Hey ‘Rick and Morty’ Fans: Netflix’s ‘Inside Job’ Is the Beth and Rick Story You’ve Been Waiting For

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Inside Job

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There’s so much to love about Inside Job, creator Shion Takeuchi and executive producer Alex Hirsch’s animated comedy for Netflix. When it’s not gleefully mocking movie tropes like clones gone wild and concentrated ’80s nostalgia, it’s making some of the funniest jokes about conspiracy theories around. In this comedy about working for a shadow government, even the most absurd theory and urban legend is treated as boring fact. But underneath its comedy, this series is hiding a more emotionally fraught story. Inside Job is untimely about a brilliant young woman who’s constantly hindered by her emotionally neglectful alcoholic father. In short? It’s the too-real Beth and Rick saga Rick and Morty has hinted at, but has never fully explored.

Immediately, it’s clear that Inside Job‘s Reagan (Lizzy Caplan) takes her cues from the super geniuses of TV shows past. The term “mad scientist” is hauntingly apt as Reagan invents Presidential robots, as well as robot versions of guys she’s interested dating. She’s constantly screaming, always has dark circles under her eyes, and her biggest weakness in the world of corporate America is a management one. Reagan has terrible people skills, a fault that requires Cognito, Inc. to bring in former frat bro Brett (Clark Duke) to be a co-leader. Basically, Reagan is a deranged, wonderful mess of ego and neuroses. She and Rick and Morty‘s Beth (Sarah Chalke) would be frenemies.

Yet as Inside Job progresses, it pulls a bait and switch of sorts. Reagan’s rival isn’t Brett, a man she once resented for his charm but grows to love in her own odd way. It’s not even entirely herself, a common trope in shows about the impossibly smart. No, as Inside Job quietly teases, the person holding Reagan back is the father she supports, Rand Ridley (Christian Slater).

Inside Job
Photo: Netflix

It’s through this deeply complicated relationship that Inside Job drills into the story it truly wants to tell. So much of Reagan’s life feels like an imitation of her father’s. She works at the same company under the same boss, tirelessly doing the same work. But as much as she’s clearly driven by emulating and besting him, Reagan is equally obsessed with distancing herself from this alcoholic, vengeful disaster of a parent. Whenever Reagan spends time with Rand, her motivations can either be summed up as desperately longing for approval, or utter disgust. And while Reagan tries so very, very hard, the object of her intense feelings sees her as little more than a pet he sort of likes.

That’s a more callous version of the dynamic Rick and Morty has established between its madman alcoholic scientist Rick (Justin Roiland) and the daughter he abandoned, Beth (Sarah Chalke). There are certainly differences between Beth and Reagan as well as between Rick and Rand. The main version of Beth we know and love never lived out her best professional life. She was a teen mom who became a horse surgeon, though it’s not difficult to imagine her on a mad scientist career track like Reagan. Also, Rick seems to like his daughter more than Rand likes his. Entire episodes like “The ABCs of Beth” have revolved around Rick offering his daughter elaborate solutions for inner peace. Rand mostly exists to text Reagan too much and beg her for replacement kidneys after he outdrinks his current one.

Despite these differences, the same outlines of parental abuse remain. Reagan and Beth both define themselves by how similar they are to their distant fathers. As for Rand and Rick, they both see their daughters as little more than a means to an end. For Rand, that means using Reagan as a connection to the company that fired him, and for Rick that means literally manipulating his daughter’s future to create a multiverse he prefers. They’re both awful fathers to daughters who deserve so much better.

In Rick and Morty, we’ve seen this narrative play out through Rick’s regretful lens and Morty’s horrified revelations. But Inside Job flips the script. Reagan is the character who’s in charge of walking the audience through her various traumas, never the person who caused them. As a result, every time she discovers a new one, it punches that much harder.

The first time the series exposes its vulnerable underbelly is in Episode 3, “Blue Bloods.” Reagan, Brett, and the team are tasked with attending an event with the upper crust of Reptoids, secret lizard people that show respect by hugging one another. Since Reagan is violently opposed to getting physically close to anyone, she invents robot arms to hug for her. Of course the contraption backfires, but in the ensuing conflict, Reagan realizes that she’s adverse to physical affection because her father build a robot to hug her rather than doing it himself. She’s never been hugged by a parent. The ending of the episode is played off as a wacky misunderstanding, yet there Reagan stands, barely capable of accepting a simple hug. It’s Part 1’s finale that really gets to the root of Reagan’s bottomless insecurities. In “Inside Reagan”, Reagan, her father, and later Brett literally go inside Reagan’s mind to find a lost code. Without revealing Part 1’s major spoiler, what they find instead completely changes Reagan’s perception of her own childhood as well as the direction of this series as a whole.

That’s the uncomfortable thing about working through personal trauma. Years go by with you fully believing one narrative only for the truth to shatter everything you believed about yourself. What’s left is the hard work as you’re forced to pick up the sharp pieces and fit them back into something that resembles you. This difficult, painful story isn’t told through one-off episodes or as an extra-dark B plot. It’s the entire point of Inside Job. And for all of Reagan’s anger and messiness, it’s beautiful in its honesty.

In many ways, it feels unfair to make a comparison between Inside Job and Rick and Morty. Inside Job is a truly funny, sharp, and insightful of-the-moment comedy that can proudly stand on its own without name dropping other shows. But in its first 10 episodes, Takeuchi’s workplace comedy has  given us a more complete and sympathetic look at a conflicted daughter than Rick and Morty has accomplished in five seasons. Thank the lizard people we still have 10 more episodes to watch Reagan unravel her own story.

Watch Inside Job on Netflix