Recap / Rick And Morty S 1 E 2 Lawnmower Dog

Season 1, Episode 02:

Lawnmower Dog

"Where are my testicles, Summer?"

Written by Ryan Ridley
Directed by John Rice

"I thought the whole point of having a dog was to feel superior, Jerry. If I were you, I wouldn't pull that thread."

— Rick Sanchez

Original air date: 12/9/2013

Rick equips the Smiths' dog Snuffles with a device that makes him smarter, but the dog soon becomes self-aware and upgrades the technology to lead dogs into a rebellion against mankind. Meanwhile, Rick takes Morty into the dreams of his math teacher to convince him to give Morty better grades.

---

Tropes:

• All-Ghouls School: Scary Terry apparently went to school full of similarly scary students.
• All Just a Dream: The Bad Future where Snuffles takes over the world.
• Androcles' Lion: Rick and Morty helping Scary Terry in his nightmare leads to the latter becoming a friend.
• Animal Is the New Man: Rick creates a device that makes the family dog, Snuffles, intelligent. Unfortunately, Snuffles becomes too intelligent and ends up making every dog in the world smart and they take over the Earth. Good thing Rick and Morty save the day... for now, at least.
• Animals Fear Neutering: "Where are my testicles, Summer?"
• Auto-Tune: Used to give the dogs' mechanical suits a funny-sounding robot voice.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • Snuffles allows Morty to live with him and keep his testicles because he was the only human who treated him kindly before he became sapient.
  • Scary Terry also helps Rick and Morty work through the various dreams in return for them standing up for him in his nightmare.
• Brain Bleach: When Morty and Rick see their half-naked sister/granddaughter Summer in dream level 2 and she starts hitting on them.
• Brick Joke: When the family is reunited, Summer embraces Morty and he's briefly smothered by her breasts. Having just seen a rather explicitly perverted version of her from his teacher's repressed fantasies, he's especially uncomfortable about it.
• But Now I Must Go: Snuffles has Rick open a portal to an empty dimension so he and his army of sapient dogs can live as they please without taking over the world.
• Captain Ersatz: Scary Terry, a parody of Freddy Krueger.
  Rick: Looks like some sort of legally safe knock-off of an '80s horror character with miniature swords for fingers instead of knives!
• Canines Gambling in a Card Game: Five intelligent dogs play poker and smoke cigars while using their advanced robotic suits.
• Character Catchphrase: "You don't knowww me!" for Mrs. Pancakes.
• Chicken Walker: Snuffle's Mini-Mecha has backwards bending legs.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  Snuffles: You're being very aggressive, Jerry. Perhaps tomorrow Dr. Scraps will solve that problem with a bit of surgery.
  [another dog comes out with a pair of scissors]
  Jerry: Huh! You think you can control me with a haircut?
• Concealment Equals Cover: On the airplane, the seats protect Rick and Morty from the teacher's machine gun fire.
• Creepy Children Singing: Happens in the Centaur's dream.
• Danger Takes a Backseat: Scary Terry suddenly appears in the backseat of the car Morty and Rick were sitting in.
• Deadline News: A newswoman reporting on the dog rebellion ends up getting attacked and muzzled by said dogs on the air.
• Dirty Old Man: Apparently, Morty's teacher has a pervy attraction to underaged Summer.
• Dolled-Up Installment: The episode was based on a rejected series that Justin Roiland pitched called Dog World. It was about a family transported to an alternate universe where sentient dogs kept people as pets.
• Dramatic Thunder: The nighttime scene where a fully sentient Snowball first confronts Summer takes place during a thunderstorm, dramatically flickered to that effect.
• Dream Emergency Exit: Rick and Morty invade the dreams of Morty's math teacher just like Inception and encounter Scary Terry (a parody of Freddy Krueger, the villain in A Nightmare on Elm Street). The rules of dying in dreams are inverted compared to those of the two parodies: when you die in someone else's dream you die for real, and Scary Terry killing the dreamers merely wakes them up.
• Dream Walker: Rick and Morty travel into the dreams of Morty's math teacher, Mr. Goldenfold.
• Dream Within a Dream: Part of the episode's Inception parody.
• Even Evil Has Standards: After being transported to the perverted dreams of Morty's math teacher, Rick has no problem whatsoever in engaging in his depraved fantasies, but even he's disgusted when Summer, his own granddaughter, is revealed to be part of them.
• Exploding Calendar: Showing the time passage in the last dream level.
• Fan Disservice: Morty is understandably grossed out by his teacher's repressed perverted fantasy about his (underage) older sister. Rick tries to get him to swallow his pride, but he gets disgusted too.
• Fetishes Are Weird: Invoked and subverted. After going deeper into Goldenfold's subconscious, Rick and Morty reach a dream-level that is entirely devoted to his sexuality (in the form of a giant orgy), where there's BDSM, fetish gear, gnomes, and animal-human hybrids. Both Rick and Morty are uncomfortable, but Rick quickly "blends in" and engages in some pet-play with the gnomes. The only thing that crosses the line for them is Goldenfold's fantasies about Summer, Morty's teenage sister, understandably.
