Cop Duo Rick and Morty head to “The Creepy Morty,” a perfectly named strip club where Cop Morty does under-the-table business with a drug lord named Big Morty. Rookie Rick questions Cop Morty’s methods and tries to arrest Big Morty.Cop Morty helps Rookie Rick out of the building, and while Rookie Rick waits by the car, Cop Morty vaporizes the entire building. Childlike Morty stabs him in the shoulder. They search the facilities and find a sad, Childlike Morty, whom Rookie Rick picks up out of sympathy. The Mortys direct him toward a gang called the Morty-town Locos, and Cop Rick and Cop Morty burst in, guns drawn. Cop Morty tries to buddy up to some local Mortys, and ends up with a gun pointed at one of them. Without a side to kick, they just start kickin’.” Shop Owner Morty tries to describe the suspects to the cops, but obviously all Mortys look pretty much the same. As Cop Morty puts it, “They were raised to be sidekicks. They are called to investigate a robbery in Morty-town, the bad part of the Citadel where the Rick-less Mortys live. Cop Morty hates other Mortys, and he dismisses Rookie Rick’s sympathy for them as a weakness. Meanwhile, a grizzled old Cop Morty takes on a Rookie Rick as his partner.Campaign Manager Morty tries to show them the secret dossier, but is sucked into the vacuum of space. He’s thrown into prison, where the Secret Service Ricks tell him that Candidate Morty is still alive and he won the election. (“It’s secrets, look at how I’m dressed.”) Campaign Manager Morty then shows up at a political rally and shoots Candidate Morty point blank. Meanwhile, Campaign Manager Morty drinks at a bar and is confronted by a Mysterious Rick who slides him a dossier about Candidate Morty.
Candidate Morty soars to the top of the polls, and he gives a press conference in which he evades questions about his dimension of origin.After he finishes his speech to rousing applause, Candidate Morty walks offstage and promptly fires his campaign manager. He doesn’t see that division: He just sees people with common goals. At the presidential debate, the Rick candidates refuse to take the prompts seriously, but Candidate Morty gives a thoughtful answer to a question about the division between the Ricks and Mortys in the Citadel. A Citadel-wide presidential election has come down to a wide variety of Ricks and one Morty candidate, who seems to be included because all the Ricks find him adorable.On the Citadel morning news, Rick D716 and D716-B report all the big events relevant to the Citadel, throwing immediately to a commercial for Simple Rick’s Simple Wafer Cookie: “Come home to the impossible flavor of your own completion.” These wafers are made from the happy thoughts of Simple Rick, a Rick who chooses to enjoy and appreciate his family.It took me a minute to figure out exactly what was happening, so be prepared: There are a lot of Ricks and a lot of Mortys. The episode pulls an unexpected sleight of hand early on, switching out what sounds like one of Rick and Morty’s few uncomplicatedly fun adventures with deftly interwoven tales from the Citadel. Given how “The Ricklantis Mixup” unfolds, I’m going to recap it through bullet points to break up each story line.Rick and Morty go to Atlantis and have a great time! Morty gets it on with a mermaid! Rick and Morty don’t care about politics! They can’t wait to go back and have another adventure! Five stars.