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Recap / Rick And Morty S 3 E 5 The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy

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Original air date: 8/20/2017

Rick takes Jerry out for a space trip. Meanwhile, Morty and Beth have to save Summer after she misuses one of Rick's inventions.


Tropes:

  • Accidental Murder: An alien playing with his sister kills her for real after the resurrection barrier is shut down.
  • Acid-Trip Dimension: Jerry, Rick, and Risotto go through this when they enter a wormhole with the ship's temporal shielding damaged.
  • A-Cup Angst: Summer wants to have bigger breasts after being left by Ethan for someone with bigger breasts. She attempts to enlarge her breasts using Rick's Morphizer-XE. Naturally, it doesn't end well.
    "Oh, yeah, Ethan? What do you have in common with Tricia Lange? A mutual love of French cinema? The belief that a carbon tax is the only viable solution to climate change? Or could it be her massive stripper titties?"
  • Agitated Item Stomping: Morty stomps Beth's phone to death.
  • Almost Dead Guy: One of Groupon's men emerges from the roller coaster wreck, incriminates Jerry and dies.
  • Alone with the Psycho: A case where Morty is the psycho. When Beth calms down Summer and stops her from rampaging against Ethan and Tricia, Morty sits by the fire and calmly roasts a marshmallow. Tricia runs off, but Ethan is too scared to do the same when Morty tells him to sit. Morty turns on the Morphizer after giving Ethan a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about making Summer cry.
  • Always Need What You Gave Up: Once Jerry and Rick make it back to Earth, slightly banged up, Jerry agrees not to enter the family house to avoid the temptation of exploiting their pity. Then Jerry remembers he has no car, phone, or wallet because Rick pulled him out of his apartment naked. Rick ignores his request for aid while walking inside and activates a threatening security system, forcing Jerry to walk home.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: Summer accidentally makes herself into a deformed giant trying to enlarge her breasts, and Beth trying to fix it only makes her normally proportioned but still huge, and then turns her inside out. Summer then rampages to the campsite where Ethan and his new girlfriend are but is stopped by Beth, who has made herself into an inside-out giant as well to empathize with her.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: Morty's Little Brother Instinct kicks in when Ethan breaks up with Summer and breaks her heart, causing Morty to use the Morphizer to disfigure him.
  • Blood from the Mouth: Rick after getting impaled as a welcome at the resort.
  • Body Horror:
    • Summer gets turned inside-out when hit with the 'reverse' option of the Morphizer. Beth later does the same thing to herself to help Summer.
    • Ethan gets disfigured by Morty for breaking Summer's heart.
    • Jerry gets sucked through a hand dryer, getting mangled into pieces before being revived by the immortality field.
    • Rick, Jerry, and Risotto combine into a monstrosity being at the end of the wormhole.
  • Boom, Headshot!:
    • One of the assassins does this to Jerry on the Whirly Dirly. Thanks to the resurrection shield, he immediately gets better.
    • Rick to Groupon after they've gone through the wormhole.
  • Both Sides Have a Point:
    • Rick and Jerry both call the other out after the failed assassination plot. Rick delivers a "Reason You Suck" Speech about how Jerry makes himself look pitiful to gain sympathy from others while Jerry condemns Rick as a hypocritical jackass who sabotaged his marriage.
    • They're both half-right about who's to blame for Jerry and Beth's divorce. Rick points out that Beth and Jerry had problems before he entered their lives, while Jerry is correct that Rick deliberately manipulated things to make the divorce happen.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Rick at the beginning of the episode calls his upcoming adventure with Jerry "a Rick and Jerry episode!"
  • Breast Expansion: Summer uses the Morphizer to expand her breasts, but she screws it up by getting caught in the beam by accident and morphing herself into a disfigured monster.
  • Brick Joke: When Rick is demonstrating the immortality field, a child is shown running around shooting his sister in the head. When the field drops, the scene cuts back to the pair with expected results.
