#air force wong

[thesoftboiledegg]

Rick and Morty has got to be one of the best representations of therapy because we don't see most of Rick's appointments, but we see how much they're helping him. He's not just ignoring Dr. Wong or talking in circles. Every episode shows how much he's learned.

He's gentler with his grandkids, handles the Unity confrontation with more maturity, tells Summer that she reminds him of Diane, gets protective over Dr. Wong, tries to keep Morty out of his crazier adventures, backs down when he's about to go off on somebody, and, in the end, chooses Morty over dwelling on the past.

He also shows regular signs of depression, such as drinking, sleeping a lot and not leaving the house--which isn't healthy either, but it's better than dragging his grandson on lowkey-suicidal adventures across the universe.

And all this because he finally decided to get help.

[monbitemon]

"I wouldn't do this for anyone else"

Rick is so used to just standing idly or rubbing dirt into a wound while people suffer from his actions but he genuinely wanted to make Unity feel better after this and he just. Doesn't know how.

Him walking away is probably the best thing he can do in this situation, and he does. He leaves without a petty remark or an attempt to have the upper hand. He ignored Unity's attempts to help him and when they became so worried that they showed up on Earth, he fought them off with something Specifically Made to Hurt Unity. He hurt someone that really just wanted to make sure he wasn't dead.

When he goes to comfort Andre after Wong dumps him, he brings beer, a tiny peace offering to express a similarity between them. The last time Rick got dumped by Unity, he sulked and pettily pretended to not be hurt while attempting to kill himself, but he's grown now and knows that he can't do that.

I am rooting so hard for this man's emotional maturity, I screamed when he quietly said sorry after his argument with Summer. Look at him go! He's struggling and his growth is far from linear (as I'm sure we'll see in this weekend's episode) but he's trying and like Wong said he doesn't know how to show it, but he's changing. Slowly, but he's changing.

[fandomwe1rd0]

I like how it's basically confirmed in "Air Force Wong" when Rick says "Sorry..." quietly while looking at the floor after snapping at Summer, that sometimes he's just mean, not because he finds joy in it, not because he's a violent person, he just lashes out and snaps at people and doesn't know why, that's honestly really realistic considering that a lot of mean people aren't mean purely because they want to be, it's just a habit, Rick is slowly crawling out of that habit, but it's definitely still there.

[ricksanchezbignaturals]

i rewatched s7e3 and the weird sort of straight washing that happened with unity was worse than i realized in my first 1 and a half viewings. so im here to be a little bit more of a hater lol.

okay so like fuck this bitch in particular

now, i understand that unity has appeared in the comics which i haven't read so it's possible there's some lore there that idk about, but here's the deal as i understand it and why this specific alien acting like the face of unity bugs me so much. this alien is part of a species that, as of the episode in season 2, was very recently assimilated by unity. so like im not sure why there's so much focus placed on her specifically. having her act as a representative of sorts made sense in the first episode, she was a president on the newly assimilated planet that rick and the kids were visiting. but like, that's it, right? it doesn't make sense to me why she would be any more important than any of the other, what? trillions of life forms unity has under its belt? like the only reason for her to be here at all is to be recognizable to the audience, which like, fine. i think it's a little dumb, but whatever. the problem isn't having her as a symbol (personally i think it'd be cooler to not have an entity like unity tied down to being primarily represented through one body but i digress), the problem is that she's treated like more than that in this episode.

this is a part i didn't notice until my rewatch that really irked me.

these are concurrent shots from the scene when rick shows up and starts spraying unity. we see it in virginia telling rick to take it easy through the body of this human, then we see it continuing the conversation from its spaceship in the body of the alien. i am like super not a fan of the implications of that. this alien is not supposed to be unity any more than any one of my cells is me, but here it's depicted as though whenever unity does something in any of its bodies, it's coming from this lady. and like, that'd be super lame even if it wasn't an obvious womanification of a nongendered entity.

now im no english major so i don't have an elegant transition to put here, but yes, it is time to talk about pronouns. yeah yeah, ik, trans person gets hung up on pronouns, bite me okay, it's relevant. i went back and watched the first unity episode to be sure id remembered correctly, and yes, in that episode nobody uses gendered pronouns for unity. morty says "they" which seems more to be referring to a number of bodies, and other than that, people mostly say "unity" or "it". as for the new episode i noticed rick using nongendered pronouns twice

but after that he goes with she/her for the rest of the episode

and yeah, i think that is pretty disappointing. i didn't catch that "it" until my rewatch, but the use of "them" did make me really happy but then everybody started she/hering it. the combination of all that emphasis being put on a female body and people calling unity she so much makes for an episode that manages to be significantly less queer than the one that came out in 2015. it feels weirdly cowardly after that "we're all a little gay" bit in the last episode and doesn't inspire much confidence in me regarding rick's relationships with nonwomen. like stuff can be gay if it's for a joke, but there's more money on the line now than back in season 2, so rick's ex lover needed straightening up.

idk. i still like the episode because im easy and focusing on rick's mental health and relationships always makes me happy, but man, i am certainly not happy with how they handled unity. they really did it dirty, watered it down to being pretty much just another alien lady.

