Hawk Ripjaw
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S7E4 “That’s Amorte” (written by Heather Anne Campbell and directed by Lucas Grey).
Editor’s Note: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the series being covered here wouldn’t exist.
As a raised Catholic, I try not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but Rick and Morty S7E4 “That’s Amorte” found me invoking Christ multiple times in one of the most hilariously f*cked up episodes of the show in recent memory.
It’s spaghetti night at the Smith household! The entire family literally trips over themselves getting to the dinner table and the terminally online Summer smashes her phone against the wall in excitement over Rick’s famous spaghetti. Jerry bombed a job interview, but the spaghetti is just so good, it doesn’t matter! Morty’s excited at how spaghetti night is bringing the family together, and asks if there’s any more. Rick happily obliges, and disappears out of the room with the empty serving dish. Following him, a horrified Morty finds Rick spooning the contents of a corpse into the dish. Morty wails the question on all of our lips: “Why is it always this sh*t with you?…Why couldn’t it just be spaghetti?”
Yep…Soylent Spaghetti is people. In an effort to explain things to his grandson, Rick takes Morty to a planet in which people who kill themselves have their insides turn into delicious spaghetti. Car crash? Guts. Suicide? Bolognese. Rick explains that the amplified cortisol (“a lot of cortisol….like a suicidal amount”) increases the bloodstream’s starch content, turning their intestines into spaghetti noodles and their tissue into bolognese, proving it by slicing open a recently deceased suicide victim to reveal the tasty innards. Morty is shocked to find that Rick is indeed correct. To boot, this planet has no idea what spaghetti is. It was pointed out on Reddit that “Amorte” in Portuguese translates to “the death,” which is either an amazingly calculated part on the writers of the episode or an incredible coincidence.
Morty is understandably, uh…mortified at this development, and compels an irritated Rick to take them to the funeral of their most recent meal to pay their respects. After no one in attendance appears to be interested in sharing any words about the deceased, Morty takes it upon himself to reveal to the sparse congregation what their people become when they kill themselves, and how it brought his family together. It doesn’t go over terribly well, not for the funeral, and not for the Smith family, who are more upset that Morty ruined spaghetti night than that he told the truth.
Morty is visited by a drone from the “Spaghetti planet,” inviting him to return. Once there, Morty is greeted by their President and her cabinet, who present him with a plate of spaghetti of a person who took their own life but consented to be eaten post-mortem. The cabinet asks Morty to be a liaison from Earth, and Morty thinks all is well, now that the family can enjoy “ethical spaghetti” from someone who took their life knowing that they would be a delicious meal for someone after the fact.
Smug as ever, Rick enters the room to reveal that the Spaghetti planet has commercialized the product into Morty’s Suicide Spaghetti, a canned product that contains the remains of individuals who have found meaning in their life by ending it if it means they can be enjoyed by others. Spaceships from across the galaxy have lined up outside the planet to purchase the food, and on the Spaghetti planet itself is now an ugly, dystopian shell: the bridge guard rails have been melted down into giant spaghetti strainers for people to hurl themselves into, talk radio reigns supreme, and television is exclusively bad reality TV—all because of Morty’s Suicide Spaghetti. Morty brings Rick to appeal to the President to put a stop to it all, but she pushes back, stating the benefit this has had on their global economy, and causing even more suffering.
Morty desperately appeals to Rick, promising to stop looking behind the curtain of Rick’s new things if Rick can help him fix this, and Rick agrees. Morty’s first suggestion is clones, with Rick adding an accelerated indoctrination program wherein the clones know nothing other than their ultimate fate as spaghetti. Cut to three days later, where the clones rebel and would rather kill each other in a pact rather than be food, so scratch that plan. Morty’s next suggestion is to engineer beings who are even “less people” but still enough to be spaghetti upon death. After a couple of profoundly grim test subjects, Rick and Morty arrive at a headless blob of flesh that is otherwise an intact human. Morty suggests introducing a motor function for it to stab itself to death, eliminating the need for an actual human to want to take their own life.
Success! The lifeless husks create a new boon for the planet’s spaghetti industry, but with it come new challenges, namely the dueling violent activist groups of Torso’s Rights and another group advocating for “real” Suicide Spaghetti. Advocates of both groups activate their bomb vests in the spaghetti factory, bringing a halt to production, and angering the couriers lining up outside the planet to pick up their deliveries. With no means of lining their delivery ships, the couriers take to landing on the Spaghetti planet and harassing its citizens to kill themselves so they can take the precious cargo, to no avail.
Morty’s final Hail Mary is to have Rick synthesize a sample of just one citizen who might be willing to kill themselves. There’s just one possible subject left: Fred, a bedridden man in constant pain who would love to die, but refuses to contribute to the capitalist system the spaghetti industry created. Rick offers a solution, which is not revealed to the audience, and brings Fred to a “euthanasia machine” that will kill him after broadcasting his life to the entire planet. What follows is Fred’s life from birth to the present, from love and loss, to ups and downs, and everything in between, set to an acoustic rendition of Oasis’s “Live Forever.”. It is by turns depressing, sweet, darkly funny and heartbreaking, and a great reminder of how well Rick and Morty can integrate music into its bigger emotional moments.
Rick plan works: by forcing the world to witness the complexity of Fred’s life, he made the idea of consuming Fred post-mortem something profoundly distasteful. And just like that, the galaxy’s appetite for human spaghetti is completely extinguished and things seem to get back to normal. Back home, the Smith family is initially put off by Rick’s new dish of Salisbury steak, until they try it: it’s incredible. Rick warns them that the truth behind the steak is horrifying, and they all share a big laugh together, agreeing that they can enjoy the new meal in blissful ignorance.
“That’s Amorte” gets dark in a way that Rick and Morty only knows how, and it was probably my favorite episode of the season so far. It goes to some shocking places and makes some extremely grim jokes, but still manages to be absolutely hilarious and absurd. We’re almost at the halfway point for the season, and things are showing no signs of slowing down.
