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Recap / Rick And Morty S 4 E 4 Claw And Hoarder Special Ricktims Morty

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Original air date: 12/8/2019

Morty gets a dragon. Jerry finds a talking cat in his bedroom.


Tropes:

  • Action Prologue: The episode opens with a dangerous escape chase on an alien planet.
  • Aerith and Bob: The main dragon of the episode is named Balthromaw, but the other dragons whose names we hear are...Debrah and Michael. (though the subtitles on AdultSwim.com refer to the former as "Debranavox")
  • Alien Blood: When Chachi is shot dead, his blood is purple.
  • Ate His Gun: After being traumatized by the Talking Cat's brain scan, Rick almost kills himself this way, but thankfully does not go through with it.
  • Bamboo Technology: Rick's contraption to create Magitek.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    • Morty's desire to have a dragon, as he says at the end of the episode, was because he "just wanted to do some DnD stuff." What he got was a strange adventure that culminates in a soul-bonding orgy with 9 others, including his own grandfather and sister, and he was frankly disgusted at how sexual dragons really are.
    • Jerry and eventually Rick's curiosity about how the talking cat can talk in the first place get the better of them. When they literally see what goes on in the cat's head, it's horrifying to say the least. Rick decides to erase Jerry's mind of the discovery, but Rick himself chooses to take the burden and live with it.
  • Beware the Nice Ones: The Talking Cat, apparently. It's never anything less than pleasant, but when Rick and Jerry finally see what's in its mind and how it learned to talk, they're so utterly traumatised that they're immediately compelled to banish it.
    • At the very least, it seems to not have done anything truly horrible, as Rick would have likely killed it.
    • Leading Theories either go with the cat secretly being a mostly beniign eldritch being, or someone that fucks old people in intense BDSM
  • Big Sister Instinct: A mild, implied example, but Summer takes numerous verbal potshots at both Rick and Balthromaw for betraying her brother by having an "affair" with each other (via soul-bonding) when the latter is supposed to be bonded to Morty.
    Summer: (When questioned how they found Rick) We followed the smell of sulphur and skankery!
  • Blatant Lies: One of the party-goers steps in a partially buried piece of poop on the beach and demands to know who did it. The Talking Cat points to Jerry and says "he did it".
  • Blood Oath: The wizard pokes Morty's finger with his wand, making it bleed so Morty can sign the contract for ownership of Balthromaw. The drops form a cursive of his initials. Rick says he's not "co-bleeding" on it.
  • Bond Creatures: Balthromaw and the other dragons link their souls with other people. At first, he is bonded with Morty via Magical Contract, which forces him to obey Morty's orders, and later with Rick by becoming really close friends with him, which makes Rick feel any pain Balthromaw feels, and also makes him vulnerable to dying if Balthromaw does. Forming a bond with multiple people gives a dragon the label of "slut dragon" and forces them into exile. After this is revealed, the word "bond" becomes a substitute for sex.
  • Boom, Headshot!: Chachi at the very beginning, courtesy of one of the robots chasing him and Morty.
  • Brain Bleach: Balthromaw is still interested in soul-bonding with Rick and/or Morty after the adventure is complete. However, Rick takes the first excuse he can come up with to leave, and Morty refuses, as he is super grossed-out by the sexual nature of the soul-bonding with dragons—and also by the fact that he soul-bonded with his sister and grandpa along the way—and needs to process everything that happened.
  • Brick Joke: When Rick clashes with Balthromaw, he discovers that the dragon has spent a lifetime hoarding more than just gold; he has a treasure trove of rare media and merchandise, including an album made and signed by Future in "molly and percocet", a mixture of drugs. Later, when they hang out, the song "Mask Off" is heard with the focus lyrics "molly and percocet".
  • Call-Back: The memory-erasing gun from "Morty's Mind Blowers" reappears when Rick uses it on Jerry to make him forget...whatever it was that the Talking Cat showed them. In that episode, while one of the titular Mind Blowers did end with the gun being used on Morty, here we directly see the aftereffects of it as well.
  • Cluster F-Bomb: When the other slut dragons appear, the conversation quickly devolves into a lot of (censored) profanity.
  • Combined Energy Attack: The slut dragons and our heroes merge their powers to create a powerful dragon entity that brings down the wizard.
  • Commonality Connection: Balthromaw is somewhat ashamed about his soul-bonding addiction which led to Morty rejecting him. He later sees the talking cat in The Stinger, who is equally ashamed about his origin. They find some common ground in this.
