Calling all Jan Michael Vincents.
Warning: full spoilers follow.
There’s a vague continuity linking the various episodes of Rick and Morty together, but this marks the first time the show has attempted a full-blown, direct sequel to an older episode. And really, if you’re going to retread anything, it might as well be “Rixty Minutes” and its nonstop barrage of bizarre, nonsensical television streamed from all corners of the multiverse. It’s a format that never quite gets old.
Predictably, “Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate” didn’t quite live up to the standard of its predecessor. Rick acknowledged as much when he hooked up his TV tuner in the hospital waiting room and had one of his trademark fourth wall-breaking moments. It wasn’t just that the novelty was no longer there, but also that none of the TV segments reached the hilariously absurd heights of “Ball Fondlers,” “Gazorpazorpfield” or “Alien Invasion Tomato Monster Mexican Armada Brothers Who Are Just Regular Brothers Running in a Van From in an Asteroid and All Sorts of Things: The Movie.”
Even so, there were plenty of amusing fake TV moments to be had. Rick and Morty is often at its best when it becomes apparent that co-creator Justin Roiland is just riffing dialogue. This format encourages the improvisational approach . The goal isn’t so much to lampoon specific pieces of pop culture or create insightful satire. It’s more about just conjuring up the dumbest, weirdest ideas possible and running with them for 15-30 seconds. And if the dialogue winds up being including a few stammers or stifled laughter from Roiland, so much the better.
Probably the best of this year’s fake TV segments was Eyehole cereal and its diminutive defender, Eyehole Man. “I’m the Eyehole… Man. I’m the only one who’s allowed to have eyeholes. Get up on outta here with my eyeholes!” The fact that the post-credits segment called back to Eyehole Man was especially funny. The Li’l Bits commercial was also a standout. The gag was dumb but somehow grew more amusing the longer the commercial wore on. And then there was “The Personal Space Show” and its little musical number (if you can call it that). Finally, if any segment did recall the surreal ’80s action movie charm of “Two Brothers,” it was “Jan Quadrant Vincent 16.” In general, while this episode didn’t force me to pause so I could wait for the laughter to subside as “Rixty Minutes” did, the stream-of-consciousness humor definitely entertained.
It also helped that this episode didn’t devote quite as much attention to the TV segments as Rixty Minutes. There was more of an actual storyline this time, as Jerry faced the difficult choice of whether or not to sacrifice his penis to help out the most beloved social crusader in the universe. This conflict worked for two reasons. For one thing, it featured none other than Werner Herzog as an alien dignitary who waxed philosophical about the human penis. “I’ve dwelt among the humans. Their entire culture is built around their penises. It is funny to say they are small; it is funny to say they are big.” In a season marked by surprising guest stars playing incredibly weird roles, that might just take the cake.
But there’s also the idea that the conflict was so perfectly Jerry because there didn’t need to be a conflict at all. It was pretty much a no-lose situation for him. He could have refused to be a donor and returned to Earth, never to have to face the wrath of the Shrimply Pibbles fanbase. Or he could have agreed to donate his penis and gone home with an advanced prosthetic that clearly would have made Beth happy. The only reason the situation spiraled out of control is because of Jerry’s incessant need to make everybody like him. Which, naturally, just resulted in everyone being mad at him and Jerry resorting to holding an operating room hostage with a motorized phallus.
For a brief moment it seemed that Jerry was going to be killed off as a result of this kerfuffle. Given some of the other plot twists that have unfolded on the show (Rick and Morty bailing on their own reality to permanently live in a world where their counterparts died in a lab accident being among them), you never can be too sure of anything. But Jerry emerged relatively unscathed from his ordeal, as he was fortunate enough to be in the one place in the universe where having 50 bullet wounds is just a fleeting inconvenience. Beth had the perfect piece of advance when she told her husband, “You can’t make people like you. You just have to wait for hating you to bore them.”
Rick and Morty proved once again that the show its its own worst enemy. This was an all-around entertaining episode that combined humorous alternate reality TV segments with a funny storyline about Jerry being the architect of his own misery. This episode’s only flaw was that it tried to recapture the magic of a classic Season 1 episode and didn’t quite get there.
