Last Night on Rick and Morty: Stephen Colbert and The Tinyverse Were Awesome

By  · Published on August 31st, 2015

Adult Swim

This is your weekly reminder that you should be watching Rick and Morty every Sunday night on Adult Swim. If you need more evidence, feel free to read my 107 Things We Learned from Rick and Morty Season 1 article, which details the pure insanity of season one and the season one DVD commentary.

Seeing as the show is already in full swing with season 2 and I don’t feel like not writing about it, I’m going to come back here and there to remind everyone that Rick and Morty is some of the top quality television out there right now. There are very few shows that can deliver this kind of consistent humor. It reminds me of Community in its first few seasons, which isn’t a surprise, as Dan Harmon is also involved here.

This week’s episode, “The Ricks Must Be Crazy,” continues season 2’s trend of having major names in the guest star credits. Last week we got Keith David as The President and That 70s Show’s Kurtwood Smith as a nuke-happy general. Two weeks before we got a sexually charged visit from Christina Hendricks as a world-assimilating hive mind. And in the season’s second episode, Jemaine Clement voiced and sang as a fart. This week came the big one, Stephen Colbert as a mad scientist and antagonist for Rick inside a mini-universe that lives within the battery of Rick’s car.

Both Colbert’s banter and the convention-breaking elements of the story were fantastic. And in the end (you should have watched the episode by now), I can’t help but wonder if Colbert’s character will become a sort of Khan character for Rick. The dark humor – between the protective action of Rick’s car and the way things ended with Rick’s enslaved mini-verse – was cranked all the way up in this episode, to the point where I would add this to the growing list of essential Rick and Morty episodes. Right up there with Meeseeks and Destroy and perhaps Lawnmower Dog, these episodes define the sort of dark webs that are weaved so perfectly by this show.

Watch the episode for yourself on AdultSwim.com. Let’s take a ride on The Slow Ramp, then we’ll hand out some episode awards:

Best Character of the Episode: Rick’s Car.

At this point, there might not be a non-Rick character that is quite as dark as Rick’s Car. It’s like GLaDOS from Portal, programmed to think with the logic of a mad scientist. Something so simple as “Keep Summer safe” turns into a situation in which babies are melting, psychological warfare is waged and a peace accord between humans and mind-controlling spiders is possible. Before this episode, it would have been hard to imagine that an episode that included such an awesome antagonist voiced by Colbert could get beaten out as best character of the episode, but this car was crazy fun.

Best Quote of the Episode: “You ruined ice cream with your boobs out!”

My favorite quotes are always the ones that are barely heard in the background. Like Principle Vagina’s “Don’t come to the dance if you’re sick. You wouldn’t bring a dead baby to Passover.” line in the flu episode. This one is great and it sneaks in right as the camera is pulling away from Rick, Morty and Summer in the ice cream parlor at the end. Rick is always blaming things on Summer’s boobs.

Best Background Item of the Episode: 3 Brothers Movie Poster

“It’s just called 3 Brothers…”

Best Randomness of the Episode: The Mortimous Prime.

Best Not Giving a F*ck of the Week: Gettin’ Schwifty on Tinder.

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GIFs via /r/rickandmorty.

Neil Miller is the persistently-bearded Publisher of Film School Rejects, Nonfics, and One Perfect Shot. He's also the Executive Producer of the One Perfect Shot TV show (currently streaming on HBO Max) and the co-host of Trial By Content on The Ringer Podcast Network. He can be found on Twitter here: @rejects (He/Him)