Film Theory: What is the Cat HIDING? (Rick and Morty Season 4)

So why don't you talk? Why should it matter? Maybe it's time you stopped asking questions and started eating lunch. What was that all about? Hello Internet. Welcome to Movie Theory, the show that, unlike Rick and Morty, doesn't take a break during Thanksgiving week. Luckily, with that week-long hiatus for Turkey Day behind us this week, we're finally brought another episode of Rick and Morty to devour—let's just say it's not one to watch with the kids. Definitely not one to watch with your parents either. You might want to take a long shower yourself after seeing this line.

I just want to be clean. I feel dirty after everything that happened. In my opinion, it was a strange episode full of wasted potential. No offense to the creators of Ricky Morty, but I have to be honest with you because I love you. I mean, they put Rick in a situation where his science is affected. useless It's like the first time we really see him helpless, but then, a commercial break, he's basically being unstoppable again. It would have been cool to explore it as a concept. If I'm honest, this was one of my least favorite episodes of all time or at least the plot of the episode was fortunately for me and the monetization of this video.

The episode actually gave us something a little more interesting and a lot safer to talk about. So let's talk about that mythical talking beast. I'm much more interested in these normal talking animals. I'm a talking cat, but who cares? Why isn't my point? The story of this episode focuses on the escapades of Jerry and his new talking cat friend, that is, the first

season

gave us talking dogs. But now, move over, snowball, we have a talking cat with the voice of my son. Matthew Brode

rick

doesn't know he's my son. but I love him because he's a theater nerd like me and us theater nerds need to stick together.

Even if one is not aware that the other exists. Sure, Matthew is a talking cat and no, we're not supposed to ask questions about that. Ironically, that's all we're going to do in today's episode about this new character in this episode. Anyway, Jerry, after finding his detailed feline friend but receiving zero answers about

what

's really going on, decides he's well enough to take a trip to Florida, at the cat's request, a wife came. Florida because they don't ask questions, they play volleyball, they have fun and have fun, right? Things get considerably less fun for Jerry when the cat decides to use the beach as a litter box and chooses to blame him. about his poopy human companion And buried it was like two little kicks and I love to hear like a landline.

It was he who also became a lot less fun for our talking cat Fred when he stopped following his own advice and broke Florida's number one rule by asking too many questions. It's like fight club for retirees. I'm asking too many questions, aren't I? how ironic After a long day together, Jerry and the cats' trip comes to an end when Rick joins Jerry and the two decide it's time to get some answers or specifically an answer. Why this cat? Oh, the cat is not willing to spill the soup. Then Rick pulls out the mental scanner on him.

My skin. He looks. You're overthinking it. The goal of a talking cat is to have fun and

what

he sees seemingly defies words. Let's see the truth What? Whatever they see in that cat's mental scan is enough to make Jerry lose his lunch and his breakfast probably during dinner yesterday. We can't see what they're seeing But one thing is clear: the cats have to go. Get out. They both seemed deeply disturbed by what they see, but luckily Rick has a solution for that. Remember the

season

3 episode, Morty's Mind-blowing that he showed us. how Rick has a way of erasing memories that are too traumatizing.

It is disturbing to deal with them well. Rick remembers that Jerry isn't sure he wants to take the easy way out. No, I don't think we should forget it, but. This Someone has to remember, someone will and with that Rick erases Jerry's memory but not his own and the two return home, but what a strange plot, right? I mean out of nowhere. There's just this random talking cat and then a trip to Florida and then when we see secondhand reactions from people who actually find out the truth of what's really going on here? It's like the most horrible thing possible, so terrifying that it even shakes the unflappable Rick Sanchez, who has literally seen it all.

So, of course, on this channel we will ask the question. What did they see? What were they looking at? What's really going on with that? Damn cat? Look, you're thinking too much that the whole point of a talking cat is to have fun with the answer. Well, let's look at the evidence. It might be tempting to assume that the cat was responsible for some sort of unspeakably horrible act. Something is so miserable and evil that Rick and Jerry couldn't help but be repulsed by how evil it was. But it seems unlikely that's the case, after all, Rick and Jerry's reaction is to tell the cat to go away.

Rick has no ethical qualms about killing people who deserve it and sometimes even those who don't deserve it. So if the cat was really responsible of some kind. of a horribly evil act It seems pretty safe to say that he would have simply killed it on the spot or at least made some attempt to contain it, poor cat, it would have defiled it. After all, he has a prison in the secret laboratory under the garage. as we saw in the season 2 episode where it was Keeping Blin blam. The Chained Baby-Eating Killer I'm a Baby-Eating Killer and I Came to This Planet to Eat Babies Rick and Jerry's willingness to let the cat go indicates that he simply witnessed some kind of evil act or perhaps he was simply perpetrated by an act.

