Season 1, Episode 11:
Ricksy Business
A party for the ages.
Written by: Ryan Ridley & Tom Kauffman
Directed by: Stephen Sandoval
Directed by: Stephen Sandoval
Morty: Rick, tell Summer she can't have a party!
Rick: Uh, Summer, you can't have a party. Because I'm having a party, b-i-i-i-itch!
Rick: Uh, Summer, you can't have a party. Because I'm having a party, b-i-i-i-itch!
Original air date: 4/14/2014
Beth and Jerry head for an iceberg of a date leaving Rick in charge. Morty doesn't get to go on any more adventures if the house isn't in the same condition when they get back.
This episode contains examples of:
- Adolf Hitlarious: Abradolf Lincler, who was Rick's attempt at creating a morally superior leader by combining the contrasting ideologies of Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. Rick isn't proud of him, and Abradolf lives every moment in angst.
- Age-Gap Romance: Birdperson and Tammy have a 23-year age gap (Birdperson, age 40; Tammy, age 17).
- Almost Dead Guy: Lincler, after defeating the two-headed monster, can deliver an offscreen It Has Been an Honor speech addressed to Rick.
- Armor-Piercing Question: After Morty repeatedly denounces Rick as a horrible person, Birdperson asks him, "Then why do you care so much if you are no longer allowed to continue on your adventures together?"
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: Beth saves Jerry from getting raped and expresses sympathy for him, apologizing for having Lucy take her place on the tour.
- Book Ends: The pilot had Beth and Jerry threatening to put Rick in a home for endangering Morty and making him skip school. Here, Beth threatens to stop the Rick and Morty adventures if the house is damaged. In both cases, Rick uses a sci-fi solution to avoid the consequences.
- By Wall That Is Holey: The garage door that falls upon Rick, Morty and Summer in the opening scene.
- Captain Ersatz: Birdperson is a parody of The Hawk from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
- Cerebus Retcon: Rick's catchphrase, "Wubba Lubba Dub Dub", originally thought of as a nonsensical catchphrase, is actually a comprehensive sentence in Birdperson's language, meaning "I am in great pain. Please help me."
- Didn't Think This Through:
- Beth and Jerry really didn't think through leaving Rick in charge of the house. They and Morty were hoping the threat of no more adventures would keep Rick in line, but apparently not.
- To a lesser extent, Jerry goes on the vacation of his dreams and didn't consider that Beth would be less than enthusiastic. He tries to get her into the romance of it, but Beth would rather hole up in her room and read a book.
- Dance Party Ending: Rick, Morty and Summer cap off the episode dancing to "Shake That Ass Bitch" while everyone else is frozen in time. ROLL CREDITS!
- Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: Averted; the entire scene where Lucy holds up Jerry at gunpoint is played seriously, with Jerry trying to stall for time before she makes him get in the car from the movie where Rose and Jack had sex. Beth saves him, and in a rare moment of compassion shows sympathy for Jerry, even acknowledging that Lucy was a rapist.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This was the eleventh episode in Season 1 when the rest of the seasons only had ten episodes.
- Exact Words: Two examples.
- Beth threatened to ground Rick and Morty, not Summer. She initially tries to exploit this with her party.
- "How many people did you invite, Rick?" "Uh, people? ...Six."
- Fan Disservice: Lucy is too much beyond her prime for us to appreciate her curves.
- Friendly Enemy: Although Rick has established himself as an enemy of the Council of Ricks, he has no issues inviting two of its members to his party.
- Funny Background Event:
- After Morty throws Rick's crystals out of the house, a testicle-monster is seen snatching the bag with its tentacle. The next time we see it, it's tripping out of its mind in the background.
- During Jessica's romanticized slow-motion entrance, we see a beer bottle being whipped across the room behind her.
- Good-Times Montage: Rick, Morty and Summer have a montage of enjoying themselves while time stands still.
- Hair Flip: Parodied with Jessica's entrance at the party where she does her hair thing in slo-mo thanks to Slow Mobius.
- Hybrids Are a Crapshoot: Abradolf Lincler is an entity created by Rick from the DNA of Adolf Hitler and Abraham Lincoln in an attempt to make a morally neutral super leader. It didn't work as planned, as Lincler turned out to be an awkward being of ambiguous moral standings, or in his own words, "an abomination tortured by the duality of his own being."
- Hypocritical Humor: Rick's use of the word "Glip Glop", which doubles as N-Word Privileges.Summer: Are some Glip Glops from the 3rd Dimension going to come over and play cards or something?
Rick: Glip Glop? You're lucky a Trafflorkian doesn't hear you say that.
Summer: Is that like their N-word?
Rick: It's like the N-word and the C-word had a baby and it was raised by all the bad words for Jews.
(Later, when Rick is inviting a bunch of aliens inside)
Rick: Yo, what up my Glip Glops?! - Jerkass Ball: Summer grabs it hard in this episode. She decides to throw her brother and grandfather under the bus by hosting a teen party and becoming popular. When an uncool "friend" shows up, Summer sends her on a Snipe Hunt to get crystals despite Nancy having no experience in the field.
- Laser-Guided Karma:
- It was Summer's idea to throw a raging party, and to let her brother and grandpa take the fall. The guests all leave after Morty yells at Rick to take them back to Earth, with Nancy explicitly calling Summer a bitch for sending her to die and indirectly disallowing her from joining the rest of the partygoers at Squanchy's.
- Lucy, while attempting to stow away under the Beth and Jerry's car, ends up falling off and gets ran over. Serves her right after what she tried to do to Jerry.
- Messy Hair: Invoked by Tammy when she sees Brad arriving at the party and tells the girl she was talking to, "Quick, make my hair look drunk."