(also to be clear, i am not trying to shit on the writers here. obviously idk exactly what went on, but im pretty comfortable placing the blame squarely on execs)

[blue-rick24]

how dare they

[urnnnnn227]

my rendition of ricks world melting around him after killing rick prime

[christiecandor]

Why TF wouldn't Unity trust Rick after that? Does someone want to explain this? He finally proved he CAN change, which was supposedly its' WHOLE issue with him! Ugh, I just feel justified for always hating Unity 😂😭

I also totally disagreed with Dr Wong that Rick was wrong for not accepting Unity's calls/trusting it again. Maybe I need (A LOT MORE) therapy, but I 100% don't blame him.

[hazelnut-u-out]

I really wanted to like 'Air Force Wong', but it was a massive letdown.

I think my main issue with the episode was that it felt like queer erasure.

I have no issue with Curtis being into Wong. Let everyone be pan/bi if they please! At the same time, I feel like the inherent homoeroticism/queer-coding of Rick's relationship with Curtis was... downplayed? Especially in the beginning, I thought there were a lot of elements set up that didn't get properly explored. One of these moments is the scene where Curtis says, 'You’re making me choose? You or her?' I don't think I'm mistaken in thinking that's a very coded statement. Then, the rest of the episode seems to put that setup on the back burner in favor of Unity.

Again, I don't have any issue with Unity. In fact, it was one of my favorite side characters and I was super excited to see it on screen again! I just feel like they lost understanding of its character, to put it lightly.

I was honestly really annoyed with all of the she/her and 'lady' business. Unity was one of the only characters in the show with very explicit neutral pronouns. I was fine with the instance of 'them' (especially because it felt like Rick was implying that it wasn't a woman and it was used in ‘Autoerotic Assimilation’). I could have even excused Wong referring to Unity by feminine terminology if Rick hadn't joined in? In 'Autoerotic Assimilation', the writing was very explicit about Unity's pronouns, so this frustrated me.

Another issue I had with the way they portrayed Unity was that they almost portrayed the President member of Unity as Unity itself (or something adjacent to the 'core' or 'real' Unity)? Again, in 'Autoerotic Assimilation' it's very explicit that every member of Unity is equally Unity, and we watch Rick interact romantically with members of all ages and genders. Even in the break-up sequence, the letters are read aloud in the voices of many different members. I feel like this was more erasure of Unity having no one gender and it felt like it was pushing heteronormativity onto Rick’s attraction to/relationship with it.

Maybe I’m being too harsh, but I was not a fan. All of the mishandling of queer characters made the good aspects of the episode fall flat for me. I think it tried handling way too many things at once.

Hopefully next episode will be better! Excited for the rest of the season.

As for ‘Air Force Wong’, I give it a 5/10.

[portal-placement]

Hey did anyone else's stomach turn when Rick sat down at the end of the episode

[cassowariess]

Honestly I've never felt disappointed with an episode that explores Rick's previous romantic relationships (whether male or female) but Unity is not *supposed* to be female. I think part of the reason I feel annoyed when people reduce the 2015 episode to just "it's just rick banging big breasted alien chicks" is I remember that episode being so much much more when the show was at its most popular. It was extremely clear that Rick was slutting about with both male and female alien bodies:

Dan Harmon said he was proud that Unity was one of the first non binary characters on TV. He who we no longer speak of confirmed Rick as pansexual at comic con a day before the episode aired in front of a huge audience. Unity had no gender, it was just a creature that took over other bodies that Rick got romantically attached to. It was fun and fresh and showed there were weird alien species out there and the episode ended showing Rick at his most vulnerable for the first time.

I will die on this hill. 🙃

This episode felt *more* straight and like it was pandering to straight bros. What's next? Are they gonna retcon Rick's feelings for Nimbus and BP and turn them into "just bros after all"?

[robotricksanchez]

her: you're fucking stupid if you think the "your crush will call you" fortune is about unity showing up again

my idiotic ass:

[thesoftboiledegg]

Rick might be a smartass in therapy, but I think Dr. Wong is genuinely one of his favorite people. He visits her every week, gets protective over her and respects her as an equal. She knows how to get on his level without making him angry or defensive, which is refreshing for him.

