Recap / Rick And Morty S 2 E 7 Big Trouble In Little Sanchez

Original air date: 9/13/2015

Rick joins in on some hijinks by transferring his consciousness into teenage "Tiny Rick". Beth and Jerry sort out their relationship with couples counselling.

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Tropes:

• Ax-Crazy: Rick when killing his clones in the basement.
• Big Brother Instinct: Inverted^note  Morty may actually be technically older than Summer at this point due to several adventures seen or mentioned which have had years pass for him and hours or days for her, as Morty has some Little Brother Instinct for Summer. While he initially resists her attempts to return Tiny Rick to his normal body, what gets him to change his mind and help her is when Tiny Rick humiliates her at the dance in front of the whole school and she runs off in tears. When the two of them later stop Tiny Rick from attempting to kill his normal body, Tiny Rick insults Summer for interfering with him, prompting Morty to stick up for her and kick his ass.
• Body Backup Drive: Rick attempts this but deems the experiment a failure after this teenage body, dubbed Tiny Rick, compartmentalizes Rick's true personality, leaving only his hedonistic urges. After he returns to his old body, he dubs "Project Phoenix" a failure and proceeds to kill off the various clone bodies he made. With an axe. While naked.
• Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The Beth Mytholog doesn't hurt the original Beth because she needs her mind to create more Worm!Jerrys. She does strap Beth into a chair with a metal bar, to ensure that Beth doesn't get any ideas.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: Inverted; Beth tells Jerry to hide while she goes to get help because their chances of surviving are better if they work apart. Jerry eventually realizes he can't do it while Beth is in danger and compels the worm!Jerry to help him. Cue him appearing with a gun and helping turn the tide when Beth imagines an idealized version of him as her hero.
• Continuity Nod: In The Teaser, Morty is eating Strawberry Smiggles.
• Clone Army: The Beth Mytholog starts to create an army of Worm Jerries to Take Over the World.
• Demonization: Part of the point of the alien couples counselling. They use a machine to bring to life a spouse's worst perception of their partner as part of the therapy. Beth is portrayed as a vicious, egotistical monster, while Jerry is a subservient slug.
  Doctor: I think we all see what you both mean.
• Deus ex Machina: A literal example. Jerry resolves the conflict with the monster Beth by using the machine on an idealized version of Jerry. His perception of Beth conjures a goddess version of her that immediately obliterates the monster version.
• Dirty Coward: Jerry's first instinct is to save himself; he finds a hatch that he can hide in and despite it being obviously big enough for both him and Beth, he insists on her finding her own hiding space.
• Ejection Seat: Rick has a button that says "Passenger Purge" that he hovers his finger over while Beth and Jerry are fighting in the backseat. He waits until they are close enough and then presses the button, probably because Beth is his daughter and he doesn't want to harm her.
• Escaped from the Lab: The hostile projections of Jerry and Beth escape and wreak havoc at the facility.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The Beth Mytholog has a deep voice.
• Feather Boa Constrictor: The perception of Jerry briefly takes on this role.
• Fighting from the Inside: Rick's true self keeps trying to reach Morty, Summer, and others throughout the episode. Only Summer picks up on it immediately; everyone else thinks he's just coming up with songs or such.
  "Let me out. What you see is not the same person as me. My life's a lie. I'm not who you're looking at. Let me out, set me free. I'm really old. This isn't me. My real body's slowly dying in a vat! Is anyone listening, can anyone understand? Stop looking at me like that and actually help me. Help me. Help me I'm gonna die."
• From Bad to Worse: The versions of Beth and Jerry breaking out of their cell is bad enough, but then the doctor realizes they're co-dependent.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Morty and Summer are unfortunately subjected to this (together with the audience) by their own grandpa as he chops up all of his clone bodies with an axe in the nude while they can only look on and scream in horror.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Vampire Lord who was the boss of the vampire who was killed off-screen.
• Hormone-Addled Teenager: This experience has taught Rick that the teenage mind is its own worst enemy.
• I Resemble That Remark!: Beth and Jerry arguing:
  Beth: Oh here we go, right to the victim role.
  Jerry: Am I a victim, Beth? Or am I married to a mean unfair monster that always hurts me?!!
• Innocuously Important Episode: Rick transferring his mind into a child-version of himself seems like a one-off plot, especially since he transfers back into his old man body by the end (because Status Quo Is God) and destroys all the younger clone versions of himself in a scene very much Played for Laughs. As it turns out, these clones are part of Rick's Phoenix Protocol project, which becomes relevant in "Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat" and "Rickmurai Jack", and him destroying the clones here has major consequences during the former.
  • Also, Beth and Jerry's disastrous couple-counselling, where the head counselor gives up and wonders how Beth and Jerry could ever get together, which is explored in "Rickmurai Jack" as well.
• Kill and Replace: Tiny Rick, who had overtaken Rick's original consciousness, tries to destroy Rick's original body after Summer gets him expelled from school so they can't transfer Rick's mind back to his original body. Luckily Summer and Morty ambush Tiny Rick before he can take an axe to Rick's original body and they re-upload Rick's mind to his own body, who promptly destroys the Tiny Rick body and the rest of his clones he had hidden in the basement.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: Jerry realizes that he can't leave Beth to the mercy of her Xenomorph counterpart. He grabs a gun off the wall, heads back, and starts firing. This has the added benefit of Beth imagining idealized Jerrys to join in the fight, which turns the tide and puts the Xenomorph on the ropes.
• Louis Cypher: The off-screen vampire called himself Coach Feratu, though no one apparently suspected him of anything. The vampire lord later demands an end to "this clever name bullshit" and that vampires pretending to be humans just use generic names.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Rick disposes of his remaining clones by chopping them into little, very bloody pieces.
  "Grandpa's back, baby!"

