3x08 Morty's Mind Blowers

[7.6/10] Well, I guess I was wrong about last week’s episode replacing the improv-based interdimensional cable eps we’ve gotten previously. But I enjoy this entree full of bite-sized adventures for our heroes. It’s a throwback to Harmon’s “clip show but with new clips” bit from Community and fun to see the mini-stories thrown out rapid fire.

I particularly liked the opening pair of stories. Morty mistaking his new guidance counselor for a scary moon man is the sort of Bailey School Kids schtick with a Rick and Morty twist that really tickled my fancy. By the same token, turning the usual “humans trapped in an alien zoo” routine into a Contact-based hoodwinking is entertaining.

But I also really enjoyed the fact that Rick didn’t just zap away the memories of things that were too heavy for Morty to take; he zapped away his own minor mistakes, like the phrase “taken for granite,” not to mention things that implicate his family members, like Beth choosing Summer over Morty in her alien Sophie’s Choice scenario.

While most of the stories were amusing in that black comic way the show’s mastered, it feels like they’re all another brick in the wall of Morty getting tired of Rick’s bullshit, and the rest of the family’s bullshit too. The twist that both Rick and Morty lose their memories and have to use the vials to figure out who they are revitalizes the premise a bit, but also leads to the bleak realization that after seeing all that stuff, the pair want to have a suicide pact.

It’s played mainly for laughs, with Summer barging in on them and refueling their memories in a desultory fashion like she’s had to do this dozens of times, but like most episodes of the show, it finds the humor in something that, at its core, is pretty damn dark. (And then “no wonder you guys fight all the time and are always behind schedule” sounds like a not so veiled bit of self-commentary about Harmon and Roiland, which is a little discouraging.)

Overall, it’s a fun, rapid-fire premise for an episode that allows the show to deliver its humor and demented scenarios in quick hit format, but which still uses the form to offer a commentary on its two core characters, what they’ve seen, and the frustrations and vanity and ego that drives them to want to end it all. The fact that the show can wring comedy from that is just another pelt on the wall of its achievements.