Rick & Morty S01E05 Review: The One With The Molestation Subplot

Rick and Morty, Season 1, Episode 5: Meeseeks and Destroy

Y'know, I remembered watching this episode the first time and going "what the fuuuuuck" on one particular scene. You know that scene, if you've watched the episode, and, honestly, chances are, it's a scene that'll get brought up in most conversations about this show anyway, once you peel away the massive layer of memes and quotable lines from the fandom. And I feel like we should discuss that scene first, which, of course, is the scene where Morty is assaulted by King Jellybean in a tavern's toilet in a pretty horrific attempted rape sequence. It plays out pretty horrifically, and while Morty himself doesn't actually get raped (he actually succeeds in smashing his assailant's face into a toilet), the sexual assault is certainly there and it's only the bizarre oddity of using a jelly bean as an assailant that makes the scene... not as dark as it should be. Because it still is, which really illustrates just how horrifying rape is.

And that is what manages to really separate Rick and Morty from the glut of other edgy or crass adult-oriented cartoons like South Park or Family Guy. The way it tackles certain topics. And it's not that Rick and Morty is any sort of huge, ground-breaking and deep discussion about the horrors of rape or whatever, but the fact that the show actually portrays what lesser shows would've probably used as a gag, and ended up showing just how horrific it is, ends up being kind of a pretty respectable thing. Because as assholish, cynical and edgelord-anarchist as Rick and Morty can sometimes get, there are lines drawn in the sand, and those lines are important in separating Rick and Morty from being a show with some crass jokes to just crass.

I wouldn't call "Meeseeks and Destroy" my favourite episode or anything, but the main Rick and Morty plot is pretty... interesting. After a particularly traumatic experience where Morty was forced to kill an interdimensional time-travelling demon clone who looks like Beth (or something), he decides that he's had enough, and basically makes a bet with Rick -- he'll choose the adventure this time, and prove that sometimes Morty can do something good. It's... it's a neat little focus on Morty for once, and it's a motivation that fits with how he's sort of a doormat, but has enough.

And for the most part, while the episode focuses on the Meeseeks plotline, we get cutaways to the fun, but not especially exciting or groundbreaking scenes of Rick and Morty going through Ye Olde Fantasyland, with pretty generic villagers asking for them to help save their village or whatever. There are your expected jokes, like the Jack and the Beanstalk parody leading to the horrifying and brutal twitchy death of the pretty innocent giant, or the whole prison and eventual courtroom parody, or the weird tavern cut onto the side of the giggantic staircase, which give us some neat one-liners but are ultimately unremarkable. Despite Rick's pessimism, things sort of play out like a traditional fantasy genre, where some sort of contrivance shows up to help them out, be it a giant lawyer campaigning for smaller woman rights or a banana slug that's happy to ferry them down to the town below.

And Rick's a gigantic ass throughout this entire episode, which is nothing new. It's Rick, after all, and of course he's going to be a gigantic ass. And we get some pretty great scripting between the two, with Morty growing a bit of a backbone and calling Rick out for trying his damnadest to not enjoy a single thing about this adventure just to spite him. At which point Morty gets assaulted in the bathroom in a very, very creepy fashion by a jellybean, and other than the fact that the assaulter is a jellybean, the scene is played out very horrifically as the young boy Morty has to fight off the angry advances of the violent jellybean. It's... it's honestly a bit much, and I wouldn't argue that the episode would probably have a similar impact if the molestation sequence was cut and replaced with a different sort of tragedy. But it works in the sense that Rick immediately admits that he's actually having fun gambling and karaoke-ing in the tavern while the horrific deed's going down, and while Morty is in tears and honestly just utterly broken from the trauma, just wanting to go home and going "okay Rick you win just please go home", Rick quickly pieces together what's happened, and instead ends up being very supportive.

He doesn't mock Morty's weakness, not even once, and even admits that he's having fun, doesn't force Morty to tell him what's happened, and goes out of the way to make sure this adventure at least ends in a nice note, where they go off and complete the quest Morty has wanted to do... and when Jellybean man turns out to be King Jellybean of the village, Rick and Morty vamoose through a portal, but not before Rick pulls out his gun and blows the molesting Jellybean the fuck up, a completely deserved death for sure. And, honestly, while far from my favourite storyline in the season or series, it at least ends up sweetly instead of being brushed off as a crass "lookit us, making rape jokes cause we're adult" insensitive gag.

