Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S8E9, “Morty Daddy” (written by Beth Stelling and directed by Eugene Huang)
As the Smiths sit around the breakfast table, Morty’s phone vibrates. It’s the hospital, where his son, Morty Jr. (from “Raising Gazorpazorp,” in which he was conceived from Morty inseminating a sexbot), is. The Smiths and Rick strongly discourage Morty from going to his son, with Jerry in particular citing the book Morty Jr. wrote about how terrible his dad is.
A second vibration comes from one of those electronic pucks they give you at restaurants, indicating that the “Precog restaurant” that Summer made Rick make a reservation at is ready for them. A third vibration comes from Jerry’s vibrator. Rick, Summer and Morty leave in disgust.
Morty visits Morty Jr. in the hospital, where he has aged rapidly (as Gazorpians do) and is now older than Morty. Junior apologizes for some of the things he said in his book, and Morty acknowledges that family can sometimes get messy. He notes that Morty Jr. appears to be dying, and his son replies that he didn’t ask him here to talk about that: he wanted to pay his respects to his mother (the sexbot). Morty nervously responds that he’s not proud of where she ended up. Still, Morty Jr. insists, and Morty reluctantly obliges.
At the restaurant, “Prix Cogs,” whose claim to fame is that they predetermine what you’re wanting to eat before they even bring it to you, an excited Summer and a bored, skeptical Rick are being led to their table, and pass multiple patrons gushing over their dishes. Once they’re seated, a wooden ball traveling through a tube confirms that this half of the episode is a Minority Report spoof. Rick continues to complain, calling everything here a gimmick.
Then the dishes arrive, and once Rick’s dish is unveiled, he’s finally on board: it’s an alien dish served alongside its mother’s still-alive tentacle, so you have to be fast to cut a bite lest the tentacle swipe at your hand. Summer gets even more excited to see what she’s predetermined to be served. The lid is slowly lifted off…
It’s avocado toast.
Summer is furious. Rick loved his meal and is even ready for dessert, but Summer’s avocado toast is not only just avocado toast, it isn’t even good avocado toast. Summer glances at the kitchen, and realizing what his granddaughter is about to do, Rick warns her that she does not want to get caught up on that “future-predicting Precog bullsh*t.” Unfortunately, Summer is not nearly as easily manipulated as Morty is, and storms into the kitchen, where there are literally the Minority Report`Precogs. Summer grows more irate as the Precogs continue to finish her sentences during her tirade, while Rick tries to calm her down with, “Anything you do here pulls us further into their bullsh*t.” Summer angrily chucks a cast-iron skillet at one of the Precogs, bloodily striking them in the face and sheepishly saying she thought they would see it coming.
Almost immediately, the cops show up, and Summer wonders how they showed up so fast, but of course, as the Precogs say in unison with Rick, they called in a tip ahead of time. The Precogs say that Rick wants to hang out, because he wants dessert, which is at the cool Precogs’ safehouse. “New plan, Summer. We’re taking these ‘cogs to go!” Rick throws the Precogs over his shoulders and they exit.
Morty takes his son to Rick’s garage, where a handprint sensor opens of a garbage portal with a ladder leading down. After attempting to read his letter to his mother, Morty Jr. decides instead to just go down there, so the two of them head down the ladder. A second handprint sensor sends the ladder back up, and Morty Jr. marvels at the overwhelming quantity of garbage down in the trash portal. It’s piles and piles of discarded inventions, with a massive Eye of Sauron-style tower called Salvatron, flanked by smaller drones, in the center. One of the Salvatron drones comes over and scans Morty and his son, announces “Value Detected,” and continues that in that case, he needs to inform Rick. And since he doesn’t want to talk to Rick (and get yelled at), he’ll have to kill them. Morty and Morty Jr. run for their lives.
Morty and Morty Jr. evade the drone and fall deeper into the area, where they are greeted by a talking pizza box with legs. The pizza box takes them to Gartopia, an underground settlement not unlike Nuketown from Fallout 4, inhabited by surviving robots and inventions. Many of these inventions can walk and talk, such as a seductive urinal hungry for urine. Morty shows the pizza box a photo of the sexbot, and the box excitedly points the way to the graveyard. Morty turns to Morty Jr. to bring him there, but he’s gone—instead looking on in awe at an Enchanted Goblin live performance. It’s an adaptation of a book series Morty Jr. wrote! He’s less happy with his presumption that his father never read the box set he sent him. Morty insists that they had a complicated relationship, but it’s all in the past and they should visit Morty Jr.’s mom.
