Something that’s always bothered me is the presentation of the infamous ‘Mr. Jellybean’ scene in Meeseeks and Destroy versus the Planetina plotline in A Rickconvenient Mort.
On first watch, we know Mr. Jellybean is terrible. In my opinion, I always thought they handled that whole plotline rather well. It wasn’t played for laughs or made light of, we see the emotional effect on Morty, they don’t attempt to make the predator sympathetic, and we see Rick step up as ‘Grandpa’ for one of the first times ever— to kill a pedophile, no less. Pretty strong morality alignment on that one.
Suddenly, though, when the predator is no longer an older man, but an older woman, it’s… shitty, sure, but not explicitly wrong.
On my first watch, I thought A Rickconvenient Mort was pretty blatantly a statement piece on grooming. Planetina follows textbook grooming tactics, including lovebombing, isolation, manipulation, and gaslighting. She plays into the classic ‘very mature young man.' We even have Beth as a voice of reason, finally stepping up to the plate to protect her son after what seems to be years of emotional neglect. We watch that very neglect backfire on her concern and push Morty further into this relationship. I initially thought it was a play on grooming the viewer, as well, because of the way it’s told essentially from Morty’s ‘puppy love’/‘first love’ point of view and leaves you feeling just the right amount of unsettled after the ending.
So, you could imagine my surprise when I realized that not everyone (in fact, less people than I had expected) initially clocked Planetina as a sketchy/predatory character.
So, I did what any great journalist would do— rewatched. And rewatched. And rewatched.
I wanted to form a nuanced opinion, but I came out on the other side wondering why we never got a moment with Planetina that clearly shows us she’s a condemnable character in the relationship with Morty and not just because of her methods of activism.
I think we’re actually supposed to agree with Morty in this scene, which was not my first reaction.
The age difference is obviously something they intended to be a main plot point for this storyline, as well. The explicit references to it (Morty's age, in particular) were put there for a reason, from the beginning of the episode all the way to the climax.
In a lot of ways, it makes sense to assume that maybe they didn't want to explicitly state it was wrong (though, they do through Beth, in my opinion).
That would explain why so much of A Rickconvenient Mort is set up using textbook grooming tactics; why we never see Planetina outright condemned, but see Morty emotionally destroyed and confused; why we’re (arguably) supposed to agree with Morty over Beth; why we follow Planetina all the way up to when her facetious face of peace and ambivalence crumbles.
Of course, I’m not trying to assume anything, but it does make me wonder what leads someone to write a character in this way— and even promote her as a character at times (like this post, which is captioned 'Tag your Planetina').
Then again, maybe my initial interpretation was correct and all of this was the result of a conscious choice to write and direct an episode from the point of view of Morty as a victim. I mean, it wouldn’t be too far off to assume something like that as we’ve seen them do it time and time again, just with Rick as the abuser. Think of Mortynight Run, The Vat of Acid Episode, and the new infamous episodes: A Rick in King Mortur’s Mort & Ricktional Mortpoon’s Rickmas Mortcation, just to name a few.
Maybe A Rickconvenient Mort is another one of the episodes intended to show Morty’s perspective and frame his loss of innocence as he views it, not as adults/outsiders view it.
It could be a cool contrast between how Rick protects Morty from these sorts of situations versus how Beth does.
(Disclaimer: I’m NOT saying that there aren’t different types of abuse and different appearances to abusers/predators! I just feel like both of these types of abuse/assault can be explicitly depicted as wrong.)
