Venture Bros: Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman

The “wereodile,” of course, turns out to be a fraud. This is only natural, as it is, narratively speaking, nothing but a flag of convenience, a device to hang a plot on. The wereodile, and the rainforest it lives in, is of no more importance to the characters of “Dr. Quymn” than the cherry orchard is in the Chekhov play of the same name. And, as in The Cherry Orchard, the only woods of any importance are the dark woods of human sexuality. Specifically, frustrated human sexuality.

Dr. Quymn is presented as very much a female Rusty — red haired, twin girls attuned to a life of adventure, supersonic airplane, muscle-bound bodyguard, etc. Her neuroses has developed differently from Rusty’s — she has ventured (sorry) into the rain forest as a bleeding heart to “protect the natives” and “cure cancer” instead of toiling in failure in her mother’s shadow, but she is as delusional and doomed as Rusty — the natives, we learn, do not want or need her protection and the rare plant she pretends to seek for her cancer cure is destroyed by the fire Ginnie and Brock start at the episode’s climax.

Everyone in “Dr. Quymn” wants sex badly, but in spite of their desires, everyone thinks of other things to do to instead. Dr. Tara Quymn wants to have sex with Rusty and has wanted to since they were both ten years old, but instead of doing so she has gone to the rainforest to try to “save the world”. Rusty is more open about his desire for sex (or at least easier to read) but his long list of failed projects is like a life-long parade of impotence — he hardly needs to have real impotence to make the metaphor clearer. Hank and Dean want to have sex, and while Hank sublimates his desires in a relatively normal fashion — that is, playing guitar — Dean is forced, in his terror, to retreat into his childhood fantasy world of mysteries and ghost stories.Brock and Ginnie, Dr. Quymn’s Brock, both want sex but are happiest expressing their desires either through the cars they drive or through fighting, or wielding their various weapons, their penis-substitute knives and guns. Ginnie is the most complicated of the cast in her sexuality. To be honest, I don’t know what the hell she wants out of all this. She’s devoted a healthy chunk of her life in a go-nowhere pursuit of Tara, but seems to be willing to give Brock a spin as well — if she’s drunk enough, or if she thinks it will make Tara jealous. Tara’s twins Nancy and Drew want sex, and their response as “teen girls” is the most natural of all — they fight over who gets the object of their affection, stuff their bras, change their minds, act older than they are and give up surprisingly easily (one wonders what would have happened if Ginnie had not interrupted them).

(Typically for The Venture Bros, the most “normal” of the sex-crazed cast members are the girls.)

(I would even argue that Clyde the orangutan wants to have sex — with Hank, but sublimates his desire through boxing.)

(For those who watch this episode guffawing at all the crazy story lines, let me inform you that the “boxing orangutan” angle is, in point of fact, 100% true.)

(The real Clyde The Orangutan, of course, met a quite unhappy end — no wonder he’s so pissed off. Hank must remind him of Clint Eastwood, the man who made him famous and then got him killed — shades of Rusty and Jonas again.)

Why isn’t anyone having sex? The answer, for the sake of this episode, is that it is impossible for these characters to have sex because their parents had sex. Or, specifically, Rusty’s father and Tara’s mother had sex, and therefore no one in the Venture universe may ever have sex again. To be even more specific, Rusty’s father and Tara’s mother had sex while they were playing an adventure game, thus fusing in their minds the ideas of child-like “adventure” and frustrated sexual desire. Rusty has pursued his goal of trying to be his father, in the hopes that it will lead to a fulfilling sex life, and Tara has lived her life of “adventure” in the wilderness, hoping for the same thing. (Of course, it hasn’t — her neuroses associated with the event have led her only to self-denial, failure, various addictions and related problems, and dead-end physical relationships. And, for all we know, unwanted twins and epilepsy.)

(A number of readers have noted that Rusty and Tara may, in fact, be brother and sister, and there is ample evidence to support this.  If so, I see no reason that they could not, in fact, be twins.)

Rusty’s pursuit of potency and Tara’s sublimation of her desires kick the plot into gear. Rusty steals “the natives”‘ fertility idol and Tara seeks the “Solomon’s Heart” seed. They bring along their baggage, both physical (their families) and mental, guaranteeing their respective failures. Hank and Dean, who, as recently as last week had never met a real teenager, now meet two attractive, apparently normal teenage girls. Dean panics because he thinks they are wereodiles, which is, of course, only his way of dealing with his intense desire to avoid sex. Dean’s endgame in this episode is “solving the mystery,” but to solve the mystery there must, of course, be a mystery first, and so Dean must create a mystery in order to solve it, and thus forestall his sexual maturity.

(He is shocked to see his father’s erection: “Who did that to pop?” he worries. In Dean’s mind, and Rusty’s too I suppose, the fact that his father has an erection means that he cannot have one himself.)

(It is ironic thatone coupling between a relatively healthy man and woman enjoying each other would have such a devastating impact on so many lives. It is, I think, in spite of the adultery involved, the most “normal” sexual relationship we’ve seen on the show so far.)

(Jonas’s and Ms. Quymn’s coupling also illuminates a line from “The Buddy System:” Rusty says “If they found out their childhood hero had sex their heads would explode” I did not know then that he was talking about himself.)

Rusty, of course, fails utterly in all his pursuits. Tara fails to cure cancer and to protect the natives, Ginnie’s desire is transferred to her fight with Brock, which both destroys Tara’s work and her relationship with Rusty. Nancy and Drew seem to have come out okay, and Dean actually seems to have come out ahead — he’s successfully avoided sexual maturity, while Hank, in “defeating the wereodile,” is denied the sexual initiation he craved and is given instead the gift of circumcision, which earns him the nickname “Broken Arrow” from father-figure Brock.

(Ginnie seems to be named after Virginia Slims, the 70s-era cigarette marketed to women with the phrase “You’ve come a long way, baby,” which Ginnie quotes to Tara, right before allowing her — that’s right — an emergency cigarette.)

Favorite moment: the wereodile, after reportedly ripping off a native warrior’s head, took the time to spell out “RARRRRR” on a rooftop. Well, what would one expect a supernatural creature to write?

Second favorite moment: James

  squeaking the line “Oh my God! I almost _____ed a wereodile!” And then sounding even more creeped out when he realizes that instead of being a wereodile, Tara is actually an epileptic. His parents must be so proud.