Film Theory: Inside the Mind of Rick Sanchez (Rick and Morty)

I've heard of Loire dumps but this is getting ridiculous hello Internet welcome to film theory the show that Believe It or Not is able to produce more than five episodes per year suck on that traditional entertainment and in case you overlooked the title thumbnail opening gag in title screen we're back to continue talking about Rick and Morty because you know what I like it you guys clearly like it and we only get five of these this year so might as well make them count season four is second episode the old man and the seat was everything we love about this show a perfect blend of cerebral existentialism and poop jokes lore drops and other droppings and while we've already seen a range of emotions from Rick Sanchez from sad Rick - angry Rick - bored Rick - pickle Rick this episode managed to show us a new side of his personality as well as allude to details from his past which remains more elusive than a jheri an immense amita it's worth talking about this episode in particular because the glimpses we get into Rick's psyche are likely to set the pace for what we can expect from this character throughout the rest of the season while also helping to clear up a lot of misconceptions I think people have about Rick as a character so to recap in the episode Rick announces that he's gonna be taking a solo adventure I've got a quick solo adventure to go on and this one will not be directed by Ron Howard summer reveals that he's actually going to poop and that Rick is believe it or not a shy pooper who flies all the way to an idyllic isolated planet to poop on the porcelain throne of his dreams he finds though that someone else has been visiting his Oval Office and he sets out to kill them in case you missed this one Rick trying to keep anyone else from pooping on his toilet as a metaphor for him trying to keep other people away from his personal life keeping them at arm's distance from anything that feels intimate obvious metaphor was pretty obvious but you know wanted to make sure that we were all starting with the same baseline after a bit of detective work Rick discovers the identity of the trespassing pooper an alien office worker named Tony Rick's plan to kill Tony though changes once Rick finds out that Tony's wife is dead can I look at a photo of my wife while you'll kill me she's dead and I don't mind joining her rick experiences a sudden and characteristic change of heart and leaves a fart bomb instead of outright killing Tony why well we're gonna come back to that in the meantime Tony can't seem to let the toilet go and invades Rick's private domain yet again here Tony shows that he's no dumb-dumb by explaining to Rick why he's the shy pooper you know a chai popping is Rick it's a pointless bid for control you want to take the one part of life that you truly think is yours and you want to protect it from a universe that takes whatever it wants it took my wife it clearly took something from you again explaining the reason Rick likes to be the only person on the entire planet while he's pooping is because it's the only way he feels safe and in control Rick knows that there are infinite planets and universes and realities and that everything happening in them is chaotic and random so having his special poopy time is the only thing Rick can really control in the end with his past and future are so out of his hands it's a frustration that he's talked about in past episodes specifically the season 3 episode ABCs of Beth the universe is basically an animal you know smart people get a chance to climb on top take reality for a ride but it'll never stop trying to throw you and eventually it will but here it's made even more clear so the episode escalates when Rick places Tony in a version of the matrix designed to create a heaven like experience the chemical is global fan it connects to whatever you want section of your brain to the whatever you have section in other words Rick gives Tony everything that he could have ever wanted and ideal existence and Tony's mind rejects it this is because Tony can't accept his own happiness he's scared off from it forcing him to be miserable sound familiar should because that's exactly how Rick operates Rick is a man who can make a perfectly realized islet film simulation of heaven but the one thing he can't make the one problem he can't figure out is how to be happy it's ironic he's the smartest man in the universe who can become a pickle or travel to infinite realities but he's miserable and there's no way that he can science his way out of it it's something that he actually addresses to Beth during season 3 am i evil worse you're smart when you know nothing matters the universe is yours and I've never met a universe that was into it and so finally Rick has found Tony someone who's as unable to accept happiness as Rick is unlike all the others in the simulation pods Tony rejects a perfect life which simultaneously makes Rick feel more connected to Tony but at the same time pisses him off so a final bid to push Tony out of his life Rick tries to pull off an epic prank by