  Morty: [nervously] Oh man, Rick, this is pretty weird!
  Rick: Don't judge, Morty.
• Get A Hold Of Yourself Man: While they are in free fall, Rick slaps Morty who starts losing it.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: Terry slicing the Centaur in two.
• Hippie Teacher: The Stinger features Scary Terry's new teacher Scary Mr. Johnson (or, as he prefers, Scary Glen).
• Horrifying the Horror: Parodied. Morty wonders what horrible things someone like Scary Terry has nightmares about. It turns out, his nightmare is a fairly benign (for taking place in an All-Ghouls School) dream about failure as a student.
• Human Pet: Rick builds a device to make their dog Snuffles more intelligent, which leads to the dog improving the device and uplifting all dogs. They take over the world and keep humans as domestic animals; Snuffles (who now calls himself Snowball) keeps Morty as his pet because he always treated the dog well, while other humans are enslaved.
• Humans Are Not the Dominant Species: Subverted. The viewer is led to believe that cyborg dogs have taken over the earth, usurping humans as the dominant species. Instead, it turns out that it was All Just a Dream designed to convince the leader of the dog rebellion that taking over the Earth would make them just like the humans, leading him to decide to colonize another dimension instead.
• Ironic Nursery Tune: Scary Terry comes along with a white-dressed little girl jumping a cord while singing his nursery rhyme: "A, B, his name is Scary Terry... C, D, he's very scary... E, F, he'll design your death..." When Rick tries to save himself and Morty from Terry, he knocks out the girl and incepts her dream... ending up in a copy of the environment they just escaped from, with another identical little girl continuing: "J, K, he'll really ruin your day..." Later, as the duo make their way back to Mr. Goldenfold's dreamworld with Terry by their side, she sings, "Q, R, you won't get very far..."
• Jive Turkey: When they get into Scary Terry's dream, Rick and Morty start talking in very stilted hip-hop slang for some reason.
• Laborious Laziness: Morty points out that in the time it took Rick to build his dream-invading device, he could have just helped Morty with the homework. Rick is just that disdainful of school and ordinary life.
• Made Myself Sad: When Beth sarcastically comments how the dog gaining intelligence will go well, Jerry states that is exactly what she said to him on their wedding day. After a brief pause, he becomes depressed and slouches in his chair.
• Marshmallow Hell: When they get back to the real world, Summer does this to Morty. He, already freaked out by her appearance in his teacher's sex dream, disentangles himself as fast as possible.
• Mini-Mecha: Snuffles builds walking frames for himself and his army. Blue Tron Lines mean "civilian" and yellow ones mean "combat" and are piloted by rottweilers.
• Misplaced Retribution: Jerry demands that Rick find a way to make the family dog smarter, but since he has no authority over Rick, he threatens to ground Morty so Rick can't bring him to help on his latest adventure. Fortunately for Morty, Rick already had a device for just such an occasion.
• "Not Wearing Pants" Dream: Scary Terry's nightmare.
• Not in Front of the Kid: Scary Terry can't say "bitch" in front of their child, as his wife warned him.
• Off with His Head!: The girl in the Centaur's dream suffers this fate, thanks to Scary Terry.
• Oh, Crap!: Confronted by Scary Terry, Rick and Morty try to escape by entering the dream of a little girl, but they're faced with Scary Terry soon afterwards.
  "He can jump from dream to dream!"
• One-Liner, Name... One-Liner: Rick's final line.
  "What do you know, Morty, what do you know?"
• Opinion-Changing Dream: The whole idea for the inception plot. Rick wants to manipulate the teacher's subconsciousness to give Morty an A so he won't have to bother with homework.
• Out of the Frying Pan: Said word for word by Rick when he and Morty happen upon the dog rebellion when getting back to their house.
• Persecution Flip: Dogs gain super-intelligence from one of Rick's creations and rebel against humans, turning the survivors into pets.
• Please Put Some Clothes On: Both Rick and Morty demand this of stripperific Summer in the math teacher's dream.
• Powered Armor: Exoskeletons really, but they are mostly similar in function, including weapons. Snuffles builds walking frames for himself and the rest of the neighborhood dogs. Blue Tron Lines indicate civilians, yellow lines indicate soldiers.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Scary Terry. Not only is terrorizing people literally just his day job, after he's done, he goes home to a perfectly normal-looking suburban house, complete with an equally scary wife and infant son.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: After making up with his wife, Scary Terry shares a passionate kiss with her that also involves him copping a feel on her butt. Rick even states that he and Morty should wait until the couple's "scary coitus" is over before going in. The next time Scary Terry and his wife are seen, they are both naked with their bed and bedsheets torn up.
