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.
[Programming note: Anyone who’s been actually watching the Venture Bros. re-runs has noticed by now that they’re not showing the series in order. Rather than jump around the continuity, the Joint Venture feature’s going to keep going on in series order. This is because we love you, dear reader.]
This week, Evan Narcisse and Graeme McMillan talk about Season 1/Episode 12: ” The Trial of The Monarch.”
GRAEME: Oh, man. So much good stuff in “The Trial of The Monarch”… Not least of which is watching the show realize for the first time that it can pretty much dump all of its lead characters and still be entertaining (Last week’s ep may have written off Hank and Dean, but there was a lot of Rusty and Brock. This time, it was pretty much all the Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend for the entire ep, and all the better for it). But the Monarch being on trial for a murder he’s been framed for! It’s so wonderful, especially because it really underlines how useless he is as a villain – that the only thing he can get arrested for, literally, is something that he didn’t actually do. I also love that what causes the whole thing to happen is Girlfriend leaving the Monarch and returning to Phantom Limb; there’s something about that – that she was the only thing keeping him together, that she’s so good that the Limb will go to such lengths to keep her, that she seems to have no idea about either of those things – that I really like, and that gives everyone involved so much more depth.
(Also surprising: The mention of the Murderous Moppets. I really thought they came out of nowhere in season 3, but here they are being brought up way back here.)
The opening is great, even before you get to MegaShiva; I get that Hank has become Indiana Jones, and that Brock is dressed like Michael Knight from Knight Rider, but who is Dean supposed to be with that moustache? Magnum?
Completely terrifying and out of nowhere: The Southern Lawyer! And his scary miniature self controlling the larger dummy! If this were live action, I’d probably have nightmares about this (Fitting, too, that the entire Guild operation is actually about him: The Monarch can’t even star in his own story, he has to get upstaged right at the very end…).
Best line: Either “That mean little tell-all book filled with nothing but lies and pictures of also-lies!” or “Look at your costume! What, did Frank Frazetta design it for you?”
EVAN: When I first saw this episode, I couldn’t stop saying Mecha(Mega?)Shiva for weeks. That opening crystallizes so much of what makes the Venture Bros. work. The pastiche of so many different elements–The Monarch’s Liefeld-esque re-design, Hank and Dean as Indiana Jones and Magnum, PI, and Brock as David Hasselhoff/Michael Knight with a more bad-ass helper meant to stand in for KITT–is already by itself entertaining. To throw in the absurdity of an anime robot transformation and seat it all in a overheated courtroom drama out of My Cousin Vinny makes it sublime.
VB‘s a show where everyone and anyone can be an unreliable narrator which makes the Monarch yelling at Hank and Dean in the courtroom all the more hilarious. We’ve watched him talk lots of trash about his villainy and abilities through this first season, so it’s funny to watch the tables get turned on him.
The series reminds us so much that Rusty’s a washed-up boys-adventure hero, because it’s the Monarch who really lapsing into grade-school playground language more than Rusty. The liar-liar stuff and the irrational jealousy makes Monarch seem a lot more emotionally stunted than Dr. Venture. But he catches a bad one at the end of the episode.
As an added treat, I’m pretty sure I spy cartoon versions of James Urbaniak and Doc Hammer in the courtroom.
As testament to the greatness in this episode I present a three-way tie for my favorite line:
“And may I remind you that I am rubber and you are glue and whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you?!”
“It’s like he channels dead, crazy people.”
“I myself am growing from the torso of an in-bred simpleton”