Here at Techland, only one television program manages to tie into so many of our geeky obsessions all at once. Superheroes, mythical creatures, action figures and barely believeable sci-fi all flop onto each other on the glorious cavalcade that is The Venture Bros. Cartoon Network’s just started airing the series from the start and Techland’s Hive Mind is taking the occasion to re-watch the exploits of Hank, Dean, Brock and Dr. Thaddeus Venture. Join us as we witness how Venture Bros. evolved over its four stellar seasons.
This week, Michelle Castillo, Graeme McMillan and Evan Narcisse talk about Season 1/Episode 3: “Home Insecurity.”
EVAN: How much do I heart The Venture Bros.? So much that I laugh out loud at those ‘name-is-a-joke’ characters that I’d otherwise snicker at. Dr. Girlfriend? Poignant, gut-busting and disturbingly fetching. Girl Hitler in this episode? Hilarious. Dr. Killinger, who shows up later in the series? One of the best characters ever on TVB.
GRAEME: You forgot Catclops! I love that random, wonderful pun. A man with a cat on his head for no immediate reason!
MICHELLE: Oh, Doctor Girlfriend. Even though she’s got a doctorate and is smarter than almost all of the villains on the show combined, she’s always relegated to second-in-command. At the very least she wouldn’t have sent Monarch out with that tarantula; she would have built him some awesome apparatus to help him defeat Dr. Venture once and for all.
Another thing I especially love about this show is the non-verbal gags that go on in the background. The one that made me laugh especially this week was Hank wears an Aquaman outfit to sleep and Dean wears a Spiderman one.
EVAN: Baron Ünderbheit makes a great stand-in for a regal, Doctor Doom-style villain and he’s got a point as far as his grievance with Dr. Venture goes. A lab partnership IS a sacred trust. I love how the show treats the “villains trying to kill each other” cliché as perfunctory. It really drives home the notion that the show’s creators know that the audience knows these genre fiction tropes.
GRAEME: And then to use all the cliche sound effects and ideas to deal with the cliched battle between Ünderbheit and the Monarch – Seriously, how often have we heard that laser cannon sound in EVERY SINGLE OTHER CARTOON EVER MADE? I love that, when Ünderbheit does the Wonder Woman defense, we see the ricochets killing other people – before the Monarch gets bored: “Yeah, we tried, whatever.” It’s not just parodying the cliches that I love about the show, it’s the explicit idea that even the show’s characters are bored with all of this stuff.
MICHELLE: Let’s not ignore the music as well. How come we never realized how similar the music during the action scenes for all our favorite Saturday morning cartoons really sounds?
GRAEME: I love all the stuff that Ünderbheit brings along with him: Ünderland, and Ünderlaw, specifically. It’s kind of great to imagine a dictator so petty that he really goes go through with the childlike dream to not only rule your own country, but name everything after you as a result. I wonder how he feels about DC Comics’ villainous internet, the Undernet? (Yes, that really exists.)
EVAN: Soooo… I love H.EL.P eR. For many reasons. Part of it is because he’s a robot riff on Beaker–the hapless, high-strung lab assistant to Dr. Honeydew on the Muppet Show–and Beaker has always been my favorite Muppet. The other part of my Helper love is the depth to which he’ll go to protect and love the Venture family. This episode as a result makes me very happy and sad, what with Helper feeling taken for granted and all manner of messed-up things still continuing to happen to him.
GRAEME: “HELPer’s a real robot!” Damn right, Dean. No other robot would put up with all the crap you have to. I’d never made the Beaker connection before, but now I’m feeling like an idiot: It’s SO OBVIOUS. (Thankfully, Beaker doesn’t end up part-spider by the third season.) Still, at least he gets something along the lines of his own back after the credits this week.
MICHELLE: Agreed. H.EL.P eR. has more power than the Venture family – as seen as he saves everyone this episode – but he never uses it for evil. If I were him, I would have demanded more than an apology to let them out.