Strawman Has a Point in this series.
Characters
Jerry has been falling into this a bit in Season 2 with the examples as follows:
- "Auto Erotic Assimilation" has Jerry getting into an argument with Beth over Rick's antics in their house. An alien prisoner of Rick's breaks free and dismisses both sides of their argument as ludicrous. While this would be true of Beth (who was just calling Jerry needy and unable to comprehend her father's brilliance), Jerry raises several valid concerns. Rick does routinely endanger their children by dragging them along on his escapades while Jerry is Forced to Watch because Beth refuses to support him against her father and is willing to defend Rick against all common sense because of her abandonment issues, and Rick is far from a bastion of morality.
- "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez" has the two trying alien couple's therapy, where respective representations of how they see each other are made real. Jerry's view of Beth is basically a super-strong monster that wants to conquer the universe and has a very high opinion of itself. This is a good deal more exaggerated than Beth really is but does capture several of her personality traits (condescending, seeing herself as better than others, very dominating towards Jerry). Not to mention Beth becomes a Hypocrite when her ideal version of Jerry is an assertive, strong man that worships her but she actively shoots him down for attempting to become the assertive man she wants through her condescension.
- Also in "Big Trouble in Little Sanchez", when the therapist blames their poor marriage as the reason for their alternate selves rampaging the building, the two blame it on the faculty's incompetence. This is supposed to be a case of Never My Fault, but the manner the staff checked on the creatures was incredibly careless and led to them escaping (ie. one staff member checking the room with the door left wide open).
- The idea that everything bad that happened by all Beth and Jerry's fault for having a shitty marriage is hurt by the fact that Jerry and Beth would eventually receive counseling from Dr. Wong and were able to work on and improve their marriage with zero casualties.
- "Interdimensional Cable 2: Tempting Fate" has Jerry being condemned for not wanting to go through an organ donation and being shot down when he does the same to those criticizing him after an alternative presents itself. This is passed off as Jerry just being insecure but considering the hospital staff made it out that his organ donation was the only viable option this becomes a case of Never My Fault on their end. However, Beth did tell Jerry that he technically did have a choice in that situation as she told him that if he didn't want to donate to Pibbles, he just had to say no and Jerry's own actions were what caused the alternative option to happen in the first place.
- "The Wedding Squanchers" has Jerry wanting to turn Rick over to the Galactic Federation so they can return to Earth. The rest of the family calls him out for this but he raises the perfectly valid point that everyone is willing to make themselves subservient to Rick, regardless of how damaging it is to do so. Given what Morty has gone through because of his involvement with Rick it's easy to side with Jerry. This culminates in a Deconstruction of the trope, since Rick himself agrees with Jerry and sacrifices himself so they can have a proper life. And then it gets reconstructed when it turns out Rick did that to get back at Galactic Federation, the Council of Ricks and/or Jerry himself—assuming that you take Rick's rant at the end at face value.
- Heck, being a strawman who has a point is Jerry's Establishing Character Moment. In the very first episode he interrupts Beth at work to complain about Rick while she's doing surgery and snottily acts like it's no big deal since she's operating on an animal and not on a person. This is pretty much going to be his shtick from that point on: everything he says about how Rick is a problem and a danger to the family is 100% correct, but he's being a douche about it so that we know we're not supposed to listen to him.
- Morty has a case of this in "Get Schwifty" when Bird Person calls Morty out on planning to abandon Rick to certain death, describing it as a "dick move." Morty argues that "all of Rick's moves are dick moves", which is rather hard to argue against. Morty has personally seen Rick commit atrocity after atrocity, whether by design or accident, up to destroying Morty's original world through his careless antics, while Bird Person's recollections of Rick have been (by some miracle) mostly positive. It's telling that Bird Person doesn't actually come to Rick's defense and has to appeal to Morty's morality to convince him to save Rick (and even his insistence of taking a bet seems skewed when he's on his own planet safe from any consequences).
- A near identical interaction between them occurs in "Ricksy Business"; after all the hell Rick has put Morty through, Morty considers just letting him face the consequences for once. Bird Person reasons that he is in pain and the idea Morty wouldn't stick through all of this to cover for Rick makes him question how he can sleep at night. It doesn't help that, after helping Morty clear up a single can Birdperson hooks up with Tammy and leaves them to handle everything alone.
Episodes
- "A Rickconvenient Mort"':
- Beth Smith isn't wrong to feel uncomfortable by Morty and Planetina's relationship, given that it's a case of a teenage boy being wooed by someone who is effectively an adult. Furthermore, while Morty's The Reason You Suck speech would have been applicable to Season 3 Beth, she has undergone significant Character Development since then - she has become more supportive and caring towards Morty (as seen in Edge Of Tomorty and One Crew Over The Crewcoo's Morty). She even had no problem with Morty's Girlfriend in The Vat of Acid Episode and Jessica in Mort Dinner Rick Andre, showing that the age gap was her only issue with Planetina.
- Planetina. She goes through extreme measures, but it is true that Earth is in a desperate situation. Morty gets upset about her actions, yet never actually tries suggesting an alternative course of action.
- "Mortynight Run" is heavy on the issues of acting without knowing the whole situation, with Morty causing an insane amount of deaths to save a life he ends up taking anyway. While this is true, Rick is never shown trying to provide a bigger picture that could give Morty a better understanding, or even being aware of it himself, his tactic being of just getting out of sight before he can learn of the consequences of his actions and not caring about others.
