"Mid-Life Chrysalis"

Originally aired September 25, 2004

License to Kill... expired?! This episode opens with Brock being informed his Secret Agent License has expired and Doc being called "Grandpa," wounding his ever-fragile ego. Watch for that shot right before the smash to the titles, the look of heartbreak on Brock's face is amazing.

So Rusty decides what he needs is a new car and a piece of tail, showing up in the compound informing Brock of "Operation: Get Me Some." Brock meanwhile is having a difficult time adjusting to his new murderless existence, leading to the second greatest montage the show has yet produced (the first is in the season 2 premiere. You know what I'm talking about), as Brock reminisces about all the people he's killed and the various painful ways he's killed them (In the commentary, Jackson and Doc state that the one where Brock is purple is direct reference to an episode of Johnny Quest where Race makes himself purple with berries and pretends to be a god. Fun for the whole family!). This all leads to a strip club where Brock cockblocks Rusty (not that Rusty needs any help) and, due to his identity being removed from him, is unable to bang that stripper in the Unisex restroom.


Around this time the other part of the plot walks in: Dr. Girlfriend, disguised and sent by The Monarch, sends Rusty a drink and engages him in conversation. All a ploy, of course, she gets back to his place and before they can seal the deal as it were, she injects him in the neck with some no doubt horrible chemical, causing him to pass right out. When he comes to the next morning, "Charlene" is escaping to The Monarch's Cocoon, and he's left with what he assumes is a hickey (of biblical proportions).


So Dean and Hank set about helping Brock train to retake his secret agent test and Rusty sets about um... trying to talk "Charlene" into going on another date with him and turning gradually into an enormous caterpillar. Both men fail the tests put in front of them (although in Brock's case it could be said that he fails because he's too fucking good at his job) and both men are restored to normalcy through the actions of someone else (Dr. Girlfriend comes back and injects Rusty with the antidote; Brock's test administrator is General Treyster's son).


It occurs to me while doing this write-up that this is an episode with two A-stories. I would feel remiss in shortchanging either of these two plotlines. I also feel compelled to note that this is the episode during which Jackson and Doc discuss which of their characters they would bang (Doc: Dr. Girlfriend if it's just a one night stand, Trianna for a more long-term relationship, Dean if we're talking about the guys. Jackson: Pete White, because "I've never had an albino").


So, all in all, a solid episode, doing a number of the things that the Venture Bros will eventually be doing better than anyone else, the blending of mid-life failure and cartoon supervillainy, spy tropes and comic books. Not reaching for the stars, exactly, but a thoroughly solid outing.


Episode grade: 7.0/10


Notes:


"I'm all out of condom."
-Doctor Venture


"Why would you dress like that?"
-Brock


-The first mention of General Treyster, head of the OSI, is in this episode.

"Careers in Science"

Originally aired August 14, 2004

Honestly, this is one of my least favorite episodes of the whole run. It introduces a couple of largely uninteresting/one-joke characters and serves little purpose in the grand scheme of this aside from really starting to hammer home our main theme (failure) and establishing Jonas Venture's genius through the Gargantua-1 Space Station.


The episode opens with a filmstrip, complete with beeping and projector sounds, on (what else?) Careers in Science. It seems appropriate to note that this is the only episode of the show that doesn't open in the more "cinematic" 16x9 widescreen that characterizes the cold opens for the first two seasons (starting in the season 3, the whole episode is presented in widescreen), and that alone is enough to strike the viewer as odd (This is also the only episode not to be "Presented in glorious EXTRA-Color!," but since that's more a parody of how proud networks and studios were of, y'know, having color in the '60s).


Anyway, the filmstrip sets up our locale (as well as giving us an iconic shot for the climax), the Gargantua-1 Space Station, built by Jonas Venture back in the '60s and '70s, with little Rusty tagging along as though he has a choice (More on that when we get to "The Incredible Mr. Brisby"). Gargantua-1 is the "ninth wonder of the world," we're told, with a crew of 2,000, it's probably the height of man's achievement, and after being operational for all these years, the "Problem" light has turned on... and that's never happened before. Clearly the brainiac son of Dr. Venture should be able to fix this in a jiffy!


In addition, Col. Bud Manstrong tells the boys a tale of a Phantom Spaceman who is said to roam the corridors looking to murder the crew, and there's a horrendously ugly woman (Lt. Baldovich) with whom Brock has sex ("I like it with the helmet on."), presumably because Jackson and Doc simply couldn't think of something else to do with him. A problem that arises in a lot of the early episodes is that Brock has only two modes: Murderer Extraordinaire or Impossibly Well-Endowed Loverman, and these two things inform most of his plot lines. Which is rough on rewatchings, because the Brock of later episodes is so much more interesting, conflicted, complicated, whereas here we're just presented with a skewed version of the character Vin Diesel plays in most of his movies.


As I say, they push the failure theme in pretty hard here, the opening promises a crew of two thousand, which is a pretty stark difference to the two people who actually run the place. Hank and Dean run around fairly ineffectually, eventually beating up HELPeR in a case of mistaken identity and shoving him out the airlock. And Doc realizes that the Problem indicated by the light is him (okay, a toy he left in the panel which has since melted). Of course, the problem once recognized is easily solved and Doc is able to patch things up pretty easily afterward (because it takes exactly zero skill to do so).

What else is there even to say about this episode? Gargantua-1 is interesting as an expression of failure. The "ninth wonder of the world" has barely been used at all, as Brock points out at one point, "The whole place smells like a new radio." Further, the next time we hear about Gargantua-1, it will be plummeting to Earth (also probably Rusty's fault, I can't imagine urine is good for electronics). And Bud Manstrong as a largely impotent man-child with no conception of how human relationships work, because he's been trapped on a Space Station since he was old enough to be paperboy.


