Rick and Morty Episode 24: Pickle Rick

Morty hears Rick speaking from the garage and finds that Rick has turned himself into a pickle. Rick says he did it “because he could,” but Morty suspects he is trying to avoid the family therapy session, especially when they notice a syringe rigged to transform him back once everyone leaves. Beth takes the syringe with her, and Rick is left behind as the family goes to therapy.

Alone and immobile, Rick is knocked off his workbench by a cat and then washed by rain into the sewer. Trapped there, he has to improvise a way to move and survive. He kills a cockroach and uses its body in a grotesque way to create a basic means of locomotion, then keeps building more makeshift equipment from sewer creatures and scraps as he works on escaping.

Rick eventually upgrades his crude survival setup into a more powerful exoskeleton and weapons, allowing him to break into a secured compound. He kills several guards inside and draws the attention of the compound’s administrator, who sends a prisoner named Jaguar to stop him. After fighting, Rick convinces Jaguar to join him instead of opposing him, and they work together to escape as the compound is destroyed.

Back with the family, the therapy session focuses on Beth, Morty, and Summer working through their problems with the therapist, Dr. Wong. The session reveals a lot of tension in the family, especially around Beth’s relationship with Rick and the way the children see him. Rick and Jaguar then arrive in a helicopter, and Rick apologizes to Beth for lying to her. He uses the syringe to turn himself back into a human.

Afterward, Morty and Summer show interest in continuing therapy, but Rick and Beth dismiss the idea and mock Dr. Wong instead, choosing to go out drinking. In the post-credits scene, a villain named Concerto has Rick and Morty trapped in a giant piano, but Jaguar arrives and saves them. Rick ends the episode by telling Morty, “that is why you don’t go to therapy.”