Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S8E8 “Nomortland” (written by Albro Lundy & James Siciliano and directed by Fill Marc Sagadraca).
Early morning in the Smith household, the family is getting ready for school and work, while unemployed Jerry is Jerrying, wolfing down a bowl of cereal with a new five o’clock shadow. And then…a clean-shaven Jerry enters the kitchen. Clean-shaven Jerry reacts significantly better than I probably would at meeting a different version of himself, but I guess he’s seen enough that his response is, “Um…okay…” His counterpart (who will be called Mooch Jerry at a later point) books it from the table with Jerry in hot pursuit. He quickly catches up and tackles Mooch Jerry, and demands answers.
Over lunch at the mall, Mooch Jerry asks Jerry if he’s going to eat the rest of his food, and when Jerry responds in the negative, Mooch Jerry eagerly digs in and declares, “The Road provides.” That just creates more questions than answers, and Jerry asks if Mooch Jerry is a clone or a future version of him sent to kill and replace him. Mooch Jerry replies that he’s a Jerry from another dimension, slipping through cracks in the multiverse. Jerry tells his multiversal counterpart that he can’t stay at the house, but Mooch Jerry asks for the bedroom closet back.
Getting back to the house, Jerry attempts to distract Rick from Mooch Jerry getting upstairs. Rick starts by yelling at Jerry for taking up too much freezer space. Jerry glances sideways to check that Mooch Jerry has made it upstairs. “Hey, hey! Look at me when I’m talking to you!” Rick demands. Jerry deflects by mentioning the show Naked and Alone, which makes Rick even angrier, asking “Are you making conversation with me?” before admitting that he, too, watches the show and even shares an agreeable tidbit about it. It doesn’t last long: “Okay…good. Don’t waste my freezer space. And DON’T. F*CKING. BLINDSIDE ME WITH SMALL TALK!”
A bedroom closet is a strange place to shack up, but as soon as they get back to the house, Mooch Jerry starts feeling around the inside of the closet…for some reason. Mooch Jerry quickly finds what he’s looking for as his hand sinks into the back wall of the closet, and invites Jerry to come explore the multiverse with him on The Road. After Rick screams up through the floor that he’s still angry at Jerry for talking to him, Jerry agrees, on the condition that Mooch Jerry will get him home.
Their first stop on The Road is a reality visually identical to Jerry’s. After climbing through a massive coat rack, Mooch Jerry finds an upside-down coaster: a sign from another Jerry that this world is okay to travel through. The only difference here is that every word is “blah.” Getting to the bathroom, Mooch Jerry opens up the mirror to a mirror tunnel to their next stop: A completely frozen reality, in which the Smiths froze to death holding each other on the front lawn. On a wall in the house, Countless Jerrys have hung totems and keepsakes of their visits to this reality. Mooch Jerry cuts off a piece of his shirt for Jerry to add to the wall, and reaffirms that they are all the same person. They set off again for a less depressing reality.
Set to Rusted Root’s “Send Me On My Way,” the Jerrys travel through multiple realities: one where everything is yarn, one where they shrink down to ride a mouse and everyone has a goat head, and others, each time utilizing a normal object as a gateway to the next reality. Sitting on the roof of the house in a reality where Rick turned the Moon into a disco ball carving beams of destructive energy into Earth’s crust, the Jerrys enjoy some alcoholic drinks together and Jerry shares some of his own experiences of swapping dimensions before meeting Mooch Jerry.
But they take a little too long, culminating in them racing to their connection point to get Jerry home. They barely miss the point (Rick and Morty portaling out of a taco restaurant), so Mooch Jerry suggests that they stay with Gene for the week until Rick and Morty return. Jerry is having none of it: if he was gone for a week, his family would just replace him. There’s a bit of growth with Jerry in this episode, as he goes from being replaceable to insisting that his family loves him.
Mooch Jerry suggests another option: Grand Central, via a rope leading into a burlap sack with its interior glowing. The Jerrys climb in, follow the rope down through a tunnel, and emerge in a different forest, where a Jerry wearing a bandanna walkies in another Bandanna Jerry in a golf cart. He takes the Jerrys to a Smith house with tents outside and brings them into the house—Grand Central—where they meet multiple other Bandanna Jerrys, Jerrys who went on an adventure and never came back. Upstairs, multiple Bandanna Jerrys flank another dark-haired, bearded Jerry wearing a cool leather jacket: Boss Jerry. There’s also a disheveled Rick in the room, smoking Portal Crystal Meth.
