Rick Potion No. 9

"Rick Potion #9" is the sixth episode of Rick and Morty. It premiered on Adult Swim on January 27, 2014, was written by Justin Roiland, and directed by Stephen Sandoval. In the episode, a love potion goes wrong, creating a virus that begins to infect the entire world population, making everyone fall in love with Morty. The episode has been well received, and was seen by about 1.7 million viewers when airing.^[1]

Plot

Morty has a nervous crush on a girl at school named Jessica. On the night of the Flu Season Dance at his school, Harry Herpson High, his desire leads him to ask Rick for a love serum to make his interest in Jessica requited, and Rick acquiesces, giving him a serum derived from voles. Upon Morty giving Jessica (who, unbeknownst to Morty, has the flu) the serum, it latches onto the flu virus and goes airborne, spreading through the entire planet in a matter of minutes and causing every person not directly related to Morty to fall in love with him. In an attempt to counteract the DNA used in the original serum, Rick makes an antidote from mantis DNA, but the serum fails, instead causing the world's population to mutate into monstrous mantis-people, all of whom want to eat Morty after mating with him.

As these events transpire, Jerry, feeling insecure about his relationship with Beth, follows her to work after she is called in for a late shift. En route, Jerry finds the road blocked by the chaos created by the mantis-people; when they attempt to force Morty's whereabouts out of him, he escapes and kills them with a shotgun. Arriving at the equine hospital at which Beth works, he finds Beth cornered by her raving, infected co-worker; after Jerry kills him, the two reconcile their marriage.

Hiding from the infected population in the desert, Rick makes a third virus to try and undo all the previous ones. But as the virus was amalgamated from various DNA sources ("Koala, rattlesnake, chimpanzee, cactus, shark, golden retriever, and just a smidge of dinosaur," in Rick's own description), it only further mutates the world's population into barely humanoid blobs. Dubbing the monstrosities "Cronenbergs", Rick decides the situation is beyond repair; rather than make another attempt to fix the world, he instead finds another dimension in which two specific events occurred: alternate versions of themselves successfully created a working antidote, and also died soon afterwards. Rick and Morty enter the new reality, the latter visibly traumatized by the transpired events and his counterpart's gruesome death, and they bury their alternate selves in the backyard before quietly assuming their place, leaving no one but themselves with the knowledge of what has actually occurred.

In a post-credits scene, Jerry, Beth, and Summer being the sole normal humans left in the ruined world, a Cronenberg version of Rick and Morty appear from a dimension where Cronenberg Rick accidentally turned the whole world into normal people.

Reception

Zack Handlen of the AV Club gave the episode of B+, liking the deconstruction of the creepiness of the love potion trope.^[2] Joe Matar at Den of Geeks liked the episode, saying that while it wasn't as funny as the previous episode, it had a wonderfully dark ending, and liked Jerry's action hero subplot.^[3] David Roa of Dead Screen loved the ending, saying that "while it was very Deus ex machina, it was still satisfying." He compared it to how people treat the planet, and just move to a new location after destroying where they live.^[4] The reviewer from Junkie Monkeys said that the episode was his second favorite up until this point, behind only “Anatomy Park”.^[5]

Justin Roiland has called this his favorite episode of the first half of the first season, both because he thought it was paced well, and due to that fact that he loved how insane it got in the end.^[6]

References

External Links

• Rick Potion No. 9 at the Internet Movie Database