Well, it wasn't bad per se, it was so horrible and disgusting that it offended his human sensibilities. This cat might not be a threat to his physical safety, but seeing him around would be a constant reminder of the terrors that almost drove them over the edge. of madness So the kitten has to go, so what could have upset them so much? The key word here is disgust because it is one of the most intense emotional responses humans can have to having been given a stimulus if you dig into the psychology and evolutionary background. of disgust, there is actually a very good reason that this disgust is intended to serve as a violent physical rejection when your body senses something that could be a potential contagion.

It's what psychology professor David Pizarro of Cornell University describes as a quote built into the poison detective. You can even see it in babies: you put a few drops of a bitter substance on their tongue and their tongue immediately darts out of their mouths as their body reflexively tries to reject the bitter substance you're trying to feed them when we eat expired food. Our body wants to vomit to remove potentially spoiled or contaminated food from our system and simply smelling, touching or seeing something we dislike can trigger the same physical response Just like we see happening to Jerry Some things David Pizarro noticed things that universally trigger disgust in humans our poop vomit blood Rotten or decaying meat and what do all those things have in common?

Well, they are all common ways diseases spread. So it makes sense that it would be evolutionarily advantageous for our bodies to violently reject or be disgusted by those things. However, David Pizarro points out that the list of universal provocation errors we have discussed includes not only those substances, but also many sexual acts, which again makes sense considering that this is just another way many diseases spread and would also explain Partly why so many cultures around the world have taboos around dirty deeds. table as a possible explanation for why Rick and Jerry had a violent reaction to what they saw in the cat's mind, some kind of ridiculously deviant sexual act that might be the kind of thing that would make them have this intense feeling of repulsion.

Well, also, clearly being well enough to not be worth an immediate death sentence at the hands of the Reds. He said that this was an episode where a dragon's soul unites with his grandfather and his two grandchildren. So it definitely stands with the episode and it would have to be pretty strange to offend a b

rick

. But again, this cat totally came down to a single bond. with that same dragon in the post-credits scene. So it's very clear that there is a lot on the table for this little tabby. This is not the first time in the series that Jerry has an intense dislike for reacting to certain bedroom activities.

Although he had a negative reaction. Not as strongly in the season 1 episode Anatomy. Park Jerry's parents come to visit the family for the holidays and neither does Jerry. Happy to know that they brought his mother's new friend, Jacob. I watched them sometimes from a chair, sometimes from a closet Almost always dressed as Superman even though Jerry's parents seemed very happy and content with the arrangement. Jerry doesn't like it one bit. This might seem like a bit of a random thing to mention here, but Jerry's parents may actually be important in unraveling the mystery of what this cat is doing after the traumatic flashback of watching Jerry Says This Wasn't My House.

I was not in my house where my wife and children are, but in my house where I keep photos of my parents, which seems to indicate something that involves parents or older adults. Something that would embarrass him. That his parents knew. Could that relate to the time he and the cats spent together? Other Florida online theorists have also pointed out the fact that the last time we saw cats interacting with old people on Rick and Morty was on Interdimensional Cable, it was the dead cat lady parody from the weekend at Bernie's that had a group of cats manipulating a long dead man. women.

Mrs. Sullivan, forgive me for being forward, but her eyes are so beautiful. Certainly disgusting. It's also worth noting that it was directed and written by Gerry from another universe written and directed by Jerry Smith. So it's possible that that universe Jerry was consciously inspired by, or the remains of a long-erased memory, on a certain trip to Florida with a particularly energetic and excitable Cat character, but you know what? Maybe we're barking up the wrong tree, bitch, whatever the cat equivalent of that is. Let's scratch the wrong post. Anyway, there's something much more interesting going on here and that's the whole meta-nature of what this cat is trying to tell us as the audience.

The cat's backstory isn't what matters here and that's the point the writers are trying to tell us what the cat is doing in this episode, appealing to us and by we don't mean the general Rick and Morty audience, I I mean us, the theorists watching in the audience here. I'm standing in front of the camera right now doing an entire episode dedicated to wow! There was a cat that could talk on this show. It has a kind of secret and confusing history. What could it be when, in fact, the cat already told us that maybe it would be better to accept the fact that there was a talking cat in one episode rather than ruin the fun with the whole thing? these questions in our constant search for answers.

Maybe it's time. You stopped asking questions and started having fun. I mean, it's just a cartoon, bro, you shouldn't overanalyze every detail, even though that's the concept of these channels as they exist on YouTube. Tell me I feel personally attacked by this episode. Fortunately. I'm in good company, although I don't have to be the one to yell at this cat for condescendingly lecturing me about how I should or shouldn't enjoy something because Rick Sanchez is here to do it for me, finally implying that I can't ask questions and have condescending fun you see. The Cat sets up this dichotomy of people who ask questions about why things are the way they are and people who just like to have fun and enjoy things without asking questions, but as Rick points out, this is a false dichotomy.

It is possible to ask questions. Have fun and enjoy things. That's why I exist here on YouTube. It's just fun to see these kinds of little mini mysteries. So who is the cat here saying that we shouldn't ask too many questions and just relax and have fun or sort? Who insists on finding the answers to those questions? Well, let's start by separating the cat's perspective. The plot of this episode reveals that not even the cat himself fully subscribes to her "take it easy" philosophy. He claims that he doesn't like people asking him why he can talk and wants to travel to the mythical land of Florida, where they never ask questions, but once he finally gets his wish, Florida enjoys it only for a short period of time before You finally start to get a little anxious.