Boss Jerry states that travel fares have increased, and when Mooch Jerry hands over a wad of cash, he and Jerry are immediately apprehended by Bandanna Jerrys. Boss Jerry asks if Mooch Jerry has been mapping new routes through the multiverse, and instructs his underlings to take the Jerrys away and blacklist them. They’re kicked out of a shed in a different reality—Mooch Jerry’s reality—and the locker is sealed shut, trapping them in this reality. Mooch Jerry reveals that he’s a drifter in the multiverse because he left his reality after feeling unappreciated, and when he returned Beth had remarried.
They go to Mooch Jerry’s house anyway, and are greeted at the door by Beth’s new husband, who turns out to be an incredibly kind man who is excited to see Beth’s ex-husband and invites them in. In this reality, everyone has a five o’clock shadow. Mooch Jerry argues with his family over the dining room table, airing his grievances over their resentment of him, but they respond with vitriol that he disappeared. Mooch Jerry prepares to storm out, but Jerry grabs him. “Stop disappearing for once!” he says. Jerry confesses how much he loves his family, and when he came back, the family just seemed happy with their new patriarch. “We are happy,” Mooch Beth says. “But that doesn’t mean we hate you!” Mooch Jerry admits that he thought his family took him for granted, but it was the other way around.
Mooch Rick agrees to repair the shed to get Jerry home. As he works, Mooch Jerry tells Jerry that going through Grand Central is the only way back. He pulls out a pair of bandannas to disguise themselves, but they don’t last long: a gaffe leads to them immediately being made. Boss Jerry and the Bandana Jerrys relentlessly purse Jerry and Mooch Jerry across The Road through realities, set again to “Send Me On My Way,” but this time ramped up to twice the speed. Mooch Jerry’s Hail Mary is to escape into a trash can and go to the Goat Dimension, where they grow the mouse to giant size and ride it to the burlap sack portal.
As they climb through, Boss Jerry goes in after them. “I’m gonna kill you, Mooch! And then I’m gonna f*ck your wife!” In another of my favorite Jerry-isms, Mooch Jerry responds, “Good luck! She’s married!” With them almost in the clear, Boss Jerry pulls a gun and starts shooting at them. “You guys suck, you’re weak! Not like me, I’m cool!” The Jerrys escape the burlap sack and Mooch Jerry cuts the rope tying the sack to the tree, severing the connection to the other realities and sending Boss Jerry into what I assume is an infinite vortex which kills him, vaporizing the sack.
The Jerry’s emerge from the closet. Mooch Jerry favorably comments on a family photo Jerry has on the bedside table, and Jerry invites him to stick around. Mooch Jerry declines, saying he’s been living on someone else’s tab long enough, and maybe The Road will open back up now that Boss Jerry is gone. They embrace, and Mooch Jerry reenters The Road.
The Smiths enter the bedroom to find Jerry, having worriedly looked for him when he disappeared. Apparently he was gone long enough for Morty to mate with an octopus, according to Summer. Jerry states that he was “taking some me time.” The family reacts in disgusts, and Jerry counters that he wasn’t masturbating. They’re even more grossed out by that since that wasn’t what they were implying, and tell him he needs to get out more. They leave, and Jerry flips the coaster over. Rick pokes his head around the corner “What the f*ck was that?” “Uh…nothing?” Rick narrows his eyes, glances into the closet, back at Jerry, and affirms what his family just told him.
Best Moments
- Mooch Jerry offers to provide answers if Jerry buys him lunch. Jerry refuses to do so, and Mooch Jerry suggests they call it “Breakfast II.”
- Rick yelling at Jerry about making small talk, and his eyes slowly narrowing as Jerry talks.
- When Jerry is surprised that Mooch Jerry has cash, Boss Jerry responds that he doesn’t: all Jerrys use the same ATM PIN.
- At the beginning of the climactic chase, they’re in a reality where everyone’s face is rearranged and distorted. Rearranged Summer exclaims that this must be “a dream, some sort of weird hallucination…I ate too many mushrooms!”
- The generally-chill “Send Me On My Way” playing at double speed set to a frenzied chase put a huge smile on my face.
- As they often are, the post-credits stinger is one of the best bits of the episode. Here, Rick and Jerry are naked in the family room watching Naked and Alone (“It’s the culture of the show, you’re supposed to watch it naked!”). It’s nice seeing the two enjoying something together, and I hope it brings them closer.
