That night, Rick is awoken by smelling salts to find himself strapped to his bed with the rest of the night family standing over him. Night Summer reveals that she’s taken control of the night family. They all answer to her. Rick is unfazed and still refuses to rinse his dishes, so the night family hold him down while Night Summer scrapes the grime off a dirty plate into his mouth. “I have always been here, Rick,” she says, “deep inside the mind of your grandchild, waiting to come out. Your machine allowed me to steal the night, and soon, I will seize the day.”
The next morning, the house is stripped bare of furniture. Night Rick has also locked Day Rick out of his tech, so he improvises by building a force field generator out of household trash while hatching a plan. He then builds a sleep deprivation suit for Summer. Among its features are: air horns hooked up to each ear, hooks pulling her eyelids open, an iPod Nano, forks stuck into her back, a pair of stilettos to make walking uncomfortable, and a feeding tube filled with Mountain Dew and DayQuil. The plan? Summer will stay awake, impersonate Night Summer, and plant a deactivation device on the Somnambulator.
Over the past few seasons, Rick has become (in his own words) basically Inspector Gadget, so it’s fun to watch him wind up in a situation where he has to improvise from scratch. While the sleep deprivation suit doesn’t hold a candle to Rick’s DIY skills in “Pickle Rick,” it’s still an impressive bit of on-the-fly engineering.
