Posted in: Adult Swim, TV | Tagged: rick and morty

Rick and Morty: Why S07E05: "Unmortricken" Cold Open Still Haunts Us

The cold open to Rick and Morty S07E05: "Unmortricken" left us wondering about just how abusive Evil Morty's relationship was with his Rick.

It wasn't like Adult Swim's Rick and Morty hadn't already earned the right to call itself one of the best animated series to ever hit the small screen after six seasons. And yet, the Emmy Award-winning series knocked out seventh and eighth seasons that were opener-to-ender greatness. Regarding episodes that made a lasting impact, we could easily argue that S07E05: "Unmortricken" (directed by Jacob Hair and written by Albro Lundy and James Siciliano) should be at the top of everyone's list. By the time the credits rolled, Rick had brutally eliminated his Rick Prime problem, Evil Morty got his hands on the one thing that might just guarantee that Rick and Morty will leave him alone, and we learned that Rick didn't just lose Diane: Rick Prime erased her from across all of infinity.

But it was the first 55 seconds of the cold open that hit us hard and has stuck with us ever since. Before the opening credits rolled, we were offered Evil Morty's backstory by seeing how some very important dots connected leading up to S01E10 "Close Rick-counters of the Rick Kind" (directed by Stephen Sandoval, written by Ryan Ridley). From there, we see the threads that tied that episode together with S03E07 "The Ricklantis Mixup" (directed by Dominic Polcino, written by Dan Guterman & Ryan Ridley) and S05E10 "Rickmurai Jack" (directed by Jacob Hair, written by Jeff Loveness & Scott Marder).

If you're a fan of Rick and Morty, then you know the show isn't exactly a shining example of healthy, functioning relationships of pretty much any kind (though we could argue that it's done a great job of having the characters confront their issues and attempt to move beyond the toxicity). And yet, there was something a little too real about that opening minute to "Unmortricken." Returning from another adventure, there's nothing but disdain shared between the dimension-hopping duo. Morty isn't happy with how things went down, and Rick makes it clear that he's had enough of Morty's complaints and threats to quit.

Every time we've watched it play out, we're left with the feeling that Evil Morty's origin story may have included an abusive relationship with his grandfather, Rick. Look at the way Morty falls to the floor in shock when Rick barks back his response and how Morty looks genuinely afraid of Rick. There's nothing about that moment that left us believing that this was the first time, and it adds more clarity to what comes after. Though he looks to placate Rick with beer, you can see that Morty has made a no-going-back decision to stop the abuse for good. But it wasn't enough to simply kill Rick: Morty turned Rick into a valuable tool to help him achieve his goal of tearing down the Ricks' facade and then finding a place to be alone. The abused literally took the power away from their abuser.

Rick and Morty Co-Creator, Showrunner on "Unmortricken"

While keeping themselves on spoiler lockdown heading into the episode, series creator Dan Harmon and Showrunner Scott Marder explained to Gizmodo why now is the right time for Rick to have a nemesis – and for the backstory behind it to play out the way that it did:

Harmon: Staff Writers Keep the Canon Going: "The great thing about 'Rick and Morty' is that a lot of our staff are former 'Rick and Morty' writer's assistants—that whole tradition goes back to Mike McMahan before he abandoned us for his 'Star Trek' show ['Lower Decks']; he was the original first 'Rick and Morty' writer's assistant who left us at the EP level, executive producer. We've continued that tradition, and that makes these people not only workhorses but they are huge 'Rick and Morty' fans from the get-go. I'm so grateful to have people on the show that are like, 'Look, I'm on this show because I love this show, and I've loved it since the beginning—and have you noticed that we haven't given any red meat to the avid fans?' We'll be working on multiple seasons at once, so I won't notice. I'll just be like, 'Oh, have we not done Evil Morty in a while?' I have this general allergy to canonical stuff because I feel like it'll happen anyway, and therefore leaning into it is like leaning into gravity and falling down when your job is to jump and soar. But yeah, I was asleep at the wheel. [It was] our passionate writers that were like, 'No, it's time to resurface this.' And the fun thing is that the timing of it works out so that it's going to be smack in the middle of this season."

Marder on Making Rick Prime Work: "I feel like Harmon can feel our enthusiasm. He greenlit us doing [episode] 510, ["Rickmurai Jack"], which was obviously a bonkers, canonical one. That one was so crazy that we felt like there was suddenly so much pressure on having to solve that cliffhanger in season six that we just kept breaking and breaking that premiere over and over again. But we eventually landed on that idea that everyone gets sucked back to their original dimension, and it felt like it created such an organic idea: the guy that originally blew up Rick's original [wife] Diane and [daughter] Beth will get sucked back to his too, which was presenting Rick with the best opportunity to get that guy. It was just cool that we had a bad guy that had been in plain sight, that we had an organic idea that kind of helped him resurface. And we just loved that the story didn't really need to feel like it was retconned. It was always sort of there; we just sort of brought it forward. We were excited to have that guy that was always kind of available to us."

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