At the cool Precog safehouse, Rick is relaxing in the guitar-shaped pool with one of the Precogs, while Summer jealously complains that Rick would rather hang out with them instead of her. Rick performs a complicated unrehearsed secret handshake with one of the Precogs and deflects Summer’s insistence that it is now he that has been drawn into the “Precog bullsh*t.” Rick says that Summer wanted to be at a Precog restaurant and that this is even better, but Summer shoots back that it wasn’t about the restaurant, she just wanted to Rick to try out some cool stuff with her. Rick coldly responds that she wants that because she thinks that is what he wants, but the Precogs know what he wants before even he does. Damn, Rick.
At Morty Jr.’s mother’s grave, the two connect briefly before being accosted by The Trash of the Trash (they don’t let him hang out with everyone else), an amalgamation of fabric, wires, machine and robot heads. TotT picks up father and son, demanding to be led into the upper level. Morty confesses to his son that he was a bad dad, and now they’re going to be killed when Morty Jr. was already dying. Morty Jr. drops the bomb that he wasn’t actually dying: Morty mentioned it, he just didn’t really confirm it, and he needed material for the sequel to his book on Morty being a horrible father. Finding them both to be bad people, TotT shoots Morty Jr. in the chest and carries a screaming Morty away to the handprint sensor to get him to lower the ladder so he can ascend to the world of the humans. The sensor fails, scans Morty and TotT, and announces a “Scenario 3,” which recommends a trash rebellion and a conversation with Salvatron. The Eye of Salvatron activates, and the drones show up to destroy TotT.
Hiding under its corpse while the Salvatron drones try to get to him, Morty falls through the ground into Gartopia, but this time the drones decide to follow him. As Morty hides, the sexbot appears out of the darkness. One of the drones moves forward and whistles. “Talk about value detected!” It’s immediately destroyed along with the other drones, and as the dust clears, we see that the sexbot was held aloft by Morty Jr., who was found and rescued by the Enchanted Goblin fans, accompanying him now. Morty and his son make amends again (wow, these two are toxic). Their reunion is interrupted by one of the fans, reminding them that Salvatron now knows about the tunnels to Gartopia.
Rick awakens in the pool. Summer and the Precogs are gone. The drugged ‘cogs wake up in a truck, commandeered by Summer, racing down the freeway. If they don’t want to be killed, they need to tell Summer whether the avocado toast was what she really wanted. The Precogs confess that no, it wasn’t, and they were just trying to get to Rick to get to her. The conversation is cut short by Rick speeding after them in a semi. What follows is another action sequence. They have been reliably exciting throughout the season, but this might take the cake. The Precogs predict insane, impossible stuff for Summer to do, ending up in her favor, as Rick pursues them to get “his” Precogs back. It’s deliberately reminiscent of Minority Report, and it’s a ton of fun.
At the conclusion of the chase, the truck slides into a parking slot, the Precogs repurpose it into a food truck, and Summer eagerly digs into a hot dog given to her, seemingly her true preconceived dish. Rick asks one of the Precogs if hanging out was ever real, and they state that he doesn’t want to hear the answer.
Morty Jr. rallies the trash people to rebel against Salvatron and take back the trash world as their own. Morty chimes in to help, and in doing so, admits that he read all of Enchanted Goblin and loved it. Now that they are (once again) on good terms, Morty Jr. and his dad lead the hordes up to the next level, where they handily demolish the Salvatron drones (with some casualties) and topple the Eye of Salvatron. Morty Jr. declares a new era to the discarded denizens of Gartopia, where everyone has value! Morty, however, couldn’t be more eager to get back home. As the food truck falls out of the portal into Gartopia, Morty frantically runs towards it, and it’s just another chapter in his son’s book, sold in an airport to his family’s disdain.
“C’mon, we’re boarding. You guys still read books?”
Best Moments
- The letter Morty Jr. wrote to his mother begins: “I’m told your mouth was always open, but I’m sure your heart was as well.”
- “Summer! You’re not Morty, I can’t just grab you!” Rick complains as Summer heads to the Precog kitchen.
- The talking pizza box takes a dump on the floor, and it’s just a pizza. “Wish it hadn’t sh*t on the ground, because I’m kind of hungry,” Morty says.
- The post-credits stinger finds the Precogs still working in the food truck in Gartopia. One of the robots says he doesn’t like onions on his dog, and the Precog tells him he’ll die of a coronary (once again, he’s a robot). Another of the ‘cogs comes up, telling the first one that the boss wants to speak to them. When asked if it’s a prediction, and the response is “Just go talk to him, Steve.”