The other, arguably longer A-plot, is neat and funny, but doesn't really have that much of an impact. While Rick and Morty goes off to dick around, he leaves behind a "Meeseeks Box" for the rest of the family. It's essentially a genie of sorts, this lanky, slightly-malformed blue man with a hilarious voice (provided by Justin Roiland again) that is very quotable. "I'm Mr. Meeseeks, look at me!" I don't think he's that funny, but maybe that's the sheer amount of Meeseeks memes out there that has made me more lukewarm to the character. Still, while Jerry thinks he realizes what's going on and talks about the importance of making a proper, simple request, Summer and Beth goes for seemingly large ones -- "make me more popular" and especially "I want to be a more complete woman" -- it's their wishes that end up being resolved very very quickly off-screen, while Jerry's kind of a loser and ends up taking forever to take two strokes off of his golf game.

Summer's popularity bit ends up with what amounts to a gag, but with Beth? Her conversation with her Meeseeks over wine reveals that she's got a fair amount of pent-up frustration over "what could have been" if she didn't get pregnant at 17, with the Meeseeks telling Beth to "be honest with them, even if it means setting them free". This leads to Beth essentially considering a divorce, and very much willing to do so over dinner.

However, Jerry's complete incompetence ends up causing the Meeseeks to summon even more Meeseeks-es to try and solve the problem, leading down a conga line of an expected gag of having a literal army of Meeseek-es trying to solve Jerry's problem, and they can't properly dissipate until Jerry's actually taken two strokes off of his golf game. After a violent brutal punch-down between the Meeseekses, they decide to go drastic and just kill Jerry to technically take all the strokes off of his game. This ends up in a stand-off when the Meeseekses hold the entire restaurant at gunpoint, causing Beth to be assertive, and essentially help Jerry fix his swing. It's sort of a parallel to how both Beth and Rick essentially have their moments of kindness and love underneath all their bluster, and Beth and Jerry sort of end up repairing their relationship. Also, I guess Beth knows that with Jerry, you can't be all nice and submissive like the Meeseekses, but you have to be harsher? It's neat.

Overall, though, despite the fun of the Meeseekses and the relatively mature handling of a sensitive topic, I can't help but feel that "Meeseeks and Destroy" is one of the less impressive episodes of the first season. I enjoyed it enough, but not quite as much as the other ones.

Random Notes:

• The post-credits scene for this one is a bunch of people in the jellybean town finding pictures of what I assume are King Jellybean's other... victims, and two villagers decide to destroy this evidence, noting that "our people will get more from the king he represented than the jellybean he actually was", which... yeah, that's pretty horrible because, honestly, it probably hits a bit too close to home considering the fact that if you dig deep enough into most historical figures' histories, they probably have a nasty detail or two that most society would prefer stay hidden. 
• This is the first episode where Rick says his catchphrase "wubba lubba dub dub", and the way this episode ends is Rick making a little fourth-wall-breaking joke about catchphrases people say at the end of the show before the cast goes into a bizarre "see you next week" bit. Honestly, watching the scene again, It really feels like something that's just thrown in as a gag, and because the whole "the TRUE meaning of wubba lubba dub dub" isn't explored in the first season, I really feel like it's just a little throw-it-in gag and not something they expected to use as a plot point. 
• The opening sequence is just a pile of random sci-fi monsters all molded into one, being "clones from an alternate reality possessed by demonic alien spirits from the future", which is a joke I giggled way too long at. We also get a Ghostbusters joke at this point with the gadget they use to kill the alien demon future clones, and Morty has to plug in what looks like an NES cartridge. 
• Rick's rant about what the hell "Shmeckles" are and how he's baffled about the alternate currencies of fantasy-land is hilarious. Not as funny, though, is the joke about boobies. 
• I like the staircase people in the tavern. There are a bunch of other weird background characters like a sentient grape, some dude with a butt-head and the bizarre mutant balloon lizard that is "Mr. Boobie Buyer", but for whatever reason I really find the stair people charming.