  • Continuity Nod:
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Rick, Morty and Summer fight orcs at a lava pit while no one seems to be bothered by the heat.
  • Creator Cameo: Among Balthromaw's treasures is a Funko Pop! figure of Dan Harmon.
  • Deconstruction:
    • Of the Bond Creatures trope in fantasy literature: having a perpetual mental link to another being would eventually either feel uncomfortably intimate at best and like literal Mind Rape at worst.
    • Also of the "A Boy And His Dragon" fantasy trope. It's a great Wish-Fulfillment fantasy for humans since the person gets to go flying around on demand, but for the dragon it would be tedious and demeaning at best since they'd be expected to let a human ride on their back like a pony, but at worst it's no better than slavery.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Balthromaw warms up to Rick after the latter bests him in combat.
  • Department of Redundancy Department: To defeat the wizard, the slut dragons along with Rick, Morty, and Summer engage in a "soul orgy" to assume an all-powerful form. The name of the form is “The All Slut Slut Phoenix Dragon Slut”.
  • Didn't Think This Through:
    • When Morty won't shut up to Rick about wanting a dragon, Rick finally gets annoyed enough that he uses a knockout gas to make Morty pass out. However, since they are in the quite-small cockpit of Rick's spaceship, the gas knocks Rick out, too, leading to the spaceship crash-landing on Earth and Rick breaking a whole bunch of his bones.
    • The Talking Cat could have gone to stay with anyone in town/on Earth and just told them he can talk because he's from space, and they probably would've accepted this, especially since this iteration of Earth once had a whole bunch of aliens living there. Instead, he tries to stay with the one family with the means to find out the real reason he can talk. Furthermore, rather than just immediately offering the "I'm from space" explanation to Jerrynote , he makes a big deal out of dodging the question altogether and not wanting people to ask him about it. Thanks to Reverse Psychology, this just makes Jerry, and eventually Rick too, curious enough to learn the truth behind it, and once they do, they furiously send the Cat away.
    • The wizard tries to save himself from death by combined fire breath by freezing himself over but this just makes his burning to death slow and painful instead of painlessly instantaneous. He lampshades this throughout his death.
  • Dragon Hoard: Balthromaw has one with various vintage pop-culture collectibles (including a Hi-C Ecto Cooler), which makes Rick change his mind about dragons being lame.
  • Dragon Rider: Morty gets to be this as part of his soul contract with Balthromaw. Rick later gets to do so as well.
  • Driven to Suicide: Whatever Rick's brain scan of the Talking Cat shows him disturbs him so much that he almost blows his own head off, though luckily he doesn't go through with it.
  • Eye Scream: When Summer shoots an arrow into Balthromaw's eye, which also damages Rick's eye due to their Synchronization.
  • Feed It a Bomb: Rick tricks Balthromaw into swallowing an android doppelganger of himself made with a lot of C4.
  • Forced Orgasm: It turns out that dragons are all massive sluts, and their soul bond is a magical orgasm which can happen involuntarily. Rick accidentally soul-bonds with Morty's dragon, and when they go to the dragon homeworld to rescue it (long story), Rick, Morty, Summer, and the other polyamorous dragons all end up making a super dragon through a long orgasmic process.
  • The Friend Nobody Likes: Michael is one of the slut dragons hiding from the wizard, but the other slut dragons are put off by his obnoxious personality and the fact that he has intercourse with a woolly mammoth.
  • Fungus Humongous: The place where the slut dragons live features giant mushrooms.
  • Gag Penis: The slut dragon elder has a staff whose top looks like a horse dildo.
  • Get Out!: Rick and Jerry both shout this at the Talking Cat after the brain scan of it shows them something about its origins that deeply traumatizes them.
  • G-Rated Sex: Spoofed with soul-bonding; the only difference between it and sex (besides the specific word itself) is that soul-bonding involves energy arcing between participants as they glow and levitate in the air. Characters have no qualms using other sex acts to refer to soul-bonding, they just don't directly call it sex.
  • Hanging Around: Balthromaw gets hanged for soul-bonding with Rick, and because of that bond, Rick gets hanged as well. However, it takes 78 years to hang a dragon, so Rick treats his coughing and gagging like a minor, irritating inconvenience at worst.
    Rick: Aw, man, it's s-so annoying. You ever, like, try to swallow a really big vitamin with no water? (gag) You know, like—(grunt)—a really, like, big one, you know, a-and it kinda gets—(gag)—stuck in your throat? (grunt) I-It's annoying.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: A passive, non-lethal one. Rick was originally going to use his memory gun to remove both Jerry's and his own memories of whatever they saw in the Talking Cat's brain scan, but Jerry insists that he shouldn't forget about it because "someone needs to remember". Rick just replies with "Someone will", and only erases Jerry's memory of it and not his own, shouldering the burden himself of knowing about yet another super fucked-up aspect of The Multiverse while sparing Jerry from this pain.