It's great that they don't ask me why I can talk. I'm a talking cat, but who cares? Why isn't my point? Well it was a pleasure talking to you for no reasonin the next scene. The cat himself is the one who starts asking questions that ruin everyone else's fun and gets kicked out of Florida for it. I'm asking too many questions, aren't I? how ironic The cat doesn't want people to ask questions yet at the end He recognizes that asking questions is a natural response to being confronted with incomplete information That we, as humans or talking cats, naturally crave an answer if we go with this meta Interpretation and assumption that the cat's message here is the show's way of telling fans not to think too much about the show they're watching.

Well, it's all a bit reminiscent of a comment from the creators of Westworld in 2017. After that first season, it aired. which recognized this type of tension between fans who question the answers and the creators themselves. To quote Jonathan Nolan, one of the creators of that program, who happens to be Christopher Nolan's brother. It's sometimes annoying when people guess the twists and then blog about it. But commitment is rewarding on one level because if someone guesses your spin it means you've done it. With a proper job of structuring the series, you can't complain when people are so committed.

It's very rewarding But please stop doing it and that's the reason I stopped watching Westworld with such pity. I hate that quote. It makes me very sad to see that, on the one hand, stop doing it. Please sounds like the plea the cat makes in this episode. He stops asking so many questions and just enjoys the show, but even as he says this, Jonathan acknowledges it. that it's nice to have people talking about your show online and it's rewarding to see that kind of conversation. It happens to be the dichotomy of cats. So does that mean Rick and by proxy?

After all, the theorists are right, well, not exactly. Or they are just like the cat wanted a world without questions and he was not happy when Florida gave him exactly what he wanted. Rick wanted answers to the question of how the cat could talk. and he wasn't happy either when he got what he wanted for you. Looking at how we consume media. Sometimes we as fans ask, the shows give us answers to our questions. And we end up ultimately dissatisfied with the answers we get after Star Wars. the force awakens. We spent two years speculating about who Ray's parents could be and then were disappointed when The Last Jedi finally gave us the answer that they were nobody.

In fact, we did an entire episode on this channel at the time about how constant theorizing about Star Wars led fans to create expectations about this movie that no one could have met, setting us up for inevitable disappointment. That being said, we might have been less disappointed if we knew they had actually stuck to checking out this whole gun and everything. which is also part of that whole episode saying it wasn't all our fault. Now the last Jedi may have been disappointing for other reasons and he posed the question about Rey's parents as the kind of thing that would be answered before the finale. of the series so they could leave us in the dark forever plot Not all origin stories need to be explicitly explained to us Especially if they aren't a huge plot point like the Star Wars sequels tried to make, e.g.

Star Wars Prequels Was anyone really dying to know what Anakin was like when he was nine? Would anyone watching have been disappointed if he had simply left that question? Sir, and I just started the prequel trilogy with Anakin when he was a teenager, like we did with Luke in the original trilogy. It's the same with a solo Star Wars story. No one really cared about Hannes's early days. He was just a cool character. We didn't need to explain too much. Some questions are best left unanswered. Exactly because no answer would be satisfactory. This episode provides a perfect example.

As much as we would like to theorize about it. What the mind scanner saw in the cat's mind The fact that the episode didn't tell us exactly what the scanner saw made things a lot more interesting. It makes our imaginations spin in directions that are much more entertaining than a single answer could be. That classic horror movie problem, the monster you can't see, will always be scarier than the monster you can see because the limits of your imagination are beyond what a practical effects department could show you on screen, at the same time. Just like the traumatizing backstory that I Can't See, it will always end up being more interesting.

So between the cat and Ric, whose side are we supposed to be on here? I mean, this is another one of those places where the show presents us with two contradictory signs that implicitly ask us which one is right and neither of them are one hundred percent right, the answer of course lies somewhere in between, maybe the best. The solution is to ask questions and be happy that you don't always get all the answers or when you do get an answer not be dissatisfied because you asked for it. So, mentally there are some things that require more than superficial analysis to actually fully enjoy.

One of the things we love about Rick and Morty is that it's one of those shows where we're rewarded for picking out all the little details. However, it's easy to make the mistake of assuming that because I have questions, the program owes me answers. Yes, certain things shouldn't be left open. No one likes a big plot hole, but certain things invite speculation and that's intentional. Answering our questions directly would kill all the fun. We can trust that they will eventually solve some of the show's biggest mysteries. like what's happening with the evil Morty and everything that's happening at the Citadel.

Except we're not going to find out exactly what Rick and Jerry saw in that mind scan, I don't think this cat is coming back. Don't think that's a question that will ever be resolved, which means that from now until the end of time we have to be content with it. Just being a

theory

, a cinematic

theory

and it cuts you off