Rick and Morty Season 8 keeps on trucking!
The third and fourth episodes of the season could not be more different to one another, with the first being a side story that follows a random Rick trying to live the simple life following the events that caused the destruction of the Citadel. The second is a Jerry story… so, you know, there’s a whole bunch of Jerry being a goober.
So, without further ado, let’s recap episodes 3 and 4 of Rick and Morty Season 8.
Rick (Ian Cardoni) and Morty (Harry Belden) begin the episode scavenging the carcass of the Citadel of Ricks. Morty, bored out of his mind and playing with a fidget spinner (remember those?), distracts Rick enough that debris from the exploded space station severely damages his ship, causing him to land on a nearby asteroid. They land in the middle of Homesteader Rick’s farm, who tells them to GET OFF HIS LAND or some such. Our Rick and Morty leave, laughing at Homesteader Rick because who the heck would want to live like this anyway?
FAKE OUT! That’s right, it’s time for a story just like “The Ricklantis Mixup”, this time following Homesteader Rick (H. Rick from now on) and the factions on this asteroid.
H. Rick enters the nearby Morty town bar for supplies. Unfortunately, a rabble of Rick clones arrive and abduct pretty much all of the Morty clones living in town and destroy most of its infrastructure. H. Rick is critically injured, but he’s a Rick after all. He’s fine. But his farm isn’t, and neither are his Dr. Mephesto-looking pig-animal hybrids he’d developed. H. Rick is about to go all John Wick on their asses! You don’t get to kill a man’s pig-wolf-bear and get away with it, damnit!
Anyway, H. Rick infiltrates Boss Hogg Rick’s (he’s the leader of this here slice of Citadel-ana) base of operations, finding a ton of clone Mortys and an almost equal amount of clone Ricks. Yeah, these aren’t REAL Rick’s and Morty’s; they’re just clones. Along with Doc and Arcade Morty, H. Rick destroys Boss Hogg’s enterprise and frees the clone Mortys, but not without sacrificing himself for the cause. Because H. Rick was the Rick responsible for all the clones in the first place, and it was his responsibility to end it.
The clone Mortys find themselves new homes, and Arcade Morty returns to the Homestead… just in time for our Rick and Morty to return in search of Morty’s lost fidget spinner, mocking the planet once more as they fly away. They suck as humans, don’t they?
Jerry (Chris Parnell) wants to celebrate Easter (because he likes chocolate, not necessarily because he knows why it’s a holiday), but the rest of the Smith family is just tired of his bullsh*t. Annoyed and on a sugar high, he goes out to buy more Easter decorations and candy, and, distracted by gorging himself like Augustus Gloop, he runs over the Easter Bunny. Unfortunately for Jerry, the Easter Bunny has the same kinda deal as St. Nick in The Santa Clause, and he begins to transform.
Rick temporarily imprisons Jerry to keep him out of trouble before he and Morty travel to the Alps to investigate the origins of the Easter Bunny. They find a large yet incomplete egg originally from the Andromeda Galaxy, which causes Space Christians to attack and steal it for their own purposes. Following the Space Christians to the egg’s origin, they find Engineer-looking from Prometheus aliens who have been dispatching Easter Bunnies to planets across the universe in order to incite horniness in a goal to overpopulate and collapse their world’s order.
*DEEP BREATH*
Meanwhile Jerry breaks out of his prison, seduces Beth, but it becomes weird when his knees start bending the wrong way and his facial structure begins to change. Jerry develops psychic bom-chica-wow-wow powers, making people smoosh all around him. Rick, Morty and Space Christian General, Richard Kincaid (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), arrive in a ship shaped like an Easter Island head (of course) and, after many transfers of the Easter Bunny Clause, trap it in a repaired egg.
Pondering the origins of other high-profile holidays, the Smith family disregard or spoil other widely celebrated holidays in a montage (some off-screen as well). To close the episode, Richard Kincaid’s wife spurns his advances because his species abhors sex. Also, he’s just a torso now owing to Jerry’s stint as an Easter Bunny. Forgot the context. My bad.
In the post-credits scene, Summer (Spencer Grammer), absent for most of the episode, is still at spring break, where society has broken down. She’d been there for over 9 months.
These two episodes are completely different. The Citadel-centric installments are always some of my favorites, and this one was no different. I always like to see the fallout of Rick C-137’s actions and how the other Ricks are coping as a result of being defeated and their home exploded. Although I don’t think Boss Hog Rick was the right antagonist (Dukes of Hazzard bad guy at the Citadel ruins? Are we running out of ideas for different Ricks?), the overall premise was cool.
Now, the Easter Bunny episode is a different matter. It’s pure chaos, and although it was fun at the time, this one won’t be something I’ll be itching to come back to anytime soon. Jerry was pretty annoying (which is, to be fair, standard), but that annoyance wasn’t twinned with the appropriate patheticness that I need from a Jerry episode. His confidence irked me.
Overall, though, this continues the very strong opening to the series, even if the wider narrative doesn’t yet seem apparent. I’d really like to get back to some important arcs soon, please and thank you.
What did you think of these two episodes? Did you like the Easter Bunny/The Santa Clause schtick? If this is true, how about the Tooth Fairy? Let us know in the comments.
