There’s No Pity For Jerry in Rick and Morty’s Tightest Episode of Season 3

Rick and Morty has always had some element of stoner culture to it—after all, it’s a sci-fi show with a portal that looks like a puke-soaked acid trip hallucination—but in “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy,” we see the series going full Adult Swim in both animation and content. This was the trippiest half-hour of the show since Jemaine Clement did his best Bowie impression in Season 2’s “Mortynight Run,” and that was very much to the episode’s benefit, since Rick and Morty delivers its best commentary when circumstances are furthest from reality.

And this episode starts off really real. When I had the chance to speak with Rick and Morty’s cast at San Diego Comic-Con, Sarah Chalke and Spencer Grammer mentioned that Jerry’s story would get incredibly dark, and the opening of “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy” proved them absolutely right—at least in terms of Jerry’s objective circumstances. But crucially for the rest of the episode, we aren’t plunged into abject, inky abyss. Jerry seeing his family (sans Rick) in a mold stain on his decrepit ceiling is still hilarious, as is the rest of his pathetic routine and, especially, Rick’s arousing him from bed before he can even put on pants. Attentive Rick and Morty viewers already knew that Jerry is the living equivalent of the Arrested Development-ized Charlie Brown sad walk, and even when we hear that Morty was afraid that Jerry might kill himself, we’re confident enough in Jerry’s lack of willpower to commit that act that the whole situation elicits piteous laughter rather than true vicarious heartache. That, of course, is the meta-point “Whirly Dirly” is making about Jerry: here’s a character so fueled by pity that his agency is entirely dependent upon the will of others.

Of course, those of us who’ve lived through Jerry and Beth’s couples therapy in “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez” already knew this, and Rick speaking the harsh truth aloud to his ex-son-in-law doesn’t add a whole lot to the equation, since we already knew that Rick despises Jerry. Once again, we witness Rick’s genius in breaking down a situation—a skill he can’t apply to himself without the help of a therapist, it seems—but the most significant aspect of this scene is Rick’s candor with Jerry (rather than just killing him, as he does with other life forms he considers subhuman). Perhaps it’s partially spurred on by Morty’s demand that Rick take Jerry on an adventure, which would suggest that Rick has actually developed some respect for his grandson. Perhaps it’s even due to some secret, overarching empathy buried deep within Rick’s heart, as we’re briefly led to believe that Rick and Jerry may have the potential to build a real relationship. But after the various shit that Rick has pulled over the course of the series, it’s hard to buy for more than a second that the two of them clinking drinks is more than a Rick-borne ploy of some sort; we expect Rick to turn on Jerry in some way. In fact, it’s sort of unbelievable that Jerry is given the opportunity to turn on Rick first. The only explanation I can rapidly devise is that the very concept of immortality grants disarming solace to a mad scientist who harbors an existential fear of boredom, which goes hand-in-hand with being dead. (Speaking of which, doesn’t the setting of “Whirly Dirly” feel like a jab at Westworld? Regardless of whether this was intentional or not, the death of the alien child when the resort’s gimmick goes offline hits harder than any moment in Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy’s overblown melodrama.)