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Rick directly references upcoming story points in the episode, pointing them out on the map in the exact spots in which they would fit in the Story Circle. The map of the train Rick discovers is actually the Story Circle, the template Dan Harmon famously uses to plot out his scripts.
RICK AND MORTY SEASON 2 EPISODE 3 REVIEW SERIES
(Because they’re a series of unrelated narratives, anthologies don’t have any continuity outside of a framing device.) Rick mentions with that the anthology train consists of “linked unrelated narrative fields” that are “uptight” and “overwritten”, and mentions that “If we wanted one-offs, we’d do Interdimensional Cable.” Clearly, series co-creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon consider the anthology format to be lazy, and they blow it up immediately by having two train cops show up and shoot a Continuity tank, allowing Rick and Morty to escape. The entire thing is about the process of writing a Rick and Morty episode. Rick and Morty is frequently self-referential, but “Never Ricking Morty” might be the first episode that is 100% meta. There’s a brief post-credits scene in which Puppet Jesus uses his magic blood to short out the toy train, and real-world Rick gets pissed and demands Morty go out and buy another one. Rick is unexpectedly enthusiastic about the gift, and launches into a speech about the glory of capitalism and fulfilling our sacred duty to buy as many things as possible. The camera pans out to the final reveal – that the train is just a toy the real Morty bought for Rick at the Council of Ricks gift shop, and the entire episode was just a bunch of sentient puppets on the train acting out stories as the train ran in circles around the Smith’s living room.
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He moves to the control panel to stop the train, but all the controls are fake. Rick ultimately frees them by praying to Jesus Christ, which destroys the machine because it is something he and Morty would never do, and traps Story Lord beyond the fifth wall. Breaking the fifth wall begins mining Rick and Morty for potential future story ideas, including the return of Abradolph Linkler and Morty’s hyper-intelligent dog Snowball. The unrelated story breaks the theme, getting them inside the engine car, where they do battle with Story Lord, a super jacked bearded man who straps them into a machine to break the fifth wall. In order to break in, Rick has Morty tell a rambling story that has nothing to do with anything that’s going on in the episode, about Summer and Beth battling a horde of lady scorpions with their “heavy special time”, which is a phrase here meaning “lasers blasting out of their vaginas,” because Morty is an idiot. They climb outside the train in spacesuits, with Morty’s suit carrying a ticking clock that will kill them if it reaches zero, and reach the Thematic Seal on the engine car.
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Meaning the stories will just keep going and going unless Rick and Morty can make it to the train’s engine and stop it. They reach a map of the train revealing that the train is essentially an ouroboros, on a neverending circular path. (Because continuity has been broken, get it?) Rick figures out that they’re trapped in an anthology and detonates a Continuity barrel, allowing them to jump anywhere on the ship. The episode takes place entirely on a space train that is literally a narrative device – it’s fueled by a bunch of passengers telling unrelated stories about Rick, each one an extremely overused trope about doing battle in an evil fortress or saving Christmas or introducing him to your parents over an embarrassing dinner. And as the title suggests, we’re in for some supremely meta shenanigans. Nearly six months later, the duo is finally back for the second half of Season 4, which kicks off with Episode 6, “Never Ricking Morty”. We last saw the titular drunk nihilistic scientist and his hapless grandson dealing with a bunch of Nazi snakes in an alternate timeline (it was a whole-assed thing).
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Rick and Morty is known for taking long breaks in between seasons, but Season 4 marks the first time the show has gone on hiatus in the middle of an episode run.