Hey, Wisecrack.
Jared incarnate again,
and we’ve got another Wisecrack quick take on this week’s Rick and Morty episode, "Pickle Rick."
"I'm Pickle Rick!"
I’m here to try to answer the question: why does Rick turn into a pickle?
And yes, it’s partly because Dan Harmon said, “Rick is a pickle” in a writer’s room brainstorm.
"And Harmon just goes, 'Oh, and uh Rick is a pickle!'"
And then there’s the other easy answer to avoid family therapy.
But if you stick with me, I’m going to argue that Rick’s being-as-pickle can
teach us a lot about freedom.
Welcome to this Wisecrack Quick Take on Pickle Rick.
And, of course, spoilers ahead.
But first, a recap: Rick, if you couldn’t deduce, has turned himself into a pickle to
get out of family therapy.
But things go awry, and he ends up fighting his way out of a sewer, and later, a Russian
embassy using a mech suit made out of roach parts and rat limbs.
Meanwhile, Beth, Summer and Morty have to go to family therapy after Summer huffed pottery
enamel and Morty peed his pants.
There’s a clever parallel between Beth and Rick in this episode.
Just as Rick goes to insane lengths to avoid baring his emotions in therapy, Beth is doing
her best to stonewall her school-appointed therapist and maintain her emotional distance.
“I think it's possible that you and your father have a very, uh, specific dynamic.
I don't think it's one that rewards emotion or vulnerability. I think it may punish them.
I think it's possible that dynamic eroded your marriage
and is infecting your kids with the tendency to misdirect their feelings."
"F**k you."
"Mom!"
"F**k both of you, too."
One thing we’ve noticed in this season is that there’s more emphasis on serialized arcs.
In the last episode, Rick is willing to stay in Mad Max land to avoid his daughter’s divorce.
"My daughter's going through a divorce, and I am not dealing with it in a healthy way at all."
Now, he’s literally turned himself into a pickle to run away from reality.
And Morty and Summer seem increasingly damaged by their parents divorce.
"I am mad that I can't huff enamel without people assuming it's because my family sucks."
With this continuation, we’ve noticed a few themes that seem to be slowly developing.
One of which is freedom.
This quote from Dr. Wong really sets the stage for our discussion:
"I think it's because the only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it's your mind within your control.
You chose to come here.
You chose to talk.
To belittle my vocation, just as you chose to become a pickle.
Each of us gets to choose."
At first, Dr. Wong’s monologue seemed a little strange.
After all, how could Rick not understand that he’s in control?
He can do anything, including turn himself into a pickle.
"The reason anyone would do this, if they could — which they can't —
would be because they could — which they can't."
But after digging through my notes on the ugliest of existential philosophers, I think
Dr. Wong’s monologue gets us to something quite insightful.
As we all know, Rick doesn’t believe in God.
"There is no God, Summer. Gotta rip that band-aid off now, you'll thank me later."
And for philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, godlessness means we are radically free to define our
own existence.
But, instead, we choose to do things based on social pressures, or who we think we’re
supposed to be, and all kinds of other bullsh*t.
Sartre calls this acting in "bad faith."
But since we’re mortal, there's a fixed amount of choices to make in our lives, what
Sartre calls "finitude."
And each of those choices prevents other choices: choosing to be truck driver means choosing
not to be a teacher.
To deny the the importance of our finite choices is another way to act in bad faith.
Often we pretend to not have a choice.
As West Side Story puts it:
“Dear kindly Sergeant Krupke, you gotta understand, it's just our bringin' up-ke that gets us out of hand.
Our mothers all are junkies, our fathers all are drunks! Golly Moses, naturally we're punks!"
Essentially, the hoodlums know that they’re acting like a bunch of little shits, but instead
of choosing to be better, they relinquish their choice and blame it on their negligent parents.
"That's why I'm so bad!"
They just can’t help themselves.
But what’s unique about Rick is that he doesn’t deal with finitude.
He deals with infinitude.
"My access to infinite timelines precludes a necessity of attachment."
Rick has to grapple with the exact opposite of what Sartre proposed, because, to call
back to season 1:
"There's an infinite number of realities, Morty!"
Whereas Sartre criticizes the person who won’t take responsibility for their choices, Rick
thinks he doesn’t have to, because he has already made them all in the infinite versions
of himself.
If Sartre said the human condition was one of finite choices, well, Rick has transcended
that human condition with science.
But as Dr. Wong suggests, justifying your actions with the multiverse, or your god-like
intelligence, isn’t a solution.
Because although intelligence can help you make a decision, you still have to make the decision.
"The only connection between your unquestionable intelligence and the sickness destroying your family,
is that everyone in your family, you included, use intelligence to justify sickness."
Despite the fact that Rick is the “master of his universe,” he paradoxically has yet
to come to terms with his own choices.
No matter how many versions of Rick exist, nothing can stop the fact that his choices
are uniquely his own.
Because to quote Dr. Wong,
"The only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it's your mind within your control."
In season 1, Rick straight up tells us how he deals with infinite choice in the multiverse.
"What about the reality where Hitler cured cancer, Morty? The answer is 'don't think about it!'"
But of course, all therapy does is make you think about things, so Rick turns himself into
a pickle to avoid choice, or at least the appearance of it.
As a helpless, armless pickle, it’s not his fault if he can’t make therapy..
And in that sense, Rick’s blatant disregard for his choices, as Sartre would say, is acting
in bad faith.
Speaking of arcs, this ties in nicely to what we talked about in the last episode..
Between Jerry’s powerlessness, Morty’s resentment of him for that very reason, and
the juxtaposition with Rick as an all powerful madman —
"I don't respect therapy because I'm a scientist.
Because I invent, transform, create, and destroy for a living, and when I don't like something about the world,
I change it!"
This season is really leaning into
ideas of agency, and I’m super excited to see what they come up with next.
There’s one last thing worth noting, but it’s probably more of a stretch.
You know the common characterization of Freud’s work as “everything is a penis?”
Well, I’m convinced someone in their writer’s room probably took this loose connection between a phallic
object and therapy and went a little wild with it.
But if you want to hear more about this, you’ll want to check it out the Wisecrack podcast,
where we're breaking down every new episode of Rick and Morty.
Ryan, Alec, and I talk further about all the intricacies of this awesome episode.
So, check us out on iTunes, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks a lot for all the support, guys. Thanks for all the recommendations.
Thanks for all the feedback. We really appreciate it.
See ya later.