I had to take a bit of a refresher on last season of Rick and Morty, because
Season 6E1 "Solaricks" picks up some time after the explosive last season
finale in which Evil Morty broke the Central Finite Curve (the "wall"
separating the universes in which Rick is the smartest man in existence, and
those in which he is not) and breaks portal travel, stranding Rick and Morty.
Also, the Citadel is destroyed again! That thing just can't catch a break!

Of course, as always, it doesn't take long for Rick and Morty to get out of a
scrape, and this time it is Space Beth that rescues them. Rick immediately
sets about resetting the portal fluid to re-enable portal travel, but as he
often does, makes a mistake and makes things worse. He instead resets all
portal _travelers_, meaning that everyone who has portal traveled from a
different universe will be sent back to that original universe.

This forces our protagonists to confront their pasts, calling back to
episodes in the first two seasons and really tightening up some of the messy
lore of the show. Morty gets sent back to the Cronenberg dimension (where he
abandoned his original family to the hellscape apocalypse), and runs into his
father, who is the only remaining survivor of the family, if not humanity.
Jerry, far from the naive idiot Morty knows, is a hardened man who has
finally accepted Rick's outlook on life and rejects all of Morty's attempts
to apologize and reconnect. There's no fixing what Morty has done here.

This isn't the first time that our characters are forced to confront the
reality of the destruction left in their wake and the lives ruined by running
away from their problems or trying to fulfill their wants and needs through
an "easy" method, or just simply jumping to a different dimension. There are
plenty of examples in which the show reveals the massive body count as a
result of Rick and Morty's antics, but this is the uncommon and satisfying
instance in which the consequences have direct ties into actual character
development.

Oh yeah, and Jerry gets reset because Rick and Morty accidentally retrieved
the wrong Jerry from the Jerryboree in S2.

Rick gets sent to his original dimension, where Rick Prime killed our Rick's
family and made him the bitter, nihilistic man we've known. Rick, in order to
torment himself, has programmed the house to haunt him with the voice of his
late wife; a voice always in the next room, just out of reach, constantly
reminding him that he failed her and their daughter. What's more, Rick has
set the universe to repeat the day of his family's murder over and over;
however, Rick forgot about aging, so everyone (including the earnest and kind
Mr. Goldmanbackmajorian) stuck in the time loop here feels the physical
effects of aging, but cannot die. "Oh yeah," remarks Rick. "I used to _drink_
drink." It is both horrifying and remarkably on-brand that Rick morphed this
dimension to punish himself with no thought to the broader consequences--
although thankfully, after realizing his gaffe, he puts the denizens of his
purgatory out of their pain.

The big kicker comes here: the Morty we've been with all this time is the
grandson of Rick Prime-and our Rick stationed himself on our Morty's universe
because he is still, after all these years, determined to kill Rick Prime.
This doesn't do any favors to the strained relationship between Rick and
Morty, as Morty once again feels like he's merely bait, but Rick is taking
the chance to finally kill his nemesis. He can't portal travel, but he can
utilize the rift left behind by Evil Morty to travel between universes. When
faced with the opportunity, he instead decides to go save the Beths and
Summer. In the mid-credits, Rick Prime encounters Jerry in the Cronenberg
dimension, confirming this to be Prime's original home (and he our Morty's
grandfather). I was expecting Rick Prime to accept Jerry's offer to team up
against Rick and Morty, but Rick Prime instead kills him, ending the life of
what is so far the multiverse's most accomplished Jerry.

The end of the episode finds the family happily reunited in a new universe,
original Jerry in tow. Season 2 Jerry, still in the midst of a rough patch
with Beth, comes downstairs and chastizes Rick for the adorable pyramid-
shaped alien in the cat carrier. Rick warns him not to release it, but he's
too late--the alien bites Season 2 Jerry on the ankle--which promptly sprouts
its own adorable face, crooning "Mmmm, I'm Mr. Frundles!" Mr. Frundles
apparently has the ability to bite anything, even inanimate objects, to
continue the spread. Amidst a growing chorus of objects saying "Mmm, I'm Mr.
Frundles!" the family escapes once again as, in a matter of minutes, Mr.
Frundles has consumed the entire planet. It's a hilarious and fairly
terrifying little sequence that got the biggest laugh from me for the week.
And of course, we've come full circle, with the family having to once again
travel to a different timeline, murder the versions of them in that timeline,
and bury them in the backyard.

So what's next? In a refreshing twist, portal travel still hasn't been fixed
by the end of the episode. Rick says he'll get to it eventually, but it's
interesting that portals weren't quickly resolved and as long as they're out
of the picture, I'm sure there are going to be some time and space
shenanigans as workarounds. I also really liked how both Rick and Morty had
to confront emotional turning points in their pasts, and how they were
incorporated with lore from the show's early days.

