The Venture Bros: “The Devil’s Grip” part 1
“The Devil’s Grip” has four major protagonists: Sgt Hatred, Col Gentleman, the Action Man, and The Monarch. Two of these characters are decidedly minor in the Venture universe, another is an arch turned guardian and the last is a straight-up villain, the villain of the series. Their stories are intertwined in this episode around the theme of “regret.” Hatred regrets giving up his job as guardian, but is then moved to rescue Dr. Venture by his default-setting of “soldier.” The Action Man regrets not living a more square life and is moved to action by the presence of Hank in his life, Col Gentleman just plain regrets, and The Monarch starts at a place of ultimate power (for him) and slowly slides toward regret. Regret, in this episode, leads to nostalgia, a form of homesickness, and leads in all cases to comings home. “The Return Home,” in all cases, is not presented as a retreat but as a gesture of healing, a symptom of wisdom, a reassessment of each characters’ place in the universe.
The Venture Bros: “Bot Seeks Bot” part 2
Brock’s mission is now “to save Ghost Robot,” which seems big of him, considering that he doesn’t seem that attached to Ghost Robot, considering that no one seems that attached to Ghost Robot, really. Brock’s passion here is for his work, his job, the job for which he has forsaken his family, the Venture clan, for SPHINX, which has been destroyed by his foster father figure, Hunter Gathers. Brock’s job is his family, and it’s the only thing he’s good at. He can’t win at love, he’s backed away from being a father, he’s distant with his work brothers (he even steals one’s wife), but his job is everything to him, an all-or-nothing proposition, even when “the job” is nothing more than invading a nightclub to rescue a robot from an awkward date.
The Venture Bros: “Bot seeks Bot” part 1
The Clue Clown wields his question mark for good reason. We were only just introduced to his existence, and now he’s gone, leaving nothing but questions. Who was he? What did he stand for? What were his hopes and dreams? Those might be questions too silly to ask of a farcical one-joke supervillain, but the funeral of the Clue Clown is treated with a somberness rare for a Venture Bros death. We barely knew the Clue Clown, the script seems to say, but then, how well do we really know anyone? The death of the Clue Clown sends a whole tributary of minor Venture characters into a whirling tailspin of reflection, sober and otherwise. And, like all funerals, it provokes death’s opposite: lust. What better protest against death could there be than the seeking of carnal fulfillment? In this case, having the lovers seeking their carnalities in bodies of metal.
The Venture Bros “Momma’s Boys” part 2
While Hank, Dermott, Gary and HELPeR act crazy to get themselves committed (what could possibly go wrong?) Rusty and Hatred go searching for By-Golly Gulch, using a hover-tank and a smartphone. A lot of the characters in The Venture Bros are in desperate search of a dream, but Rusty wants to find Teddy with a GPS. And, since By-Golly Gulch is a nonexistent fairyland, he is doomed. The important thing, though, is that Rusty, who’s always found the whole alter-ego thing to be a stone drag, a blight on his life, is so in need of an alter ego that he’s created one – in Teddy, who, for the purposes of Rusty’s narrative, doesn’t exist. Rusty is going to rescue Teddy, who he sees as a version of himself, from the clutches of evil. This, the narrative implies, is what happens when a man doesn’t do the normal thing of dressing up in a costume and affecting a colorful persona: one sees people where there are none, no matter how obvious it is that they are not there. Read more
The Venture Bros: “Momma’s Boys” part 1
When reasonable people gather to discuss Batman, at some point someone clears their throat and says “Well you know, according to some schools of thought, Bruce Wayne died the night his parents died; from that moment on he was Batman, and ‘Bruce Wayne’ became the mask.” This is certainly a compelling argument with a subversive impact, but it only works if we proceed with the supposition that Bruce Wayne is completely insane. A sane man does not assume the personality of a night-time crimefighting vigilante and relegate his “getting by” personality to that of a billionaire businessman.
