Movies - TV
Rick And Morty Season 7 Borrows A Plot From One Of Sci-Fi’s Darkest Stories
By MICHAEL BOYLE
In Season 7, Episode 4 of "Rick and Morty," titled "That's Amorte," the Smith family eats spaghetti made with mysterious ingredients. Morty quickly discovers it is made of people.
Morty learns there is a faraway planet full of humanoid people, some of whom kill themselves to release a chemical in their bodies that turns their insides into spaghetti.
This sets off a horrific chain of experiments where Rick and Morty try to make the spaghetti's production more morally defensible. Eventually, they try making clones to use.
So begins a quick "Never Let Me Go" parody, a 2005 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro. It tells the story of Kathy, who grows up in a boarding school that's really an organ-harvesting farm.
All the kids in the class are essentially clones. The people they are clones of get to live happy lives, while the kids are only being raised to have their organs harvested.
The story also has some romance. Kathy spends most of the book being in love with her friend Tommy, who's been kept away from her by their mutual friend, Ruth.
In the end, Kathy and Tommy end up in love, which they've been told means they could be pardoned from their duties to live normal lives. However, they learn this isn't true.
In the "Rick and Morty" episode, Rick finds a terminally ill man who's willing to die. Before he does, Rick forces everyone to witness the man's life as it flashes before his eyes.
After a touching montage, everyone vomits with disgust. They fully lost their appetites after being forced to see the full humanity of the person that they were eating.
It's not as touching as the romance in "Never Let Me Go," but the effect is similar. It forces everyone who was waiting to eat to properly reckon with what it means to eat someone.