Rigby doesn’t need to learn a lesson for stories focused on
him to succeed, but such episodes do tend to benefit from some sense that Rigby
is capable of growth. Tonight’s episode features a moment of such insight from
Rigby, but it really is only a moment. After spending so much of the episode
proclaiming his coolness in high school, Rigby admits that it was actually Mordecai who was the cool one way back then: “You don’t understand. You were
actually cool in high school. This is my only shot.” That’s a surprisingly
profound realization for Rigby, as it reveals a hitherto unseen ability to
separate superficial appearances from underlying motivations. Mordecai might
have been the sort of teenager who did art club and gave his jazz saxophone a
prominent position in his yearbook photo, but such nerdy activities only define
him inasmuch as they reveal how comfortable he was in his own skin. Rigby, on
the other hand, was a cool, disaffected rebel desperate to prove to everyone
just how cool, disaffected, and rebellious he was, even if it meant bringing a
bullhorn to school. He worked so damn hard to cultivate a mystique, but he only
managed the sort of mystique that is impressive to complete idiots.
As such, it’s no surprise that the modern-day Rigby is the
only one fooled by his high-school self. He spends the first portion of the episode
trying to live up to the absurd standard he believes that he set for himself,
but his longstanding insecurities keep poking through. His panic upon realizing
that he hasn’t managed to accomplish anything on his list is telling, as that
is the moment where Rigby can no longer maintain the fiction that, whatever his
current situation, he at least used to
be cool. As long as he can insist that he was the most awesome dude around back
in high school, he can pretend that he’s more than some loser stuck in a
dead-end job. Sure, his present-day self hasn’t accomplished anything with his
life, but he can brush away that fact with some half-baked claim that his
current laziness is just the latest manifestation of his well-established
rebelliousness. But his utter failure to accomplish anything on his high-school
self’s list makes Rigby look like a loser at all points of his life; one of his two selves is essentially an act, and it would be crushing to learn that the cool high school rebel is the unreal one. If Rigby was
once as cool as he says he was, that means he must have potential that he chooses not to live up to. The
alternative is that his current situation is actually the best he can hope to
achieve, and he’s just self-aware enough to know he can’t live with such a
horrible thought.
It’s only during that brief sequence on Johnny Skydiver’s
runway that Rigby fully realizes all this. After Mordecai begs him not to risk
his life jumping out of such a terrifyingly shady plane, Rigby accepts that he
could indeed lie to all his old classmates and tell them he accomplished more
than he really did. He is no longer jumping to impress other people, but rather
to prove something to himself. Make no mistake: That is still a deeply, deeply
stupid reason to jump out of a plane, but at least it’s a noble kind of stupid.
Rigby’s other honest moment comes after he has been thrown out of the plane, as
he plummets through the air. For that brief sequence, he forgets the silliness
with the burrito and the camera, and he is caught up in the exhilaration of the
moment. After all, even if his motivations were ludicrous, Rigby still had the
guts to jump out of a plane, and his initial whoops of excitement indicate that
he does recognize the special nature of the experience before he returns to the
burrito-related business at hand. “Rigby In The Sky With Burrito” features so
many exercises in self-delusion, but it’s heartening to see that Rigby is
sometimes able to forget his own nonsense and take life’s adventure as it
comes.
Those little moments offer the most intriguing insights into
Rigby’s character—hence devoting about half of the review to them—but tonight’s
episode does not gel into the sort of larger investigation of Rigby that “Bank
Shot” offered earlier this season. By and large, this is an episode that is content to have a bunch of stuff happen in succession, with only those all
too brief indications of what this latest set of misadventures means to our
heroes. That’s not to say that I demand rigid adherence to some theme; indeed,
one of the best sequences tonight is the opening mail fight, which is nothing
more than a glorious waste of time. Mordecai and Rigby’s reenactment of a
samurai—or ninja, but Rigby’s just winging it anyway—fight is a charming bit of
silliness, with a particular emphasis on our heroes’ attempts at samurai-appropriate
dialogue. It serves a narrative purpose, too, as the fight underlines the pair’s
continued state of arrested development; hell, antics like that would have
seemed a tad immature even back in high school. The scene reminds us that
Mordecai may be maturing—his genuine apathy with the reunion is proof
enough of that—but he sure as hell isn’t growing up. He’s in a far better place
mentally and emotionally than Rigby, but they fundamentally remain on the same
level.
“Rigby In The Sky With Burrito” is more meandering than the
typical Regular Show episode. The sudden introduction and equally sudden departure of Jumpin’
Jim is a rare example of a throwaway Regular
Show character; I’m still a bit shocked that the story didn’t see Rigby
come crawling back to the guy to beg for a second chance. As it stands, Jumpin’
Jim’s main purpose is just to be a weird, skydiving-obsessed dude, complete
with a style that prominently features Chinese silk, real Italian suede, and
Icelandic embroidery. Johnny Skydiver is a better defined character, if only
because the episode has to stretch itself a little to justify how such an
obvious burnout case could still manage to operate an airplane. It’s reliably
amusing to meet characters who share Muscle Man’s ironclad belief in the
favor-based economy. Johnny gets the most enjoyably dark line of the episode
when he tells Rigby that, should both his main and emergency parachute fail, he
will have the rest of his life to enjoy the view.
The episode wraps up with the bizarre reveal that the
reunion wasn’t Rigby’s at all; for some preposterous reason, Pops’ class
president accidentally addressed the letter to Rigby. That’s about as flimsy an
explanation as the show has ever trotted out, yet it only matters in the sense
that it allows Rigby to sidestep the larger questions about his identity and
sense of self that this episode occasionally raises. His realization that he
now has a chance to get that slam dunk in the Olympics is a decent closing gag,
but it suggests that he has already forgotten whatever it was that he briefly
learned. “Rigby In The Sky With Burrito” is funny and entertaining enough to be
a solid episode, even if it is far more superficial than it needs to be. Not every
Rigby episode can be “Bank Shot,” but I’ll admit that I wish this episode tried
a bit harder to attain such depth of character.
Stray observations:
- “Promise to save my life if I let go of you? … Betrayal!”
Rigby learns the hard way that it never pays to trust a burrito. - “I’ve got the parachute to live, the burrito to eat, and the
camera to prove it.” Yes, those three things seem precisely equivalent. - I don’t always support Mordecai and Rigby’s squeamishness,
but I think it’s safe to say that we’re all better off not knowing what Muscle
Man means by “brunch.” - So, as you may have heard, Regular Show’s status at The A.V. Club is in a little bit of
jeopardy. Here’s Todd’s sage advice on how best to get more people to check out
these reviews: “The best thing you can do is share things on Facebook and
Twitter. You could also e-mail links to others. You could probably call them
and read the URL to them over the phone, but why would you do that?” That
last suggestion actually feels very much in keeping with the whole Regular Show ethos. Anyway, whatever
happens from here, it’s been a ton of fun sharing my thoughts on the show with
you all, and I’ll keep doing it for as long as I’m able. So, let’s stay
positive!