Starting in what looks at first like an Episode that might jettison Rick and Morty entirely and focus on the various humans and creatures they’ve wronged in their travels, the train they’re on slowly gets revealed as a giant struggle to escape their own storytelling conventions.

Traveling through the different-styled cars, each with their own purpose, makes this feel like “Rick and Morty” taking on these conventions by way of “Snowpiercer,” complete with a de facto train conductor Storylord (the ever-welcome Paul Giamatti) serving as the Ed Harris of this whole enterprise.

Not that any “Rick and Morty” story is a leisurely stroll through an alternate dimension, but this might be the densest episode since “The Ricklantis Mixup.” It’s helped along by the unfamiliar setting (the only trips to the Smith house are the Bechdel Test cutaway and the last scene in the living room — with the jarring side-angle view of the couch, that second one almost doesn’t count) and a lack of a cold open that wastes no time getting right into the thorny thicket of the train.

For a show that once had one of its title characters call out “Inception” for being dumb and nonsensical, there’s a blend of nested levels here, whipped through with such abandon that it’s hard not to at least smile at the scope of the thing as it’s happening.

Guest Star Recon: It’s a big night for Paul Giamatti, with “Billions” returning on Showtime and him voicing the would-be conductor of this symbolic runaway enterprise.

Giamatti is the perfect kind of guest star for this show: someone with enough technical expertise to sink their teeth into playing an actual character, but to do it in a controlled way that’s not just unreserved vocal chaos.