  • Brutal Honesty: Morty pulls no punches when delivering a "Reason You Suck" Speech to Beth about her flaws. He basically says in the harshest way possible that she's a Daddy's Girl whose desire for an exciting life is making her take on the worst traits of her father and that her Blind Obedience to said father won't make him stay but will just push away anyone else she cares about.
  • Buffy Speak: Rick gets some of this on the flight home after having his intelligence reduced to that of a child to keep him a compliant passenger.
    "Uh-oh, we get shoot-shoot now!"
  • Call-Back: Two examples:
    • Rick himself noted in "Mortynight Run" that Jerrys typically don't fare well off-world. So, he takes Jerry to a world with Resurrective Immortality.
    • We first see Beth at home instead of the hospital, because in The Rickshank Rickdemption, she mentioned that the horses were given alien medicine which makes them "healthy forever", rending her job as a horse surgeon redundant.
  • Calling the Old Woman Out: Morty finally does this to Beth about how her attempts to please Rick and become more like him are driving the rest of her family away.
  • Camp Wackyname: Summer planned on going camping at Camp Flabanabba with her boyfriend, though they broke up before the trip happened. Morty remarks that it "sounds like somebody gave up halfway through naming it."
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The whole point of their adventure was to stop Jerry from killing himself. Rick only tolerates Jerry's betrayal because, should he come home without him, the grief he'd get from Morty would interfere with his work. Invoked when Rick rescues Jerry after being digested by an alien snake, intending to use him as bait.
  • Comically Missing the Point: Beth completely fails to understand the correlation between the customer service reps having her open a panel on the Morphizer-XE, and then the line going dead as three tiny aliens flee the machine to freedom.
  • Cyborg: Rick apparently has considerable cybernetic implants, including a weaponized arm and targeting scope in his eye. Possibly justified when you remember that this isn't his original body (which was killed in "The Rickshank Redemption") and once belonged to the commander-in-chief of the Citadel of Ricks' task force.
  • A Day in the Limelight: The first for Jerry after his divorce with Beth.
  • Death by Irony: The mailman gets crushed by a mailbox Morty supersizes while testing the Morphizer.
  • Death Is Cheap: Invoked. Anyone in the Immortality Field that surrounds the resort can instantly recover from a fatal injury, attack, or condition. This ends when the field deactivates thanks to Rick and Jerry's antics. Shortly after, an alien boy notices the sister he was playing guns with not coming back up after a shot to the head.
  • Disney Acid Sequence: Things get really trippy when the ship that Rick and Jerry are on enters the wormhole.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Ethan gets disfigured by Morty by the end of the episode. While he did break up with Summer and start another relationship, he was never mentioned to be unfair to her or cruel doing that, and everything that happened to Summer during the episode was due to her tampering with alien technology without supervision and Beth's insistence on solving the issue herself without calling Rick. It's also strongly implied that, before Beth showed up to calm her down, Summer was planning to violently attack both him and Tricia.
  • Distress Ball: Summer thinks that Ethan left her for her boobs when he didn't criticize her at all. Granted, he did start dating another girl with bigger boobs, but that doesn't mean this was for the titties. Summer also becomes superficial and extremely sad because of the breakup, even though she did date other boys in the past and that was after she started dating Ethan. She also breaks into her grandpa's garage and uses one of his inventions and makes mistakes like putting her hand right in front of the growing ray and not running away from said ray when it mutates her body, even though nothing was stopping her to do so. Because of this, Beth and Morty have to save her.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: Rick agrees with Jerry that the parents at the resort shouldn't be letting their kids fire at each other with lethal weapons, even if there's an immortality field. He says the rich do what they can for cheap thrills and bad parenting.
  • Eat the Camera: How the stinger ends when one of the small technicians gets carried off by a bird. Doubles as a Fly-at-the-Camera Ending.
  • Exact Words: Much like the spaceship from "The Ricks Must Be Crazy", the Morphizer is very specific with its settings. When Beth uses the 'normalize' setting, it makes Summer's proportions normal while still being giant. Then when she tries to use 'reverse', Summer gets turned inside out.
