“The Buddy System” is filled with scenes of father/son struggles, whether explicit (Rusty belittling Hank for not having his own TV show), implicit (Pete White acting as a “caring, protective man” to Billy) or cryptic (Brock’s relationship to Dermott).

Rusty, surely one of the most spineless, unlikeable creations in TV history, deeply resents his TV-show childhood, but that doesn’t mean he won’t cynically exploit that childhood for personal gain. This man who cannot stand the company of his own sons decides, for some reason, to open a day camp. And a very poorly-run day-camp it is too: obviously thrown-together at the last minute, with more thought put into the t-shirt design than to scheduling or activities. Presenters are unpaid, their acts are apparently not previewed or vetted, the few scheduled activities offered are, to say the least, ill-considered. The laissez-faire attitude extends to the safety of the attendees: “The Buddy System” is instituted at Rusty’s Day Camp because Rusty is too irresponsible to watch over the children himself. “The Buddy System” is, in fact, just another term for “you’re on your own.”

(The rainbow flag in the background of the opening commercial is a particular puzzler — how could a 21st-century parent see this ad and not assume that Rusty’s Day Camp for Boy Adventurers is not a meeting place for children of gay couples?)

(Although the episode doesn’t push the comparison, Rusty’s Day Camp seems to be run along the same lines as the Bush administration: take everyone’s money, hire incompetents and cronies, conduct no oversight, have no plan, shift all responsibility to the people you’ve been charged with protecting, offer lies and no apologies when something goes wrong. The episode even concludes with an ill-timed military invasion.)

Having Rusty, Action Johnny, Billy Quizboy and the Pirate guy all in one place offers a sharp critique of children’s television. The shows that Billy, Johnny and the Pirate represent (It’s Academic, Jonny Quest and Scooby-Doo) were, after all, designed to be “buddies” to real-life children, companions to adventure on Saturday mornings. As fresh-faced kids gather ’round to obtain advice from these TV “buddies,” they find that their future presents few appealing opportunities indeed: one can become a 35-year-old quiz boy, a man in a pirate costume who teams up with rubber-mask ghosts, or a ranting junkie.

“The Buddy System” has many questions regarding what it takes to be a father, but what does it have to say about being a good son? The sons of “The Buddy System” are all bad sons indeed (my TiVo machine even identifies the episode as “Enter the Bad Seed” for some reason). They gripe about their fathers, they plot against them, they team together to pull their progenitors down. The sons of “The Buddy System” all feel terrible resentment toward their fathers (or father figures) — a sense of victimization that excuses any sort of bad behavior. Rusty himself, of course, is the king of this bad behavior — he has neither truly examined his past nor bothered to try to live in the present, and no doubt when a boy is killed on his watch he will blame his father for the event. (I can hear him now: “Well, my father never told me there were wild gorillas in the E-Den — how was I supposed to know?”)

(It cannot be coincidence that the dome of savage, brutal nature that Rusty sends the campers into is named for the staging grounds of the most primal father-son battle in literary history.)

Rusty is a psychologically stunted, pitiable wretch, and yet, he seems to be a high-functioning normal compared to poor Action Johnny. Spotlighting Johnny in “The Buddy System” reveals a father-son conflict much harsher than the one between Rusty and Jonas Venture. Johnny is capable of supplying a common definition of “father,” but it seems that he’s been a very bad son. Dying for his TV-show scientist-father’s attention, it appears that Johnny, between commercials perhaps, killed the family dog (not Bandit!) and stole one of his father’s precious formulas. Suddenly, all those episodes of Jonny Quest going off on adventures alone seem less like fun and more like child abuse — where the hell was Jonny’s father, not to mention Race Bannon? Why was Jonny along on all his father’s secret missions, and why was he constantly allowed to wander off on his own?

Child abuse forms the spine of the plot of “The Buddy System,” although the script, in a clever twist, decides not to tell us that until the last line of the episode. Doughy, dead-eyed Dermott is, it appears, Brock’s son, and sets the plot of the episode rolling by committing to get Brock’s goat. Brock’s goat is, apparently, easily obtained, as his conversation with Dr. Orpheus reveals. “So, anyone who doesn’t immediately give you respect, you murder,” says Dr. O, acting as temporary father to Brock, who responds by acting as a temporary son and deliberately perverts Dr. O’s perfectly sane advice. Brock leaps into action, launching a plot to humble Dermott, hoping to get Hank (to whom Brock has always been more of a father) to beat him up. When Brock can’t locate Hank (who is, as it happens, befriending Dermott at that very moment), he considers using the quasi-child Moppets, then, reluctantly, tries to train Dean to do his dirty work.

(“Where’s your brother?” says Brock to Dean. I would have done a spit-take if Dean had protested that he is not his brother’s keeper. Dean, in this situation, should be experiencing a healthy dose of sibling rivalry. But his hostile response to Dermott seems to have more to do with his fear of Dermott’s size and rudeness, and attendant feelings of unmanliness — the fact that Dermott is stealing Hank, the only friend Dean’s ever had, doesn’t seem to enter into the equation.)

(Dermott hits this episode like a meteorite. He looks about 200% more “real” than the stylized, moon-faced Hank — he almost looks like he’s from a different TV show altogether.)

(The usual twinnings and mirrorings abound in “The Buddy System”: as Dermott attends the day camp to spy on Brock, the Moppets attend to spy on Rusty. The twist is that the teenager, by befriending Hank, gains the access he’s looking for and the professional henchmen come up short. Also, the Monarch uses the Moppets to get to Rusty the same way Brock tries to use them to get to Dermott, before turning to Dean instead.)

Meanwhile, the Monarch reneges on his promises to Dr. Mrs. The Monarch. Dr. Girlfriend has committed to her new identity, why can’t he? But no, he’s back to his old tricks, using his wife’s henchmen to arch Dr. Venture. He’s not ready to be a husband, much less a father — he still wants, essentially, to be a teenager, to dress up in his costume and stalk his boyhood nemesis.

(Brock, apparently, would prefer this as well, for reasons that are unclear to me.)