- Mood Whiplash: The scene where Jerry and Lucy visit forbidden areas of the Titanic boat seems to start sweet. At first, it seems Lucy is trying to cheer Jerry up for the boat not crashing and Beth being aloof about it. Then Lucy disrobes, pulls out a gun, and threatens Jerry to draw her and then have sex in the car from the movie.
- Not Quite Dead: Abradolf Lincler in The Stinger, much to his quick regret.
- Only Sane Man: Poor Morty for this episode. He tries to point out to Rick that they're trying to stay out of trouble or they'll both be grounded forever, and they can't have guests die on their watch. In the end, he is very tempted to let Rick get in trouble for it.
- Pants-Pulling Prank: Rick and the kids do this to strangers on the street as part of their Time-Freeze Trolling Spree.
- Pet the Dog:
- Downplayed. Rick takes offense to Summer attempting to exclude her nerdy friend—saying everyone should be welcome at a party. Of course, he's saying this while spilling his drink on the poor girl, and he really dreads the sudden arrival of Abradolf Lincler.
- As a silent apology to Morty for making him worry about the party night, Rick freezes time and lets the kids have fun after they clean up the house.
- After all of the crap Nancy got put through, she ends up becoming one of the popular kids, turns the rest of the partygoers against Summer, and tells her off for throwing her under the bus just to gain favor with the cool kids.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: As per usual with this show, Jerry nearly being raped at gunpoint by a maid on his Titanic cruise is played 100% seriously.
- Sadistic Choice: The folks threatened to never allow Morty to have adventures with Rick if the house was trashed while they were gone. As Morty both tries to clean up after the party and badmouths Rick, Bird Person points out that fate has given him the perfect opportunity to choose whether or not to continue being Rick's sidekick. It would give him a break, but also take the fun out of life.Bird Person: This is your moment, Morty. Choose wisely.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Abradolf Lincler pulls his Heroic Sacrifice to get Morty and Summer home, or so he thinks. Turns out Rick just wanted to get high.
- Sequel Hook: The Stinger reveals Lincler to still be alive, vowing to get revenge against Rick. Subverted when he is attacked and thrown around by the testicle monsters.
- Serious Business: This time, it's Beth who threatens to ground Morty, not Jerry. Morty lampshades this."Aw geez, Rick. If my mom's the one who's saying it, then you know it's pretty serious this time."
- Skewed Priorities: As much as Rick wanted to hurry Beth and Jerry out the door as quickly as possible, he really did have "some synthetic laser eels oxidizing in the garage". Beth makes him stay to hear her threaten him and Morty, and right after they've left, the aforementioned eels dissolve the garage door to escape, which falls off its hinges around Rick, Morty and Summer.
- Smurfing: Squanchy's language seems to involve just replacing random words in a sentence with "squanch". Though just by itself, "squanching" turns out to mean auto-erotic asphyxiation.
- Snipe Hunt: Rick sends Lincler and Morty onto one and Summer adds Nancy to the party.
- Status Quo Is God: A variant; Morty chooses to continue adventuring with Rick. Though even if he had let Rick face his parents for trashing the house, Rick would have found another way to get a shield.
- The Stinger: Abradolf Lincler survives, only to be grabbed by a testicle monster and repeatedly exchanged along with the partygoer abducted earlier.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Even though it worked in Cape Fear, clinging to the bottom of a car while it's moving is a good and fast way to get yourself killed.
- Take That!: Near the end of the episode, while time is frozen Rick, Morty, and Summer watch Titanic and have this reaction at the credits.Rick: Worst movie ever.
Summer: Dumb.
Morty: Hoo boy, what a waste of time. - This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Summer can't throw a party because Rick is throwing a party, biiiitch!
- Time-Freeze Trolling Spree: Rick stops time to be able to clean up after a party they had when Beth and Jerry were away. Instead of just cleaning up they decide to play pranks on people instead.
- Time Stands Still: Rick pauses time so they can clean up the house before Beth and Jerry walk in (but not before pulling pranks on everybody in town first).
- Underside Ride: Jerry's attempted rapist tries to follow him home by clinging to the bottom of his and Beth's car a la Cape Fear but is subsequently run over and left for dead.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: Summer's friends don't seem to mind the sight of aliens, monsters and assorted weirdos at the party.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom:
- All because bored-out-of-her-mind Beth chose to stay in the room and read a book instead of joining him, Jerry almost gets raped by Lucy, at gunpoint!
- Birdperson wouldn't have met Tammy, and Tammy wouldn't have betrayed and fatally shot Birdperson more than a year later at their wedding had Rick and Summer opted out of throwing a wild house party.
- Rick starting a brawl between Abradolf Lincler and Brad.
- Squanchy choosing to squanch in Rick's garage causes Morty to accidentally knock over one of Rick's inventions and get the house warped to another dimension.
- What You Are in the Dark: Morty gets frustrated with Summer and Rick for being so selfish. He tries to get them to keep the house intact and in their dimension. As Birdperson points out, though, if Rick is such an asshole, why is Morty trying to fight for his right to keep adventuring with his grandfather? Morty is given a choice just as his parents are walking through the door to either let Rick face the consequences of his actions — that is no more adventures— or warn him. He chooses to warn Rick.
- Wild Teen Party: What Summer plans at the beginning of the episode while Beth and Jerry are away. Rick has a similar idea which turns into a Wild Alien Party which includes the house being transported to another dimension.
- You Cloned Hitler!: Abradolf Lincler was Rick's attempt to create a morally neutral super-leader by combining the DNA of Adolph Hitler and Abraham Lincoln. Rather than neutral, it created someone who is emotionally confused and tormented by the duality of his mind.
- You Shall Not Pass!: Lincler takes on a two-headed monster so Morty and Nancy can escape.
