Recap / Rick And Morty S 1 E 5 Meeseeks And Destroy

Season 1, Episode 05:

Meeseeks And Destroy

"I'M MR. MEESEEKS! LOOK AT ME!"

Written by Ryan Ridley
Directed by Bryan Newton

Morty: Adventures are supposed to be simple and fun.
Rick: Oh, yeah, Morty, yeah. Yeah, that that that's real easy to say from the sidekick position. But but, uh, how about next time... you be in charge, and then we'll talk about how simple and fun it is?

Original air date: 1/20/2014

After Morty is traumatized (again), he refuses to go on any more adventures with Rick because they're not "simple or fun". Rick dares Morty to come up with a better adventure. However, the rest of the family needs Rick's help, so Rick gives them a Meeseeks box: a box that summons a blue man (named Mr. Meeseeks) to do tasks for them.

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This episode contains examples of:

• Alien Blood: Meeseeks’ blood is revealed to be white.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • One scene involves the Meeseeks fighting each other, causing a lot of these since Meeseeks can’t actually die until they fulfill their tasks.
  • Though the confrontation between Morty and King Jellybean itself is not amusing, the aftermath leaves King Jellybean comically beaten down and swollen from Morty slamming him repeatedly under a toilet seat. He is later paraded by his civilians still in a sorry state.
• Attempted Rape: Morty is almost raped by King Jellybean, but finds just enough strength to fight him off. Rick realizes what happened when Morty, beat up and shaking, leaves the toilet, and an even-more-beat-up King Jellybean leaves soon after as well. It ends with Rick murdering King Jellybean in revenge.
• Bar Full of Aliens: "The Thirsty Step", built under one of the steps of the giants' Courthouse. It is visited by all sorts of weird fantasy creatures, including Mr. Jellybean.
• Bathroom Brawl: King Jellybean tries to rape Morty in the tavern bathroom, but Morty gains the upper hand and repeatedly slams his head on the toilet seat.
• Berserk Button: Like the episode before it, this one shows that if you want to stay alive, you leave Rick's grandchildren alone.
• The Bet: Rick allows Morty to choose his own adventure in this episode. He then invokes this bet: If Morty backs out midway for any reason, he is forbidden to complain about all adventures going forward. If Morty finishes, however, he gets the right to choose his own adventure after nine of Rick's.
• Beware the Cute Ones: Somewhere along the way, Morty learned how to fight well enough to beat the shit out of Mr. Jellybean, who is likewise harsher than he appears on the surface.
• Big Red Button: Morty has to press one in the Action Prologue to kill the zombie clones of his family.
• Break the Cutie:
  • Morty is almost raped in a bathroom. The whole thing is played extremely seriously.
  • Jerry has a more humorous example if still a little sympathetic. Beth and Summer completed their tasks fairly quickly, but Jerry struggles with his (knocking two strokes off his golf game). Not only does he anguish about it, but so does his Meeseeks.
• Broken Pedestal: Lampshaded, discussed, and intentionally averted. The two who discover compromising photos of King Jellybean after his death decide to Destroy the Evidence to protect the public's perception of him.
  Village Leader: Wait; Destroy it. Our people will get more from the idea he represented, than from the jellybean he actually was.
• Catchphrase: "Wubba lubba dub dub," Rick's catchphrase, is introduced in this episode.
• Courtroom Drama: When the Giant slips and dies from his head wound, his wife wants legal justice, and the story briefly changes from an adventure into a legal drama.
• Cry into Chest: Morty does this to Rick after he is almost raped in the bathroom. Rick comforts him by offering to take the schmekles he won to the villagers, so Morty would win the bet.
• Death Glare: Rick pulls one off when after King Jellybean comes out of the bathroom, beat up and Rick realizes what happened.
• Death Seeker: Existence is painful for a Meeseeks. The only way for Mr. Meeseeks to die is for them to complete their tasks. They'll do anything they can to finish their job.
• Door Focus: After Rick and Morty exit the fantasy world via portal hole, the camera lingers on the spot where the door disappeared. Sure enough, it reopens for a lethal shot from Rick's gun.
• Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male: Openly defied, seeing how King Jellybean's Attempted Rape of Morty is played dead-serious in the scene itself and Rick's reactions to it, culminating in Rick murdering King Jellybean in revenge.
• Dull Surprise: King Jellybean is so beaten down and dazed from his encounter with Morty that he barely responds to Rick disintergrating besides a lethargic grunt.
• Epic Fail: Played for Drama: Jerry is such an incredibly bad golf player that a literal army can't help him reduce two strokes from his game, and this eventually drives them all so crazy that they decide it's best to murder him and get it over with.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Parodied at the end of the episode.
• Fictional Currency: Schmekles.
• Fiery Cover-Up: Compromising photos of King Jellybean are burned in the tag in an attempt to uphold the pedestal.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Summer's Meeseeks makes a speech at school to fulfill its purpose of making her popular, and several girls crowd around her afterwards, to her delight. One of them is recognizable from the back as Tammy Guetermann.
• Homage: The concept of the Meeseeks, a creature brought into existence for a single task who then self-destructs when said task is done, is borrowed from Scud the Disposable Assassin (though the Meeseeks want to die after completing their task while Scud had enough self-preservation instincts to purposefully leave a job undone, something that's shown to be extremely painful to Meeseeks). Co-creator Dan Harmon wrote several issues while the comic's creator Rob Schrab had been a writer on Harmon's Community.
• Impossible Pickle Jar: Jerry's inability to open a jar results in Rick giving him the Meeseeks box, sparking the B-plot of the episode.