  • Hilarity in Zoos: Rick and Balthromaw free the animals from their cages at the local zoo and blow weed smoke into their faces.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Rick is forced to save Balthromaw when Morty warns him anyone soul-bonded with a dragon when they die will die at the same time they do.
  • Hypocrite:
    • The cat constantly tells Jerry to stop asking questions and just have fun. The cat eventually starts asking too many questions, which annoy the partygoers.
    • Rick yells at Summer when she accidentally shoots an arrow into Balthromaw's eye (which he felt at the same time) while goofing off when Rick was encouraging her to make the shot as difficult and ridiculous as possible.
  • I Can Explain: Said word-for-word by Rick when Morty and Summer walk in on him and Balthromaw accidentally soul-bonding.
  • I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Normally, Rick doesn't give any shits about what Jerry's up to, but when Balthromaw is still interested in soul-bonding with them at the end of the episode, Rick quickly uses the texts from Jerry asking to be picked up from the airport as an excuse to leave.
  • Ironic Echo: When Jerry asks the Talking Cat why it can talk, it just dodges the question by asking Jerry in return, "Why ask questions, why not just have fun?" Later, after the Cat is thrown off the party yacht, returns to Jerry, and asks him if he has money for a cab, Jerry responds by shooting this same statement back at him, and the Cat admits, "I deserve that."
  • The Joy of First Flight: Morty is very ecstatic during his first flight on Balthromaw.
  • Lady Looks Like a Dude: One of the "slut dragons" calls Summer (who is currently dressed in a fantasy-world archer costume) a "man with a ponytail". Possibly a shoutout to Legolas from the LOTR movies.
  • Language of Magic: Morty defeats the Rock Monster by citing a spell from his Spell Book.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: Rick uses the memory-erasing gun to remove Jerry's short-term memory.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: As Rick, Morty, and Summer are being forcibly soul-bonded with the "slut dragons" in a soul-bonding orgy, Rick says to the kids, "Maybe don't tell your parents we did this."
  • Lonely Together: There are shades of this in The Stinger when Balthromaw and the Talking Cat, after both have been rejected by various members of the Smith family, decide to bond with each other instead.
  • Made of Explodium: Rick's robot doppelganger of himself, due to being made with lots of C4.
  • Magically-Binding Contract: Subverted; at first it seems like Rick's Synchronization with Balthromaw is enforced by the wizard's contract, but the effects persist after Morty tears it in half because the binding is powered by the wizard.
  • Magitek: Rick rigs this up in the fantasy world once he finds that his usual science gear won't work. It seems to primarily work as a Transformation Ray, and he uses it to turn Summer into a "sexy arrow shooty lady".
  • Make-Out Point: Rick and Balthromaw hang out at a place overlooking the city. Accidental soul-bonding ensues.
  • Mondegreen Gag: Morty, frustrated that Balthromaw doesn't like him, calls Rick a "sad old fart" before running off; Rick then says to Summer, "How do you 'saddle a fart'?"
  • Never My Fault: Rick blames the whole misadventure on Morty for wanting a dragon and has it count for his one out of every ten adventures, but it was Rick's soul bonding with the dragon that was to blame. None of this would have happened if not for Rick's involvement.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Rick, Morty, and Summer are sneaking into the wizard's lair to free Balthromaw, but Summer misses her arrow shot because she's fooling around and showing off, and accidentally hits the dragon in the eye. Due to his Synchronization with Rick, this also damages Rick's eye and he begins loudly yelling in pain, getting them caught.
  • Noodle Incident:
    • Apparently, while on his mission for Rick, Morty was thrown in prison by the robots, and Chachi helped him escape, which is how they became friends.
    • The Talking Cat is obsessed with going to Florida. Even after going there with Jerry, he asks Balthomaw if he can take the cat back.
    • While the content of the Talking Cat's brain scan is left as The Unreveal, one thing that particularly horrifies Jerry after what he and Rick found out is that "[The Cat] was in my house, where I keep photos of my parents!"
  • Not Me This Time: Jerry once again blames Rick for something weird going on in their house—in this case, the talking cat in his bedroom. As Rick himself is busy with the dragon, he retorts:
    Rick: Jerry, why would I give Morty a talking dragon and you a talking cat at the same time? Those concepts bump. If you're talking to a cat, it's an abnormal event unrelated to me, like—urrp—when you went to Pluto or f***ed my daughter.
