“Hey, guess what? Nobody cares who would win in a crazy fantasy fist-fight between Anne Frank and Lizzie Borden. We never should have brought the henchmen. We’re going to be the only ones there with henchmen!”
“As usual, your detective skills are impeccable, Samson. You have succeeded in exposing my sinister plan to lock myself in a dungeon, chained to an albino.”
“Smurfs don’t lay eggs! I won’t tell you this again! Papa Smurf has a fucking beard! They’re mammals!”
For M-D‘s custom post, a reward for winning the Television Episode Naming Convention Contest, I will now praise the great Venture Bros.
Probably the funniest full half-hour Adult Swim has yet produced, The Venture Bros. combines some disparate elements into a surprisingly coherent whole.
First off, there’s the obvious take on a classic cartoon, a standard Adult Swim trope. But, not content to merely mock Johnny Quest, Venture Bros. evolved into one of the most sophisticated examples of the quickly burgeoning sub-genre of revisionist superhero parody. Finally, the show managed to evolve a mythology all its own, rivaling that of straight comic narratives for complexity and structure.
And did I mention it was funny as shit?
“Please. How stupid do I look to you? World Domination. I’ll leave that to the religious nuts or the Republicans, thank you.”
“Why is it every time I need to get somewhere, we get waylaid by jackassery?”
“Now that we’ve exchanged pleasantries and hot panda milk, Dr. Venture, let’s talk business.”
The first season sets the stage by introducing us to has-been Dr. Thaddeus Venture, living in the shadow of his father’s achievements in “superscience” with his two enthusiastically naive sons, Hank and Dean, their ubermensch bodygaurd Brock Samson (voiced by hardest-working-voice-in-show-business Patrick Warburton) and their robot H.E.L.P.eR. They face off against a slew of villains, none so often as the butterfly-costumed Monarch (one of the best animated characters ever inked) and his gravel-voiced moll, Dr. Girlfriend.
(And yes, that’s where my own Dr. Wife gets her moniker. She was previously Dr. Fiancee and before that, well, you get the picture.)
Dr. Girlfriend: Sweetie, isn’t that the guy from Depeche Mode?
The Monarch: Oh, no way! Where? Holy crap, he’s with a girl?
Dr. Girlfriend: Oh yeah, that guy is totally straight. I saw a whole thing about him on the VH-1.
The Monarch: But he’s the guy from Depeche Mode! It’s impossible.
Dr. Girlfriend: Straight.
The Monarch: Come on! He’s in Depeche Mode!
The first season is pretty epsiodic, slowly weaving a bit of a story arc toward the end involving The Guild of Calamitous Intent, a sort of union for supervillains, but the second season is where things really get going, balancing the laugh-til-you-weep humor of the first season with fairly intricate story arcs. By season three the story arcs are so masterful as to go beyond being a good parody of action narratives to just a good action narrative – although I feel the humor suffers a bit as a result.
I’ll introduce you to the Brothers the same way I was, with this clip from Season One
You can find full episodes and clips on Adult Swim’s site, though I’d stick to the eps since most of those clips are from Season Three and you don’t want spoilers.
So, if you like shows where a sexy Russian assassin gets a name like Molotov Cocktease, I think this is for you.
Buy…
The Venture Bros. – Season One
The Venture Bros. – Season Two
The Venture Bros. – Season Three
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