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Cool Motive, Still A Crime: Difference between revisions
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** "Pickle Rick" has the family attending school-mandated therapy with a psychiatrist interested in their screwed-up dynamics; Rick turns himself into a pickle to avoid therapy, which leads to his [[Humiliation Conga]] throughout the episode. Beth at first tries to blame Morty and Summer for their dysfunctions that led to their teacher's concern because she resents having to be at therapy in the first place. Dr Wong is not phased; she pinpoints that Beth's underlying issues from her relationship with Rick may be passing on the stress to the kids so they act out in unhealthy ways following her {{spoiler|divorcing Jerry and making Rick the family patriarch}}. Beth responds, "Fuck you, lady," much to her kids' shock. Their session ends with the family being emotionally honest with each other for the first time in ages, and season 4 confirms Beth continued to see Dr. Wong after ending the episode insulting her in the car while talking to Rick.
** Rick is never impressed when Beth tries to blame her daddy issues on him abandoning her as a kid. "The ABCs of Beth" actually goes into this when he calls her out for {{spoiler|leaving her best friend Tommy to die in Froopy Land, the ''one'' place that every Rick designed to prevent her from wrecking havoc on the neighbors. Tommy says in a play reenactment it's because Beth resented that Tommy's father liked him, while Beth mutters, "Fake news." Beth has a mild point in that Rick built this place to avoid spending time with her, something Rick doesn't contest, but Rick retorts he made the whole place childproof so she wouldn't get hurt, killed or drowned. Beth keeps claiming that she didn't leave Tommy stuck in a honey swamp on purpose, but a grown Tommy who has become the Froopy Land king knows better}}.
** "Mort Dinner Rick Andre"
*** Nimbus, Rick's archnemesis that we never heard of prior to this episode, calls out Rick for this. He says that Diane, Rick's wife, wouldn't have liked the man that Rick became: a bitter cynic that pretends to care about nothing. Rick has no retort to this apart from saying that Nimbus shouldn't establish canonical backstory. Morty also asks why Rick has to pick a fight with everyone, why he can't just get along and be a normal human being for once.
*** The B plot has Morty also call out the Hoovians for this; he accidentally started a generational saga of Hoovians wanting him dead while getting wine to drink with Jessica from their Narnia-like dimension. For context, decades in their world pass in minutes on Morty's world, thus their society evolves every time Morty nips down to the basement portal to get another wine bottle and either gets attacked or retaliates with Rick's armory. When their latest attempt to assassinate him gets Jessica kidnapped, his rescue leads with the robots that defeated the Hoovians capturing him. Morty revives in their lab and says, "I just took some wine! I already apologized! What the fuck is wrong with you?!" Jessica was ''definitely'' an innocent party in this fiasco.
** The season five finale reveals that {{spoiler|the tragic backstory that Rick presented to the Citadel was ''real'' and not made-up as he claimed at the time. A rogue Rick did kill his Beth and Diane using a bomb, when his Beth was a little girl, and Rick spent months both coming up with the interdimensional formula and recovering from his injuries. He never abandoned any Beth before she was old enough to have Summer and Morty. When Morty comes out of the memory gun flashback, he apologizes to Rick for what happened. Then Evil Morty holds them at gunpoint; he says that all Ricks try to justify their actions based on tragic backstories, and Morty's Rick is no different. He may have a point; this was this same Rick that went on a rampage to kill dozens of Ricks trying to avenge his family, leading to the Citadel and Council of Ricks being formed}}.
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