How RICK AND MORTY Trolled Us So Well with Pickle Rick

Raise your hand if you were hyped for “Pickle Rick.”

That hand better be way, way up, because he was an instant cultural icon when the season 3 trailer dropped. It was pretty much an instant meme! It’s the most inane, high concept thing Rick and Morty has done, and Rick’s own enthusiasm for being a pickle jumped right off the damned screen and into our hearts. He already had his own catchphrase, and when the episode landed online, the show tweeted out “The wait is over,” because they knew that this was the one we’d been chewing our nails to get to.

Then, in the cold open, the show did the only thing it could do: use Morty’s reaction to Rick to steal the excitement wind from our pickle sails (these are real things). He’s straight up bored. Rick’s a pickle. So what? He can’t move or do anything except yell about being Pickle Rick. Morty stares not in disbelief, but in disappointment. Rick begs for recognition, appreciation of the intrinsic value of turning oneself into a pickle, but Morty already knows that Rick’s done this in order to get out of family therapy.

It’s a glorious, epic trolling. You wanted the unmitigated hysteria of pickle goodness? Great. Your sloppy hero can’t move, his plan was embarrassingly transparent, and he could fry up on the sidewalk to death. Turning himself into a pickle is undoubtedly the dumbest thing Rick’s ever done; not because it’s risky, but because it’s stupid.

Those first dull moments of Rick stuck as a pickle, alone in his garage, give us what Morty saw of him. Intentional or not, the symbolism of an alcoholic pickling himself is pretty plain, but he’s also helpless and vulnerable. Rick would be dead if not for a random, coincidental change in weather, which makes him something we almost never see in the show: not in control.

Images: Cartoon Network