Besides, if The Monarch were to kill Rusty, then what would he do with his life? We’ve seen that he’s not happy arching anyone else. What would happen if his ambition were fulfilled, if Rusty was blown to smithereens by The Monarch’s lightning cannon? Would The Monarch then take off his costume, let go his henchmen and live in suburban comfort? Doing what? What is he qualified to do, besides supervillainy? We’ve seen that he steals all his weapons from others, it’s not like he could get a job designing flying cocoons, the market for which seems extremely limited. And would Dr. Mrs. The Monarch stay with him, or would she become, finally, her own supervillain instead of someone else’s sultry sidekick? How could she live without appending a title to her name?

The Monarch, and all the Guild-sanctioned supervillains it seems, are addicted to the game, as surely as the Sea Captain is addicted to tranquilizer darts (and to feigning outrage, but that’s another story). Where does this addiction come from? What is the source of the need for this game? Well, the 60s-era shows and movies that The Venture Bros salutes and parodies were a product of the Cold War, when the US and the USSR were locked in a cat-and-mouse game of one-upsmanship, a game where billions of lives theoretically hung in the balance, but where both sides seemed to understand that any actual fight would be absurd. And so the two nations rattled their sabres and made their childish threats, but the missles stayed resolutely in their silos and the casualties were all peripheral — North Korea and South Vietnam were the “Scott Hall” or “Henchman No 1″s of the Cold War. The US and USSR, it could be argued, never really hated each other, never wanted to destroy each other, but created the Cold War as a safe way to create a set of national identities (just as the Monarch desperately needs his status as a supervillain to create a personal identity) and, yes, to create a permanent military-based economy. Benton Quest and James Bond, GI Joe and their costumed nemeses were cartoon versions of the East vs West conflict, and “The Lepidopterists” suggests that the Cold War’s basis as a meaningless game of cat-and-mouse is reflected in those cultural artifacts. Benton Quest would never kill Dr. Zin, Bond would never kill Blofeld, GI Joe would never defeat Cobra. There could be no “end” to the game — to end the game would be to end the series. And just as the point of the series is to make money for the corporation who owned the network or studio, the point of the Cold War was to make money for the military-industrial complex.

The USSR “lost” the Cold War and the world’s conflicts are quite differently-structured now, which is where The Venture Bros comes in. Rusty has inherited the military-industrial complex created by his father, but the cartoon nemeses of the Cold War (like, you know, Castro) have been downgraded to demented freaks like The Monarch.

We’ve read in recent weeks about how The Joker = Osama, but a more legitimate question might be does Monarch = Osama? The Monarch, we see in “The Lepidopterists,” wants to “play the game” of harmless (if expensive) Guild-sanctioned attacks (he’s outraged when Jonas Jr — gasp! — fights back) but in his heart he is a true cold-blooded killer, a man who truly hates the Ventures and wants to destroy them and everything they stand for. It’s as though Al Qaeda had somehow become a Soviet-sponsored state. OSI (and the Guild, for that matter — although I, for one, won’t be surprised to learn that they are actually the one and the same — they almost say as much in this episode) is at a loss as to dealing with The Monarch — they are both bound by the code of their elaborate “game” and also perfectly willing to crush him like the insect he pretends to be. The Lepidopterists of the title are caught in this bind (if they are, indeed, agents of the OSI) and so, oddly, is Brock. Brock, who helped the Monarch re-build his cocoon this season, and who seems to want the Monarch back in Rusty’s life (to give it some sense of order?) here gets addicted to the game as well, cozy with the Lepidopterists and desperate to shoot off Jonas Jr’s giant laser (boy, try to type that sentence without feeling dirty).

The schism between the us-and-them clarity of the Cold War and the what-the-fuck-are-we-supposed-to-do confusion of the War on Terror is reflected by the b-story comedy of the henchmen. Henchman 1, the only competent henchman we’ve seen so far in the Monarch’s story, represents the super-capable agents of the Cold War, while 21 and 24 represent the modern way of warfare — a couple of incompetent, wise-cracking idiots who, thanks to the construct of “the game,” manage to keep wandering from mission to mission, laughing at the deaths of those who care while they have no clue as to what’s going on.

