Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S8E3, “The Rick, The Mort & The Ugly (written by Michael Kellner, Albro Lundy and James Ciciliano and directed by Jacob Hair).
Rick and Morty are collecting Citadel wreckage after the Citadel was destroyed in S5E10 “Rickmurai Jack.” Morty is deeply bored, playing with his fidget spinner (remember those?). After a spare Citadel piece smashes into the windshield, they make an emergency landing on a planet with Rick and Morty clones, landing in a crystal cornfield owned by farmer Homestead Rick. Homestead Rick is not happy to see them, aiming a shotgun and prompting our Rick and Morty to quickly escape.
That’s just about the last we see of our Rick and Morty this week as the episode’s focus shifts to Homestead Rick. Set to “Luckiest Man” by The Wood Brothers, we see Homestead Rick’s day-to-day, including harvesting his “corn” into liquid pumped into a huge tank, from which he fills a bottle and heads into a town of Mortys and into the town arcade. Homestead Rick and Arcade Morty don’t appear to be on the best of terms, with Homestead Rick seemingly here out of necessity instead of for any sense of camaraderie.
Suddenly, a spaceship touches down, and as one of the Mortys sounds the alarm in panic, a group of Ricks comes out of the ship and begins Morty-napping. Multiple Mortys are violently rounded up and loaded into the ship. Homestead Rick just wants to carry the wares he procured at the arcade and be on his way, but the Ricks, upon realizing that the farmer is not one of them, shoot him multiple times. They take their leave with their Mortys in tow and burn the town down.
It appears that the Ricks are constructing a new Citadel and using their captive Mortys as fodder for a Morty clone. For what, we’re not sure yet. Trafficker Rick travels up an elevator to meet Boss Hogg Rick, who says that once they have the requisite Mortys, they can all live like kings. He tosses Trafficker Rick a paper bag containing a vial of portal fluid.
Homestead Rick wakes up getting his wounds patched up by robots, and drives back home to find it burned down and the message “What grown man listens to Tori Amos?” written in what appears to be feces on the floor. Homestead Rick opens a compartment on the floor to reveal a stash of weapons and arms up, heading to the New Citadel. En route, he discovers Arcade Morty and Doctor Morty in the back of his truck. Homestead Rick reluctantly agrees for them to tag along, with the caveat of “if you die, you die.”
Still, after they infiltrate the brewery, Arcade Morty manages to hold his own, as angry as Homestead Rick is and ready to beat a Rick to death over the loss of his town and fellow Mortys. Doctor Morty is pretty quickly shot down by the Ricks, but Arcade Morty and Homestead Rick agree to fight together, managing to take down almost all of the Ricks in the brewery. The remaining Trafficker Rick uses the portal fluid from Boss Hogg Rick to escape.
Arriving in the cloning chamber, Arcade Morty starts to free some of his brethren, while Homestead Rick finds multiple laser sights trained on him. It’s here that we learn from Boss Hogg Rick that the big tank in Homestead Rick’s house was cloning equipment, and that Homestead Rick is not only not a clone, but the foremost Morty replicator in the Citadel. Boss Hogg Rick offers Homestead Rick his old job back, and Homestead Rick agrees and gets to work, successfully creating a new clone Morty.
But it was a trap—the new clone’s vascular system and flesh begin to grow into shape…and then keep growing and growing, until a massive Hulk Morty explodes out of the tank and starts slaughtering Ricks. Homestead Rick leads the Mortys to a spaceship and, despite Arcade Morty’s cries, decides to stay back and sends the ship away so the Mortys can “make some memories that aren’t fabricated.” As Hulk Morty is finally felled by the multiple Ricks firing at it, Homestead Rick takes his turn, laying waste to the Rick clones with the large arsenal hidden in the bed of his truck as the Tori Amos song “Little Earthquakes” plays (a fun payoff to the derisive message left for him earlier in the episode).
Boss Hogg Rick escapes to his penthouse office and accesses a safe from which he takes a large bottle of portal fluid. Trafficker Rick suddenly appears, but Hogg Rick takes him down with a desk gun (yes, apparently they exist). Homestead Rick, increasingly bloody and battered, is taking his final stand when Boss Hogg Rick emerges from a portal. But before the killing blow can be struck, Homestead Rick presses his detonator, and the bombs he’s been leaving all around the Citadel detonate, killing himself, Boss Hogg Rick and all of the remaining Ricks, and bringing down the entire structure.
Up in the spaceships, the Mortys decide to find their own homes. In a montage, each of them are dropped off on a planet relevant to their theme, until Arcade Morty is the only remaining Morty. He chooses to return to the Homestead, where he honors Homestead Rick with a grave. Our Rick and Morty suddenly appear because Morty has lost his fidget spinner. Rick nervously notes the grave and surmises that Arcade Morty killed his Rick. Before Arcade Morty can really lay into them, Morty finds his fidget spinner and they leave. “A**holes…” mutters Arcade Morty.
Frankly, I didn’t like this episode as much as the previous two. The deviations from the classic Rick and Morty adventures are usually a lot of fun, but “The Rick, the Mort & The Ugly” just didn’t have as much of the sauce. I did enjoy the reliably energetic action and the creative permutations of Ricks, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to next week’s (hopefully) classic adventure. As it stands, it’s still good, but ranks a little lower in the pantheon of Rick and Morty. See you next week!
Best Moments
- Oddjob (yes, the James Bond Oddjob) Rick attempting to make small talk in the elevator: “You like football?”
- The Ricks gamble with dice, but instead of rolling for a number, the dice come to life and box with the loser falling over to land on the (hopefully) desired number.
- The fact that Rick and Morty have returned to this planet because Morty lost his $3 fidget spinner gets funnier the more I think about it.
