Dr. Wong, Pickle Rick and others in “Unfinished Business”

You must be Rick.

Mm-hmm.

I've heard a lot about you today. Your family is crazy about you, your daughter holds you in very high regard, you're a lucky fella.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, thank you. Hey, sweetie, you don't still happen to have that syringe in your purse?

Dad, I would like you to tell me what's in the syringe.

It's a serum that I need to, uh...to stay alive. I have...had a rough day, and, uh...I've sustained a lot of damage, I'm pretty close to death, which the serum will prevent.

By changing you from a pickle to a human.

[long pause] Yes.

Rick, why did you lie to your daughter?

So I wouldn't have to come here.

Why didn't you want to come here?

Because I don't respect therapy. Because I'm a scientist. Because I invent, transform, create, and destroy for a living, and when I don't like something about the world, I change it. And I don't think going to a rented office in a strip mall to listen to some agent of averageness explain which words mean which feelings has ever helped anyone do anything. I think it's helped a lot of people get comfortable and stop panicking, which is a state of mind [belch] we value in the animals we eat, but not something I want for myself. I'm not a cow. I'm a pickle. When I feel like it. So... you asked.

Rick, the only connection between your unquestionable intelligence and the sickness destroying your family is that everyone in your family, you included, use intelligence to justify sickness. You seem to alternate between viewing your own mind as an unstoppable force and as an inescapable curse. And I think it's because the only truly unapproachable concept for you is that it's your mind within your control. You chose to come here, you chose to talk to belittle my vocation, just as you chose to become a pickle. You are the master of your universe - and yet you are dripping with rat blood and feces, your enormous mind literally vegetating by your own hand. I have no doubt that you would be bored senseless by therapy, the same way I'm bored when I brush my teeth and wipe my ass. Because the thing about repairing, maintaining, and cleaning is it's not an adventure. There's no way to do it so wrong you might die. It's just work. And the bottom line is, some people are okay going to work, and some people... well, some people would rather die. Each of us gets to choose.