Why Rick Can't Kill God (Season 5 Episode 2 Breakdown)

this video is brought to you by surfsharkvpn what's up guys it's definitely not a decoy michael to talk clones gods and pinocchio jerry's the fifth season of rick and morty is already off to a great start offering the mind-bending hilarity we've come to expect from our favorite geriatric genius okay let's go that's his magic ocean horn but episode two more duplicity really intrigued us he's morty is it there god damn it just tell me if i'm real sporty do it and not just because it involved watching every main character meet their earthly demise a few dozen times rather we think the clue to understanding the episode actually lies in the opening lines christian god is real he's been asleep for thousands of years we're gonna sneak up there and kill him specifically because killing god might be the one task too ambitious for the smartest man in the multiverse we'll explain in this wisecrack quick take on rick and morty why rick can't kill god and as always spoilers ahead but before we get into it i want to give a shout out to this week's sponsor surfsharkvpn surfsharkvpn helps you secure your data with industry leading measures by using uncrackable encryption and the most secure vpn protocols this is especially helpful if you're traveling because with surfshark you can overcome location-based prices on plane tickets and car rentals by connecting to vpn servers in different countries and because of surfshark's encryption you'll also be safe whenever you're on public wi-fi there is also surf shark search which works as an extra ad block to allow for a peaceful browsing session one subscription will allow you to protect all your devices and there are apps for all your favorites like pc mac android chrome firefox amazon fire stick and even your xbox and playstation surfshark is fast easy to use and jam packed with features if you use the link in the description and use the promo code wisecrack you can get surfsharkvpn for 83 off its normal annual price plus three extra months for free so go to surfshark.deals wisecrack or hit the link in the description protect yourself online and download surfsharkvpn today and now back to the show now as we mentioned the episode opens with one version of rick and morty eating a high protein breakfast before their next mission killing the christian god mob styles whack his ass of course things quickly go awry the entire family is offed by some vengeful squids who are apparently jealous of rick's anatomy well we're talking about me it could be anything maybe jealous of my penis size i had sex with their queen my dick's too big the episode then seemingly abandons the killing god plotline instead exploring the implications of rick's totally normal choice to build an entire race of familial decoys but we'd argue that on a deeper level the theme of wanting and failing to kill god remains a poignant through line now to be clear nobody would ever accuse rick sanchez of being a religious dude his worldview is pretty squarely centered around a central belief in his own genius in this way rick shares much with 18th century enlightenment philosophers who sought to relocate the place of meaning and truth away from religion that is faith in some divine all-powerful being and instead center it around human thought and creativity this was the catalyst for that era shift from religious faith to secular reason as the primary source of human knowledge in this way rick is just a more ego-maniacal foul-mouthed enlightenment-style thinker like like kant if kant partied and it's this shift from faith to reason that one german philosopher friedrich nietzsche was talking about when he famously and a bit melodramatically wrote that god is dead and that we killed him see as humans increasingly stopped needing religion to explain how the world works or to set our moral compass pointing north we no longer needed god and could instead chill out and revel in our awesome humanity and that was the end of human suffering right well according to nietzsche's 19th century live journal not so much instead nietzsche called this abandonment of god nihilism and not in an edgy coen brother's way julie doesn't care about anything he's a nihilist rather he thought that when enlightenment philosophers sucked god out of their intellectual paradigm they also left nothing in god's place to give value meaning or purpose to human life without the bearded guy upstairs to tell us how to be good people he argued life becomes as empty and meaningless as a taco filled with air which which i i guess that's just a tortilla and this nihilism thing really seems to sum up rick's whole vibe nothing really means anything so why not fly around the multiverse starting with very little regard for either cosmic consequences or the hurt feelings of his immediate family god is deader than dead and nothing has replaced him except rick's big big brain but here's where we get to what's most interesting about this episode rick the og anti-god guy goes on to create decoys in his own image in a very god-like way and those decoys then go on to embrace of all things religion we see this most explicitly when puppet beth riles up a crowd of decoys with her low-key evangelical preacher act convincing them to join the cause which functionally seems to be a religion that views rick as a somewhat dickish god figure we are decoys brought into the world by an unloving god here beth's religious impulses