feeding Tony a laxative only to discover that Tony's died while out living life to the fullest Rick offers his condolences as a generous gift to his family while also denying that the two were ever friends hey Tony's dad this is 8 billion in your local currency and this is a kid who's a clone a new son it's not my friend as Rick mourns the loss of his not friend Tony he sits down on the toilet triggering the trap that he had set another epic prank that involves a thousand Holograms of Rick pointing and laughing at him Rick sits on his porcelain throne the king of loneliness [Music] the show in this episode isn't exactly subtle with its metaphors and messaging but there's still a lot to tease out fundamentally this episode is all about the ways Rick keeps the people around him at a distance the way Rick behaves now is fundamentally influenced by his past just like Tony's life is influenced by the loss of his wife when Tony mentions that loss it sparks a complete change of heart and Rick indicating that Tony's story has struck a chord Rick has also experienced a great loss that's what's caused them both to be shied poopers now up to this point the truth about Rick Sanchez's past has been the show's greatest mystery why was Rick out of Beth's life for so many years where is Beth's mother and what did Rick do to her we know based on the existence of Beth that she must have existed at some point rights well anyone who knows this show well will immediately jump back to one of its most iconic episodes season 3 episode 1 rick shank redemption which was all about show knees and memory hopping in rick shank redemption rick dives into memories to show us and a grumps almight investigator the day that a younger Rick Sanchez had two tragically watch his partner Diane die except as Rick leader tells us this isn't a real memory it was just a totally fabricated origin story now well the memory itself may definitely be fabricated there is some real-world science that allows us to theorize about whether it's actually that far from the truth it turns out that humans are really bad at coming up with original ideas in fact many neuroscientists believe that new ideas don't even exist instead our brains are constantly remix we hear feel smell or taste researchers at the University of Haifa found that when forming an original idea the brain utilizes an associative region which is what we think of as our creative thinking what's interesting though is that this associative part of the brain still fundamentally involves recombining ideas that are already stored inside the brain what we think of as coming up with new ideas is actually just re mixing old ideas in new ways this was actually confirmed by researchers at the Institute of psychology of the University of Graz Austria who confirmed that coming up with a new idea and recalling an old memory actually show similar activation patterns in the brain that's not to say that we can't remix ideas to come up with stuff that's incredibly innovative just means that in Rick shank redemption there's a pretty good likelihood that Rick's fabricated memories are actually based on some very real-world experiences so let's look at that fabricated memory again Diane and Beth both died by Rick's own hand another Rick visits him from a different timeline offering him the opportunity to be a God pass excuse me who do you think you are a different kind of Rick I guess well see how long that lasts Rick rejects the offer a bomb drops into the garage sent via portal to kill off his family we can assume that this was sent by the other Rick's to set our Rick on the quote-unquote right path now we know that this isn't what really happened to Diane as Beth says in the episode Rick potion number nine do you think grandpa Rick had something to do with this it's not fair to assume that summer give me a break he is a selfish irresponsible butt and he left my mother her real man stands by his Worman so while the faked memory may not be how it actually went down in a symbolic sense it shows us that Rick blames himself and his war for pushing Diane and Beth out of his life well it's exciting to imagine this being caused by sci-fi high jinks the reality here is probably more mundane and less all the more infuriating for Rick Dan died in his life because a Rick strive to be the best scientific mind pushed her away in the process he lost the relationship with the one and only thing that could grant him true happiness his family he realized long ago that the greatest thing he'd ever create there are a lot of other analysis channels and articles that have tried to diagnose Rick with some sort of mental disorder often settling on diagnoses like narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder but this episode shows that we can flush both of these diagnoses right out although Rick sees himself as the smartest person in the galaxy and seems to lack empathy he doesn't actually have narcissistic personality disorder it's more that he's suppressed his empathy probably because he himself views it as toxic as we saw on the episode rest and relaxation as much as Rick might hate