Review: Rick And Morty, "Fear No Mort" | Season 7, Episode 10
When you jump into the Hole, the Hole jumps into you...or something
I think I know what my greatest fear is. Like, not a hundred percent sure or anything, but I think, if you gave me a few minutes (and let me put my thoughts in writing), I’d be able to get there. It wouldn’t be a particularly interesting journey for anyone but myself, so I won’t bore you all with the details. It’s more the sort of thing you talk about in therapy, anyway, or something you deal with when you decide to jump into a hole in a Denny’s.
That’s part of the pleasure of an episode like “Fear No Mort,” obviously. Fiction is great for that sort of thing. You set up a situation in which some external force is able to look into your mind and tell you the answer to a question that you (unlike me) might not even know yourself. We’ve been trained as audiences to accept this as possible without questioning it too much. Just give us a hint of eldritch power, a system with enough genre trappings to let us ignore the wire frame “drunk conversation at two in the morning” aspect, and we’re in for the ride. The tension of what follows is less about wondering if we’ll get a coherent explanation for what we’re seeing, but finding out if the show is capable of offering some kind of unexpected truth.
The level of difficulty varies from series to series. A Twilight Zone episode about some sucker struggling with his worst nightmare is supposed to be a little corny; the anthology format makes it easier to swallow didactic morality tales, and as long as it’s just a little cleverer than we’re anticipating, it works.
With Rick And Morty, things get… tricky. The “creepy guy offers you a chance to see your greatest fear” story hook is so ancient that it’s a joke in its own right, and the self-aware commentary from Rick and Morty about the clichéd nature of it all is, at this point, its own kind of cliche. When our heroes meet a Rod Serling-esque stranger (voiced by Liev Schrieber, always a treat) and he makes his offer, the question is clear: is this going to be another undermining genre spoof ala “Something Ricked This Way Comes,” where Rick uses his genre awareness and scientific genius to turn a familiar horror scenario into a joke; or is it going to be actually sincere. Is the Stranger going to be revealed as an easily defeated putz, or are we gonna get a villain who’s actually more powerful than the boys?