Meanwhile, Jonas Jr, for a guy who has spent most of his life inside someone else’s abdomenal cavity, seems to be pretty well-adjusted.  He leads a family/team of adventurers damaged even by VB standards and unifies them — I especially like the Ventronic robot, which literally creates a “whole man” from the sum of its parts (well, near enough anyway).  He’s managing the whole “make your family your adventure” thing well — he even takes care to include Ned on his adventures. Indeed, he seems to think more of Ned than he does the Sea Captain — either that or the Sea Captain is simply more sensitive to Jonas Jr’s backhanded geniality. If Jonas Jr and Sally are the “dad” and “mom” of this team of Venture castoffs, Ned and the Sea Captain must be the “children”, with Ned as the “baby” and the Sea Captain as the Rebellious Teen. (This is, of course, a reflection of the Fantastic Four family — Reed is the father, Sue is the mother, Johnny is the rebellious teen, and poor Ben, with his diaper and his tantrums, is the baby of the Richards family.) The Sea Captain seems unhappy with this role, in spite of the fact that he plays into it at every opportunity — he’s sensitive to his “parents'” opinions, and he compensates for his misery by getting addicted to drugs.

Aside from all this metaphorical mumbo-jumbo, I found “The Lepidopterists” to be the most tightly plotted episode of the season so far. As a bonus, the Monarch constructed a plan that, due to the efforts of the one competent henchman on his staff, actually worked.

(Another clue that Brock is working for the Monarch: the “Dark S-7 Maneuver” [or as I like to think of it, “the Speed trick”] affects only the video surveillance of Spider-Skull Island, yet Brock reports that the Monarch’s Cocoon is “twenty miles off” or something while looking atsomething other than a video monitor — why is he helping with the Monarch’s plan, if not to bring the Monarch and Rusty together again?)

Why does Jonas Jr. turn his home into a museum dedicated to his father?  I don’t think it’s merely that he worships Jonas Sr (although it’s certainly easier to worship a father who isn’t around — cf Christianity), and I don’t think it’s merely that he wants to stick a knife in Rusty’s side (how appropriate that Jonas Jr lives in the ex-headquarters of the — yikes! — Fraternity of Torment). 

I think Jonas, like many of the characters of the Venture universe, yearns for family.  Up to this point, he’s kind of been tossed on the scrap-heap of “old Venture characters”, making do on Spider-Skull Island with Sally Impossible and Ned and the Ghost-Pirates and so forth.  Having no love toward his brother (whom he tried to kill even before he was born), Jonas reaches out to his missing father to assemble a family from the members of the old Team Venture.  This is the point of the museum, is it not?   To bring together Colonel Gentleman, the Action Man and the rest, to assemble them for that “impromptu” photo-op, with himself at the center?  To, essentially, take his father’s place as the head of the Venture family.

Jonas Jr’s gesture brings up questions the purpose of organizations like Team Venture, organizations like the Fraternity of Torment, and the real-life counterparts of those organizations (the CIA, the Marines, the Navy SEALS, the Mafia — any organization that presents itself, first and foremost, as a “fraternity”).  Jonas Sr has no wife that we’ve seen so far, and is enormously absent with regards to his young son Rusty (his glib, facetious confession to Dick Cavett notwithstanding).  Jonas Sr, no doubt, founded Team Venture precisely to have the family he felt he didn’t have in “real life.”  If he felt Rusty was part of Team Venture, Rusty’s role in the team seems to have been primarily that of “hostage,” the family member who is always in trouble and therefore must always be “rescued.”  Men, it seems to me, leave their “blood” families specifically in order to join an artificial family.  The artificial family a man chooses may be the army, or academia, a street gang or a film crew — or it may be a globe-trotting gang of misfits and psychopaths adventurers.  Jonas Jr, finding his tossed-together set of Venture “remainders” wanting, decides to shoot for the big prize — patriarch.

(Action Man’s murderous rampage in the intro, shouting “Action!  Action!  Action!” as he shoots a helpless man repeatedly in the head, reminds me that shows like Jonny Quest, Scooby Doo and the others cited in this episode were used, in their initial runs anyway, as babysitters for children whose parents wanted to sleep in on Saturday mornings.  They became, in essence, surrogate parents and family members, teaching their lessons of violence, imperialism and incredibly bad parenting to a generation of wide-eyed moppets.  This is, of course, where Billy Quizboy’s fan worship comes in.  No doubt, Team Venture were Billy’s family growing up — as far as I can remember he’s never spoken about having parents or siblings — and his quivering desire to possess the team reflects that.)