[zeep-xanflorp]

air force wong and rick and unity's relationship summarised for my simple self

unity left rick bc it wanted to focus on its work instead of the lifestyle it has when it's with rick.

rick was so hurt by this that he attempted suicide.

after that failed, he ghosted unity and cut off all contact.

fast forward a few seasons, rick is searching for rick prime again. unity hears about this and tries reaching out to rick to offer support bc it still cares.

rick ignored all its attempts to contact him.

unity acts drastically, appearing on rick's home planet and country and assimilating a chunk of the population to get rick's attention.

rick finds out about this and sees it as a violation of his boundaries and reacts negatively, formulating something to repel unity and cutting off all the assimilated bodies it has on earth.

unity is hurt by this but still needs rick's help to release the bodies properly. rick declines until he finds out that it's necessary to get its help.

after the threat is averted, rick is open to seeing unity more but it feels betrayed and hurt by rick's actions against it and cuts rick off itself.

basically for once rick wasn't entirely in the wrong but dr wong was so quick to blame him when it was a miscommunication between two hurt beings and it UPSETS me.

[trashbaglord]

S7 E3 might have been my least favourite episode of them all. Am I secretly unknowingly toxic, or was Dr. Wong just blatantly wrong??

"Rick, I think you're wrong. You had an outerspace lady that was concerned for your life and your response was hostile enough to cause a huge problem."

What response?? Him ghosting an ex that broke his heart and dumped him with a note he couldn't even reply to? Rick doesn't have to answer Unity's messages if he doesn't want to. Never answering your ex could perfectly well be a healthily set boundary. And pushing the responsibility of Unity's actions onto Rick definitely doesn't seem right. No one is responsible for Unity's actions but Unity, even if Rick was massive asshole (which I don't think he was this ep).

The only thing that would save that interaction for me was if Dr. Wong actually lied like Rick suggested right before they met Unity because she judged the life of everyone on Earth worth lying for.

Also, why the criminal lack of Morty?.. T-T

[ricksanchezbignaturals]

i already touched on it in my post on the new episode, but i wanted to talk a bit more about viewing unity through a queer lense. warning this post is long and possibly incomprehensible because im sick.

ive always thought it kind of wild that so many people missed the memo about rick being pansexual when the first explicit partner of his we get to meet is unity (i say explicit because birdperson shows up before unity, and while i do believe rick is definitely meant to be into him, you wouldn't know that from his first appearance and it's not clear if c137 ever had romantic/sexual relations with bp or if it was purely unrequited). it seems obvious to me that there was queer shit going on in auto erotic assimilation, so rnm fans being all homophobic seems puzzling, because that episode came out in 2015. queer shit going on in this show is not new, why do people act surprised everytime it happens? to be honest, the new episode gave me a bit of clarity there.

so, a relationship with unity being queer might be obvious to me and my fellow gays, but it is played very safe. the majority of rick's interactions with unity are through female bodies it inhabits, and especially the main sort of ambassador lady. it almost feels like she is unity first and foremost, with all the other bodies it has being some cool power of hers, an offshoot of that one specific alien rather than equal parts of who unity is.

and yknow, that's clearly intentional, nobody ever went broke for appealing to straight men, but there is something there. i do think the choice to make the first serious relationship the audience gets to see from your main character be with a hivemind that assimilates regardless of gender is a cool one. because like i said in the other post, that makes being with unity a sort of pansexual microcosm. the first episode had a couple nods to rick not exclusively sleeping with the female bodies under unity's control, and i think this new episode was worse about making unity basically feel like it is mainly supposed to be that one alien. unity gets called she/her a lot in this episode, but there was that one line "don't talk to them like that" which i found... interesting.

it is possible im overthinking unity's pronouns. hell, i have multiple sets of pronouns, and im not even a hivemind. but that specific line did seem like, idk, intentional? yknow like when the pronouns were inconsistent in the first episode that was coming from morty and summer who were just meeting unity. i don't think rick even used pronouns to refer to unity in the first episode, but in the new one that's what he says to curtis, who's talking to unity through The Main Alien Lady. "don't talk to them like that" while later he uses she/her when talking to wong. unity's pronouns come across to me as written for the queer folks to catch the ~vibe~ and the straight folks to not have to notice at the same time.

honestly a lot of unity comes across that way. at the same time it can be this genderless entity experiencing life through many bodies, but also maybe more like one woman who happens to be able to control a planet's worth of people. and yeah, i get it. everybody wants to make the gays happy but nobody wants to lose the straights business. if rick's ever allowed to have a more explicit queer relationship than the referenced history with nimbus, that'll piss some people off. rick and morty fans in particular have a penchant for being intense and sometimes they're weird about minorities even though rick is one like 3 times over.

so like, i loved this new episode a lot, but i do feel like there was a missed opportunity to be a bit more ballsy with unity. i don't think it should've been represented by the same body as last time, that makes it feel like just another sexy alien lady for rick to have the hots for and i think it can be more interesting than that, yknow?

[blue-rick24]

he’s so fucking smug