Rick and Morty Season 1 Episode 2 “Lawnmower Dog”
In Rick and Morty Season 1 Episode 2 – Rick creates a device to make the Smiths family dog smarter. As disaster ensues, Rick and Morty go on a quest to get Morty an A in Maths by travelling through the dream of Mr Goldenfold, Morty’s Math Teacher. The adventure quickly turns into a dive into the dreams within a dream, referencing the popular film “Inception” and Scary Terry, the Rick and Morty version of Freddy Krueger.
You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
We start this episode in the living room of the Smiths. Jerry and summer sit watching TV when we are introduced to Snuffles, the Smith’s Family Dog. Snuffles stands and stares at Jerry, immediately irritating him. He asks snuffles if he wants to go outside and then proceeds to open the door for Snuffles to exit the house. Snuffles doesn’t move, so Jerry closes the door and sits back down, at which point, Snuffles cocks his leg and urinates on the lining room floor. Jerry yells out, and Morty enters to make sure everything is fine.
Jerry berates the dog calling him stupid, and Morty defends the dog and cuddles him affectionately. Then, while arguing with Morty, Jerry disciplines the dog by rubbing its face into the carpet and repeatedly shouting bad dog.
Rick enters and grabs Morty asking him to do help with a favour that evening. Their conversation is interrupted by Jerry asking Rick to whip up a science thing to make dogs smarter. Rick and Jerry argue about Rick living in the Smith family home rent-free, and Rick begrudgingly agrees to help after Jerry threatens to ground Morty if he doesn’t. Rick leaves the room and returns shortly after with a helmet-like device that he places onto Snuffles. Rick gives the dog a series of commands and snuffles complies, leaving Summer and Jerry in awe.
The Dream Hack
Rick and Morty Leave the Living room and make their way to the garage, where Rick reveals his device and plan. The device he reveals works by placing it into their ear so they can enter someone’s dream. They make reverence to the 2010 film Inception and how it is utterly confusing and makes no sense. Rick reveals the plan to enter the dreams of his Math teacher Mr Goldenfold so they can Incept the idea of giving Morty A’s in Math into his brain. He reveals that they are doing this so Morty can help him with his science all the time. Referencing the previous episode of Jerry and Beth giving him a hard time about Morty’s school work plummeting because of the number of adventures Morty is partaking with Rick.
The Inception of Goldenfold
Rick and Morty head over to the house of Mr Goldenfold, who is lying on the sofa eating ‘Wheat Thins’ and falls asleep while watching the show “The Days and Nights of Mrs Pancakes”. Rick and Morty enter the premises of Mr Goldenfold through the Window. Rick turns off the TV as Mrs Pancakes is saying what appears to be her catchphrase, “You don’t know me”, not wanting to see spoilers of the show stating that he is an entire season behind.
Rick places one of the inceptions devices into the ear of Mr Goldenfold, then Morty, who collapses instantly, then after making himself comfortable on a bean bag.
Pancakes on a Plane
Rick and Morty enter the dream, where Mrs Pancakes is serving wheat thins on a plane when she sits on Goldenfolds lap, and they start flirting with each other. Goldenfold refers to her catchphrase, “You don’t know me.”.
Rick Gets up on the plane and shouts, “Allah Akbar”, and further states that he will take control and “9-11” the plane unless Morty Doesn’t get better grades in Math. Mr Goldenfold fights back, surprised that Mr Goldenfold is an Active dreamer and has more power than Rick anticipated. Rick explains to Morty that they have to avoid dying in the dream because they will die in real life. Rick explains that they need to take out Mr Gooldenfold so they can wake up from the dream.
Slave Snuffles
We are taken back to the Smiths, where we see Jerry and Summer giving orders to Snuffles to complete, overlooked by Beth, who warns that something is going to go wrong by saying, “Oh yeah. This should play out just fine.” Jerry says that she said the same thing on their wedding day, looking smug, and Beth Leaves the room, displaying the friction of the couple’s relationship.
Snuffles then starts to howl at Summer and Jerry, who take it to mean that he is trying to communicate with them, such as phrases like ” I love lasagne.” and “I love Obama”. Shaking his head Snuffles leaves the room but first discovers that the helmet he is wearing is battery-powered and has only one battery inserted of the four available slots. So he heads for a drawer containing batteries.
A dream inside a dream
We are taken back to the dream, where Rick devises a plan to take Mr Goldenfold out so they can all wake up. He takes Mrs Pancakes hostage, causing Goldenfold to panic. As he is panicking, his dream starts to spiral. One of the passengers kicks the door open to the plane, causing everyone to get sucked out. Rick and Morty are falling through the air, spot Mrs Pancakes, who is wearing a parachute. They grab onto her and release the parachute while she announces her catchphrase once again. Morty looks down to spot Mr Goldenfold, who has built a robotic game to pluck Mrs Pancake from the air.
Realising their danger, Rick decides to knock Mrs Pancakes unconscious and enter her dream to give themselves more time, a detail also shared with inception.
