Of all the recurring main characters of the cast of the widely beloved and successful Adult Swim seriesRick & Morty, Jerry Smith is easily the most forgotten and looked down upon character. Voiced byChris Parnell, Jerry plays the dad role in the Smith family, and is often the butt of many jokes due to his ineptitude and frequent culture shock at the wild inventions and adventures that Rick, Morty, and the rest of the family get up to. Despite his stature as the predesignated punching bag in the family,Jerry surprisingly has a fair number of episodes that give him his own time in the spotlight.
Whether it be episodes that double down on his aspects as the quintessential laughingstock of the family, or one that goes against the grain and shows his unexpected capabilities as a family man, the show has a lot of great moments and episodes for Jerry as a character. While a number of his biggest episodes are simply the B-plots to larger, more iconic central plots, they don’t take away from the impact and legacy that these Jerry-centric stories have left on fans over the years.
Rick and Morty
The fractured domestic lives of a nihilistic mad scientist and his anxious grandson are further complicated by their inter-dimensional misadventures.
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10’Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate'
Season 2, Episode 8
While the main premise of ‘Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate’ follows the classic collection of shorts that made the first one a hit, the B-plot follows Jerry on a wild journey of pride and ego. After a dangerous accident ends up landing Jerry in a galactic hospital in space, the doctors realize that Jerry could donate his sexual organs to act as a transplant for the heart of a universally renowned civil rights leader. Jerry is forced to deal with the complications and ramifications of attempting to deny giving up his sexual organs without seeming like a bad person for letting this civil leader die.
While the episode as a whole was never going to live up to the ingenuity and lightning-in-a-bottle energy of the original ‘Interdimensional Cable’, Jerry’s B-plot is easily the highlight of the episode. It plays into the classic staple of Jerry being the sort of squirmy, cowardly force,yet brings it up to a massive galactic scale in terms of stakes and execution. It only serves to get more hilarious after Jerry completely fumbles the opportunity to be a positive life-saving force for the galaxy, and then decides to go in guns blazing, demanding that they perform the transplant anyway.
9’The ABC’s of Beth'
Season 3, Episode 9
Playing into the overarching story and themes of season 3 as a whole, “The ABC’s of Beth” sees its side story following one of Jerry’s primary escapades following his and Beth’s divorce at the beginning of the season. In a strange and unexpected rebound for Jerry, he has found himself in a relationship with Kiara, an alien huntress with telekinetic abilities. However, when Jerry attempts to break up with Kiara, he uses Morty and Summer as a scapegoat, blaming them and saying they are forcing them to split apart, sending her on an enraged quest for revenge.
The episode does a great job of tackling the mindset and fractured psyche of Jerry during this difficult time in his life post-divorce, with unintuitive rebounds and an unwillingness to admit to his failures. His self-destructive failures in this episode lead directly into his mindset in the season finale, where he reevaluates his situation with Beth and they manage to come together as a result. This effective layering and theming around the overarching points of the season has helped this be considered one of the best episodes of the season.
8’Childrick of Mort'
Season 4, Episode 9
One of many episodes thatsees a comical increased scale of Jerry’s everyday life experiences and values being brought to the largest galactic scale imaginable, ‘Childrick of Mort’ follows his fatherly instincts of wanting to go camping. However, when the family ends up spending their time on a sentient planet, it quickly becomes apparent that none of the family is interested in Jerry’s old methods of camping compared to the technology and advanced city built by Rick and Beth. Jerry soon ends up making his own civilization out of the “unproductives” of Gaia, with him as the king, as they plan an uprising against Rick and Beth’s city.
‘Childrick of Mort’ goes to the massive comedic lengths of just how far Jerry will go to drive home his points and perspectives, even if they come from a flawed, non-scientific viewpoint in the world ofRick & Morty. His relationship and building of the society of mindless underlings that follow his commands come off as equally hilarious and sad, especially when Jerry makes specific efforts to hinder their advancement in the name of camping spirit. While he eventually comes around and realizes the chaotic error of his ways, it’s hilarious to see his spite take the form of him becoming a vicious tribal leader.
7’M. Night Shaym-Aliens!'
Season 1, Episode 4
One of the first episodes of the series that truly made an effort to focus on Jerry for its side plot, “M. Night Shaym-Aliens!” sees Rick, Morty, and Jerry all stuck inside a simulation of their normal life, with Rick and Morty doing all they can to escape. However, in Jerry’s section of the simulation, the computer requires much less power to convince Jerry that he’s living his normal life. This leads to his simulated world being hilariously awkward and filled with glitches, with Jerry being none the wiser and feeling like he’s living the best day of his life.
This highly underrated episodeacts as one of the first true, great extended displays of just how comically unaware and stupid Jerry is compared to the rest of the recurring cast. The hilarity of the many glitches and repeated dialogue in Jerry’s simulation is only further made comedy by Jerry’s complete lack of self-awareness and inability to realize just how wrong everything is.It provides a great look into Jerry’se simplistic life goals and sets him up as a comedic force for the rest of the series.
6’Amortycan Grickfitti'
Season 5, Episode 5
One of the few episodes that sees Jerry going on a strange, wild adventure with Rick, ‘Amortycan Grickfitti’ sees Rick taking Jerry along for a “guy’s night out”, with the duo hanging out with a bunch ofHellraiser-esque demons. While hesitant at first, Jerry soon finds himself as the life of the party and hitting it off with the demons, not realizing that they are feeding off of the misery of being around him. When he ends up discovering the ruse, Jerry’s tirade and anger end up annoying the demons, with them going on a rampage and taking Jerry with them back to Hell.
