 2017 [4 favorites]


The fight scene between the Ricks was wonderfully imagined.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:20 PM on August 28, 2017 [12 favorites]


This episode just confirmed my theory that the entire series is a metaphor for therapy and psychoanalysis.

This season definitely. I'm still waiting for the Beth episode. Season Finale, maybe.
posted by leotrotsky at 5:41 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I mean this was essentially a spin on the Beth and Jerry marriage counseling plot.

But not as much about interpersonal dynamics but the dynamics of self and self awareness.
posted by French Fry at 6:30 AM on August 29, 2017


"Terry Flap" is a third-rate "Get Schwifty" - which also had a compelling context. I grow weary of sophomoric cursing posing as "edginess."

There were a lot of things to like about this episode, but that song was not one of them.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:47 AM on August 29, 2017 [5 favorites]


I don't get how the "Terry Flap" song relates to the episode at all. Did I miss something? It just seems like it comes out of left field and plays over the end credits. What even is it?
posted by wabbittwax at 8:15 AM on August 29, 2017 [1 favorite]


It plays in the space car when Morty turned on the radio on their way back from the spa.
posted by numaner at 8:20 AM on August 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


Ohhh ... leading into the talk about listening to a new song everyday, etc. huh.
posted by wabbittwax at 9:11 AM on August 29, 2017


I grow weary of sophomoric cursing posing as "edginess."

Edginess, or inherent humorousness? Not disagreeing in principle, but I'm not sure anyone on staff would consider swearing on its own to have edge.
posted by Going To Maine at 9:14 AM on August 29, 2017


Thanks, codacorolla, for the swell sockpuppet name!
posted by Coasting Sociopath at 9:25 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


Suck my flaps you piece of shit.

"Piece of shit" is definitely one of Roiland's go-to extemporaneous lines. Feh.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:53 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


I grow weary of sophomoric cursing posing as "edginess."

Edginess, or inherent humorousness? Not disagreeing in principle, but I'm not sure anyone on staff would consider swearing on its own to have edge.


And yet: Eat some fucking shit, you fucking stupid bitch. Hehe, Just kiddin'.
posted by leotrotsky at 9:54 AM on August 29, 2017 [2 favorites]


"Piece of shit" is definitely one of Roiland's go-to extemporaneous lines. Feh.

Dan Harmon too, if you listen to the Harmontown podcast. A lot of Toxic Rick's dialogue sounded like straight Harmon ventriloquism.
posted by paper chromatographologist at 9:59 AM on August 29, 2017 [4 favorites]


Tied up in this is the realization that the show is telling us that Morty is also a genius (though maybe a bit less of one, since it takes him longer to come around).

It also honestly made me really wonder about Evil Morty. Like, how big is the difference between a passive Rick that somehow gets mind controlling software put on him, and a passive Rick who just goes along with whatever he Thinks Is Right? What's the difference between Morty As Evil Stockbroker and Morty making a Morty shield for his pet Rick?
posted by corb at 6:34 AM on August 30, 2017 [1 favorite]


I feel I have to stick up for the Terry Flaps song. I don't know why but it made me laugh both times I watched this episode. It wasn't the swearing per se, I think I just liked the name "terry flaps".

I like how this show introduces so many neat thought experiments. What would toxin-free potrzebie be like? I've been pondering it all week. Definitely wouldn't spend so much damn time reading the politics threads.
posted by potrzebie at 11:17 PM on August 30, 2017 [8 favorites]


Full Terry Folds song. I mean, I know it's a joke, but the textures and harmonies by whoever produced it are really nice.
posted by rollick at 10:16 AM on August 31, 2017 [4 favorites]


OK so I think I figured out what I like about the Terry Flaps song. I think why it's funny is that I have watched and read a lot of science fiction in my life but this is the first time I've heard the alien equivalent of just some dumbass pop song about sexual gratification? I feel like usually science fiction pop music doesn't attempt vocals or if they do it somehow doesn't get picked up by the universal translator, and I'd never really thought about it but of COURSE it's because it'd just be too silly.
posted by potrzebie at 9:24 PM on August 31, 2017 [6 favorites]


