He’s since returned to the family, but that doesn’t mean he’s caught a break: in fact, the show’s writing team appears to not only be continuing their dunking on Jerry, but making up for lost time.
Jerry hit rock bottom when he and Beth took a break and a miserable Jerry retreated to a dirty hotel room. Then there are the “unproductives,” who get fired out of the back of the machine and into the muddy, undeveloped land below. This sequence is rife with painfully funny (and accurate in a twisted way) dunks on a multitude of professions. Upon their arrival, Gaia gives birth-a process involving hundreds of thousands of spiky-haired clay creatures being vomited from a geyser and screaming “I AM!” Beth convinces Rick to help save the children, and the pair proceeds to help develop them into a functional society by routing each of them through different tubes leading to careers and job functions. The standard dynamic of pairing Rick with Morty (with Summer sometimes tagging along) and Beth and Jerry shifts in a refreshing way for “Childrick of Mort.” This time, Rick and Beth get the A-plot with Morty and Summer enjoying an uncommon sibling dynamic, and Jerry off doing his own thing.
Beth demands that Rick visit his baby momma immediately, so Rick replaces Jerry in the driver’s seat and they fly off to visit Gaia. Even Rick is tagging along, which seems odd, until his phone starts vibrating: it turns out that Rick, not unlike with Unity in Season 2, has gotten intimate with a planet-Gaia this time-and she’s pregnant. No one’s particularly happy-Summer would rather be doing drugs and partying and Morty wants his video games. Jerry, true to form, is very excited to express his worth and take the family on a camping trip. For the first time in The Other Five (the name given to the second half of this Season 4), the entire Sanchez family gets to go on an adventure together, and it’s a nice diversion from the largely Rick and Morty-centric antics of the last few episodes.