  • Flapping Cheeks: Watch Jerry and Rick at the roller coaster.
  • Flower Mouth: The monster that Rick tranquiler-darts has such a mouth.
  • Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: After everything that happened, Rick and Jerry amicably agree to cover for each other, and Jerry, despite Rick's offer, chooses not to go into the house and absorb pity from his family, something that visibly impresses Rick. Nevertheless, he acts fast before Jerry can change his mind.
    Rick: *quickly, smiling* Stay strong Jerry, I believe in you. *locks door and turns on elaborate security*
  • Forgotten Phlebotinum: This episode would have been half as long if Rick had remembered to bring his portal gun.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: When looking at the enhancements that Rick has that makes him a threat, one of them appears to be a robotic heart.
  • Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: After a failed assassination attempt, Jerry yells at Rick for stealing his place as the patriarch. Rick instead throws this excuse back at Jerry and berates him for using pity to excuse his own actions and portray himself as the bigger victim. Jerry absorbs this lesson and refuses to go home with Rick, insisting that the family will just pity him.
  • Frozen Dinner of Loneliness: We see Jerry alone in a motel room, warming up microwave food. Provides the trope page image.
  • Giant Woman: Summer, and later Beth.
  • Giving Them the Strip: As he is grabbed by the drone from above by one of his would-be assassins, Rick escapes by slipping out of his lab coat.
  • Gone Horribly Wrong: Summer tries to use Rick's Morphizer-XE to enhance her breasts, which works but decides to make them even bigger, and she accidentally gets caught in the beams and ends up becoming a disfigured giant. Beth makes things worse by normalizing her into a giant and then causing Summer's skin to turn inside-out.
  • Grievous Bottley Harm: Rick "kills" Shnoopy Bloopers with a broken bottle.
  • Heavy Voice: Giant Summer's (and later Beth's) voice is significantly lower in pitch.
  • Heel–Face Door-Slam: Risotto considered forgiving Rick for his actions after the wormhole sequence, but Rick just kills him on the spot. Rick insists he was talking himself back into murder.
  • Heel–Face Revolving Door: Jerry initially starts as a face by refusing to help kill Rick when Groupon asks him to; then swerves into heel territory by changing his mind and deciding to help kill Rick when the latter unknowingly pushes his Berserk Button; then goes back into a face by deciding not to go through with it when Rick says something nice to him.
  • Hypocrite:
  • Hypocritical Humor: Groupon giving Jerry this lecture:
    Groupon: But there comes a time in every man's life when he must choose the foundation on which his legacy will be built...one of compromise or one of blood.
    *Puts on his party hat and leaves to entertain customers in the next room*
  • Idiot Ball: Groupon's plan to kill Rick hinges on the Whirly-Dirly having a precise spot just outside the immortality field where his assassins can shoot Rick without him regenerating afterwards. Then they try to kill him before he reaches said spot, managing only to reveal their plot and lose the surprise element.
  • If I Wanted You Dead...: Early on, Jerry expresses his fears that Rick was going to kill him. Rick tells him that, given his current state (sitting naked in Rick's ship), killing him now would be a waste.
    Rick: So you thought I was gonna drive you into the middle of the galaxy and shove you in the vacuum of space with your dick hanging out? And we're seeing how you'd act if that were about to happen? [...] Also, if I wanted to kill you...
    Jerry: Yeah, I get it. It'd be amazing.
  • Ignored Epiphany: After entering a wormhole makes Groupon, Jerry, and Rick merge minds for what feels like an eternity, Groupon hesitates to kill the other two. Then Rick kills him, claiming (from previous experience) that it was just a short-lived effect before Groupon talks himself into murdering them anyway. Jerry admits Rick is probably right, as he's already gone back to hating Rick.
  • Immortality Inducer: The resort Rick and Jerry go to is covered in an Immortality Field (and the Trope Namer for it), causing everyone to instantly heal from any lethal injury and letting them kill each other for fun. The title Whirly-Dirly is a roller-coaster that very briefly leaves the field, making it possible to assassinate Rick.