• Institutional Apparel: Rick and Morty dressed in bright orange prison suits.
• Irony: Jerry takes Rick's warning of not assigning difficult tasks to Mr. Meeseeks to heart, but Summer and Beth end up doing just those (Summer wanting to become popular and Beth receiving tips to being a complete woman) and succeed in their issues. Jerry, meanwhile, drives a whole bunch of Mr. Meeseeks crazy because he's unable to learn how to take two simple strokes off his game.
• Karma Houdini Warranty: King Jellybean has supposedly been using his identity to get away with molesting children for years. Not only does victimizing Morty end with him suffering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, but Rick then later disintegrates him with his laser pistol while he is paraded by his worshippers battered and dishevelled.
• Laser-Guided Karma: King Jellybean gets some in the form of an actual laser gun that makes him slowly explode.
• Lecherous Licking: King Jellybean licks Morty's face in the bathroom.
• Lilliputians: Rick and Morty are these in the world of the Giants.
• Loophole Abuse: After undergoing severe Sanity Slippage, the Meeseeks all rally under one Meeseeks who comes up with a viable solution to Jerry's golf problem. That solution?
  Mr. Meeseeks: We'll never get two strokes off his game!
  Mr. Meeseeks: No, we won't. But we will get all strokes off his game... When we kill him!
• Mood Whiplash: Both plots take an incredibly grim turn:
  • Rick and Morty's misadventure in a goofy alien village come to a dark end when Morty is nearly raped in a pub bathroom in a disturbingly realistic way.
  • The Meeseeks' comically futile attempts to make Jerry lose two strokes on his golf game descend into a Sanity Slippage as they become desperate to end their existance, resorting to trying to kill themselves and then, at fail, pursue and try to murder Jerry.
• Motor Mouth: Dale the giant's wife when she calls 911.
  Dale's Wife: Hello? 911? Myhusbandhasbeenattackedbytinypeople HE'S DYING!!
• Mundane Made Awesome: Jerry demonstrating his improved golf game in the restaurant. He kicks open the door, stares down the Meeseeks looking to kill him, and lands a tomato in a saucepan with his swing. Set to EXTREMELY epic music.
• Off on a Technicality: Rick and Morty leave the court as free men because they weren't read their Miranda Rights.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After his Attempted Rape by King Jellybean, Morty's enthusiasm for the adventure completely vanishes, and he begs Rick to go home in a quiet, solemn tone. It doesn't take long for Rick to piece together what happened, and he makes sure Morty ends his adventure on a positive note.
• Overly Long Gag: "Well, he roped me into this!"
• Papa Wolf: Rick ends up killing King Jellybean for what he tried to do to Morty.
• Pet the Dog: Rick quickly realizes what happened to Morty in the bathroom and goes out of his way to make sure Morty wins their bet.
• The Power of Legacy: The Stinger, where the villagers destroy the evidence of King Jellybean's true nature.
  Peasant: Our people will get more from the idea he represented, than from the jellybean he actually was.
• The Power of Love: Jerry gets his swing right after his wife declares her love for him.
• Pun-Based Title: On the phrase "seek and destroy".
• Rape as Drama: Despite the silly setup that the rapist is a Jellybean and the fact that it's only an attempt, the aforementioned scene averts both Black Comedy Rape and Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male and shows just how horrifying the act actually is.
• Sanity Slippage: With Jerry having so much trouble with his golf game, his Meeseeks summoned another one and that one another one and so on and son. Eventually, after panicking and blaming each other, they agree to go on a murderous rampage to complete their task.
• Series Establishing Moment: This is the first episode of the show to draw a line in the sand about its stance on rape jokes, that comments about it can be funny, but the act itself isn't. Rick's joke about Prison Rape is meant to be funny, but Morty getting assaulted in the bathroom isn't in the slightest.
• Serious Business: A simple golf handicap becomes a matter of life or death when the Meeseeks drive themselves mad trying to improve Jerry's. They divide into factions over whether the solution should be to choke up or follow-through, get into fights, and eventually band together to kill Jerry.
• Sherlock Scan: Part and parcel for Rick's extreme intellect, he immediately deduces what happened to Morty in the bathroom when he sees Morty's terror and disheveled appearance and how beaten up Jellybean is. Rick is emphatically not thrilled.
• Shout-Out: When Jerry wants to open a jar of mayonnaise, Rick calls him "Patrick."
• A Simple Plan: Despite Jerry picking a rather simple request the Meeseeks couldn't help him with his golf but were able to help the rather complex task of making Summer more popular at school and Beth's life more fulfilling.
• Smooch of Victory: Morty gets kissed by two village girls at the end.
• The Stinger: After King Jellybean was killed by Rick, one of the villagers finds pictures that were in his possession that prove he was a child molester. The village leader he shows it to commands him to burn it to keep this secret, feeling that the people will get more from the idea of him than the jellybean he actually was.
• Stress Vomit: Morty vomits after having killed his family in the opening simulation.
• Suddenly Shouting: When Jerry says he sucks as the Meeseeks fails to teach him, the Meeseeks replies, "No, Jerry. I'm the one who SUCKS!"
• Tranquil Fury: Rick, despite figuring out what happened between Morty and King Jellybean, seemingly just plays along with Morty and ignores it. Then as they leave the village, he nonchalantly sticks his arm out of the portal and shoots King Jellybean with a laser, blasting him to paste.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Summer doesn't appear again for the rest of the episode after she and Beth come home from the Meeseeks helping them.

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"Existence is pain to a Meeseeks!"