Update: I have been humming "lick my flappy foldy folds" for the last 5 hours, so they obviously did something right.
posted by grumpybear69 at 10:11 PM on August 31, 2017 [1 favorite]


The Flappy Folds song works better as a little joke that you hear in the background. It's part of one aspect of the show I like a lot: alien cultures have a lot of junk in them, and they're not just a bunch of high minded mysterious stuff. Like you tend to get the pop songs and the commercials rather than the ancient ceremonies and religious texts.
posted by codacorolla at 1:35 PM on September 1, 2017 [4 favorites]


I enjoyed this episode and feel that season 3 is easily the most consistently good so far, but my god that song makes me never want to watch the show again. It sounded like something written by a 13 year old.
posted by knapah at 1:46 AM on September 3, 2017


one thing that particularly amused me was they way that even though they pixellated naked rick's crotch, you could still tell that whatever was behind there was dangling and flapping about.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 2:25 PM on September 3, 2017 [3 favorites]


Where my Trekkies at? I thought it was a decent pisstake on the concept of "The Enemy Within", with the idea that you need the parts of yourself that you'd rather get rid of in order to be a whole person.

Also, I assumed that both the kinky talk in the school corridor and the "Terry Folds" song had something to do with the idea that kids get exposed to so much crazy shit on the internet that they will talk about practices that some of us olds didn't even know existed when we were their age, or assumed that it was an urban legend or something. And songs are generally dirtier. I mean, I thought that "Too Drunk to Fuck" was way out there, but "Fuck the Pain Away" is way raunchier. Robert Plant singing about squeezing a lemon is downright quaint.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:25 PM on September 9, 2017 [2 favorites]


The fundamental message as I see it is that, yes, I could theoretically believe in the sanitized version of the world that that you do, but, if I did and was still a genius, I would immediately set about trying to believe in a shittier version of the universe.

Tied up in this is the realization that the show is telling us that Morty is also a genius (though maybe a bit less of one, since it takes him longer to come around).*

I find this statement confusing, so am perhaps misunderstanding: how is Morty played as a genius? There’s his success at the stock market, but this can be parsed as a fairly standard knock on the idea that the market rewards amorality. As someone who cares about no one, Healthy Morty is the best player. He’s not smarter than the rest, he just cares less. I see no reason why we wouldn’t assume that Healthy Jerry wouldn’t be the king of the stock market either (beyond, perhaps that his conception of a Healthy self would actually be more incompetent in work situations and more devoted to the family.)

Further, the show is unambiguous that genius isn’t connected to toxicity. Toxic Rick is a genius; Healthy Rick is a genius. Acknowledging that that the show is arbitrary enough that it changes the rules whenever it wants to, it would be a weird move to play Morty as a “genius” here. It might be simpler to say that losing the constraints of one’s “toxins”, whatever you define them as, opens you up to the possibility of success in certain fields, in the same way that the possession of particular “toxins” opens you up to success in other fields. It’s a messy wash.

The tragedy of the episode here is that Healthy Rick doesn’t care about Morty. The one person that Healthy Morty kind of cares about is Rick. It’s not a comment on their intelligences - it’s a comment on their inverted views of each other.
posted by Going To Maine at 12:22 AM on September 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


Further, the show is unambiguous that genius isn’t connected to toxicity.

Well, the show was fairly unambigous that toxicity is ambiguous: "How that machine know the difference between healthy and sick for everything that goes through it? It can't! It must rely on the individual's own definition of toxicity." So all we really know is that rick doesn't believe genius itself is toxic.

But overall I agree. The only evidence we have of Morty's success is the stockbroker scene, which Morty himself attributes to a lack of conscience.
posted by pwnguin at 9:31 AM on September 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


The only evidence we have of Morty's success is the stockbroker scene, which Morty himself attributes to a lack of conscience.

But, then, do you trust the testimony of a character that is self-evidently an unreliable liar?
posted by Going To Maine at 11:59 PM on September 11, 2017 [1 favorite]


It's true, for all we know he's not a success at all!
posted by pwnguin at 12:25 PM on September 12, 2017




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