Rick and Morty – A Rickconvenient Mort Review

Morty has always been a character who has been unlucky with love. His romantic endeavours have resulted in mass murder or the apocalypse. The episode ‘A Rickconvenient Mort’ explores Morty’s first relationship.

Morty becomes infatuated with Planetina (Alison Brie), an elemental superhero who sets out to protect the environment. However, his potential romance has two major obstacle courses: the holders of the elementals rings who can wield Planetina into existence and Morty’s disapproving mother.

Since Morty has become obsessed with Planetina, Rick takes Summer to three planets that are about to be destroyed. This means going to three hedonic parties. But despite Rick’s protestations against love, he falls for an alien woman.

We are three episodes into Season Five and it seems to be a Morty-centric season. The first episode, ‘Mort Dinner Rick Andre’ focused on Morty trying to impress Jessica and going to war with another dimension because of it. Both episodes focused on Morty’s relations with the opposite sex and the extremes he would go to. However, there was a difference: the reason for Morty’s killing.

In ‘Mort Dinner Rick Andre’ Morty annihilated a civilisation just because they got in his way. Morty’s actions in ‘A Rickconvenient Mort’ were more justified because there was affection between Morty and Planetina and Morty was saving her from her captors. Morty got to show how tough and resourceful he could be without any of Rick’s weapons or gadgets. He has learned a lot from his grandfather. Whilst the battle between Morty and the Tina-Teers was meant to be a rift on Captain Planet the use of elemental powers reminded me of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The relationship between Morty and Planetina was treated with sincerity. Planetina was shown to be a wholesome character who wanted to protect the environment. She had some cheesy quotes and despite having the body of an adult woman she was naïve and a little childlike. The episode had two wonderful montages in the episode. The first showed Morty and Planetina during the early stages of their relationship where it was filled with love and passion, the second focused on the pair doing environmental activities and Morty getting freaked out when Planetina fell into eco-terrorism.

Morty defies his mother and declaring his love for Planetina is real. He’s a 14-year-old boy so his emotions and feelings were raw. There was heartbreak when the pair broke up because it was a hard decision for Morty. Sometimes Rick and Morty does rely on swearing too much for a joke but when Planetina swears it was because she was hurt.

Planetina was clearly a parody of the ‘90s cartoon character Captain America. Planetina was a gender swap version of the character. A twist was Planetina’s version of the Planeteers had grown up to be money-grubbing adults who exploit Planetina and have no interest in the environment. Planetina saw things in black-and-white which added to her childlike nature and if things don’t go her way she rages like a child with superpowers. This shocked Morty, which was a bit hypocritical considering Morty wiped out a medieval society in ‘Mort Dinner Rick Andre’ and killed cops, soldiers, and bullies in ‘Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Rickpeat.’

The storyline with Rick and Summer allowed for more lowbrow humour. They attend orgies and get drunk and high as people party during the end of their world. Their plans for debauchery get derailed when Rick falls for an alien from the first planet. It goes against their ‘fuck love’ philosophy. This led to a major bit of character development for Summer because she stopped an apocalypse to prove a point and spite Rick. Like Morty, Summer is starting to act like Rick.

Whilst the apocalypse party crawl allowed for risqué jokes, one of them did cross. That involved a father and son doing a great taboo and have sex with each other. It felt like something Family Guy would do just for the shock value.

Jerry does deserve credit in this episode because he ends up being the one who spoke sense. He tried to forbid his 17-year-old daughter from going to three space orgies and was shocked that his 14-year-old son killed a room full of people. However, due to Jerry being so disrespected by his family they just ignore him.

‘A Rickconvenient Mort’ was an attempt to recapture some of that magic that made Season One and Two so special. It wanted to be emotional and poignant as well as funny and it works for the most part. Planetina was a loveable one-off character.