Mama's coming and she cares about your titties." It has been common knowledge from the start of Rick and Morty that Jerry is a character that struggles to fit in with his often eccentric, often open-minded family. His pathetic lifestyle and work ethic have always been the butt of the joke. Just looking back to M. Night Shaym-Aliens, you can understand why Rick considers him to be a bit of an idiot. His complete lack of perception when it comes to seeing malfunctioning code is laughable. Nevertheless, this characteristic makes him invaluable to the cast of this wonderful show. He is a consistent and well-nourished source of instant comedy, thus the writers naturally decided that this would be a "Rick and Jerry episode!".
Indeed, the Whirly Dirly Conspiracy is very 'whirly dirly'. Subconsciously, I imagine Rick is trying to show Jerry a bit of kindness as he was partly (or mostly) responsible for ostracising Jerry from the family. He takes him to a rich theme park which has an immortality field, a nice touch on a science-fiction standpoint, but one that provides a lot of dark comedy later on. As Rick and Jerry start bonding over a drink at the bar, it all seems quite quaint and tranquil, and you may start to wonder whether the two characters will actually start to understand one another. Of course not. That wouldn't be right. Unfortunately, Jerry is embroiled in an assassination attempt with the local staff at the restaurant. They've discovered a blip in the immortality field at the top of the Whirly-Dirly ride, where they can kill Rick. This is of course easier said than done, and you can see Jerry contemplating the thought of killing his father-in-law, just as they were about to bond. Naturally, things get out of hand, and Rick soon discovers Jerry's deceit. It's difficult to see what might be going through Rick's head at this point, as he used to seeing Jerry as the submissive person, not any way inclined or brave enough to attack him. Rick turns unusually angry - I mean properly angry. But, Jerry finds a newfound freedom to belittle Rick when his father-in-law's synapses are rendered useless. It may be short-lived, but Jerry is given a chance to have revenge on all the insults that Rick has ever sent his way - naturally he's terrible at rebuttal, but what else can we expect from him. The masterstroke of the episode, however, comes from the dream-state that Jerry experiences while traveling through a wormhole. Simply through rather vivid imagery, we are given a collage of insanity at how Jerry sees Rick in his deluded and rather untempered mind. Despite his prolonged animosity towards Rick, we get some wonderful character development for someone we thought would be out of the picture by now. Back on Earth, Summer has been having some trouble with her boyfriend. I didn't realise she was so obsessed with vanity, but she decides to use her grandfather's size-changing machine to increase the size of her breasts. She accidentally resizes her entire body into a giant. The consequences are left for Morty and their mother to solve. Possibly the funniest parts of the episode, I was particularly tickled by the customer service joke as Beth unwittingly allows the internal operators of the machine to escape. But, it's Morty who much watch closely as he seems to be heading into darker ways. What he does to Ethan, Summer's boyfriend, is perhaps not the worst he could have done, but you can't help feeling that Morty is developing some anger issues, a side-effect of his continued association with Rick. A brilliant episode to reintroduce Jerry and continue to set out the unbalanced relationships between the Smith family members. It consistently amazes me how this show can meld both hilarious comedy and dark emotional resonance together in one episode. Morty shouting at his neighbour for interrupting his conversation with his mother, put together with a young boy accidentally killing his sister after the immortality field was disabled. This is a delicate skill that the writers have possessed since the show began and it never fails. 9/10
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