Rick & Morty S01E10 Review: The One With A Serious Plot

Rick and Morty, Season 1, Episode 10: Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind

Oh man, I loved this episode, for the simple fact that it introduced the concept of the Inter-Dimensional Council of Ricks. Parallel universes have been a plot device in comic books and sci-fi stories since forever. Another common trope? The huge council of ominous universal management of whatever. And parallel-universe doppelgangers. And the idea that all of these alternate universe Ricks and Morties (mostly the Ricks) are actually running around policing themselves is hilarious!

The way this episode is set up is also brilliant, with the episode opening with (a) Rick having breakfast with his family, only for a scar-lipped Rick and an eyepatched Morty to shoot the Rick in the head and kidnap the Morty of the family. With "Rick Potion" introducing the idea of multiple realities and the ability to 'reset' by sneaking into a close-enough reality, it's unclear if "our" Rick and Morty are the ones that got killed, or if they are the interdimensional killers, or if they're neither. Turns out, they're neither, and after the opening credits roll, we cut to our Rick and Morty having breakfast, seemingly the "UFO-shaped pancakes" that the now-deceased Rick from the cold opening had been talking about. And then they are assaulted by a trio of Ricks in uniforms, who freeze Jerry and kidnap our Rick and Morty. 

Our Rick and Morty (of dimension C-137) are brought up before the Council of Ricks, six Ricks who stand in a courtroom with wacky hairdos, while our Rick explains to our Morty about the whole concept of Ricktopia, a place where a whole ton of alternate Ricks and Morties have gotten together to create their own utopia. The entire place is policed by Ricks, and other Ricks are there to do jobs like, well, selling items. Like replacement Morties. And C-137 Rick is held in front of the court for being a 'rogue' who refuses to cooperate with the other Ricks since he refuses to be part of Ricktopia, and they blame him for the murders of a bunch of other Ricks in the multi-verse... which, apparently, was something we witnessed in the cold opening. 

Unwilling to be framed for something he didn't do and certainly unwilling to be punished for it, Rick and Morty run around and engage in some darkly hilarious manslaughter as they weaponize their portal gun to summon flames, alien bugs, giant tentacles and basketball balls (no really) to take down the Rick commandos, before proceeding to go through a trippy series of weird dimension hopping into other dimensions, a gag that could've been exhausting but ends up being pretty dang hilarious.

After a series of wacky dimensions, we get Rick and Morty running through dimensions while they discuss the whole alternate Ricks stuff, with Morty being pretty unsure if Rick is actually innocent. Meanwhile, Beth and Jerry are visited by a bunch of alternate-universe Rick commandos (and a Morty!) who essentially try to do a wiretap game. And, of course, they sort of troll Jerry at the time because it's hilarious, causing Jerry to bond with "Doofus" Rick, who's... who's weird, but the scenes between him and Jerry are actually pretty adorable as they bond over Jerry owning a bunch of weird shit that his family makes fun of him for. It's a neat little side-gag. 

Eventually, once they get some time to themselves in the chair-dimension, Rick off-handedly tells Morty that Rick uses Morty partially as camouflage. Rick is so smart that he emits genius brain-waves that would make him easily detectable, and it's neutralized by Morty's... Morty-waves. And it's a fun little subversion that could honestly be taken either way. Did Rick really not have a soft spot for Morty? Is all of the care he does just something he does to get this living human stealth system willingly travel across the multiverse with him? And considering how we've seen Rick be insistent that Morty accompany him on his adventures, it gets a bit darker when we realize that, say, Rick wanting Morty to steal the mega-seeds in the pilot episode isn't just there to have someone to help him out like a go-fer, but because he needed the camouflage. 

Interestingly, the episode doesn't even completely refute the premise, and it's just showing that Rick's... slightly more complex than he lets on. Rick and Morty track the Rick-killer to an ominous swamp base where we get a fuck-ton of naked Morties strapped onto the side of a dome-shaped structure, being tortured constantly with horrifying machinery. Rick and Morty's argument comes to a head as they infiltrate the evil base, with Morty angrily accusing Rick that Rick is just using him as a human shield, and Rick, being far, far more concerned about taking down the evil (well, evil-er) Rick, ends up blurting out a bunch of hurtful things about how stupid Morty is. The two's argument is interrupted by a bunch of lobster alien enemies, and then by the arrival of Evil Rick and Evil Morty. Evil Morty shoves our Morty in a cell with other Morties, telling him a generic "Morties cannot defeat a Rick" line before exiting stage left. 