• Shout-Out:
  • This episode parodies both The Lawnmower Man and Inception.
  • Scary Terry is an obvious parody of Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street.
  • While Snuffles watches a documentary on how canines were turned from wild hunters into man's subservient pets, a clip of a dog playing basketball is shown.
    • In that same clip, the slow-motion sound effect from The Six Million Dollar Man is used.
  • During the dog rebellion, we see five dogs playing poker, although they're playing while controlling their robotic suits.
  • Snuffles calls himself "Snowball" as a nod to revolutionist pig Snowball from "Animal Farm" by George Orwell.
• Sinister Scraping Sound: Scary Terry makes this noise with his blade fingers on a metal pipe.
• The Stinger: We see Rick and Scary Terry back in the dream world's classroom being taught by the new teacher.
• Swapped Roles: When dogs and humans switch places and Snowball tells Morty to sit by his side.
• Take That!: Rick jabs at how confusing Inception is.
  Rick: Dreams move one one-hundredth the speed of reality, and dog time is one-seventh human time, so, you know, every day here is, like, a minute. It's like Inception, Morty, so if it's confusing, it's stupid, then so is everyone's favorite movie.
• Tap on the Head: Mrs. Pancakes goes out after a slap from Rick.
• This Is for Emphasis, Bitch!: Scary Terry likes to say "bitch" a lot. Lampshaded by Morty.
• This Is Gonna Suck: While Jerry and Summer are thrilled by the device Rick built to make Snuffles smarter, Beth immediately expresses that this will clearly end well.
• Took a Level in Kindness: Scary Terry is a Punch-Clock Villain, but his recurring nightmare left him in a bad mood and regularly fighting with his wife. After Rick and Morty help him, he becomes a lot more relaxed and upbeat.
• Toppled Statue: During the dog rebellion, a statue of Benjamin Franklin is toppled.
• Uplifted Animal: The subplot has Jerry frustrated by Morty's dog Snuffles ignoring commands, peeing inside, and constantly begging to go out and come back inside over and over for no reason. Jerry asks Rick for a device to make the dog smarter which Rick, reluctantly, agrees to, giving Snuffles a helmet that boosts his intelligence. At first, it works perfectly, the dog suddenly understands all their commands, even ones it hasn't been trained with at all. However, we learn that Rick originally set the helmet to operate well below its full potential, and after Snuffles realizes and figures out how to crank it up to 100% (putting in a second double-a battery), he becomes intelligent enough to create a device that allows him to speak English, then a Mini-Mecha, which he uses to replicate his helmet and create an army of superintelligent canines. It doesn't help that he's still pretty sore at Morty's family over being recently neutered.
  Snuffles: Where are my testicles, Summer? They were removed. Where have they gone?
  Summer: Oh... wow... that's an intense line of questioning, Snuffles.
  Snuffles: Do NOT call me that. "Snuffles" was my slave name. You shall now call me "Snowball", because my fur is pretty, and white.
• Verbal Tic: Scary Terry's usage of the word "bitch", even when the duo surprises him by providing him with a pair of pants in his dream.
  "Awwww, bitch!"
• Volumetric Mouth: Morty twice — once when falling out of the plane in Mr. Goldenfold's dream, and again when consuming the kidney pills in Snuffles's dream.
• Wall Crawl: Scary Terry crawls on the ceiling when chasing the heroes in the cellar.
• What Happened to the Mouse??: The subject of Rick's and Morty's adventures getting in the way of Morty's schooling was a central plot point in the previous episode, and is important again here since attempting to stop this from being an issue anymore is the catalyst for their adventure. But after this episode, it isn't brought up again.
• Writing Around Trademarks: Lampshaded. Rick notes that Scary Terry looks like a legally safe knockoff of an '80s horror character.
• Year Inside, Hour Outside: Time moves faster the deeper they go in Goldenfold's subconscious. Snuffle's All Just a Dream apocalyptic scenario at the end goes on for a year, despite everyone involved only being asleep for six hours, which Rick chalks up to the dream being measured in dog years:
  Rick: ...so if it's confusing, it's stupid, then so is everyone's favorite movie!
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Rick and Morty stick up for Scary Terry when the latter is being criticized for his inability to come up with puns in his nightmare, and provide him with a pair of pants.
• You Can Run, but You Can't Hide: Parodied. Scary Terry keeps saying this as he stalks Rick and Morty. The duo then discuss why they are listening to him, pointing out that since Scary Terry is the villain, he probably wouldn't offer them advice that would actually help them, so they decide to try and hide from him anyway. It turns out to be very effective. Scary Terry spends hours searching for them unsuccessfully before giving up and going home.
• Your Mind Makes It Real: Rick tells Morty that you die for real if you die in someone's dream.

---

"I can't believe how mean Snuffles got just because he's smart. This is why I choose to get C's."