The best episode of Rick and Morty Season 7 is the one you least expect

Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Rick and Morty Season 7.

Something didn’t feel quite right in the first few episodes of Rick and Morty Season 7. They weren’t bad by any means, but they lacked the warm, syrupy ingredient that made Morty (Harry Belden). Season 7, Episode 5 finally takes us back to the green comfort of a classic Rick and Morty Adventures with “That’s Amorte.” It feels very nostalgic and reminiscent of the early seasons of the series, before the whole Pickle Rick and incest baby debacle. It weaves Rick and Morty’The show’s signature wacky space antics transform into something poignant and thought-provoking that has already stood out as the best episode of Season 7 so far.

Rick and Morty

Release date

December 2, 2013

Pour

Chris Parnell, Spencer Grammer, Sarah Chalke, Justin Roiland, Dan Harmon

Main genre

animation

What is “That’s Amorte” about?

The episode begins with the Smith family enjoying spaghetti made by Rick (Ian Cardoni) on Thursday, which seems to have become somewhat ritualistic. But Rick is behind the spaghetti, so of course There’s a dead alien in the mix. In this case, the lip-smacking spaghetti is literally harvested from the innards of a person who committed suicide. As Rick explains, when people on this alien’s planet lose their lives, “their cortisol increases the starch levels in their bloodstream, turning their intestines into a long spaghetti noodle and the surrounding tissues into a spicy-sweet hematoma we would call bolognese.” .” We don’t really understand the half of it, but we trust Rick on this one. Morty is wracked with guilt, although he still finds the spaghetti irresistible. To ease his conscience, he comes to the funeral of a person he recently ate and delivers a eulogy about how the deceased’s entrails helped bind the Smith family together.

When the planet’s president learns that her suicidal citizen’s organs are a coveted delicacy across the galaxy, her greedy antlers tingle – and she develops a policy that legalizes euthanasia if patients consent to subsequent consumption. Before you know it, the planet will have customers from all over the galaxy lining up to buy the sweet, suicidal spaghetti. The money is pouring in, but there’s a problem: The demand for human spaghetti has skyrocketed, but the number of people at risk of suicide remains the same. So the planet begins to incentivize suicide by creating a terribly depressive atmosphere with gray sun, crappy reality shows, and picturesque suicide locations. This results in a series of miscalculated solutions, ranging from clones refusing to become spaghetti to callous lumps of flesh designed to do the same. Yet none of it works. Finally, Rick televises the entire life of an ordinary man named Fred, whose complex existence makes the very idea of ​​human spaghetti seem daunting. Morty says it best when he says: “You couldn’t change everyone’s taste, but you could make it tasteless.” In the end, we see that the Smiths have ditched spaghetti in favor of Salisbury steak, but this time they vow to never ask Rick where the delicious meat comes from.

Fred’s life montage is an absolute tearjerker in Season 7 of Rick and Morty

Rick and Morty has always been exceptionally good at delivering shocking and moving montages. But of all the montages we’ve seen, it’s Fred’s that brings out the best in it. From Fred’s memories we can see the defining moments of his life: as a baby assembling the LEGO bricks on this planet and dipping his fingers in a jar of jam, and as a teenager passionate about buildings and in love with his girlfriend . He fails at architecture school and falls into depression, while Amber moves on. We see him frustrated by his failures and his eventual comeback with a business idea centered around his own trademarked version of LEGOs. He later reunites with Amber, who is married with children, and their romance is rekindled when Amber gets a divorce and moves in with Fred. Finally, Amber dies when Fred places a jar of jam and a blueprint over her grave.

The montage is only three minutes long, but it is enough to make you feel like yourself knowledge Fredand it’s enough to make one weep at the raw, human beauty of his life. Rick and Morty not only understands the turbulent course of an ordinary life full of unfair, inexplicable ups and downs; It’s also smart enough to convey it authentically. Most montages have the ability to view life from great distances, making them appear smooth and sculpted. But Rick and Morty look inside and find beauty in all the uneven, jagged borders. It’s something for an episode writer Heather Anne Campbell consciously aimed at how they did Variety said, “When we see these montages of people’s lives in films, they always follow a very standard arc. Takes an interest in a thing, gets a job at the thing, produces the thing. And life is not like that at all. It’s the many detours and disappointments that shape life.”

“That’s Amorte” taps into our fear of unethical consumption

As the old saying goes, “There can be no ethical consumption under capitalism.” Sooner or later, man’s insatiable greed always outweighs any moral concerns – and that inevitably leads to moral discomfort among consumers, not leading to more suffering in the world want to contribute. But the more we learn about the world and the origins of various goods, the more guilt we feel. Because in most cases, the products we buy have caused some form of suffering. No matter how pretty the stone is, it often sits on top of dead baby insects. Recognizing this is a double-edged sword. This will keep you well-informed and allow you to make better decisions, but those “better” decisions aren’t always easy. They require costly sacrifices that can even lead one to question whether knowing the truth is worth it.

Take the Smith family, who on paper are grateful to Morty for informing them about the human spaghetti they ate, but it’s obvious they hate him for ruining their Thursday night. Jerry (Chris Parnell ) is the most blunt. When he sees the Morty O’ Suicide spaghetti container, he asks himself, ‘Are they people or not people?’ I just need to know how much to pretend to be upset.”

Can all consumption really be ethical? At the end, Rick and Morty offers no solutions or moral lessons. And perhaps it would be unfair to burden a show as smugly nihilistic as this with such an expectation. Rick explains the dilemma to his grandson: “Use up cells, Morty. Life itself is wrong, and that means death is right. But you can’t join in. That’s how you live, even if it means eating.” “That’s Amorte” remains a deeply depressive and cynical episode to the end, but at the price of an accurate imitation of life’s endless ambiguities.

Rick and Morty is currently available to stream on Max in the US, with new episodes of season seven premiering every Sunday on Adult Swim.

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