And, of course, there are people who would argue that, yes, Bruce Wayne is insane, that The Bat has taken over and subsumed his personality like Norman Bates’s mother. After all, Batman has always been a comic about insanity, far more than any other superhero title. The only thing that all Batman’s villains have in common is that they are stark raving mad. As a matter of fact, George Clooney once pitched a Batman movie to Warner Bros where it would be revealed at the end that, a la Sucker Punch, it is Bruce Wayne who has lived in Arkham Asylum all these years, fighting his never-ending war on giggling psychopaths from the confines of a padded cell.
All of which brings us to tonight’s Venture Bros episode, “Momma’s Boys.”
Some thoughts on The Lone Ranger
What does the Lone Ranger want? Excellent question! Of necessity, spoilers within.
Venture Bros: “O.S. I Love You” part 2
What does Dean Venture, protagonist of this episode’s b-story, want? He’s chafing under the mantle of being a Venture Brother and all that entails (tagging along on life-threatening adventures, being cloned repeatedly, having a negligent father and a child-molesting guardian, etc) and, what’s more, he’s a teen-aged boy going through all the teen-aged-boy things teen-aged boys go through: rebellion against his parents, discovering his own identity, girl problems. Hank, on the other hand, seems to have regressed. His Destiny strength-suit gives him power, but it’s also, as Rusty points out, just another dress-up costume like the Batman getup he had when he was 10. (Note: I’ve had a 10-year-old son, who wouldn’t dream of dressing as Batman. For him it was Gordon Freeman or nothing. He even bought a crowbar. He named it “Whammy.”)
Venture Bros: “O.S. I Love You” part 1
Due to its shuffled-flashback structure and blitz-clever dialogue, “O.S. I Love You” seems like a much more complicated episode than it is. The plot is extremely simple: Brock Samson and a team of OSI guys capture Monstroso and Molotov Cocktease and bring them aboard the OSI heli-carrier. Soon after being captured, both Monstroso and Molotov escape. Monstroso vanishes (as far as OSI knows) and Molotov leads the agents on a merry chase that ends with Brock cornering her and shredding her in one of the heli-carrier’s engines (or so we think). Later, OSI higher-ups come to investigate the botched capture, which should have been routine for Samson and his crew. In a small b-story, the Venture gang – simultaneously and coincidentally – come to the OSI heli-carrier to get Sgt Hatred breast-reduction surgery: Hatred is apparently no longer so into being the “mom” of the family.
Superman: Superman: The Movie part 6
Superman reaches its crisis point as Lex Luthor explains his scheme to Superman and Superman stands there and looks shocked. Keep in mind, Superman knows that the army and navy are testing two nuclear missiles that day, and he also knows that Lois is “out west checking into a big land sale,” and yet, as Luthor patiently explains his plan to him, he still puts nothing together on his own and does not act even after Luthor is done with his presentation. Luthor was banking on Superman’s goodness, but he needn’t have bothered – he could have banked on Superman’s total lack of deductive reasoning.
Superman: Superman: The Movie part 5
Ninety minutes or so into Superman, Lex Luthor, in his luxurious basement, puts together a chain of logic that leads to a chance to murder Superman.
Here is his chain: Superman is from Krypton, which exploded. Exploding planets create debris. Debris, drifting through space, becomes meteorites. Meteorites from the exploded Krypton would have specific radioactive signatures. Ergo (his word), a meteorite from Krypton will kill Superman.
Let’s examine this a little more closely. Lex Luthor, by his own admission the most brilliant man in the world, has a plan to kill Superman that involves exposing him to a rock from his home planet. Let’s set aside, for the moment, the fact that no aspect of his chain of logic makes any sense whatsoever. The first question is, why does Lex Luthor need a plan to kill Superman? We know at this point that he has some kind of diabolical scheme in play, but why does that create a pressing need to kill Superman, indeed, a need that supersedes all planning for his nefarious plot? For that matter, why, if Lex Luthor has a diabolical scheme, do we never see him actually executing any aspect of that scheme? Ninety minutes into the movie, all we have seen Lex do is lounge, swim, proclaim his greatness, insult his underlings and bitch about stuff. Whatever his evil plot is, its implementation takes up not one second of his time.