It's hard to know for sure how much the coming episodes will form a more
structured narrative. It does seem like the show is going to ease up on the
trolling since this episode was pretty straightforward, but of course it
could just be the first episode of a season that will get back to poking fun
at the fanbase. I'm guessing it'll be a little more balanced, since there was
vocal disappointment in not directly following canon, but as a fan of either
type of episode, I'm just happy that the show is back, and continues to
exercise unbridled creativity in its writing and animation, as well as
emotional growth from our characters.

--
Let's go Brandon!

We were off to a great start with Rick and Morty last week, and S6E2 �Rick: A
Mort Well Lived� absolutely continues that momentum with an episode that
seems to point at a season that will be striking a more delicate balance
between the elements that have divided some fans. It�s a fun, creative and
thematically interesting episode.

�Rick: A Mort Well Lived� opens with a shopowner berating a group of
teenagers�and they all sound exactly like Morty, with generic shopowner and
teenage dialogue. It turns out that the reason for that is during a session
of the virtual reality game Roy: A Life Well Lived at the Dave & Buster�s-
style Blips and Chitz, the arcade was taken over by terrorists, causing the
game to split Morty into every single non-playable character in the game.
Rick has jacked in as Roy, the player character, to rescue his grandson and
the billions of splintered pieces of his psyche scattered across the game.

Outside of the game, Summer is tasked with facing off against the terrorists,
e.g. �Doing a Die Hard.� Part of the joke here is that Die Hard is such a
established touchstone of action movies, every universe has their own Die
Hard with the same plot. As Summer does her Die Hard, the terrorists, having
seen Die Hard, think they know what to expect. But Summer, having not seen
Die Hard, is improvising, which is even more Die Hard than the Die Hard the
terrorists are expecting her to do. Shortly after, the terrorist leader
surmises that Summer hates Die Hard, making her �The ultimate McClane.�

�Rick: A Mort Well Lived� is a very fun episode, both in how it pokes fun at
Die Hard as well as in how it frames Rick�s mission: the five billion Mortys
in the game are treating Rick�s attempts to save them as a metaphor, and see
Rick as forming a cult. Soon, the Mortys are styling their hair and dressing
like Morty, singing Rick�s praise in song. Rick becomes progressively more
exasperated as he tries to explain that, yes, while he is delivering a
message, and yes, they all must ascend to higher plane for their salvation,
he is _not_ starting a cult.

And yet, Rick basically _is_ forming a cult, trying to gather as many Mortys
as he can to fly them all out to the edge of the game map and reset the game,
saving Morty�yet he is content to leave behind 8% of the Mortys, those that
don�t trust Rick. Marta, who is Rick�s right-hand Morty in the game, comes to
understand that the 8% of those Mortys are the part of real-world Morty that
doesn�t trust Rick�who resents that Rick seems unable to express love and
affection for his grandkid, and who is only doing this to continue to use
Morty as cannon fodder for his misadventures.

Due to time dilation, minutes in the real world equates to months and years
in the game, so as Summer does her Die Hard, Rick and Morty(s) are
participating in a decades-long holy war between the Mortys that want to
escape the game, and those that want to remain there, not trusting Rick and
living their lives. Marta has broken her alliance with Rick, but the latter
still waffles between trying his hardest to save Morty and resisting any
semblance of actual affection for his grandson.

Marta sends all of the Mortys back with Rick, on �one condition.� This
condition is revealed a couple of minutes later, when all is said and done, a
revived Morty cheerfully tells Rick that he trusts him implicitly. Summer
picks up on this, but Rick brushes it off, saying that he got �every last
piece� out of the game. He glances back at the machine, and in the next scene
we hear that �some rich douche� paid for the game to keep running�allowing
Marta to live out her life in the simulation. So did Rick do this out of
charity to that slice of his grandson, or did he take the opportunity to
stifle a part of Morty�s resistance to him? I�m inclined to think that it�s a
bit of both, but probably much more the latter, as earlier in the episode
Rick cryptically responds to a couple of Marta�s comments as �going to be
real funny when we get out.�

Another thing I thought was really great in this episode is how a lot of the
characters are framed in such a way that they could only come from a kid,
such as a Morty military officer mentioning a non-specific �overseas war� or
certain visual elements shown in such a way as to be drawn from the
imagination of a 14-year old who isn�t exactly savvy with geography and news.
Other good bits: Morty military officers invading the cult for them �Being
religious the wrong way,� Rick spitefully calling out the expendability of 8%
by stating �8% of the Snyder Cut was Batman dreaming,� and the absolute
multitude of callbacks to Die Hard both obvious and sly (including a mid-
credits sequence referencing the TV edit of McClane�s body sign in the third
movie).

Just two episodes in, this is already an extremely promising season of Rick
and Morty. It will be interesting to see, given the apparent commitment to
more continuity this time around, how much of the consequences of the events
so far will affect the following episodes. With Morty much more subservient
to Rick now that his cautious, distrustful side has been banished to the
game, how is that going to affect their dynamic now? Will the show find new
ways to foster suspicion in his grandfather, or will this push him further
towards what Rick is? We�ll find out in the coming weeks.

--
Let's go Brandon!