Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S9E2 “Ricks Days, Seven Nights” (written by Jess Lacher and directed by Brian Kaufman)
I went into Rick and Morty S9E2 “Ricks Days, Seven Nights” anticipating more of last week’s classic insanity we’ve generally come to expect from the show. Having watched it, I was surprised to find that it is not at all that: it’s much more of a Rick character study, and it ends up working very well.
The episode opens with a man heading through a snowy landscape in an RV. It’s Rick, though apparently not the Rick we know? He repairs a flat tire and watches an elk retreating into the forest with a look of contentedness. He comes upon a bowling alley, where he is warmly welcomed by a troupe of friends that recognize him, and greet him as “Ted.” Ted takes a hearty drink from the bar and belches. At the end of the night, Ted retreats to a liquor store for a six pack, where an armed robber enters and demands the clerk to open the register. Ted reacts in panic, but is more shocked when a pair of cybernetic tentacles come out of his arm, blocking a bullet and injecting a syringe into the robber to induce a heart attack. Ted, bewildered, exits the liquor store with his six pack.
In the RV, Ted guzzles one of the beers, grabs a kitchen knife, and attempts to dig into his arm to no avail. Suddenly, one of the cybernetic arms throws him back and activates a hologram of our Rick, revealing Ted’s true identity, who takes two weeks off a year to come here as him, Ted, to escape his existence as Rick. He offers Ted a choice: a red button to return to reality as Rick, or to a blue button to wipe his memory and stay as Ted. Ted doesn’t press either button, and stumbles out of the RV in a panic. He returns to the bowling alley where the bartender and owner of the alley, Marjorie, greets him. She shows him the disco ball she’s installed since his last visit, and they lay peacefully next to each other on the lanes.
Ted confirms that Marjorie knows who he is, clearly having some sort of identity crisis. They make love in the back room, and the next morning Ted promises he’s not going to leave her. Returning to the RV, he is inundated by holograms of Rick, insisting that Ted is not real. In response, Ted sends the RV down a hill to rid himself of the holograms and stay indefinitely in this reality. Later, sitting with his friends and drinking around a fire, Ted says that this is where he belongs, and that when he leaves, he feels like he only exists when he’s here. It’s becoming more and more clear that Rick’s state of mind is getting worse to the point that he wants to escape from the real world as Ted: this is where he actually belongs.
Much later, when all of his friends are asleep, Ted sees a bright light coming from the forest, and goes in to come across a large egg-shaped vessel. A phone in his ankle rings, and when he answers, the voice on the other end is a panicked Morty, referring to Ted as “Rick,” and begging him to get in the egg. Ted responds that nothing is worse than to be told that Rick is a character who puts on a costume. A cybernetic arm comes from the egg, attempting to forcibly drag him into the egg. Before it does, his friends show up, ramming the egg with their truck and damaging it, saving Ted. He tells his friends that a man is insisting that he’s “non-vacation me” and refuses to go back. They agree to help him, retrofitting the bowling alley with traps and weapons.
This ends up working quite well, as the multitude of drones Rick sends to apprehend Ted are held off by the booby-trapped building. Unfortunately, Marjorie perishes in the battle. Ted had made her promise not to come back after clearing out the bowling alley of patrons, but she did anyway, and dies in Ted’s arms. Ted vows to take the fight to Rick, and his friends insist on coming with him. We get a montage of Ted and his friends creatively designing suits and a vessel to go to Earth and face Rick.
They are successful, crashing into the Sanchez garage. A new Rick hologram pops up and he’s very drunk and slurring, saying that the holograms are not working. The garage’s defenses pop out with multiple cybernetic arms, but Ted handily fights them off. The rest of the Sanchez family enters the garage, and Morty confronts Ted, referring to him as “Vacation Rick.” The rest of the Sanchez family leaves in general indifference, while Morty searches for the red button in a panic.
Ted’s friends ask for their own cybernetic arms, and as they enjoy them at a bowling alley, Ted continues to drink: he’s starting to become Rick, despite his earlier attempts to resist at all costs. He’s even wearing Rick’s clothes now, and swigging from a flask. He creates a portal, and sends his friends through it, letting them believe that they defeated Rick. What follows is Ted going on an absolute bender, no longer able to differentiate himself from Rick. He comes across his friends in a graveyard mourning a deceased comrade–-killed by one of his implants. They’re not happy to see Ted, and blame him for the death. Ted, now accepting/indifferent that his is now Rick, freezes them in place, and uses the last of his portal fluid to escape back home.
Rick stumbles into the family room, drunk off of his ass, and drags Morty to the garage. He tells his grandson that he’s never going back to the vacation dimension, dumping every physical item from there, including a photo of him and Marjorie (“You don’t want to keep some of these? You look so happy!” Morty says before Rick destroys it). The episode ends with one of the saddest scenes we’ve seen from Rick. He refers to Ted as “stupid,” and laments that if he was just a little bit smarter, he could “figure it out…and be happy.” There’s a red button in front of him. Still believing he’s Ted, he asks Morty if “he” (Rick) was better. Morty nervously responds in the affirmative, and continues to encourage his grandfather of the good things in his life, and how much he is loved. Rick presses the button. Nothing happens. Morty apologizes that it didn’t work, but Rick sadly says, “it did,” and exits the garage as the episode ends. The look on Rick’s face is heartbreaking.
Some of the best moments of Rick and Morty come when we get a glimpse into Rick’s state of mind, his absolute brokenness that he is desperate to escape from. “Ricks Days, Seven Nights” takes those moments and makes an entire episode out of them. Seeing Ted repeatedly reject the reality of Rick’s misery, and Rick’s repeated attempts (and eventual success) to drag himself back to the real world, is devastating to see. It took two watches to fully absorb the tragedy of this week’s episode, and it ends up being one of the better ones.
