March 8, 2016
Hello blog readers, it's Neil again. This week's post is supposed to be about a song that managed to have an impact on me. The first thing I thought of was the song "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails, later covered by Johnny Cash (yes, really, the Cash one came later) and various other artists, because of how it was used at the end of Rick and Morty Season 2 Episode 10 "The Wedding Squanchers".
Its use came after a very emotionally intense series finale. After the Sanchez-Smith family, consisting of grandfather Rick Sanchez, grandson Morty Smith, teenage sister/daughter/granddaughter Summer, mother/wife Beth Sanchez-Smith, and father/husband Jerry, go to the wedding of Rick's old friend Bird Person to his human fiancee Tammy, a human girl who was one of Summer's best friends that Bird Person began dating after picking her up at a human/alien party hosted by Summer and Rick at the end of Season 1, Tammy reveals herself to be a deep cover agent for the Galactic Federation, an organization of space police, that has been after most of the people at the wedding for many years because of their involvement in anarchistic activities. She murders Bird Person in cold blood and nearly does the same to the family until quick thinking on Rick's part allows them to escape in a space ice cream truck. Now recognized as intergalactic fugitives, the family cannot return to Earth without the risk of being interrogated and/or tortured by the Galactic Federation. They try to find a new planet to live on, and the one they more-or-less settle on is a very small planet with one log cabin on it; a planet that can be walked around in its entirety in slightly under a minute. Rick decides to "explore" and finds a cave at the planet's South Pole that leads directly to its core, which is the size of a basketball and can be easily navigated around. Rick manages to sit in a whole directly under the log cabin to hear the rest of the family discuss the situation. Jerry, having never particularly liked Rick at all (outside of a more mentally impaired yet kinder version of Rick from another dimension when various Ricks stayed at their house), recommends turning Rick in to the Federation, which Morty, Summer, and Beth all angrily refuse to do. Summer tells Jerry that they shouldn't show Rick love in hopes of a reward and that they should love him unconditionally (a statement that I found slightly hypocritical, given that Morty seems to be the only one of them that loves his dad Jerry in spite of his occasional frustrations with him and how his insecurities make him do some pretty irrational things that can negatively affect him). Beth then explains the real reason she wants to stay with Rick, while exploding into tears- she doesn't want him to leave again as he had when she was a child and her parents were divorced, desperately wanting to cling onto the more remarkable of her two parents, even if his remarkability cane from being a sociopathic scientist and intergalactic/interdimensional criminal that regularly endangers her son. This makes Rick decide to do the only thing he can do, and the only way his family can get off of the planet. He tells Morty that he's going to go get ice cream on a nearby planet, and Morty immediately notices that he plans on leaving. Morty tells Rick that he can handle it if Rick leaves (in a way that shows that he really can't), but he'll break Beth's heart, and that he can't forgive him for that, but knows he can't stop Rick regardless. This is when the song begins to play. While flying away, Rick contacts the Federation, announcing himself as Jerry Smith and saying that Rick kidnapped him and his family, left them on a tiny planet, and went to a bar on a nearby planet. He also requests that the family be allowed to have a normal life and not be bothered by the Federation, which the Federation agrees to. After giving one last rude dig at Jerry while pretending to be him (just in case the Smiths ever manage to hear this recording so that they know it was Rick who made the call), Rick goes to the Plim-Plom Tavern to have one last drink while looking at a picture of himself and his friends in happier times before surrendering to the Federation. More agents come to pick up the other Smiths and take them back to Earth, which has become a tourist destination for aliens thanks to the publicity it had made in the space news for being discovered as the home of one of the galaxy's most infamous criminals. Jerry is allowed to go to an employment office to be assigned a new job after being unemployed for a very long time, and is the only one of the family who is happy to be home, as Morty, Summer, and Beth are still distressed from Rick leaving them. Rick is put into custody at a maximum-security space prison, and when a fellow inmate asks him what he's in for, Rick bluntly, dryly, and defeatedly responds with "Everything."
The use of the song in this scene makes it much sadder than it would be without it. The lyrics work pretty well for the character of Rick, as the line from the song "Everyone I know goes away in the end" fits well with how his best friends are dead and how he doesn't expect to see his family ever again. This was the first media work in a very long time that actually caused me to struggle to talk about it later a few days after seeing it for the first time. It may have been a little bit of how I was frustrated with my mom for seeming to be interested in the show only to later say that it was too bizarre for her and only after hearing my reaction to this episode in particular did she want to learn more about it and gain at least a decent understanding, if not a respect, for the show. Around the episode's time of airing, October 2015, I was dealing with some complicated emotions about what family really means, and still am to an extent. I was wondering why I felt emotional apathy towards those who raised me yet loved, or at least felt the desire to love, friends from school that I don't see much, if at all, anymore due to graduation, and strangers based on a shared fandom. The episode also made me question whether or not I desire to love family only if I expect something in return, whether loving your family is something that you're "supposed" to do in civil society and whether I should really do it simply because a larger societal body says it's the right thing to do, the love of a parent for a child versus the love of a child for a parent, and whether I could do what Rick did if I were in a similar situation. I, at least for a little while, came to the conclusion that I could if I were the parent or grandparent in the family, but not if I were the child or grandchild. While "Hurt" isn't necessarily about these themes, as the original was more about suicidal thoughts and self-loathing (things Rick regularly deals with), and the Johnny Cash version was a meditation on being old and close to death, these emotions probably wouldn't have surfaced had they not used a really sad licensed song such as that one and just recorded a generic sad track. I prefer the end of the Johnny Cash version, because of how the end of the Nine Inch Nails version is a minute-long bit of discomforting ambient noise, but I think that the Nine Inch Nails version is darker and more powerful, which is why I'm glad they used that one at the end of the episode. That is my mediation on a song that has impacted me. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.
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