Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Rick and Morty has always been a show of complexity. It’s high-level sci-fi that relentlessly mocks some of the most beloved installments in the genre. It’s a laugh-out-loud raunchy comedy that also authentically battles with depression episode to episode. It’s a never-ending fart joke wrapped around a studied look into nihilism.
It’s that complexity that makes Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland’s weird and weirdly human show the piece of morbid art it’s become. It’s also a trait that’s come to define the show’s central characters and their relationship with each other, specifically Rick and Morty (Roiland). However, this past season the series extended its most precious resource, its philosophy-shattering complexity, to its two leading ladies in a way we’ve never seen before. That transition helped transform this great show into one of the best shows on television.
It would be a lie to say that Sarah Chalke’s Beth and Spencer Grammer’s Summer were ignored or underdeveloped in the show’s first two seasons. They weren’t. As early as “Lawnmower Dog,” the show established Beth as the no-nonsense, hyper intelligent badass we know her to be. Summer’s development from stereotypical teenage sister to cool and socially-conscious hero took a little longer, but by “Raising Gazorpazorp” and “Something Ricked This Way Comes” it was clear there was far more to her character than an obsession with her phone. However, Rick and Morty has always been an ambitious show. On several occasions the series has been so focused on its sci-fi adventure-of-the-week or unraveling another layer of Rick’s self-hatred or Morty’s anxiety, it glosses over Beth and Summer.
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There’s always been something studied and intentional in how Rick and Morty uses its mother-daughter duo. It never feels like these characters are being benched because the show wants to focus on something more ambitious or interesting. Rather, it’s as if the show likes to intentionally rest its emotional centers before their big moments, and it works incredibly well.
Some of the most haunting and memorable moments have been connected to Beth and Summer. It’s Summer’s conversation with Morty in “Rixty Minutes” about the meaninglessness of destiny that first shifts the entire series, establishing both the show’s dark, introspective tone and linear structure. Later in “Auto Erotic Assimilation,” Summer becomes the episode’s lone voice arguing for free will, something that almost immediately and confusingly falls apart when she learns free will means inciting a race war.
Beth’s challenges typically have less to do with overwhelming questions about morality and identity, but they’re consistently the grounded fuel this high-level show needs. The first time we saw Beth’s unstable marriage come to a head was in the near-flawless “Rixty Minutes” when she angrily declared that she should have had an abortion. Both “Auto Erotic Assimilation” and “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez” expounded upon Beth’s deep-seated unhappiness and feelings that she had thrown her life away, with “Little Sanchez” literally personifying her toxic relationship with her husband. However, it wasn’t until after Beth shot Mr. Poopybutthole in “Total Rickall” that we finally started to see the untable cracks in her character. Likewise, it wasn’t until “The Wedding Squanchers” that we learned how far Beth was willing to go to keep her father this time. Beth and Summer’s arcs are always important and they’re often capable of shifting the entire direction of the show. However, Season 3 is the first time Rick and Morty really handed over the reigns to its leading ladies, and it was a horrifying delight.
Though it’s likely to be overlooked in the excitement around a possible Beth clone, Summer started this season by handling a bad situation in an even worse way, and the ramifications have seemed to completely alter her character. Seeing Summer brutally murder road warriors for sport in “Rickmancing the Stone” wasn’t shocking because she was a teenage girl. It was shocking because this isn’t who Summer is. Though she can be as distant as any typical teenager, this is a woman who recognized that all corporations utilize some form of evil, passionately argued for a planet’s free will, begged a murderous car to leave everyone alone, and is still able to be traumatized by Rick’s warped adventures. Morty may be a bit too hardened at this point, but Summer still cares about life. Sure, the scarily intense Mad Max Summer was just a response to her parents getting a divorce, but by handling her pain by causing even more pain, she’s crossed a line where she can never regain her innocence or morality, not completely.
You can see the ramifications of that toxic choice throughout the rest of the season. In “The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy,” she’s a bit faster than normal when it comes to looking for a sci-fi answer to her dating problems. In “Morty’s Mind Blowers,” she swoops in as a badass savior, but she also seems just a bit too calm and too used to knocking out her brother and grandfather. There are no finger wagging speeches or discussions of the effects of escapism — something that past Summer may attempt. She just does her job and moves on.
Conversely, this season finally allowed Beth to be a person instead of the mother and wife roles she’s constantly been confined to. It makes sense why the show would connect Beth to family drama instead of self growth arcs for so long. After all, one of Beth’s main insecurities is feeling like she she’s lost herself while she was building her family. That fear was first presented for laughs in “Meeseeks and Destroy,” but the show really starts to explore it in Season 3’s “Pickle Rick.” As Susan Sarandon’s level-headed therapist starts to question Beth about her father, we learn how much of her self worth and need for approval if tied to this one parent who left her.
However, “The ABCs of Beth” bring out a darker side of Beth and generally everything else. This episode and Thomas Middleditch’s disturbing king reveal that Beth was always smarter and more like Rick than we were led to believe, and that terrifies her. Through that lens, all of Beth’s desperate attempts to make Rick stay and domesticate her father now look like Beth arguing with herself. Surely if her strong-willed father can be happy in this family, she can be too. He’s not, and she knows she’s not, which leads to the most interesting development of this season — the potential Beth clone.
I mentioned this in my recap, but Season 3’s finale stands as a smart inverse of Season 2. Whereas Beth was once willing to do anything possible to keep her father around, “The Rickchurian Mortydate” ends with the entire Smith family hiding from Rick and Beth unsure if she’s the real Beth or a self-aware clone. The episode leaves that particular question open while shifting the power of the show. It’s Beth who stands up to Rick and puts her foot down. It’s Beth who demands her father dress up like fly-fishing Rick and apologize to the President. And it’s Beth who emerges as the head of the household and the most influential character of this story, not Rick.
Season 3 hurt and traumatized Beth and Summer just as much as it did Rick, Morty, and Jerry (Chris Parnell). However, in their own twisted ways, whether it’s through Beth’s tight-smiling denial or Summer’s faux indifference, both have come out seemingly unscathed and more in control than before. Beth and Summer are now more confusing and complicated than ever before, and when you’re talking about this show, that’s a compliment.