• Mythology Gag: Tiny Rick's Quiet Cry for Help drawing features a depiction of Doc Smith from The REAL Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti, the 5-minute TV short that Rick and Morty evolved from.
• Non-Indicative Title: Tiny Rick notes that the show title Knight Rider makes no sense as nobody was riding Michael Knight.
• No One Gets Left Behind: Subverted. The last escape ship only has room for one more passenger. The doctor tells Beth and Jerry that he'll go talk to the crew, only to immediately tell the pilot to take off.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Morty, Summer, and Tiny Rick find and stake the vampire.
• Only Sane Woman: At the Wild Teen Party at their home, Summer seems to be the only one to pick up on the Quiet Cry for Help in Tiny Rick's lyrics.
• Other Me Annoys Me: Beth and Jerry are less than amused at their counterparts' toxicity and cowardice respectively.
• Overly Long Gag: Morty telling Summer to get her shit together.
• Pet the Dog: The Xenomorph still loves Jerry and wants to create more versions of him. One of the things she tells Beth is that Jerry considers his wife smarter than she actually is. She doesn't react well when the original Jerry shoots his worm counterparts and starts fighting back.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Summer screams at Rick to put some pants on as he chops up his clones in the nude. He never does. Even to pick up Beth and Jerry.
• Quiet Cry for Help: Old Rick sends out his distress signals through song, dance and drawing.
  "Let me out! Let me out! This is not a dance! I'm beggin' for help, I'm screamin' for help! Please come let me out! I'm dyin' in a vat in the garage!"
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The evil perception of Beth abducts her to create an army of subservient Jerrys. When Beth asks why she doesn't just create an army of her "own badass selves," she gets hit with this:
  "There can never be more than one of me. I'm the strongest, smartest being alive because Jerry thinks you're that much stronger and smarter than you are."
• Relationship-Salvaging Disaster: Once again does the struggle for survival tie Jerry and Beth together. This version of them agrees to stay together until Morty graduates from high school.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: The Vampire Lord in the stinger is reasonably pissed when finding out about Coach Feratu's death—not because he died, but because Coach Feratu (real name Balik Alistane) chose such a painfully obvious alias as "Coach Feratu". He even stops himself midway through an incredulous rant to ask if he's coming across as a buzzkill to his other underlings before adjourning the meeting.
• Shout-Out:
  • Jerry's perception of Beth resembles the Xenomorph Queen.
  • The Beth Mytholog escapes the way that Indominus Rex does in Jurassic World.
  • After Jerry's perception of Beth manifests itself, viewers can spot an image of Bill Cipher on the viewscreen behind Jerry and Glexo. ^note Alex Hirsh actually guest stars in this episode, albeit as a high school student in Summer's story.
  • Coach Feratu. ^note His real name was Balik Alistane.
  • The episode title spoofs Big Trouble in Little China.
  • The last line "Old Rick! Ruining Everything!"
• Skewed Priorities: "PANTS!" ^note "For the love of god, Rick, get dressed!"
• Smart Ball: Jerry figures out the way to beat his perception of Beth is with his ideal self's ideal version of Beth. Beth lampshades this.
• Stating the Simple Solution: Beth asks Beth Mytholog why not use Jerry's mind to create more Xenomorphs for her army so that she could take over the world. Beth Mytholog asserts that there can't be more than one of her because she is the strongest and smartest Beth.
• The Stinger: The vampire lord being informed of Coach Feratu's death and reacting to it.
• Subhuman Surfacing Shot: In the stinger, a vampire seemingly levitates from a pool of blood to stand naked before his assorted servants, who quickly drape a cloak over his shoulders and proffer up a human victim for him to feed upon. It's one of the many things about this scene that's played for horror... up until the vampire lord belatedly realizes that the vampire spy who was just killed went by the name "Coach Feratu".
• Summon Bigger Fish: Jerry does this by using the mytholog machine on an idealized Jerry. The machine conjures up a Godess Beth that easily defeats the Beth Mytholog.
• Team Hand-Stack: When Morty, Tiny Rick and Summer decide to team up for the vampire hunt.
• Too Dumb to Live: The vampire lord says as much of the now-dead Coach Feratu.
  "Why the fuck would he name himself after a famous vampire movie? Was he doing a bit?"
• Unusually Uninteresting Sight: When Rick arrives to pick up Beth and Jerry from couple's therapy, he's still naked and covered in blood after chopping up all his clones. Neither of them seems to care or even notice.
• Weirdness Censor: Vampires are apparently commonplace in this universe.
• Wham Line: "Oh no... THEY'RE CO-DEPENDENT!"
• What the Hell, Hero?: Tiny Rick greatly improved Morty's chances with Jessica, which is why Morty resisted having him go away. In the end, Rick notes that Morty was quite willing to sell out his existence "for some trim."
  • Morty believed that Summer's concern for Tiny Rick's situation is just jealousy and said this to her:
  Morty: Get your shit together. Get it all together and put it in a backpack. All your shit. So it's together. [Beat] And if you gotta take it somewhere, take it somewhere, you know, take it to the shit store and sell it, or put it in the shit museum. I don't care what you do, you just gotta get it together. [Beat] Get your shit together.

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