Chris Sheridan
The following recap contains spoilers for Rick and Morty S9E6 “Erickerhead” (written by Albro Lundy & Scott Marder and directed by Eugene Huang).
Rick and Morty S9E6, “Erickerhead,” starts innocently enough, with Morty and Summer impatiently waiting for Rick to his all-you-can eat meal at a restaurant that also has endless beers, because Rick is already guzzling alcohol and burping with the spittle running down his chin. Rick had promised the siblings that he was going to take them “somewhere awesome.” He finally finishes, and they go outside (with Rick so drunk and bloated that his grandchildren have to support him), where Rick summons a portal and drags Summer in while Morty angrily berates Rick and tries to get him to come back out so they can return home the traditional way. Rick sticks his head out of the portal to retort (“Travel Hitler!”), and asks Morty what’s going to happen to him if he refuses to. The portal closes, chopping Rick’s head off. They both start screaming before the opening theme.
On the other side of the portal, the rest of Rick’s body collapses to the ground. As some aliens gather around to see what’s going on, Summer notes that the portal gun has fried and is unusable; worse, Rick tells her that she’s in a very dangerous part of town and she absolutely does not want to be see carrying around a beheaded body. Sure enough, she’s almost immediately set upon by aliens trying to take the body. Luckily, Rick’s had an explosive shotgun installed in his right leg, buying her time as even more aliens try to chase her down. Another feature of the body is to stiffen into a motorcycle, and Summer escapes.
Morty and Rick are sitting in a hospital, and after Morty finds out that Rick was planning to have his head transplanted onto Morty’s body and hospital security has been called, they escape down the hallway and into a taxi, where they see that they’re already on the news: the city is now aware that Morty has kidnapped a head. The taxi driver hears the broadcast state that there is a “fat reward” for their apprehension. He narrows his eyes through the review mirror. Morty narrows his eyes. After a beat, Morty smashes Rick’s head into the driver’s, and frantically commandeers the vehicle.
Summer enters a shop that she’s been told is a safe haven, and the shop owner, Seb, states that he’s Rick’s friend and Rick commonly visits for “lots of stuff.” Sure enough, the show owner is able to work on Rick’s body to cause it to jump up, have sentience, and communicate through pantomime. Back to Morty and Rick’s head, Morty realizes that they have no money. “Use your head, Morty!” Rick yells. Morty smashes into a convenience store and uses Rick’s head to threaten the store’s owners into giving them technology in order for Rick’s head to to consume it and use laser eyes to fire upon the cops that have arrived to capture them, taking them all out non-fatally. Rick plugs himself into a computer to make a call to the cops and tell them that they’re after the wrong kid and head, and the two escape with a cart of parts.
Summer and Rick’s body don’t have time to lay low, because Seb has sold them out: “Do you have any idea what this thing is worth?” As they run outside, things still aren’t safe, but they’re definitely not hopeless: Rick’s body suddenly springs into action, easily violently dispatching the aliens who are trying to kill Summer. As they continue onto a train, the pair continue to handily slaughter all of their assailants, with Summer showing that she’s no slouch either. Once outside the train, the thugs’ leader threatens them again, but after starting to choke him out, Rick’s body suddenly lets go, and pulls the leader into a comforting hug. This actually works, and the leader, suddenly placated, isn’t sure what to say and runs away.
At the spaceport, where they’re about to meet up with Rick’s head, Rick’s body hands his granddaughter a note apologizing for how he treats her, how his head gets in the way of telling her how much he loves her. As Summer wipes away her tears, a crowd parts and Morty and Rick’s head have shown up. Head and body joyfully race towards each other in slow motion, the music swelling…until Rick’s head’s smile turns to anger, firing the lasers, while Rick’s body suddenly engages his weapons. The two take the fight outside, and as explosions and debris continue, Rick and Summer realize that Rick’s head and body have become so happy on their own, they each want to kill the other so they don’t have to be reunited.
Back on the ship, Morty and Summer bicker over who is at fault and why each of them equipped each of Rick’s parts to make them antagonistic. Rick’s head picks up a call from them, and states that he has become happy with the separation: he and his body can go their separate ways.
Rick’s head goes to visit his friend/maybe-lover Rachel to get a new body, and as post-coitus Rachel emerges from the back, Rick’s head finds that his body is who Rachel just slept with, and they start fighting again. As Rick’s body is about to kill his head, Morty and Summer show up to desperately plead with the body to spare the head, stating that both are part of the same grandpa that they love, that they’re both selfish and need to think of each other. This finally gets through to them, and in an unseen conversation, they agree to become one again. Rick emerges from a room, back to normal, and there is a very strong implication that Rick’s head sucked his body’s d*ck to convince them to reunite.
Returning home, Rick promises he’ll treat himself better, which, in the final scene, finds him kicking in his grandkids’ doors early in the morning wearing workout gear, and forcing them to “train,” starting with a run and progressing into a swimming competition at the Olympics. The kids cheer for Rick, but they’re still exhausted from Rick’s new lease on life. “So what do we want to do now?” Rick asks. The final scene finds them back at the restaurant from the opening, where Rick is back to devouring food and chugging beer. Some things never change.
“Erickerhead” was an entertaining, funny, and action-forward episode that I had a lot of fun watching. Seeing how Rick’s head detached from his body found both parts acting more wholesomely with the grandkids—with the head being a little more emotional, less aggressively violent, and even turning away alcohol (even though he doesn’t have a liver, he isn’t really that upset about it), and the body, while still pretty violent, being protective of Summer and showing how much he truly loves her (which definitely is a true feeling, with Rick’s aggressive personality unable to stop him) — was surprisingly heartfelt. It’s a really fun idea for an episode, and the constant creativity made it yet another great episode in a season of great episodes. Here’s to the next one.
