by Jeremy Rogers Warning: This review contains spoilers for this episode and previous episodes of Rick and Morty. “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy” starts with a short montage of Jerry’s life in his decrepit apartment, living the exact kind of life someone of Jerry’s emotional fortitude would after getting a divorce. The sad piano music is interrupted by Rick, who busts into Jerry’s bedroom as he is crying himself to sleep. As in the preview, Rick drags an emotionally and literally naked Jerry off to go on an adventure. Rick proceeds to take Jerry on an adventure so Jerry can “get a win” and not be so emotionally wrecked, as he reveals that Morty put him up to this so his dad wouldn’t commit suicide. Before Rick can take a dozen steps inside their apparent destination, Rick is impaled through the chest with a spear mid-sentence. Rick, bleeding from his stab wound and mouth, starts to fade out of consciousness as Jerry starts impotently yelling for help while doing nothing in a great display of character. It is then that the gimmick of this location is made clear: Rick’s chest heals up and he is brought back to life instantly thanks to the “immortality field” that surrounds the resort they came to. Meanwhile Beth gives a lackluster response to Summer, who is aboundingly upset that a guy rejected her to hang out with Trisha Lang and “her massive stripper titties”. This causes Summer to go into Rick’s garage to find a machine under a tarp. Upon uncovering it Summer drops a hint about what she may use the device for in saying “Boob-ya!” Beth has never been extremely perceptive or responsive to the emotional needs of others, so this scene shows how dysfunctional the entire Smith family can be. After washing his hands, Jerry gets taken to a back room where the assistant manager of the restaurant, voiced by the amazingly menacing Clancy Brown who is famous for his role on Spongebob as Mr. Krabs, requests help from Jerry in killing Rick because his home world was taken by force thanks to Rick’s influence. After Jerry expresses a similar sentiment about Rick usurping his family, Jerry is given the task of taking Rick on the Whirly Dirly, a roller coaster that dips outside the immortality field so Rick can be killed. The resentment from Jerry shows that he still blames places the blame for his divorce on Rick instead of taking responsibility for his mistakes. All the while Summer uses the machine to enlarge her breasts. This goes wrong as Summer puts more than her chest in front of the energy beam, resulting in a huge, disproportioned giant expanding to fill the whole interior of the garage. Beth and Morty open the garage door and turn off the beam, but Beth refuses to call Rick for help as she tries to prove that she can solve this problem by herself. This turns Summer into a giant, albeit a proportional giant, whose skin is now on the inside, revealing muscle membranes on every bodily surface. One step forward, two steps back. Summer runs away as Morty chews out Beth for being selfish and stupid in being a bad mother and for not trying to get Rick to help. Jerry then tries to help Rick avoid assassination, but the roller coaster ends up crashing and destroying the immortality field in a fight scene with multiple decapitations, explosions and headshots. Jerry and Rick have a heart to heart as Jerry’s treachery is revealed. Rick and Jerry then board a space ship where Rick is injected with an anti-aggression synaptic dampener for security purposes. Rick and Jerry are found by their assassin who then destroy their ship’s temporal shield right before a wormhole is entered which has the effect of merging the minds of all three for millennia, after which Rick who is emotionally unaffected by this bond beyond time kills the assassin. Rick justifies this saying, “Cosmic apotheosis wears off faster than salvia,” and takes a thoroughly fed-up Jerry home. After finding Summer at the campsite where she was going to meet her boyfriend before he dumped her, Beth turns herself into an inside-out giant and consoles Summer. The two have an emotional breakthrough and hug while Morty finds the boy who started this all and stoically turns him into a deformed monster for messing with his sister’s emotions and body image. This may have been the best episode yet for showing character growth. The subtlety in the writing is much better here than the outrightness of “Pickle Rick”. Whether it is Jerry finally standing up for himself after being constantly emasculated and feminized or Beth literally having to bring her insides out in order to reconcile her emotionally devastated daughter, there is a lot of smart story telling going on here that isn’t always apparent at first glance. As Beth and Summer literally lay everything bare to solve their problems Morty grows ever more emotionally detached and angry as time goes on. All images from Rickipedia
