Marriage, the Monarch finds, brings with it duties and responsibilities he hadn’t anticipated. He’s not comfortable in his new home in a town called Malice (not to be confused with Alice), he’s not comfortable with his wife’s past love-life (that is, her old identity), he’s not comfortable with her attitude toward henchmen (Dr. Girlfriend wants to be a mother to hers, the Monarch prefers to be an autocrat to his — hardly a surprise, with a name like The Monarch). He looks around at his new situation and feels like a rebel who’s sold out to The Man. This house, this neighborhood, this lifestyle, this isn’t what he wanted. He doesn’t want to “pick an arch” out of a facebook, arching is something you have to feel. He’s obviously regretting his leap forward into “respectability.” He’s become a cog.

Sgt Hatred, on the other hand, seems perfectly comfortable with his life as a company man. Perhaps a little too comfortable. His notion of arching, involving questionaires, welcoming parties and baskets of home-grown okra, doesn’t sound like arching at all — it is, plot-twists aside, a development of “business.” Supervillainy in the VB universe is always, in some form or another, a kind of cosplay, and what good is cosplay if it’s “just business”?  (“You put the ‘pro’ in ‘protagonist,’ says Hatred to Rusty, and he means it as a compliment.) Hatred blithely goes about his shows of villainy while feeling no ill will toward Rusty or anything in particular, while the Monarch seethes and rages against the slightest slight.

“Home is Where the Hate Is” takes a closer look at the business of arching than we’ve gotten as of yet. What is this institution of arching and how has it come to be this way? In the cosmology of The Venture Bros, it seems that super-science is like God and supervillainy is like Satan: the latter exists so that we may better recognize and understand the former. Supervillains, it seems, are a natural outgrowth of super-science — create wonderful works of technology and, voila, a costumed freak will emerge to arch you. The fact that Rusty (grudgingly) accepts this indicates that the institutions of super-science understand and condone The Guild and its bureaucracy — it is, somehow, a necessary part of doing business.

The Guild has reduced arching to a business, but The Monarch understands that arching is driven by hatred (if not Hatred). Or perhaps “victimhood.” Victimization plays a strong role in the VB universe and may be what best ties Rusty and the Monarch together. Rusty feels like a victim for being born in his father’s shadow, he feels like a victim for having a more-successful brother, he feels like a victim for being saddled with Hank and Dean (whom he calls “the buzz-kill boys” in this episode). He has made his victimhood his identity, which may be what really keeps him from developing as a human being. He uses his victimization as a crutch or a fall-back position: “The General doesn’t want to buy any of my inventions because I was born in my father’s shadow.”

(At the start of the party game, Sgt. Hatred announces: “Everyone has the name of a famous person pinned to their backs.” That isn’t just the groundwork for a game, that is the essence of the entire show, boiled down to one sentence. Everyone on the show feels like they have someone else’s name pinned to their backs like a “Kick Me” sign, whether it is the name of a parent or an arch-enemy or a better-known member of their community or their younger selves. Everyone in the VB universe lives a reduced life in some way, no one is capable of reaching their full potential, because of that name pinned to their backs. In a way, one can admire Sgt Hatred for seeing this commonality for what it is and embracing it — so what if he can’t really live up to the name tattooed down his front? There are other things in life, like a loving wife, a thriving vegetable garden and an interest in lawn care. He has found a way to live outside his chosen identity — could The Monarch ever do likewise?)

The Monarch, on the other hand, seems, perversely, to be most comfortable when victimized. He grouses as he looks through the Guild’s Facebook and bickers with Dr. Girlfriend about her past, but only comes into full bloom when able to shout defiance, whether he’s feeling aggrieved about a life-long grudge or cheating at a party game. Like Rusty, he’s most comfortable as a victim because it keeps him from facing his “adult” duties of marriage and career: “I can’t be a loving husband because Sgt Hatred cheats at Charades.”

Both Rusty and The Monarch resent the responsibilities that come with their identities. Rusty resents his sons, The Monarch resents, well, pretty much everything. With identity comes responsibility, and in the case of “Home is Where the Hate Is” the themes of Identity and Responsibility are put into comic relief with the b-story of Hank and Dean’s hijinx with 21 and 24. 21 has a responsibility toward 24, his friend, but is given the responsibility of watching after Hank and Dean, which he resents: his identity as a friend comes into conflict with his identity as a henchman.

21’s problems are multiplied by an internecine conflict with The Moppets. Essentially a case of sibling rivalry — Mom’s kids don’t get along with dad’s kids — The Moppets are resenting their pending identity shift from Dr. Girlfriend’s henchmen to The Monarch’s henchmen. And while Kevin and Tim-Tom don’t make very good victims (pushy, knife-wielding dwarfs seldom do), they do hold their identities dear and harbor a grudge against their opposite — which is, of course, really a grudge against The Monarch, the man who took their “mother” away from them.

The plots of both the A and B stories of “Home is Where the Hate Is” come together, as all good comedy plots should, with everyone taking off their clothes. When Sgt Hatred invites The Monarch to strip down for a soak in the hot tub, he’s being more than just a bourgeois suburbanite, he’s asking The Monarch to shed his identity, assuring him that he will be happier and more comfortable for it. Of course, neither he nor The Monarch can fully shed their identities: The Monarch keeps on his cowl, and Hatred cannot shed his tattoo, which literally spells out his identity. Maybe that’s why The Monarch and Sgt Hatred can’t fully relax in the hot tub while Rusty seems quite at home: Rusty has no costume to shed, only clothing.

Meanwhile, off in the hedge-maze, 21 and 24’s lives are saved by shedding their costumes, losing their identities, as The Moppets, in their infantile sibling rage, literally mistake the clothes for the men. 21 asks Hank why he and Dean also took off their clothes, and Hank seems genuinely baffled as to his reasons. We know the reason, of course: thematic unity. Hank and Dean, of all the characters in the VB universe, carry the heaviest burden of identity troubles, even though they don’t seem bright enough to ever articulate their anxieties in any meaningful way (as Dean amply demonstrates in his conversation with 24, a conversation about — what else? — identity).

Dean advises 24 to “follow your dream”, but in the closing moments of the show we are given the dark side of that advice: Sgt Hatred, so comfortable in his identity, is shown pursuing an agenda of child molestation. There are, the episode reminds us, some dreams better left unfollowed.