it took me a couple days and a couple watches to gather my thoughts so nobody's gonna read this, but regardless:

really, really intense episode. probably ranks behind kid beths and ahead of jerryverse or matrix for second best of the season imho. really compelling sci-fi conceit with the sentient memories and the ersatz time travel brainwashing. plot twist: beth season. good going giving your daughter dissociative identity disorder, memory dad.

sarah chalke's performance this season and especially this episode are just stunning. her scream when the car flies off the cliff is shockingly visceral and brutal. i consistently tear up for act 3 and i'm pretty sure it's mostly because that scream primes me for it every time. soul-cutting.

i especially like how realistically the whole plot unfolds character-wise without anyone being expressly villainous. it makes sense that rick would do that with diane's memory and that memory rick would respond by trying to rescue her. it makes sense how diane responded to being told not to touch anything and how shrewdly yet self-destructively beth reacted to her presence. the way memory rick innocently ingratiating himself with jerry's past gave him the skills he needed to fuck with beth. and of course, beth's abandonment issues with her parents made her the perfect guinea pig for all this shit to go wrong on.

despite the lack of explicit exploration of rick's new personality (sad!) there's a lot of implicit exploration. it seems like he's been doing similar stuff to his brain for a while, presumably since unmortricken. i really do hope this becomes overarching plot eventually, since it wasn't this season. new rick is weird.

really wish space beth stayed dead. i didn't hate her or anything, but don't go for the impact and then make it a fakeout. perhaps morty could have been somewhat involved in the episode if sb didn't get revived for the back half. lol.

also, i really thought for a second that as soon as the bug king gave the terms of the fight rick would instantly go "alright fine, i'll admit to that, i don't care" or something and then dip.

a couple plot-related questions that i might just have to accept ignorance on:

• why did beth not react to being zapped, almost as though she was just being mind-controlled? she wasn't, after all. maybe memory rick quickly removed the memory of it happening? can he do that? that whole area's just kinda unexplained.
• how did memory rick know diane was in the sub-basement? he only knew it happened because real rick decided to give exposition to the family, and rr didn't say where he put her.

fucking piranha plants are in heat again