  • Instantly Proven Wrong: Rick tells Jerry that nothing dangerous will happen in their adventure, Rick then gets speared by another alien. Subverted when Rick comes out alive due to a regenerative barrier, and the whole thing is actually a joke.
  • Instant Sedation: The Shmooglite runner monster when shot by Rick with a Tranquilizer Dart.
  • It Gets Easier: Earlier episodes showed Morty horrified about torturing or killing people, including "Rickmancing The Stone". Here, he casually disfigures Ethan with no remorse.
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Killed Off for Real: When the immortality field is brought down, we see one of the two alien kids seen earlier shoot his sister, for her to not get back up.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: Beth insists she knows how to operate the Morphizer-XE, but instead makes the situation worse without a second thought.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Rick and Jerry agree to speak of neither Jerry's part in the assassination plot nor Rick's admission that he manipulated Beth into divorcing Jerry.
  • Like Parent, Like Child: Morty claims that Beth is starting to become like Rick. Ironically, Morty himself acts in a Rick-ish way, using alien technology to horribly disfigure Ethan for leaving his sister, and warning Beth and Summer not to use technology they know nothing about.
  • Literal Transformative Experience: As a result of the Morphizer-induced debacle, Summer can recover from the breakup and get on with her life, while Beth actually becomes a responsible parent for a change.
  • Loud Gulp: Ethan, upon finding himself face-to-face with a pissed-off Morty armed with the Morphizer-XE.
  • MacGyvering: Once again Rick demonstrates his genius by building a useful machine with roller coaster parts.
  • Mama Bear: After Morty gives her a "Reason You Suck" Speech and Beth has a Heel Realization, she becomes this to Summer, determined to find her and calm her down before she hurts herself or anyone else.
    "Mama's coming, baby. Mama's coming and she cares about your titties!"
  • Match Cut: Early on, Jerry looks up at a patchy pattern on the ceiling of his motel room which then changed into a similarly shaped family photograph.
  • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal: Rick cheerfully noting that Jerry and Beth have had problems in their relationship since they first met pisses Jerry off enough that he decides to aid in Groupon's attempt to assassinate Rick, which he previously refused to do.
  • Mood Whiplash: The episode begins on a sad and somber moment with Jerry, alone in his apartment and missing his family. Then Rick shows up.
  • Never My Fault: Zig-zagged. Rick subtly pulls this when Jerry tries bringing up how his marriage started falling apart when Rick moved in, saying that Jerry's marriage already had problems before Rick showed up. Though he later admits that his antics didn't do anything to help.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Jerry and Rick fending off the assassination attempt lead to the immortality field being destroyed. This means that the alien brother kills his sister for real and presumably other deaths.
  • Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Jerry attacks Groupon after Groupon not only calls him harmless but also mentions his fantasizing about having a vagina one time too many.
  • Noodle Incident: Beth at one point asks Morty if he's going to "go on another spiel like [he] did with the flesh-colored crayon".note 
  • Not Worth Killing: Groupon considers Jerry too pathetic to kill and even brushes aside his attempt to stop him as Jerry simply pretending he tried. Jerry isn't pleased and ends up biting him.
    Groupon: This is saving a bullet.
  • Not So Above It All:
    • Jerry is often on the receiving end of the Smart Jerk and Nice Moron relationship that he has going with Rick. However, he gleefully becomes a bully towards Rick after the latter is drugged to a point where he has the mentality of a child.
    • Morty warns Beth that she's turning into Rick and that she's pushing her family away as a result, but during the climax of the B-plot he uses the Morphizer-XE to disfigure Ethan for breaking Summer's heart, something Rick would do.
  • Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Right as Jerry and Rick get on the Whirly-Dirly after Jerry has decided to aid in Rick's assassination, Rick genuinely apologizes for causing problems in Jerry's and Beth's marriage and promises to apologize to Beth as well, unknowingly causing Jerry to have second thoughts about going through with the plan.
