Entertainingly Scattered Allegorical Review of Rick and Morty S3E3

(Spoilers…)

Let me set the scene: Rick turns himself into a pickle. Here’s where my mind went, if you want to come with me there:

The pickle is arbitrary, it’s meaningless, it’s worthless. Let’s take this picklelization as the show’s nihilism: worthless, meaningless, and the way out of meaninglessness was removed by Rick’s unwillingness to connect himself to his family (because he believes love and family is arbitrary and nothing really matters). “Family” in this thought exercise could either mean his heritage, much like the Jungian archetype of the Father, it could mean family in a spiritual sense, as paradigms like Christianity play out (God as the Father), or it could just mean the bigger picture… literally, and figuratively. So what was set up to be, the way the pickle was designed was with a failsafe, from a higher power (pre-Pickle Rick, representing a preexisting and supreme power). But because Rick chose to be selfish, rather than submitting to the higher power, his daughter (the consequences of his actions: his creation, his weakness), the higher power of nature (people are not pickles, and he says in the episode “no one can be a pickle”) and he violated his purpose, because he does not believe he has one, because there is no design/designer/purpose/meaning. So in his nihilism he chose to be meaningless (he made an identity statement, I’M PICKLE RICK: he tied it to who he is as a person), unable to move, or function the way that was set up before he was ever born… as a pickle, that is. How does he get out of this? With a little push from nature (the way things are) from a cat, and a miracle (water from “the heavens”), Rick finds himself where he was destined to be: the gutter, the rock bottom. It’s where gravity, the flow of life took him. This is where all pickles end up, inevitably.

Most of the time they go through even more… “crap,” first, if you are catching my subtlety. So in this nihilism, this godlessness, Rick works to get back to his former grandeur, using his intellect and physical ability to strive to attain what he is created for. He does this through death: he deceptively tempts a cockroach, the most despicable creature, and kills it in order to climb higher in his ability: he avails himself in death, and he brings himself to the level of cockroaches and rats in the process. That is not what his original design was: he was made to be the smartest man ever, not a cockroach or a rat. Ironically, in the nihilism, Pickle Rick uses God’s own creation, or nature’s creation (the distinction is untrue depending on your belief and irrelevant no matter your belief) in order to climb higher. So he is not just working to get to where he was supposed to be… that is, being “good,” or “living a good life,” or “finding his purpose,” and he is not just breeding death in order to attain “good,” but he is using the very designer that he refused to end up a pickle. He cannot stop depending on the higher power, even in nihilism. And just like this, you can refuse responsibility, morality, purpose, and God, but it doesn’t change a thing–you rely on God for purpose, and you rely on purpose for life. Eventually, Pickle Rick sneaks into a secret government facility and murders countless people for trying to restrain him, because he is where he doesn’t belong (as all pickles are). I see a lot of people in this murderous rampage Pickle Rick went on, being attacked and attacking is the modus operandi for the common man: we live in such violence and anger, in civilized societies or not, we are always ready to honk our horns at being slowed down two seconds, or bomb a foreign country because they initiated a conflict… It comes down to this: when we see ourselves as pickles, as deservedly pickles, we can try and try to fix ourselves and put things on ourselves that don’t belong so we can go more places and do more things, but if we see ourselves as a meaningless pickle, we’ll see everyone else as a meaningless pickle too. One of the guards uttered this line:

“He’s not just a pickle, he’s a monster.”

So I guess the moral of the story is this, all pickles are monsters. We can see this when Nietzschean theories are carried out…

Another guard replies “he’s not the only one.” I think this draws a beautiful picture of how reactionary our nihilism is: without any objective truth, we have only each other as measuring sticks, and if someone shows themselves to be a monster, our own monstrosity is sure to follow.

Eventually Pickle Rick gets to the end of all his effort: he’s back to the one he originally refused to be with, because she holds the key to restoring him to who he was created to be. He meets his daughter back in therapy (the therapist in this is someone who helps people who put “crap” into their system… I think a lot of people find themselves in a toxic consumer cycle where they’re feeding or medicating themselves with things that don’t matter and don’t help; it’s a great picture).

The therapist asks him why he didn’t want to be with his daughter, he says he doesn’t respect therapy because he’s “a scientist,” and he wants to invent, transform, destroy, and create for himself what his world will be, changing the parts of the world he doesn’t like to suit himself. He thinks therapy, which represents finding God (in this weird review/thought experiment) is there to just make people more comfortable in their negative situations, and keep them from panicking, which is simply a state of mind that he doesn’t want; he likely feels he needs to panic in order to survive, because he’s not something that can get comfortable, like a cow, he is a pickle. Something that is made to be eaten. In other words, Rick is trusting himself, and his own abilities, notably, intelligence, to get through life and change the world. That is how he does “good,” and becomes the god of his own life: we all worship something, and with Rick, it’s himself. And you’ll note if you watch the show, Rick is in a constant existential crisis: he’s depressed, the most important thing in his life is Szechuan sauce… there is a tension in this self-worship, because it is as restrictive and painful as it is comfortable.

The therapist notes this contradictory self-deification in how Rick describes his great intelligence as an unstoppable force (infinite possibility; freedom) and as an inescapable curse, because he is the “master” of his “own universe,” and the therapist notes that he chose to be a pickle; meaningless, vulnerable, and in horrible state. She basically says, “how is carte blanche going for you?” And adds the quip that he is literally turning into a vegetable. And at last, the therapist talks about how choosing to improve yourself and be something, AKA submitting to God (Rick going to therapy with his daughter) is not necessarily fun, it’s just work. The therapist shifts the goal of life from adventure; having happiness and ease and comfort (being a vegetable), with getting off your butt and accepting the responsibility you already have… to your family, to your Father, and to that she says, each of us gets to choose: some people would rather submit, and some people would rather die.

I hate dichotomies as much as the next guy… probably not as much as the last guy, but which one are you?

Fun or family?

Nihilism or sacrifice?

Reaching past yourself for a higher love, or choosing to be a meaningless pickle?

If you can’t decide… you’re in quite a pickle.