  • Oh, Crap!: The talking cat when Rick says he's giving him a mind scan.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Rick is genuinely horrified by what he sees on the Cat's mind scan, and acts much more sympathetic to Jerry than normal after the latter sees the same thing. He even outright told Jerry that he did not want to see what was in the mind scan, trying to warn him away from seeing it himself.
  • Our Dragons Are Different: They generally follow the modern tendency of having Wyvern builds (four limbs, wings serving as front legs similar to bats), having human-level intelligence and communication skills. Dragons appear to be peaceful in nature and have long been enslaved by a powerful wizard who sells them off to people as slaves. Dragons practice something called 'soul-bonding', which basically amounts to dragon sex, and as part of their enslavement they're soul-bonded to their masters; dragons are capable of soul-bonding with others by choice, but any who are found doing so are punished and imprisoned or executed for being 'sluts'.
  • Outside-Context Problem: The Talking Cat has absolutely nothing to do with the episode's main plot, nor anything to do with Rick in any way until the end of the episode.
  • Pet the Dog: Rick gets a few moments of it:
    • When Morty, after completing a mission for Rick that involved his new friend Chachi getting killed, asks Rick when he's going to get "it" (referring to the dragon that he insists Rick promised him), Rick assumes "it" is a hug, and actually doesn't seem averse to the idea of giving him one; he just wants to find a way to wash Chachi's blood off of Morty first.
    • After Morty uses his tome of spells to save Rick from a golem, Rick actually says "Thank you, Morty." It's a backhanded thank-you since Rick immediately insults him afterwards ("Figures you'd be higher status in Lameworld"), but the thank-you itself is genuine, and it might be the first time Rick has ever outright said "Thank you" to Morty onscreen.
    • Though Rick is, as usual, dismissive and rude to Jerry at first about the Talking Cat, he is much nicer to Jerry than usual by the end of the episode:
      • He tries to keep Jerry from looking at the deeply disturbing brain scan of the Cat, and when that fails, furiously shoos the Cat away when he sees the effect that the scan had on Jerry.
      • Jerry refuses Rick's offer of erasing the memory of the horrible things they saw because he insists that "someone should remember". Rick just says "Someone will" and erases it from Jerry's mind, sparing him the burden of having to remember it while shouldering it himself.
  • Pun: The john in The Stinger pulls one regarding "draggin'" and "dragon".
  • Purple Is Powerful: The ultimate cube in the prologue glows purple.
  • Rapid-Fire "No!": Jerry lets out a whole bunch in rapid succession after seeing Rick's brain scan of the Talking Cat.
  • Robot Me: Rick has a very lifelike robotic duplicate of himself that's made with lots of C4.
  • Rock Monster: The wizard summons one to demonstrate "true power" to Rick.
  • Rousing Speech: Morty and Summer together give one to the slut dragons to convince them to help kill the wizard, with Morty stating that trying to control Balthromaw was wrong because nobody should control anybody (which is what the wizard is doing), and Summer adds onto it by pointing out that, if they kill the wizard, they could have an entire world where they can be "sluts" rather than just their current underground cave.
  • Screams Like a Little Girl: After viewing the Talking Cat's brain scan, Jerry's voice goes up octaves we never knew he could reach.
  • Serious Business: Dragons are tied to the humans or masters they are contracted to. Any dragon who is caught being with another person is deemed a "slut", as far as the wizard is concerned, especially if soul-bounding is involved.
  • Sex Magic: The soul-bonding process is described as being like sex, with a dragon that soul-bonds with more than one person being a "slut-dragon."
  • Shipping Bed Death: Invoked and parodied in a show Rick and Summer are watching. Rick is really interested in seeing if the two main characters will hook up. After they do Rick loses all interest in the show.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Rick and Summer watch a show called "Ass", which Summer describes as being "like Bones, but they solve ass crimes". Even the main character's name is similar to that series' protagonist's, and Rick invokes the same Protagonist Title Fallacy that real-world people did with David Boreanaz in the early days of Bones. invoked
    • Among Balthromaw's treasure hoard are a copy of Action Comics #1 (The first appearance of Superman), and a lunchbox with a Duckman design.
    • One of the partygoers on the boat wears a hat which looks suspiciously similar to Ash Ketchum's Kanto/Johto hat.
    • The cat doesn't move his mouth when he talks, just like Garfield. However, people can still understand him.