become a rallying cry that unites the decoys in a common goal at least until the flying squid decoys wrecked and this all raises a big question is rick secretly driven by religious impulses too to figure that out let's turn to french psychoanalyst jacques lacan who believed that eradicating god from western thought wasn't just a one and done thing he argued that even if we consciously relinquish our faith in god or make our reddit username sexy atheist 69 there's still something going on in our little brain parts that remains out of our control our unconscious and according to lacan our unconscious belief in god never fully goes away even after we find out that our dental insurance plan doesn't cover mouth guards in lakan's theory of the symbolic humans still need some kind of big other to orient our lives and values especially when it comes to things like philosophy and politics and this kind of explains why rick is driven to start playing god replicating the act of creation by making tons of decoys sure he says he's doing this to protect his family after that trouble with space beth i made passable copies of the family and placed him around the country as a buffer zone to protect why does he always want to be hunted jerry's not important right now dad but he clearly gets a real kick out of playing old testament god but that's just it i'm not a man i'm god oh you're just made in my image q indeed the dynamic that manifests between rick and his decoys is very much one of creator and their creator much like the dynamic between the divine and humanity in the bible and other monotheistic texts like the grumpy god of the old testament he has no qualms about destroying his creations that is to say killing his own children though i guess at least the old testament god gave his children a chance to live by uh by smearing dead animal blood on their doors and in turn just like god's sex-positive human creations rick's decoys quickly go ham on religion first playing god themselves by creating more decoys and then by forming nascent religious structures why one of them explains pretty succinctly i i might not be the real rick but even if i'm not he made me or the me that made me which means somewhere inside of him is a version of rick capable of hearing that a version of rick who's sorry i'm sorry about the clone thing too this suggests that they're propelled by the same generative drive that compels rick to start making decoys in the first place what's more the decoys seem to accept rick as their god even as they resent him remember this decoys brought into the world by an unloving god and driven to destroy ourselves by the uncertainty he creates here beth's rallying the crowd into a sort of religious fervor which fits lacan's point that these religious structures are so ingrained in our psyches that they're functionally inescapable but lacan's idea that religion is inescapable shows up most literally in the show's after credits coda we learned that wooden puppet decoy jerry is now immortal traveling aimlessly through time much like a god who can't die even though he really really wants to eventually his head is nailed to the top of the cross during a public crucifixion christianity again here poor sentient puppet jerry finds out that in some future society christianity is going to get a fun reboot this perfectly fits lacan's theory that this religion stuff sticks around in our unconscious so of course society will eventually reproduce it a few moments earlier though we get the real punchline of the episode when what seems to be original rick and co had been flying above the earth in a spaceship this whole damn time oh [ __ ] looks like someone killed the decoy family get it like a transcendent god floating around in the heavens lording over their creations on earth it's pretty cool so why can't rick kill god because he is god or at least a blue-haired version of some divine creator no matter how much he's consciously a nihilistic atheist he's still motivated by an unconscious drive towards religion towards replicating biblical lore and this is why for lacan no matter what kind of mafia tactics rick and morty employ they'll never be able to murder god once and for all because god will always live on in our collective unconscious but what do you guys think is lecono right that it's impossible for us to escape some unconscious desire to believe in a divine being who creepily watches up or did he just die too early to bro out at the global atheist convention let us know in the comments and definitely check out our rick and morty podcast the squanch dear our thoughts on this episode and the rest of the season big thanks to our patrons for all your support decimate that subscribe button like you're a decoy killing yourself and don't forget to ring that bell and as always thanks for watching [Music] later [Music] you

Channel: Wisecrack

Views: 511,915

Keywords: rick and morty season 5, rick and morty, rick and morty season 5 episode 2, rick and morty season 5 episode 1, season 5, adult swim, dan harmon, rick, rick sanchez, justin roiland, morty, mortyplicity, the real rick, things you missed, mort dinner rick andre, cartoon network, wisecrack, wisecrack rick and morty, show me the meaning, the squanch, deep or dumb, what went wrong, philosopher reacts, wisecrack michael burns, philosophy, philosophy of, rick and morty trailer

Id: 3exc9sc_HSM

Length: 10min 44sec (644 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021