Hawk Ripjaw
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S7E6, “Rickfending Your Mort” (written by Cody Ziglar and directed by Jacob Hair).
After last week’s insanely eventful episode, Rick and Morty S7E6, “Rickfending Your Mort,” brings significantly lower stakes, but all of the ridiculous chaos. We were about due for another clip-style episode, and while I had my doubts as to how well the show would execute one without Justin Roiland’s freewheeling improvisation, this week’s episode doesn’t miss a single beat with the random mayhem.
Morty visits Rick in the garage to find him drunk and blowing raspberries, lacking any motivation to go on any adventures with his grandson. This prompts Morty to produce a handful of punch cards to redeem for an adventure, a system Rick was not aware they were still using. Rick thinks Morty is cooking the books a bit, but Morty has also been taking notes of the adventures they’ve gone on with the expectation that Rick was going to attempt to dismiss the punch cards. This prompts Rick to call for an audit of their adventures, and he summons The Observer, a sentient geode who has been watching the events on Morty’s list and can play them back to determine whether they were legitimate adventures.
From here, we get the classic rapid-fire sequence of different random adventures that allow the Rick and Morty writers and performers to really go wild with imagination. We get a Blade adventure where a man does nothing except describe his elaborate weapon, Maximum Overdrive but with clothes, and Leg Rick (“I turned myself into a leg, Morty!”).
One of my favorites was an extended bit where a couple of bullies beat Morty, causing him to turn into a boat. The bullies take Boat Morty out on the sea, where Morty suddenly transforms back into a boy, stranding the trio on a desert island. From here, we get a sequence of them attempting to survive on the island, forming an “SOS” with debris, and one of the bullies even perishing. Morty and the remaining bully bond until Rick suddenly shows up through a portal like nothing happened, rescuing Morty, and leaving the bully behind. It’s one of the longer sequences of the episode, but still condenses a lot of story into a short and grimly hilarious bit.
This particular “adventure” wasn’t even on Morty’s list, and the pair quickly realize that the Observer is queuing up footage like his own clip show, something both of them take offense to. They step aside to discuss their next move, which of course is Observed and called out as soon as they return to the garage. Rick pays the Observer and sends him on his way, but the Observer soon returns with more clips, this time for the entire family.
A couple of the notable ones here include Jerry digging in the trash and getting stuck with multiple syringes, subsequently causing his urine to open a portal in the toilet to a group of people sitting in a room (I think?) and Summer becoming distraught when an alien threat dubbed the “Hottie Snatcher” opts not to take her. There are also some pettier ones, such as Space Beth blaming a fart on her chair, and Morty stealing money from his passed-out grandpa.
Morty finally has enough, storming outside to where the Observer is floating and shoving him into the street, where he is immediately struck by a vehicle and shatters, dying. This turns out to be a clip being played at Rick and Morty’s trial for the murder, and of course, there are more clips. These just keep getting better, to the detriment of Rick and Morty’s case: there are a series of instances of Rick giving Morty varying guns and the latter repeatedly failing to understand their functions, culminating in a pistol which Rick emphatically says is “a gun to shoot bad people.” But when confronted by a mugger on a date with Jessica, Morty fires the gun, only for it to spit out a facsimile of Jeffrey Dahmer.
By far my favorite clip of the episode, however, is a situation in which Rick, at Morty’s request, makes his churro come to life, resulting in an adorable, squeaky-voiced anthropromorphic churro name Churry that joins Morty in all sorts of fun activities, such as visiting the fair and going fishing. But once Morty is done, Rick informs him that he is unable to turn Churry back: he brought Churry to life, but since Churry has no brain or internal organs, giving him life made him “functionally immortal.” So to get rid of Churry, they take him to a planet under the guise of delivering him to his family, leaving him there. When Churry sees that his “family” is just a bunch of regular churros, he vows his revenge against Morty, and I sincerely hope this is not the last we see of Churry.
Rick’s finally had enough, and queues up some of his own clips against the Observers to throw some accusations back in their faces, or whatever version of faces these beings have. He shows how the Observers have used their powers to sell bootleg versions of the Avatar movies, as well as pay homeless people to fight each other. The Observers begin to turn on each other, showing each other clips of infidelity, and being to fight. Rick and Morty use this opportunity to escape.
Back in the garage, Rick agrees to honor the punch cards at 75 cents on the dollar, and the pair hop into the spaceship to see what more trouble they can get into. Rick tells Morty to check the glove box. “Wow, another gun!” exclaims Morty. I guess some things never change, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. I can only guess what ridiculous nonsense the writers will come up with next.
