This week’s Rick and Morty is all about… sincerity?

Rick has been taking Jerry out for “guys’ night” and Beth smells a rat. It turns out they’re hanging out with a bunch of cenobites who, unbeknownst to Jerry, only enjoy his company because they’re “like Oscar the fucking Grouch” and unpleasant things are pleasant to them. This episode turns on one of Jerry’s rarely-spotlighted positive qualities: his unselfconscious ease with what a basic-ass lame-o he is. It doesn’t take much for Jerry to be happy (though his many negative qualities still often keep him from achieving it) and I’ve always thought that was the root of a lot of Rick’s vitriol towards him – Rick is too aware of the wider world and how fucked up it is to ever be one hundred percent relaxed and happy, but for Jerry, it’s possible.

The cenobites here are cleverly used as a stand-in for a particular kind of person – the pathologically disdainful type who dump on everything because if you like something, or believe something sincerely, then you can be hurt. The cenobites can never be hurt because pain is pleasure for them, and Rick accordingly turns the tables by using unselfconscious sincerity to strip them of that power. It’s a lesson a lot of the Rick and Morty fanbase could stand to learn. (And probably won’t.)

Meanwhile, Summer and Morty have their own arc about sincerity as they hang out with the aloof new kid and learn that he’s maybe not so cool after all… but that he’s still a pretty decent guy… except, in the end, maybe he isn’t. But it doesn’t matter, because he wears the same pants two days in a row and now nobody else thinks he’s cool either.

I’d rate this one a decent episode. It didn’t blow me away like the first two of the season, nor did it represent the odd change of pace of the third episode. But it was a hell of a lot better than that sperm shit.

• This is another episode where we see that everyone else in the world pretty much accepts the sci-fi stuff surrounding the Smith family as no big deal even though it really doesn’t seem like they should be that used to it. Apparently there are superheroes running around though, so there’s a lot more weirdness in the world then just Rick.
• “Never follow a hell demon to a second location. It’s always hell.”
• Sorry for the rather boring header image this week. I thought the cenobites might be a bit NSFW and there wasn’t a lot else to choose from.
• I really wasn’t expecting Summer smashing living mailboxes to be from an actual episode. Will we get the story of Morty’s golf game next?
• Rick and Morty apparently have a cameo in the new Space Jam this week? Hey, good for them.
• Poor Alyson Hannigan (no relation.)