Meanwhile, Evil Rick and our Rick are basically having a tete-a-tete. It turns out that our Rick and Evil Rick are pretty close on the 'spectrum' of all the Ricks, and considering the two of them are rogue ones who refuse to cooperate with the Council of Ricks, it makes a sort of sense. Evil Rick wants to kill our Rick and download the contents of his brain. Meanwhile, our Morty... ends up having enough of Ricks of any kind dictating his fate, and ends up giving a speech to all of the Morties in the cell... although it is pretty convenient that there is a cult waiting for the One True Morty in the dungeon, and they spring a riot as they overwhelm the lobster alien guards with sheer numbers. And the help of hammer-head Morty. 

Our Rick, meanwhile, is having a bit of an emotional episode as Evil Rick goes through his memories, notably tearing up a little at the sight of him first meeting baby Morty for the first time. Evil Rick calls Rick out on this, and he brushes it off... and the arrival of an army of Morties ends up interrupting the tender moment. The Morties overwhelm Evil Rick and apparently tear him to death, while our Morty free our Rick, telling him that he's lucky that "I'm not a Rick". The tortured Morties are freed, and Rick calls in the Council of Rick's henchmen for clean-up duty. I do find that it's pretty interesting that both Rick and Morty have significant character arcs in this episode, but they don't exactly have a proper hug-out-our-differences moment, y'know? They just sort of go on with their lives, with Morty just sort of... accepting Rick as what he is. The closest thing we get is Rick telling Morty that he don't like to connect with the other Ricks because he's "the Rickest Rick", making Morty the "Mortiest Morty". 

And this low-key heartwarming moment cuts away to the Council of Rick commandos investigating the dead body of Evil Murderer Rick... only to find out that he's been controlled by someone else. That someone else? Turns out that it's Evil Morty with the eyepatch, having successfully blended in with the masses of rescued Morties that are being sent to other dimensions. He crushes his eyepatch and hides the cables in his eyes as he disappears into the crowd, all set to the chilling tone of For the Damaged Coda. Pretty chilling sequence at the end -- and honestly, the disappearance of Evil Morty halfway through the final act, as well as the presence of a "Doofus" Rick, really should've been adequate foreshadowing, but this ended up being such an awesome blindside and a great little buildup for the potential return of Evil Morty! A pretty great and fantastic episode, and easily the standout one from the first season. 

Random Notes:

• There were a lot of hilarious alternate Ricks and Morties in the background of this episode. In addition to Cronenberg Rick and Morty (who we saw before in "Rick Potion"), we also get to see in the background a pair of robot versions of Rick and Morty, orange-skinned one-eyed Rick and Morty, fish-man-alien Rick and Morty, a cowboy Rick and Morty, a Morty with blue shirt, a Morty with long sleeves, handsome Morty, and, of course, Hammer-Head Morty in the climax. 
• During the chase through dimensions, Rick, Morty and the pursuers go through:
• A dimension of giant butts and toilet papers on trees. 
• A dimension where pizzas sit on chairs ordering humans with telephones.
• A greasy grandma world.
• A dimension where telephones sit on pizzas ordering chairs with humans. 
• A dimension of random ostrich-camel things. 
• A dimension where chairs sit on humans ordering telephones with pizzas. 
• During the sequence with the ostrich-camel dimension, we get a brief little Easter Egg from Gravity Falls, where items that got sucked into a portal in the first season finale of Gravity Falls ends up getting vomited out by one of the many portals there. 
• Beth and Rick actually bonding over "UFO-shaped pancakes" is a genuinely heartwarming moment. Beth being universally beloved by the alternate-universe Ricks is also pretty heartwarming. 
• The constant running joke that "replacement Morties" are a thing in Ricktopia is pretty dang hilarious. The punchline has to be that our Rick seems completely indifferent and actually seems disgusted with it... but takes the voucher anyway out of sight. 
• The Council of Ricks has a "Machine of Unspeakable Doom", which swaps your conscious and unconscious minds, rendering your fantasies pointless while making everything you know impossible to grasp. Also every few minutes it stabs your balls. 
• The chair-people being actually terrified of Rick and Morty wandering around their dimension actually makes sense, how creeped out would you be if you saw a bunch of living chairs walking around? Also, Rick and Morty seem not bothered at all sitting in the crotches of a bunch of random human-chairs. 
• Rick telling Morty that the Morty-torture dome is "overkill", and how he fiddled with the concept on paper, and then proceeds to talk about how the same result would be done with "five Morties and a jumper cable", is hilarious. 
• Evil Rick's crab-lobster alien minions are cool monster designs. 
• The fact that the Morty cult has Jack Chick tracts for the One True Morty is easily one of the most hilarious low-key jokes in the episode. 
• The revelation that everything that Evil Rick has been saying is actually Evil Morty's puppeteering is interesting, since the whole "if there's any truth in the universe, it's that Ricks don't care about Morties" line is spoken by him. What happened between Evil Morty and his native Rick?
• I'm also not sure why Evil Morty wants to drain "our" Rick's memories, considering he's willing and happy to just headshot the other Ricks. Is there some history between Evil Morty and "our" Rick?