Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S9E4, “A Ricker Runs Through It” (story by Nick Rutherford and teleplay by Jax Ball & Albro Lundy, and directed by Fill Marc Sagadraca & Daniel Cole).
Rick’s alcoholism is getting significantly worse. For a while, he was doing pretty good, but we’re back to early seasons Rick. Arguably, he’s even more addicted than he ever has been. At the outset of the “A Ricker Runs Through It,” he is staggering into the garage, absolutely guzzling liquor and unable to even stand up straight. It’s troubling and even pitiful to see. Sitting down at his desk, he tries and fails multiple times to log into his terminal until the garage locks down and he screams for Morty.
Morty enters, offering his grandpa something to eat, and Rick insists that he’s “only had a couple of drinks.” After slamming his fists against the locked down terminal, Rick is electrocuted and falls to the floor, after which he screams Morty’s name again. When Morty says he’s not sure how he can help, Rick accuses him of not caring about him. However, a phone call from their friend Reese is enough to give him a little more vigor, and the two of them excitedly anticipate Reese’s arrival.
When Reese (guest voiced by Owen Wilson) arrives, Rick and Morty are overjoyed. The three of them head out for a fishing trip, and Reese is shown to be a kind, chill friend, even capable of calming down Rick when he berates Morty. While hanging out at the campfire, Reese takes a phone call and says that he has somewhere to be. They return to the house, and as Reese bids goodbye, a raccoon starts to get into their cooler. Reese’s eyes suddenly glow red, he sprouts mechanical tentacle turrets, and he vaporizes the raccoon. Morty realizes that he’s Rick’s password, and that Reese is summoned when Rick gets locked out of his terminal.
Morty storms up to his room while Rick resumes guzzling from a seemingly bottomless flask (he’s set up an off-world community with a vodka silo that portals liquor into the flask). Morty decides to go down and have a discussion with Rick, and walks in on him working on Reese’s exposed brain. That’s enough for Morty, and he forcibly puts the garage into lockdown and drags Reese into the floor hatch before it seals. He ignores Rick’s shouts to open the hatch, and switches Reese back on. He and Reese begin venturing to Level 17 of the underground network, where there is a “landline portal.”
Up above, after trying and failing to shoot a laser into the hatch, Rick contacts the company responsible for manufacturing the hatch, staffed by beings reminiscent of the fart cloud from “Mortynight Run.” They need “remote access” to work on the hatch, which apparently requires controlling someone on Earth. Jerry is perfect. Once he’s under control, the cloud is elated, and “Jerry,” under the control of the cloud “Dug,” exits the house to acquire some tools from the hardware store, as he will need to dig out the entire sub-basement. His insistence that he will definitely not take Jerry’s body for a joyride is of course a lie, and we see him run Jerry through a car wash.
Morty and Reese get to Level 17 and the landline portal. They select an idyllic-looking forest, and after stepping through find themselves instead in a city inhabited by bipedal warthogs who worship Rick. This, unfortunately, ends up being a facade, as the entire house is suddenly locked down, including a giant mechanical shell over it. The “Hog Resistance” has captured Reese and used him to access Rick’s network. They begin transferring the contents of Rick’s computer as the entire garage spins violently.
Rick and Morty manage to exit the garage (with Rick pulling Morty to safety) to find Summer and Beth fighting off the furniture, all of which has transformed into murderous robots. They all climb onto the couch as the floor turns to lava. Morty asks his grandfather if he ever thought about just being nicer to people instead of transforming the house into infinite layers of defense, and Rick replies, “Never once.” Rick transfers Dug into the Hog leader, who leads all of the other hogs to kill each other before Dug switches back to Jerry.
As the family flees to Rick’s room to access the emergency shutoff, Rick once again pulls his grandson out of the line of fire. With Rick having shut off everything electronic in the house, he attempts to take a victory drink from his flask, but it also starts shooting off lasers before unleashing Reese, reprogrammed by the Hogs to kill Rick. Rick and Morty move to the garage to fight Reese with pipes, with all of Rick’s cybernetic implants disabled, and Rick again saves his grandson’s life by jumping in front of a deadly beam fired from Reese’s mouth. “You can’t love something out of hurting you!” Rick yells. This devolves into the two repeatedly shrieking how much they hate each other as Reese lifts them into the air and pins them to the wall with his tentacles. Seeing the two go at it like this manages to override Reese’s Hog programming, and he returns to his normal self, stating that even though Rick and Morty may fight, they’re “the real deal,” which is a nice lid on the fact that Rick has rescued his grandson at least three times this episode.
Rick reprograms Reese and transfers Dug into him, and Reese leaves. With his portal flask no longer having a source, Rick just drains flask after flask from under his desk, and Morty’s expression of anger soon turns to one of worry. Rick points out that Morty may be disgusted, but it’s already inside him. “It’s a disease, Morty! A genetic disease!”
Wow, I think the biggest takeaway from this episode is that Rick’s drinking is not only a serious, serious problem, but one that’s beginning to eclipse everything that’s come before. And his final words here are even more troubling: is Morty going to start to develop an addiction at some point when he’s older, or is he made of strong enough stuff that he’ll be able to resist it? Furthermore, is Rick going to start just dragging his grandson into his lifestyle? This is one of the more interesting seasons in it’s through-line, and I’m curious to see where it goes.