The concept of a group of masochistic demons finding simply hanging out and talking to Jerry as one of the greatest and most painful experiences imaginable is a hilariously over-the-top extension of Jerry’s role in the series. It only adds to the comedic hijinks when Beth comes in to put a stop to Rick’s plot, only to end up joining in on the fun of dunking on Jerry and having fun with the demons by telling embarrassing stories about Jerry. The climactic finale where the trio escape hell wraps the entire experience into a nice bow, creating a hilarious reflection on the family’s love of Jerry, despite his flaws, in the process.
5’Big Trouble in Little Sanchez'
Season 2, Episode 7
While this episode is largely remembered for its primary plot of Rick using his “Tiny Rick” body and going to school with Morty and Summer,the b-plot with Jerry and Beth is one of the best in the entire series, and is just as compelling as other episodes' main plots. The episode sees the duo traveling to a galactic spa meant to mend their relationship issues by creating physical manifestations of how they see one another. However, when these manifestations end up being codependent with one another, the entire spa goes on red alert as they threaten to take over the entire universe.
Better than nearly any other episode of the series, “Big Trouble in Little Sanchez"cuts to the very core of Beth and Jerry’s relationship with one another, one that by all feasible metrics, shouldn’t work, but perseveres anyway. Seeing Jerry’s direct evolution throughout the episode from someone that Beth sees as sniveling and cowardly to someone who will stand up and do what’s right is heartwarming and commendable, as well as directly adding to both the comedy and stakes of the entire episode.
4’Final DeSmithation'
Season 6, Episode 5
One of the most controversial and chaotic episodes from the newer seasons of the show, “Final DeSmithation” sees Jerry at the center of a dangerous and terrifying conspiracy thanks to a fortune cookie he opened. While everyone else in the family received normal predictions in their fortune cookies, Jerry’s fortune strangely said that he will have sex with his mother. Increasingly scared about this possibility, Rick begins to investigate and prove Jerry’s fears wrong, in the process realizing that the fortunes are somehow real, with the duo traveling to the factory that makes them in search of answers.
A great deal of this episode’s biggest strengths come from the absurdity of its premise as well as the wild creativity that comes from this advent of fortune cookies always coming true, as well as being used for combat purposes. While the wild, adventuring Rick-centric part of the episode is a clear highlight, Jerry’s consistent fear and increasing dread as he grows closer and closer to this painful inevitability makes for one of the character’s funniest moments in the show.
3’Something Ricked This Way Comes'
Season 1, Episode 9
One of the few times when Jerry ends up in a wild, galactic adventure all because of his own actions and without anything caused by Rick, ‘Something Ricked This Way Comes’ has Jerry and Morty working together on a diorama of the solar system. However, when Jerry learns and gets annoyed at the notion that Pluto isn’t a planet anymore, a group of Plutonians end up hearing his annoyance and transport him to Pluto as a spokesperson for the planet. While Jerry soon becomes a celebrity on Pluto, Morty uncovers that the rulers of Pluto are only using Jerry’s insistence that Pluto is a planet to distract from their mining operations that are shrinking the planet.
‘Something Ricked This Way Comes’ could easily be seen as the quintessential Jerry episode, asits structure and sequence would quickly become the blueprint for the majority of Jerry’s stories going forward. Seeing Jerry stuck and hardened in his older ways of thinking, refusing to change despite moral or scientific obligations stating otherwise, and then realizing the error of his ways in the name of his family. This formula would find itself in many of Jerry’s best episodes, with this simple yet effective Plutonian adventure being the one to start it all.
2’The Jerrick Trap'
Season 7, Episode 2
From the current latest season of the show andproving that there are still a wild number of creative and interesting stories to be told with Jerry in a central role, “The Jerrick Trap” cuts to the core of the differences and divide between Jerry and Rick. With Rick’s increased annoyance with Jerry’s dimwitted nature, he conducts an experiment where the duo switches minds and intelligence to see what it’s like in each other’s shoes. However, the experiment goes terribly wrong, with both of them immediately dying and the ship creating strange, fragmented versions that aren’t Rick or Jerry, but both of them combined.
While its concept is certainly confusing and can take a bit to wholly understand, ‘The Jerrick Trap’ does an exceptional job at giving a great insight into not only Jerry’s state of mind and his thoughts on Rick but also Rick’s own relationship and thoughts on Jerry. As this duo of fragmented minds grows from bitter enemies to the perfect pair of friends, it becomes increasingly apparent that the singular throughline between Rick and Jerry is their undeniable love for the family, an insightful and powerful reflection that impacts the entire show.
1’The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy'
Season 3, Episode 5
When it comes to Rick & Morty episodes where Jerry gets a chance to shine in the spotlight, no episode quite does the concept justice like ‘The Whirly Dirly Conspiracy’, a true exploration of Jerry’s self-esteem and relationship with Rick. The episode sees Rick taking Jerry on an adventure at Morty’s request, with the duo going to an amusement park contained inside of an immortality field, where Jerry is at zero risk of dying. However, Jerry soon finds himself playing a key part in an assassination attempt on Rick’s life by an alien who blames Rick for his kingdom being destroyed.
This episode is the greatest example of why Jerry is such a pivotal and effective member of the main cast, as his inclusion in plots like these greatly balances the zany sci-fi hijinks of the show with powerful character moments and grounded family drama. The buildup of anger between Jerry and Rick throughout the entire series had been building up until this point, with this episode acting as a powerful release for both characters to relinquish and vent their frustrations towards one another. It all comes together to make not only the best Jerry episode ofRick & Morty, butone of the best episodes of the entire series.