  • Slavery Is a Special Kind of Evil: At first, Rick and the Smith family don't seem to realize that by buying Balthromaw, they've just purchased a slave so that Morty can do 'D&D stuff' with, though when Morty starts to realize this is the case, he tries to downplay it because of this trope. After they go to the dragon world, it becomes apparent dragons have been enslaved by the wizard, which makes the fact they need to kill him to sever Balthromaw and Rick's Synchronization issue morally clear.
  • Slut-Shaming: At first Played for Laughs when Summer and Morty treat Balthromaw soul-bonding with Rick as the former cheating on Morty since he's the one that Balthromaw was signed to. Then it's Played for Drama when they realize the wizard considers this Serious Business and starts whipping Balthromaw as punishment.
  • Special Guest: Matthew Broderick as the Talking Cat.
  • Spell Book: Morty gets one as part of the soul contract with a dragon. While Rick mocks it for seeming relatively useless next to the fantasy powers that he gives to himself and Summer, Morty does manage to do several useful things with it, including saving Rick from a golem.
  • Squick: In-Universe. Rick has this reaction after the elder slut dragon comes out of his cave because he was tired of masturbating while listening to everyone talking.
  • The Stinger: A man who wants to cheat on his wife propositions Balthromaw, but the dragon rejects him. Balthromaw and the Talking Cat then meet, after having both been rejected by Morty and Rick, respectively, and decide to bond with each other instead.
  • Stress Vomit: Jerry after watching the Cat's brain scan.
  • Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Following Morty's instructions, Rick reverse-engineers the enchantment on a stone golem to charge a backpack with magic and channel it through a nozzle for all-purpose transformation.
  • Synchronization: Rick soul-bonding with Balthromaw causes this, which they first notice when the latter gets whipped by the wizard; as a result, when the latter is first hangednote  and then shot in the eye, Rick feels the pain as well.
  • Take Our Word for It: Rick takes a brain scan of the Talking Cat to find out about its true origins. We never see the contents of this scan, but whatever it found out is so completely horrifying and traumatizing that even Rick is freaked out, sends the cat away, and almost eats his gun, while Jerry is left crying and curled into a Troubled Fetal Position before Rick removes his memory of it altogether.
  • Tempting Fate: If you are a talking cat who keeps saying to just have fun and not ask why you can talk, someone is going to start taking interest in why you can talk. As for the person who actually gets to find out why the cat can talk in the first place, Be Careful What You Wish For.
  • Too Much Information: Rick is not amused having to listen to Shadowjacker talking about masturbation.
  • Transformation Ray: Rick invents a Magitek-powered one that transforms Summer into an archer and the enemy orcs into whatever he wants.
  • Troubled Fetal Position: Jerry after seeing the Talking Cat's brain scan.
  • Two Lines, No Waiting: The main plot of Morty acquiring a dragon runs concurrently with a subplot about Jerry encountering a talking cat. The two stories have nothing to do with the other and only sort of overlap near the end and in The Stinger.
  • The Unreveal: Whatever the hell shows up in the brain scan of the Talking Cat, which leads to Jerry curled up in tears and Rick almost killing himself. The only clues we get are that Jerry expresses horror that the Cat was in the house where Jerry keeps photos of his parents and that it's implied to be how the Cat acquired the ability to speak.
  • Verbal Backspace: After Morty saves Rick from the rock golem in the fantasy world, Rick is all for just leaving the dimension and not saving Balthromaw, and says to Morty and Summer, "Bros before dragons." Then Morty points out that, thanks to their Synchronization, if Balthromaw dies, Rick will too, and Rick promptly amends his previous statement to "Bros rescue dragons."
  • We Hardly Knew Ye: All we learn of Chachi before his untimely death in the Action Prologue is that he helped Morty escape from prison.
  • Wizards from Outer Space: Much of the plot is centered around Fantasy tropes, involving dragons, wizards and Sex Magic.
  • You Do Not Want To Know: When Rick sees whatever his brain scanner found about the Talking Cat's origins, he is so disgusted and freaked out that he tries to dissuade Jerry from looking as well by telling him this. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.
    Jerry: I wanna see.
    Rick: No, you do not!
  • Your Magic's No Good Here: When the group chases the wizard and Balthromaw into the alternate Fantasy world, Rick's technology fails, as his "power" is useless there. He later reverse-engineers the magic into Magitek to compensate.

 
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Rick and Morty - Talking Cat

Rick and Jerry discover the horrible truth as to why the Talking Cat can talk. It does not sit well for them.

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