It's not a bad episode, it's just so far from the peak as to be approaching the nadir. Luckily, it gets better from here. The next episode has more Monarch mayhem and crazy super-science. It also attempts to broaden Brock (but unfortunately only through his only established character traits thus far).


Episode grade: 6.2/10


Notes:


-For detail obsessives, this episode has the first mentions of Dean's favorite book series, "Giant Boy Detective."


"Great, Dad, super idea! No, you should always put a gravity button on the ninth wonder of the world!"
-Doctor Venture


"Who lets a 10-year-old build a space station??"
-Doctor Venture

"Dia de Los Dangerous!"

Originally aired August 7, 2004

So, the premiere episode of The Venture Bros. opens on a Mexican strip poker game with some shady characters who are but moments from a pummeling courtesy one Brock Samson. The hand is played, Brock loses because of "Tijuana Rules" and removes his briefs, and then, while everyone is terrified (and awed) and the immensity of his manhood, Brock kills probably 90% of the people in the room... with his socks. Finally, the man with whom he was playing poker surrenders (so as not to die) and hands over the item for which Brock came: a part for a '69 Charger. Smash to the credits.

First of all, this is a pretty ballsy way to open the first episode of a show. There's really no way to get a sense of what exactly is happening until after the credits, because only one of these characters is significant, and he's the only main character (at this point in the show) who doesn't have the surname "Venture." My other issue with the opening is that it has basically no bearing on anything else in the episode, beyond that it's set in Mexico and it establishes Brock as a badass.

Moving forward, we're introduced to Doctor Venture, who's come to Mexico to give a lecture on... the Scientific Method? He uses it to disprove the idea that Chupacabras are running about the place and is about to turn his reasoning to the Catholic Church (I love that chalkboard drawing of what I assume is the Pope zapping a church steeple in the background) when it comes to his attention that most of his students are in fact in the wrong classroom. After some confusion on the subject of his payment, he meets up with Brock (who's heading off with a hooker) and his sons, Hank and Dean:

 

After a few short exchanges (in which we realize the boys are about a bright as a shattered light bulb and that Doc has about as much compassion for his sons as the Xenomorph), the Monarch is introduced as Doctor Venture's archenemy in a delicious parody of Johnny Quest-esque villainy. Indeed, much of this season can be viewed less as the world-building show that challenges it's characters and more as a straight parody of Golden Age Hanna-Barbera cartoons. "What would it be like if Johnny Quest grew up super-dysfunctional?" is the guiding question here (and one that will be directly answered in season 2, in one of the show's all-time best episodes).

Anyway, Doc fucks off to get some painkillers from "Dr . Ernesto Guevara" (clever, that), the Monarch sends out "a phalanx of no less than 3 and no more than 5 henchmen" to observe and report, and the boys decide that they need to show the family robot HELPeR their appreciation by taking him to an auto-detailer, you know, to make him pretty. Of course, the henchmen run into Hank and Dean, who radio for help, prompting Brock to come to the rescue and be blasted with about eighty-seven tranq darts before being struck with the Monarchmobile and left for dead in the desert.

Meanwhile, Doc wakes up without his kidneys and, realizing he might need those, tries to find the boys for a transplant. He finds Brock's grave in the desert and upon Brock's return to the living (I guess he had to sleep off those darts) they voyage to the Monarch's cocoon and asses are kicked. I realize this is a somewhat slipshod account of the final act, but discussing the Monarch's origin (which has never been addressed since) and his attempts to become the boys' surrogate father would just be kind of weird (like when he's play wrestling with them and Hank's pants start falling down). It is worth noting that after Dean and Hank are rescued, they Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who'll give their pop a kidney and they both lose, a move that firmly cements Doctor Venture in the "Worst Father Ever" category, even if the boys are just clones.

For a first episode, there's a lot of character work here. Some of it is consistent with the future of the characters (Doc's seeming disinterest in his sons), some of it isn't (Brock's disinterest in the Venture clan), and some of it is groundwork for the characters to expand upon in the future (Doc's addiction to painkillers, the Monarch's relationship with Dr. Girlfriend). As of this episode, the character who has the most growing to do is Brock; it won't be for at least seven or eight episodes that he starts showing anything approaching real affection for the boys, and not until season 2 that he's as much a guiding force in their development (if not moreso) as their father.

Further, the first season in particular lays all it's Johnny Quest cards on the table (well... except for Johnny Quest himself). This episode and the next are variations on Quest-style adventure episodes: a foreign locale, a touch of the supernatural (real or imagined), henchmen and kidnappings, mysteries involving ghosts, etc etc. The major difference (aside from tone) is that Rusty Venture is no Doctor Benton Quest. No, he's the kid who used to have to tag along with his dad everywhere, trying not to be kidnapped or get in the way, who's never managed to step out from the shadow of his father, a theme that will continue long into the series.

So this is the beginning. And like most beginnings, it's not the greatest. There are still some good moments here, but this episode and the next are best viewed (in my opinion) more as moments to establish our characters and our themes (failure as a theme is big in episode 2). Going forward, we have yet to be introduced to a number of important characters, Dr. Orpheus and Phantom Limb being two that spring immediately to mind, as well as Henchmen 21 and 24 (though 24 does have a line or two in this episode, even if he isn't credited as such), and so much more story to unravel.

Episode grade: 6.5/10 (if this is actually the first episode you watch. Otherwise add a half point.)

Notes:

"But that might've been someone's spirit, Pop."

"All the more reason to get it the Hell off me!"

-Dean and Doc

"Chupacabra. They're all over Mexico."

-Brock

That thing about Speedy "earning his wings?" Never mentioned again as something the Monarch's henchmen have to do.

"What's Mexican for 'doctor?'"

"Doctor."

-Doc and Dr. Guevara