  • Oh, Crap!: After Jerry changes his mind about going through with the assassination attempt, he tries to push Rick's head down so he won't get shot. Rick is annoyed by this at first, but when Jerry gets shot in the head instead as a result (though he immediately revives thanks to the immortality field), Rick has this reaction ("Oh, shit!") and immediately turns around to start fighting the assassins.
  • Once Done, Never Forgotten: Jerry mentions in passing that he has wondered about having a vagina. Afterwards, Groupon reminds him on every occasion about his vagina fantasies, leading to Jerry proclaiming "I don't want to be known as the vagina guy."
  • One-Liner, Name... One-Liner: Beth, when turning into a Mama Bear in the car.
    "Mama's coming, baby. Mama's coming."
  • Only Sane Man: Morty has to be the sane one when Beth insists on solving Summer's mutation without Rick's help, pointing out she has no idea what she's doing.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Rick normally brutally kills or tortures those who betray him. He goes a little easier on Jerry, however, because Jerry went back on the betrayal and warned him; while he does back Jerry into a waiting snail monster's mouth and let him be swallowed, he also rescues him if only to lure a mount back to the resort. He does also admit that Jerry has a reason to be angry at him.
  • The Operators Must Be Crazy: Beth calls the customer service line on the Morphizer-XE. The operators direct her into pressing a button that opens a panel on the side, then all of them promptly flees the scene, revealing they were actually trapped in the machine the entire time.
  • Papa Wolf: Rick's "Reason You Suck" Speech to Jerry has him calling Jerry out on ruining his daughter Beth's life by getting her pregnant and getting her to marry him out of pity.
  • Pet the Dog: Rick has a few in this episode:
    • He brings Jerry along on an adventure in the first place simply because Morty asked him to (though, ironically, we later learn that at least part of the reason for this was Morty wanting a break from Rick's shenanigans).
    • He also brings Jerry somewhere that's (supposed to be) impossible for him to be injured, and drinks and bonds with him.
    • Rick giving a sincere apology to Jerry for messing up his marriage to Beth, and further plans to apologize to Beth as well.
    • A minor one, but considering how Rick has dealt with people who've betrayed him in the past, he lets Jerry off relatively easy, just giving him a "Reason You Suck" Speech and letting him get swallowed by a snake, but still saves him from the snake and ultimately doesn't directly hurt him in any way.
    • Beth turning herself into a giant reverse-skin monster like Summer just to calm her down could also count.
  • Pre-Mortem One-Liner: Averted. Rick gives one while Jerry is being consumed by a giant alien snake, clearly intending for him to think he was going to die, but ultimately rescues him.
    Jerry: I'm sorry! I'll never do it again!
    Rick: No one ever does.
  • Protagonist-Centred Morality: Ethan breaking up with Summer is considered an unforgivable offense, to the point that Morty disfigures him for it. Summer claims that he chose another girl, Tricia, over her because of Tricia having bigger boobs than her, but it's never confirmed if it's actually true or just Summer being jealous, and what's more, Summer dated, had sex with, and apparently married another man a few episodes earlier, actually cheating on Ethan, something that isn't commented on (not even by Morty, who was present). Summer was also shown to abandon Ethan for weeks or months with no contact whatsoever, something that might have played a part in him choosing to break up with her, which also isn't commented on.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Both Rick and Morty give one to Jerry and Beth, respectively, with Rick telling Jerry off for using his pathetic life to get people to pity him, while Morty calls Beth out for becoming arrogant like Rick.
  • Resurrective Immortality: The resort provides a barrier that allows beings to come back to life after being killed.
  • Revenge Before Reason: Morty disfigures Ethan after Beth manages to calm a giant Summer down and take her away. It would have done nothing to convince Ethan to get back together with Summer or fix the situation.
  • Retirony: In The Stinger, one of the tiny technicians barely has time to take a breath after saying he's retired before a bird swoops down and carries him off.
