‘Rick and Morty’ Season Eight Finally Unleashes A Proper B-Plot

For the first time in Rick and Morty Season Eight, every single member of the Sanchez-Smith family got to go on an adventure in the same episode. Well, everyone except Naruto, thankfully.

While Rick and Morty Season Eight has, thus far, been a success with both critics and the majority of the fanbase, the most recurring complaint that the show’s notoriously passionate online fandom has parroted in every post-episode discussion thread has been about the show’s shift from featuring multiple simultaneous adventures in a single episode to mono-plot storylines that fail to showcase the full cast. However, in last night’s new episode, “The CuRicksous Case of Bethjamin Button,” Rick and Morty fans finally got a distinct and separate A and B plot as The Beths went on their pre-pubescent rampage while the rest of the family explored the horrifying wonders of Earthworld.

Hell, we even got a Gene sighting this week — although I’m sure the Smiths’ kind-hearted neighbor would have rather not had a hand in The Beths’ business.

“The CuRicksous Case of Bethjamin Button” began with Space Beth and Earth Beth running through their respective routines and then returning to the Smith house exhausted and unamused by Rick’s latest family excursion, a trip to a theme park about Earth made by a mad scientist (played by Danny DeVito) who had never been. From the cold open, the storylines diverge with the Beths rediscovering their childhood sadism as their family witnesses Earthworld on its final horrific day.

The latest Rick and Morty episode marked the first time in Season Eigth that an installment has featured two completely distinct sci-fi adventures, as well as the first episode in which the entire family got to play an active role in a plot line. In the Rick and Morty subreddit, fans celebrated the return to the formula from the first few seasons, with one top commenter remarking of the newest episode, “Now THAT was a classic Rick and Morty adventure.”

“This was a great episode. I’ve been saying for a while that we need more episodes that feature B plots,” another user wrote. “B plots really help balance the episodes I think. I thought the Earth World stuff was fine, but the Beth stuff was really great. Many laugh out loud moments there, and the emotional core of it with Rick towards the end was really solid.”

So far in Rick and Morty Season Eight, the most well-received episodes have been the ones in which numerous characters from the main cast have gotten involved. For instance, the season premiere, “The Summer of All Fears,” also featured a slightly diverging storyline as Summer got to explore her relationship with her own maturity while Morty unleashed his PTSD on the world with a Killdozer-esque rampage.

In the early seasons of Rick and Morty, nearly every episode had multiple plot lines that helped to flesh out the world of the show and ground the characters’ actions and relationships in emotional truths, and as Season Eight shapes up to be the season where Rick learns the importance of family, re-learning the recipe to a classic Rick and Morty adventure might be the secret to making this year as memorable as those early ones.

Well, that, and continuing to steer clear of any more incest storylines.