Rick and Morty Season 6 Episode 8
Coming on the heels of another of those hyper-meta snoozefest episodes, the opening of “Analyze Piss,” with Rick complaining about having to fight too many “nineties-style, goofball supervillains,” was a bit worrying. Morty suggesting that Rick might want to investigate exactly why so many of these goofball supervillains keep coming after him just seemed like a potential setup for another overly self-aware adventure I personally wasn’t down for, even though Rick’s follow-up comment, “I’m not the fucking Tick,” did make me laugh. Happily, the setup is something of a misdirect; Rick never does quite nail down a satisfying reason why he’s a nineties villain magnet and “Analyze Piss” reveals itself to be a much more interesting, funny, and emotional journey for him, not to mention, there’s a lot of great stuff for Jerry and also, yes, a lot of piss. Even though the cold open sets us up for an episode about wacky supervillains, we don’t meet too many more once the Pissmaster (Will Forte) shows up. The best Rick and Morty episodes take a stupid premise and use it to go deep on an aspect of the human condition and it doesn’t get much stupider than the Pissmaster. He’s a guy who wears a suit full of piss that lets him breathe piss (which, presumably, he enjoys), rocket around on piss jets, and shoot streams of piss at people, but he’s also a storytelling device for exploring how Rick deals with confrontations; the fickleness of social media; the fine line between heroism and villainy; and, yeah, even that old chestnut, the meaning of life. It’s extremely good character stuff for Rick, who really feels like he’s growing emotionally, finally being forced to admit there are people and things that he cares about. This is helped along by the reappearance of Dr. Wong, played by the great Susan Sarandon. It’s heartening to see that Rick has been checking in with a therapist and actually taking her advice sometimes. And it’s a testament to the art and writing that the Pissmaster truly feels like a tragic, human figure, when Rick finds him dead by suicide. Further, it lands when we see how hard it hits Rick that Pissmaster left behind an estranged daughter.
