Rick and Morty: “Total Rickall” (2.04)

I’ve done a lot of shitty things to my friends. I apologize a lot for things that I’m afraid have hurt them. My one friend tells me not to worry about it, but I worry constantly. I’ve hurt people without knowing it, I’ve hurt people on purpose, because I wanted to, because I was mad. Everyone does this. This is how humans are. There is not a single person on Earth that I have exclusively good memories of.

“Total Rickall” starts out leaning heavily on making fun of sitcoms before careening violently into that harsh reality of human behavior. An alien parasite has infected the house, and it replicates by posing as an old family friend and inserting itself (and other, newer people) into their memories. They’re short snippets of memories, so the characters have to be memorable. Photography Velociraptor is a velociraptor that’s always taking pictures. They have catch phrases—Cousin Vinny’s is “Hey! I’m walking here!” As it grows faster and faster, the characters have to be more unique to be memorable.

There’s a thing that happens in sitcoms where characters begin as rounded people and then end as flat caricatures. I watched the first episode of Friends once, just trying to figure out why the fuck people like that show. I was surprised that these six assholes were once humans with some pathos, some flaws, and not a collection of gags and quotes and on again off again romances. But memory is a weird thing. Things get pancaked in there, you only remember what triggers the most extreme emotional response. I had a friend in college that I lived with that I am no longer friends with. We were friends for many years, she was one of the first people I met, and we did a lot of fun, or weird, or mundane things together. What I remembered most vividly is how our friendship ended.