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.
EVAN: Wow, I’d forgotten that the Steve Austi… er, Summers and Sasquatch characters showed up this early in the continuity! “Do you know how long it takes to pay off six million dollars on a government salary?!” Priceless.
MICHELLE: Yeah, I’ve always wondered why Steve Austin would want to stick around after the government forced him to become a robot without his consent. That line explains everything. Plus, what could $6 million get you today? Perhaps just a bionic arm, but not both legs. And definitely not the eye.
Also: What’s with the outfit? How was he supposed to be a world famous spy in crimson workout clothes? Anyone could see him. As Brock pointed out, “Better lose the bright red tracksuit too.” Summer’s reply: “But that’s my thing!”
EVAN: I vividly remember watching those Six Million-Dollar Man vs. Sasquatch episodes, too. They’re like the perfect recipe for awesome for pre-teen boy entertainment. A cyborg dude fighting Bigfoot?! Are you kidding me?
GRAEME: And the OSI! I could’ve sworn that didn’t come up until much later, but there Brock is, talking about being a member of the Office of Secret Intelligence, and the soldiers are suitably wowed. “Dibs on his cigarette butt!”
I love that so much of what will become so important later is already making appearances – The OSI, the Guild of Calamitous Intent with all of its rules and arcane bylaws. I wonder if half of what would form the basis of storylines for the next few years was even a twinkle in anyone’s eyes at this point, but it feels like forward planning nonetheless.
GRAEME: You’re right about Steve Summers and the Sasquatch – who sounds like Chewbacca, amusingly – who are spectacular. I love Steve’s grumpiness about the idea of having to pay back the six million dollars. Again, there’s a weird and wonderful reality being pushed onto the genre fantasy there that’s hilarious and depressing all at once. Where would this show be without the sadness?
Also: “Dude! That was a shaved bigfoot! And Steve Summers in a wig! Made out of shaved bigfoot!”
EVAN: And, seeing how their VB analogues wind up makes me realize that Doc Hammer and crew were probably setting up the tradition of effed-up, subversive pastiches of genre characters right from the beginning.
GRAEME: Talking of genre pastiches, Hank trying to do the Dukes of Hazzard jump out the car window, only to fall on the ground, was one of my favorite silly jokes of the episode. I always wanted to try that as a kid, but I probably would’ve been as successful as Hank, sadly.
EVAN: Given the slaugther it wreaks at show’s end, the Spider-Slayer type robot that Dr. Venture whips up is probably his most functional invention ever, right? I’ll have to keep track of the efficacy of the other stuff Doc invents as the show continues.
GRAEME: Rusty really isn’t the screw-up he’ll become later at this point – Remember, in the first episode, he was actually being paid to teach people, and then other people were asking him to go into space to fix things. I don’t know if it’s just that Jackson and Doc hadn’t decided to make him into the pathetic failure he’d end up yet, or whether it’s been a slow, slow slide into obscurity for his talents, but he’s still a reasonably good scientist right now.
That said, G.U.A.R.D.O. isn’t his most functional invention – It’s just that we haven’t even really got to the foreshadowing of what that really is (Spoiler: Cloning Hank and Dean) yet.
MICHELLE: We also have to remember that Guardo’s big undoing was being run over by Brock’s Charger so technically he’s not that functional in a battle. He can destroy hundreds of minions, but he’s not technologically advanced enough to move out of the way when Brock is coming through.
EVAN: Most WTF line of the episode: “It’s fairly common for some men to lactate involuntarily in situations of extreme stress.” That just comes out of nowhere.
GRAEME: My favorite line: ” G.U.A.R.D.O.? Does that stand for something?”
MICHELLE: Mine: “You have to give me this one, I’ve loathed Venture since college.” Dr. Venture didn’t look out for his lab partner, and as any university student knows, those who violate the bonds of lab partnership deserve the death penalty.
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