Best Episodes of Rick And Morty (#11)

#11
'Lawnmower Dog'
Season 1, Episode 2

Jerry is sick of their dog Snuffles being so dumb, so Rick gives the dog a helmet to increase his brain power, which ultimately backfires when the dog becomes too smart and builds robot bodies for he and his canine brethren with plans for world domination. Meanwhile, Rick takes Morty to his teacher's house with a device meant for going into his dreams to "incept" him into giving Morty better grades in math. This also gets out of hand as they're forced to keep going deeper and deeper inside the dreams to avoid being killed.

When making this list, I very nearly put this one into the top ten, but as you can tell, it got slightly edged out. Though most people would argue that season 2 was better, I think the first season was more funny and sometimes that's all I want out of this show. This episode manages to be hilarious and also suitably mind-bending, blending pop culture references from (among others) Inception, Lawnmower Man, and A Nightmare On Elm Street with the sarcastic and satiric tone we would come to expect from the show. Being only the second episode, it's really quite remarkable how quickly they jumped into such high-concept ideas with the confidence to slap Christopher Nolan in the face by making a version of Inception that is even more ludicrous but also somehow more logical. Now that's awesome. The legally safe knock-off of Freddy Krueger named "Scary Terry" is still one of my favorite one-off characters in the show. This is one of the funnier episodes, filled with get lines and moments that helped set the standard for the rest of the show.

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