Rick & Morty S01E09 Review: The One With The Butter Robot

Rick and Morty, Season 1, Episode 9: Something Ricked This Way Comes

A pretty neat episode! After the previous episode sort of played with format subversions and whatnot, we return to classic "let's parody a common trope" bit... and this time around, we split our cast into two. Morty and Jerry go off to Pluto and end up in a "will you sell your soul for popularity and status?" storyline while simultaneously having to deal with a government conspiracy. Meanwhile, Rick and Summer go through a bit of an attention-seeking competition as they deal with the Devil himself, who's opened up a shop where he sells cursed items. The second plot is obviously the far more entertaining one. Between the Devil's (voice courtesy of Alfred Molina) perfectly-delivered mannerisms where he's equal amounts devilish and shady dealer, to Rick's absolutely assholish behaviour in trying to go through a science-fucks-magic con scam, to Summer actually getting a proper and decent storyline, it's a riot to watch through. 

Rick's assholishness has been slightly toned down for a while, with a couple of episodes that really show that he cares enough for Morty to give him a good adventure in "Meeseeks and Destroy", and while his dialogue is pretty full of contempt to Summer, he clearly doesn't mind having her around in "Raising Gazorpazorp", saving her from aliens and giving her a free spaceship. But here Rick's assholishness is at his peak as he completely destroys the Devil's business just to spite both the Devil and Summer. And as much as he might want to claim that this is all for his own shits and giggles, the fact that he ends up getting bored when he realizes there's no one to disturb, that Summer's attention isn't there anymore, he ends up torching the whole curse removal store and leaves. 

And I really do like that Summer ends up telling Rick off for ruining her job -- she finally finds a job where she is respected, who cares if her owner is the Devil himself? And when Rick starts ruining the Devil's business and ends up driving him to suicide, Summer's decision to basically just open a new business in n33dful.com (I don't think we ever find out what the website does, but I also think that's the whole joke) ends up being a pretty neat compromise, completely ignoring Rick's antagonism and not rising to his bait. 

Of course, the Devil is the Devil (biyaaatch!) and cuts Summer out of their shared venture. And after a night's worth of just wandering alone in the house, Rick and Summer sort of make up and decide to basically bulk up their muscles, set to X Gon Give It To Ya, and then beat the ever-loving fucks out of the Devil. That's some neat family bonding right there. 

Less satisfying, while still interesting, is Morty and Jerry's visit to Pluto. Jerry ends up sitting out on this episode of being Rick's sidekick because Beth basically tells Morty to help massage his dad's ego for a bit and allow him to help out for science project. But because Jerry is unwilling to admit his mistake about how Pluto's no longer considered a planet, he gets super-duper upset not because he really understands anything about astronomy, but because he is unwilling to admit that he was wrong. Basically like a lot of real life people, huh? 

This leads them to being abducted by the Plutonians, and very quickly, Jerry ends up becoming a celebrity overnight because the Plutonians really love him and his insistence that "Pluto... is a planet!" said over and over in front of the media. There's a weak attempt at both climate change deniers and a government conspiracy when Morty meets a scientist who reveals that the Plutonian government is keeping things hush-hush and is placating the citizens with false assurances to hide the fact that it's their own mining that's causing Pluto to shrink, but it's... I dunno, it just doesn't grab me the way most Rick and Morty plots do, y'know? When Morty confronts his father, Jerry ends up going to the asshole politician's standby of insulting a random obscure fact from his past, causing Morty to return to Earth in kind of a shame, before Jerry finally realizes his own errors and gets kicked off of Pluto. It's a decent subplot, I suppose, but the resolution is sort of haphazard, and Jerry's change from ego-driven asshole father to I-guess-he's-okay father isn't as well-done as I wished it was. 

At least Morty essentially tells Jerry to not "push his luck" on how good a dad he can be? That's a hilarious scene, I think. 

Overall, though, while the Rick and Summer storyline was decent, it's just decent, and the rest of the episode earns mostly a shrug from me. It's not bad, but it's also one of the less memorable and "just there" episodes of early Rick and Morty material. It's okay, though, not every episode can be winners. 

Random Notes:

• The post-credits scene is Rick and Summer, still in their roided-up state, beating up other scum of the earth -- bullies, neo-nazis, people who protest about gays, and mean pet owners.
• Rick casually building a sentient butter-passing robot who gets into an existential crisis, and then proceed to make a couple of hilarious cameos and one-liners throughout the episode, is easily one of the best running gags in the episode. The butter robot also shows up in a whole ton of memes back in the day. 
• Considering how horrifying the curses in the items that the devil was selling, I absolutely loved just how trivial they are once Rick starts removing the curses and shrugs them off in a nonchalant manner. 
• I'm not sure about anything regarding Summer wishing on the monkey's paw. I need to brush up on my children's stories.
• Seriously, though, calling out how your kid pooped your pants when he was five in public is a low, low move, Jerry. 
• Was there really any point to the fact that it was the King's own son that was the scientist trying to bring the truth to the masses, other than to really shove it in Jerry's face that "shit, this applies to my situation!" Rick and Morty is usually a lot better with coincidentally-similar tropes than this.
• Not sure if that Morty-is-masturbating joke really ended up being at all funny other than a simple "lol fapping" one. 
• The "retarded" joke, and whether it's okay or not to use "retarded" in any context, on the other hand, was hilarious.