(Oh, and how cruel is it that “Now Museum” features Team Venture selling autographs on the same weekend as the San Diego Comic-Con?)

(At first, the Jonas Venture Jr Museum of Jonas Venture seems like one colossal stab in the back to Jonas Jr’s big brother Rusty — but on closer inspection, Jonas’s impulse seems to have little to do with sibling rivalry.  It’s not that Jonas Jr is trying to “steal the spotlight” away from Rusty, Rusty’s whole problem is that he has no spotlight to begin with.  And it’s not that he’s trying to “take Rusty’s Place” as Jonas Sr’s son.  It seems more to me that Jonas Jr wants to take Jonas Sr’s place — consideration of Rusty’s feelings don’t seem to have occurred to him at all.  Rusty may feel slighted or insulted, but, as the old saying goes, you wouldn’t worry so much about what people think of you if you only knew how rarely they do.)

Now let’s look at Richard Impossible.  What did Richard do?  Richard, apparently, left his “blood” family to join Team Venture’s “Boys’ Brigade” as a kind of Snapper Carr figure.  Once he had grown to maturity, Richard married but then tried to combine his “real” family and his artificial family — he took his own blood relatives intothe world of adventure and, in so doing, turned them into hideous freaks and ruined their lives.  Ned, rendered into a drooling, walking callous seems happy enough, but Richard’s wife Sally could not stand Richard’s controlling mania and coldness (who’s the real walking callous?) and left him, ending up with, well, ending up with Jonas Jr, another calculating, controlling superscientist.

So Richard tried to wed his real family to his artificial family and the results were disastrous.  Now that Sally and the rest of the Impossible team have left him, Richard has been reduced to a shell of a man, haggard and unkempt, prone to drunkeness and desperation.  The cold, controlling genius of “Ice Station — Impossible!” is now a shattered wreck — he’s even lost his elasticity, literally his ability to “bounce back” — an apt visual metaphor.

Sally, having left Richard, is now chafing under the smug, condescending personality of Jonas Jr.  She’s chafing, but the Ghost Pirates have had quite enough.  They decide that they would rather live as miserable independent failures than as servants to the presumptuous, ambitious Jonas Jr.  They have taken the blood-family/artificial-family conundrum one step further – they have left their blood families, formed an artificial family, failed in the goals of their artificial family and have now joined a blood family again — only to find themselves, once again, urged to leave their blood family and re-form their artificial family again.

So: Jonas Jr, unhappy with the limits of his “blood” family, tries to re-form his father’s artificial family.  His father’s artificial family, who have apparently been wandering in the animated wilderness since Jonas Sr’s death, are only too happy to oblige (Colonel Gentleman’s off-set adventures are only the most alarming of the group — he may sound like James Bond, but he is apparently possessed of the soul of William S. Burroughs — a potent combination indeed).  Jonas Jr’s brother Rusty is put out, but Jonas doesn’t even seem to notice — he only criticises Rusty’s “Scooby Doo purple” suit (although Colonel Gentleman’s even more behind-the-times purple suit elicits no comment).  His gesture of reunion (with himself as patriarch) even includes the ex-tenants of the island, the Fraternity of Torment.

The Fraternity of Torment have had their artificial family destroyed (by Jonas Sr and Team Venture) but they, too, are more than eager to participate in Jonas Jr’s self-designed coronation.  Everyone is grasping for one last glimmer of that golden time that Jonas Sr represents, and Jonas Jr exploits that desire for all it’s worth.

The spoiler, of course, is Brainulo, who pretends to be the “doddering old man” at the reunion but is secretly its cunning usurper (how dispiriting it must be for Brainulo, a man from the distant future, to find himself elderly before he has ever been born).  Brainulo uses his massive mental powers not to start his robot Futuro but to cause the hidden fears and desires of the party guests to bubble to the surface.  It is perfectly in keeping with the Venture Bros universe that most of the guests have fears and desires wholly unsuitable to the task of wreaking havoc, and the one guest who does was ready to wreak havoc when he walked in the door anyway.

Jonas grasps for his moment, the Ghost Pirates rebel, the buried resentments of a generation boil to the surface in the shape of an Italian self-destruct mechanism (deus ex machina indeed!) and only Richard’s self-loathing, his despair at having been foolish enough to combine his real and artificial family and his inability to rebuild his life, “saves” the day.