Rick, Morty, and the Ghost of Jules Winnfield

If you don’t know who Rick and Morty are, this probably isn’t your corner of the internet. Go back to The Big Bang Theory, we’ll part ways with no hard feelings. Rick & Morty is, by design, the nerdiest and most self-congratulatory show on television, and I say that with complete affection as someone who has seen every episode multiple times and feels no shame about it whatsoever.

While the wait for a new season stretches on in that special way it always does—somewhere between agonizing and vaguely insulting—Adult Swim dropped an animated music video that scratches the itch well enough. Rick and Morty go full Jules Winnfield and Vincent Vega from Pulp Fiction, blasting their way through Federation agents while Oh Mama by Run The Jewels hammers through the whole thing. The Pulp Fiction parallels are played completely straight, which somehow makes it funnier than if they’d winked harder at the reference.

There’s something about watching the belching grandfather and his perpetually terrified grandson doing coordinated hitman walks that feels more earned than it should. Like the show itself—it shouldn’t work, and yet. I watched it twice and immediately felt the pull to re-queue the whole series from the beginning, even though I know every beat. That’s the Rick & Morty problem. You can’t just dip in. You fall back in.