So far, “Something Ricked This Way Comes”, the latest installment of Adult swim’s Rick and Morty, is one of my all-time favorites of the series. The A-plot of this episode focuses on Summer’s new job working for the devil in a “little vintage thrift store”, where he exploits his customers’ insecurities by giving them magical items, for which they pay with a hefty curse. It takes Rick all of a few seconds to figure out that he’s the devil, so he decides to prove that science beats evil by creating a device that “detects and catalogs all of [his] Twilight Zone/Ray Bradbury/Friday The Thirteenth: The Series” voodo crap magic“. Again, Rick and Morty manages to spoof classic science fiction and fantasy tropes in some of the best ways possible. The show somehow goes from a classic Ray Bradbury tale to The Social Network in under 22 minutes because Rick beats the devil, Summer helps the now-suicidal prince of darkness start an internet company, which leads to him inevitably “Zuckerberg” her, as he is wont to do.
The B-Plot of this episode is nothing too special, unfortunately, because it focuses on the relationship between Morty and his father, Jerry, as they argue about whether or not Pluto is a planet. After Jerry makes a big stink about Pluto definitely being a planet, the two of them get abducted and brought to Pluto where Jerry becomes a celebrity and stupidly reassures all of the Plutonians that Pluto is a planet. A conspiracy theory unfolds, and it all kind of ends up meaning nothing in the end, but the end of the episode itself makes the entire episode worth it.
My favorite thing about Rick and Morty is its ability to continually surprise me and throw curveballs when I least expect it. After Summer gets “Zuckerberged”, she and Rick team up to get revenge. You’d think they’d do something clever, like…I don’t know…take down his internet company, or expose him as the devil, or do something like that. However, what happens is beautifully unexpected and I love it. They break into a ridiculous Rocky-esque workout montage set to DMX’s aggressively badass “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” which leads to them getting ripped and eventually beating up Steve Jobs the Devil and, during the post-credit scene, a neo-nazi, a Westboro Baptist Church Member, and a collection of other scumbags.
Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland just keep finding new ways to surprise me, and if they can manage to keep doing exactly it is that they’re doing, I’ll keep watching.
The Geek Theatre 