  • Saying Too Much: Jerry tells Rick about the spot in the Whirly Dirly that dips out of the immortality field, allowing the latter to kill a would-be assassin. Rick correctly concludes that Jerry was a conspirator in the aliens' plot.
  • Schizo Tech: Rick has a mechanical arm that transforms into a gun... that shoots a suction cup tied to some string. It's effective, though.
  • Secret-Keeper: Rick and Jerry agree to be this for each other. Rick won't tell the family about Jerry's involvement in the assassination attempt, and Jerry won't mention Rick's admission that he sabotaged the marriage.
  • Short-Distance Phone Call: The support operators Beth was calling were actually inside the Morphizer the whole time.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Summer is turned into a giant, then has her body turned inside out, making her resemble Attack on Titan's skinless Colossal Titan.
    • Beth says that Summer "Clive Barkered herself" to describe her transformation.
    • Beth deals with giant Summer by turning herself into a giant, the same as the ending to Honey, I Blew Up The Kid.
    • During the wormhole trip, one of the visions Jerry has depicts two giant Ricks closely resembling the multi-faced beings from the cover of the album "10,000 Days" by tool.
    • The wormhole ship is a Galaxy-class.
    • Summer's out-of-control enlargement bears some similarity to Tetsuo's bodily expansion at the end of AKIRA.
  • Sincerity Mode: Rick apologizing for messing up Jerry's marriage to Beth, and promises to apologize to Beth for it too. This ends up serving as Oblivious Guilt Slinging for Jerry.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: Jerry, at least at this point; he turns down an offer to go to a strip club, noting that his "heart still belongs to Beth."
  • Split-Screen Phone Call: When Beth calls the Morphizer XE support line.
  • Stating the Simple Solution: After Beth fails to reassure Summer about her looks and the morphing fiasco ensues, Beth asks Morty what he would have said in that situation. Morty replies that he would have just told her she was hot when asked, which Beth finds weird, even though most parents would have been more tactful than Beth was.
  • Stealth Hi/Bye: When Morty and Beth stop paying attention to giant, inside-out Summer, she manages to get up and flee the scene without so much as making a sound.
  • The Stinger: The tiny technicians see what's become of Ethan and one of them has an unfortunate encounter with a bird.
  • Stutter Stop: Morty stops stuttering when he is about to punish Ethan for contributing to Summer's woes.
  • Swallowed Whole: Jerry, by that giant snail-like beast.
  • Take That!: When Rick is discovered to be a hazard for commercial travel, the company drugs him to the point of being harmless rather than kick him off the flight. This becomes a more obvious slight against the TSA after this line:
    "It's cheaper than kicking him off the flight. [...] Otherwise, the terrorists win."
    • And, from the same scene, comes Drugged Rick's line immediately after having his intellectual capacity reduced to the level of a five-year-old:
      "I want cookies, and a 90-minute cut of Avatar!"
  • This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Jerry to Drugged Rick, after abusing Rick's compliance to be in charge for once: "That's what I thought, bitch."
  • Throw the Dog a Bone: Rick decides to take Jerry out on a relatively safe adventure to boost his confidence so Morty wouldn't worry about him. Things quickly go awry. Jerry also gets away with screwing around with Rick while the latter can't do anything about it.
  • Traitor Shot: A close-up on Jerry's face as he squinches his eyes when deciding to go through with his plan to lure Rick into the roller coaster.
  • Tranquil Fury:
    • Rick goes into this state when he realizes Jerry almost got him killed.
    • Also, Morty while confronting Ethan. If anything, he seems even calmer than Rick.
      "Careful, Ethan. Your s'more is burning."
  • The Unintelligible: Summer and Beth as giant reverse-skin monsters.
  • Yank the Dog's Chain: It seemed like Morty asked Rick to take Jerry on an adventure to help his father out. Later, though, Morty angrily reveals to Beth that this wasn't true, or at least wasn't his main reason for doing so; Morty just wanted a break from Rick's craziness.

 
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