it he does care for his grandson so much so that even the seemingly hateful toxic version of Rick is willing to abandon his destructive quest in order to save Morty are you okay likewise Rick doesn't suffer from antisocial personality disorder or psychopathy either which is characterized by a complete lack of remorse for all your actions now while it might not seem like it at first glance Rick constantly experiences remorse throughout the series for starters his alcoholism alone is clearly self-medicating to cope with feelings of existential loss and unhappiness in the old man in the seat he attempts to make right by Tony by extending a well-meaning offer of kindness to his father Rick is even willing to put Morty's life above his own as we see in a wrinkle in time when Morty loses his time stabilizing caller and Rick takes off his own collar to give Morty a way out of a certain death situation okay with this be good Morty be better than me are hardly the actions of a narcissist or psychopath so then how do we explain Rick's clear and intentional acts of cruelty towards Tony if Rick is so desperate for a friend and isn't actually a psychopath well it's actually really easy much more mundane and tremendously sad anger hostility lashing out at those who are closest to us they're all common but under talked about symptoms of depression which comes from our own feelings of being inadequate those of us who are depressed often hurt the people that are closest to them because deep down they believe that they're undeserving of love or happiness their hostility pushes other people away thereby confirming their own feelings of inadequacy there have also been a number of reports on the fact that we're most aggressive towards the people we love because those are the ones who are most in a position to hurt us taking these ideas and applying them to Rick it becomes clear why he reserves the cruelest of his insults for his grandkids when it comes to Jerry Rick barely expresses more than minor annoyance when it comes to people Rick actually hates he's content to kill him without insult even letting him have the last laugh dr. Ben Zev from the University of Haifa notes in his book the subtlety of emotions that another reason for hurting those closest to us is a wish for more dependency and attention could Rick's cruelty actually be a bid for attention well his catchphrase is what I love a job done which we're told means I am in great pain please help me so yeah I'd say we're barking up the right tree so when Rick arranges elaborately cruel pranks to play on Tony what he's really saying is pay attention to me because secretly that's what I really want Tony understands that cry for help and is thus his friend and interestingly enough there's one final twist here because when you apply this same logic to the members of his family we come up with Rick's favorite co-star being summer and if you look at what actually happens in the episodes it makes total sense it's summer who joins Rick in getting all right it up and punching the devil it's summer who goes native in their Mad Max adventures and Rick man seing the stone to the point where Rick specifically complements her on her creative use of his booze for the win it's summer who recognizes tiny Rick's downward spiral in big trouble and little Sanchez thanks kids you figured it out well summer did it's the reason she's the failsafe when it comes to Morty's mine blowers and yet we get some of the worst insults reserved for her get out of here summer you ruined the season four premiere Rick actively excludes her permissions despite the fact that she's undoubtedly smarter and more capable than Morty she's even saved Rick's life on multiple occasions and like Tony he can't kill her he can't get rid of her in his life so he actively undervalues and insults her tries to push her away and keep her at arm's distance but summer sticks around she lets it roll off her she recognizes what her grandpa is really doing and she's able to dish back summer's been playing a more active role in a lot of the episodes that have been coming out over the last season and a half so maybe with Rick forced to confront more of his emotional hang-ups summer will ultimately end up being the key to unlock it all only time will tell if that's just a theory a film theory [Music]

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 5,238,333

Rating: 4.9133873 out of 5

Keywords: rick and morty, rick and morty season 4 episode 3, rick, morty, rick and morty season 4, rick and morty season 4 episode 2, rick and morty season 4 episode 1, season 4, rick and morty trailer, rick and morty season 4 trailer, rick and morty theory, adult swim, rick and morty oval office, mr poopybutthole, rick and morty real life, rick and morty timeline, film theory, film theorists, matpat, film theory rick and morty

Id: fNYCSpvCs3w

Length: 13min 43sec (823 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 01 2019

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[u/Wefee11]

Huh. This puts a bit of a spin on all those people who say "people who identify with Rick are disgusting".