Throughout the entire run of Rick and Morty, I've counted myself amongst the few who openly defend my distaste for the character Jerry Smith (Chris Parnell). Yes, I'm aware that he's the "best" character on the show and that he's also the most stable human being amongst the entire Smith family (at least until Season 3 Morty came out of the woodwork), but he's also, beneath that veneer of just a guy wanting what's best for his family, one of the most pathetic creatures to exist in modern television, often displaying the characteristics more akin to a parasitic leech than anything resembling a loving family man. And, with the newest R&M episode "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy", it seems that creators Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland, after spending the entire third season so far pretty much ignoring him, are finally ready tackle Jerry just to call him on his shit.
Mind you, it wasn't hard to actually see this finally coming from a few episodes away. R&M, despite being one of the best shows on television, needs its primary conflict between Rick's (Roiland) clinical, nihilistic view of the universe and Jerry's idiotic lack of relevance to succeed and the Season 3 has ignored this trope almost completely. But, in doing so, it created a chance to show us what Summer (Spencer Grammer), Beth (Sarah Chalke) and Morty (also Roiland) can finally accomplish without the pathetic anchor that is Jerry hanging around their necks. Summer has become more assertive in her life while also being prone to the usual teenage behavior (huffing in class, marrying into a post-apocalyptic marauder clan), Morty has finally matured to the point where he's both willing to call Rick on his own shit and also able to back it up with past experience expertise (like disarming bombs) and even Beth has managed to finally become something resembling a mother to her own children (she seems to care about her children rather than considering them burdens of a toxic marriage). Hell, outside of a few slight thematic problems (Beth still hasn't had much to do with her newly-divorced time to ensure she won't let Jerry weasel back into her life) this season has proven that the writers know how to find nurture throughout the chaos that is its own universe.
Then of course, there's the fact that Jerry still needs to be there because the universe needs its punching bag. This is where "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy" comes in. In this episode, Rick decides to take Jerry out for an "adventure" to get Morty off his back about fears that his dad might become suicidal considering the train wreck that his life has become (in actuality, Morty conned Rick into it to get rid of him for a day). Unfortunately, being established by already well-known canon, Jerry is a guaranteed casualty in anything but the most mundane situation possible. The solution: take him to a place where death is impossible and thereby sparing the easiest target in the universe its own magic bullet. What follows is a textbook example as to how Jerry ruins everything (even temporary immortality).
Let's just skip past the basics here and get to my favorite part of the episode (other than Morty calling out Beth for lacking priorities): Jerry, beaten and once again defeated by pretty much everything in his life, finally cracks and angrily accuses Rick of not only stealing his family but ruining his long believed perfect life with Beth. Rick, in response, points out that Jerry is little more than a parasite who relies on the sympathy of others for his own survival and that, while he may try to blind himself from reality through his own self-centered personality, no one in his family nor anywhere else actually considers him anything more than a pest.
This statement is the exclamation point on Jerry's very personality throughout the series. He was married to a woman far out of his league because he managed to knock her up after a pity prom, he leeched off of her for years by belittling her downgraded profession (horse surgeon instead of human surgeon) and likely would have done so for years more had Rick not reenter his daughter's life and given her the confidence (via his own, much worse manipulations) to finally realize just how insignificant Jerry really was to her. Yes, this gave Beth severe daddy issues that she hasn't, and likely won't ever, be able to successfully resolve, but, in the words of most break-ups, at least she managed to lose a few hundred pounds of useless fat in the process.
This is not to say Beth was much better than Jerry on the marriage front. Much like Jerry latching onto her for the comfort of a home and the need to be pitied, Beth used Jerry to boost her own fragile ego when it came to terms of professional success (no matter how bad it might get for her, she at least wasn't Jerry) and their toxic marriage was definitely a co-dependent union made up of equal parts spite (their children seemed to exist just for further manipulation) and competition (their entire relationship was built on who blinked first).
My hopes for the rest of this season (and, hopefully beyond) is that the divorce actually remains a permanent fixture. Yes, the series tends to suffer without Jerry's constant screw-ups proving that Rick was right all along, but such an absence makes episodes like "The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy" so beautiful by comparison. Hey, you can't just show your best card for the entire series.
