Rick And Morty primarily follows 14-year-old Morty and his alcoholic genius grandpa. They go on wild and crazy adventures all throughout the galaxy and have established themselves as the show's primary focus over the course of five seasons.
But, with a myriad of supporting characters, the other members of the Smith family find themselves in many of their own shenanigans along the way. In fact, some of the B-stories throughout the series as just as, if not more, entertaining than the main plotline.
The main storyline of the Season 1 episode "Anatomy Park," is the Jurassic Park-style attraction (one of the many fandoms parodied by the series) that Rick built inside of a homeless man, and injected Morty into after shrinking him down. The B-story for the episode is, unbelievably, even more entertaining. Jerry is hyperfocused on a classic family Christmas, but when his parents come to visit, they've brought an extra guest: Jacob, his mother's new lover.
As Jerry tries not to think of his dad dressing up as Superman and watching the two from the closet, he eventually learns a thing or two about connecting with family and the use of electronics to avoid conflict.
While Morty goes through the trials and tribulations of raising a child at 14 and avoiding the same questionable parenting choices the rest of his family made, Rick and Summer travel to the alien baby's home planet to get to the bottom of the sex robot's purpose.
When they discover that he's from a planet completely run by women, Summer lies and tells them that Rick is her slave, and audiences get to see Rick knocked down in a way he hadn't been yet on the series. Rick can't keep his cool, though, and he and Summer have to escape from a death sentence when he farts and the woman leaders find out he's Summer's "grandpa."
As Rick is out searching for the culprit who used his secret pooping place, Jerry gets sucked into making the Loverfinderrz app (one of the best high-concept gags from season 4), with Glootie, Rick's intern. Soon, everyone starts mindlessly jumping from partner to partner, and Beth has to chase down a lovesick Summer.
As rampant matchmaking causes chaos on Earth, Morty and Jerry travel up to the mothership and take down the server. They discover the entire app is a rouse to harvest Earth's water, and Jerry's incompatibility with anyone on the app gets Glootie to bond with him and let them escape.
When Morty ties himself down with a new girlfriend, Rick convinces a heartbroken Summer to go to apocalypse ragers on doomed planets to party away her sorrows.
They vow to not get attached and bow out before the worlds actually end, but Summer soon breaks through her drug-induced haze to find that, hypocritically, Rick started a relationship with Daphne, an alien from the first world they visited, and snuck her along for the rest of the trip. Bitter, Summer spends the rest of the trip convincing Rick that Daphne is more interested in survival than him and that love isn't real.
Morty cashes in on leading an adventure, and the whole family is complaining about their problems and asking for Rick's help. To stay as uninvolved as possible, Rick gives them a Meeseeks box, with creatures whose purpose in life is to help them. Morty decides he wants to go on a quest to help out some alien villagers, but things go south when he's assaulted by Jelly Bean in an alien saloon bathroom.
Rick, previously severely bored, catches on to what happened, and heartwarmingly helps Morty finish the quest and bring gold back to the village. When the two see that Jelly Bean is actually the village's king, they hightail it back home, but not before blowing him to bits - one of Rick's best moments.
While Rick and Beth explore Froopyland, her childhood "sequester," as Rick called it, Morty and Summer meet Jerry's new Krootabulan warrior priestess girlfriend, Kiara. However, they quickly find out that Jerry's gotten himself in too deep and soul bonded with her to get back at Beth.
While it's cool that sleeping with Kiara gives him telekinetic powers, she's constantly hunting and he's actually not all that into her "blue skin and avocado-shaped head." To make things worse, he blames the kids when he breaks up with her, and she tries to murder them.
A trip to go get ice cream in a different reality turns hectic when Rick and Morty have to go inside his car battery microverse to figure out why it's stopped working. They leave Summer in the ship and Rick tells it to "keep Summer safe"- which immediately turns horrifying as it dices the first guy who walks up to the window. Hardly one of Rick's most genius moments.
Before she knows it, Summer is surrounded by police, and the ship is playing sick mind games with the officers, like making replicas of their dead kids to tell them to leave the car alone before turning to goop. When Summer complains, the ship executes a treaty between the giant telepathic spiders and the humans on the planet as a way to get them to leave.
A crystal that lets Morty see his future makes him obsessed with following the path that leads him to dying with Jessica. As a result, he leaves Rick's lifeless body on a planet without transferring his DNA to a new Rick.
While hologram Ricks tries to get Morty to reconsider, Rick's consciousness is automatically transferred to Ricks in alternate realities - many of which turn out to be fascist dystopias. After being a human fascist, a fascist shrimp, and a fascist Teddy bear, Rick finally makes it to a wasp reality with democracy, and the resident wasp Rick helps him get back home.
Rick and Morty get trapped in a simulation made by the universe's most ambitious, least successful con artists after the formula for concentrated dark matter, and Jerry unknowingly gets stuck inside of his own. When the Zigerians realize that Jerry got taken in by mistake, the lower the processing of the simulation to almost nothing.
Totally oblivious, Jerry goes into work to pitch an ad campaign. While people are walking into trees and robotically shouting "My man!", Jerry sells "Hungry For Apples" to his pretend company and wins a fake Appley award. He's on top of the world before he gets ripped away by reality.
Technically the entire Citadel episode is a B-story, with the show's Rick and Morty going off on an Atlantian adventure. Within the episode itself, several storylines take place at once. Evil Morty runs for office, a dissatisfied Rick holds up a factory, Mortys graduate from sidekick school, and viewers are introduced to Cop Morty and his new Rick partner.
It's an interesting dynamic because the audience has yet to see Rick in a true sidekick-style role. Cop Morty is a corrupt, disinterested police officer training Rick on the job. He exposes him to the harsh reality of what they do and for once, it's a Rick who doesn't feel comfortable with the ethics of everything. Rick stays naively focused on justice, and eventually even has to kill Cop Morty to do what he thinks is the right thing, losing his faith in the system on the way.