They enter the dream of Mrs Pancake to find a seedy sex club-like setting known as the pleasure chamber, the hidden layer on Goldenfolds subconscious. Morty says he will explain to Mrs Pancake that she needs to convince Goldenfold not to kill them when they wake up. Rick stops him, stating that they need to make it seem like it’s their idea. Rick says that they need to blend. He strips and is taken away by sex gnomes. Morty makes his way through the pleasure chamber and then stumbles upon his sister in lingerie. Disgusted by the sight and propositions of his sister Morty starts to freak, alerting a centaur who sentences them to death for sexual hang-ups in the pleasure chamber.
Rick jumps the Centaur and chokes him until he is unconscious, and they enter the dream of the centaur.
A dream inside a dream within a dream
Here Rick and Morty are presented with a nightmare. They meet Scary Terry, the rip-off of Freddy Krueger from the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. Scary Terry has an affinity for the word “Bitch”.
The evolution of dog
We are taken back to the smiths family home to be presented with new modified Snuffles. Snufflers is now equipped with a Claw and a translator and can communicate with Summer and Jerry. Jerry attempts to take away the device but is stopped by Summer. Finally, Snuffles settles down in the living room and watches a documentary about man taking the vicious wolf and, through selective cross breading, creating “man’s subservient little buddy.” It is visible that this has angered Snuffles.
A dream inside a dream within the dream of a dream
Running from scary terry Rick and Morty make their way through what appears to be a maintenance tunnel. While they are running, you can hear a creepy little girls voice chanting the poem “A, B, his name is Scary Terry. C, D he’s very scary. E, F, he’ll design your death.”
While running through the tunnel, they find the little girl skipping and knock her unconscious to enter her dream to escape scary Terry.
A dream inside a dream within the dream of a dream of another dream
They enter the girl’s dream to find themselves in the same tunnel and the girl continues the poem, “J, K, he’ll really ruin your day.” Rick states that they have hit dream bedrock, and they are then faced with Scary Terry again, with Rick exclaiming that he can travel through dreams. They run as fast as they can away from Scary Terry.
The transformation to Snowball
Back at the Smith household, it is a dark and stormy night. Summer is asleep in bed when she is woken by the presence of snuffles at the bottom of her Bed. Snuffles is now more advanced than ever, wearing an android suit that towers over the size of a human.
Snuffles repeatedly asks summer where are his testicles. Stating that they were removed, but where have they gone? Snuffles then says that he is no longer called Snuffles as that was his Slave name and instead is called Snowball. Jerry and Beth enter the room where Snowball confronts Jerry about rubbing his face in Urine. Jerry and Beth tell Snowball that they had come to collect Summer for a family walk. When they try to leave the room, another dog wearing the same equipment blocks the doorway, and Snowball states, “You will walk when it is time to walk.”
You can run, but you can’t hide.
We cut back to Rick and Morty, who has now escaped from the tunnel and are now on Scary street. They enter a car only to find Scary Terry in the back seat. They flee, and Terry chases them, yelling You can run, but you can’t hide.
Rick points out that they should try hiding as that’s the opposite of what he is saying. So, they successfully hide from him and wait until he gets tired. Then, they follow him home to where his family is located.
The Scary Family
After the Scary family finishes their dinner, they go to bed, and Terry falls asleep, allowing Rick and Morty to enter his dream.
A dream inside a dream within the dream of a dream within a dream of another dream
They enter Scary Terry’s dream where he is at school being berated by his teacher for not knowing the theory of scaring and his classmates mock him for being pantless. Rick and Morty stick up for Scary Terry, and Morty gives him some new pants.
They exit the dream with a friendship with Scary Terry. Terry’s wife mentions that he hasn’t been as relaxed as this for a while and Terry asks if there is anything he can do to help.
They go back through all the dreams killing the individual dreamers they are in to get back to the original dream of Mr Goldenfold. Scary Terry transforms himself into a missile to kill Goldenfold but not before he mentions this is for not giving Morty good grades.
They all wake up with Goldnfold having the epiphany of giving Morty an A in Maths.
Rick and Morty Save Mankind
Rick and Morty return to the Smith household to find the new super race of dogs has started plans to take over the world.
Snowball requests Morty to be by his side as his pet as he treated him well as Snuffles. The Dogs launch “phase 2” of their plan for domination.
We see months pass with dogs truly taking over the world and then we cut to Morty in bed with two women. Rick steps in to explain they are within the dog’s dream and that Mort had defecated himself in real life.
Again Rick takes the opportunity to rip into Inception.
Rick gives Morty some pills that make his kidneys fail. Snowball realising that sharing the same world as the humans will lead to nothing but death and destruction, wakes and agrees for his new race to leave the planet and colonise a new one.
Review
This episode is great again as a character builder to the show. We start to see the relationships of the main characters develop, such as the tensions between Jerry and Beth.
They manage to cram so much information into 20 minutes of screen time with two separate storylines that interlink at the end it really is a work of art.
The secondary characters add a great level of depth and comedy to the storyline.
Excellent show and cannot beat the amount of effort that goes into creating an absolutely cram-packed episode like this one.
