Venture Bros: Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman


Rusty is threatened by Ginnie’s impressive weapon.

There’s something Shakespearean about “Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman.” It’s full of twins, mirrored story-lines, star-crossed lovers, frustrated couplings, all taking place in an Arden-ish (if not quite E-Den-ic) forest. It even has supernatural creatures flitting about the woods to spice things up.free web site hit counter

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.

Comments

70 Responses to “Venture Bros: Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman”
  1. st_rev says:

    It may be worth noting that in the only known real case of “semi-identical” twins, both twins were genetic chimerae with some XX cells and some XY cells, and one was a hermaphrodite.

    This puts a somewhat different spin on the bra-stuffing scene, and Dean’s screams.

    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.

    Brilliant.

  2. sheherazahde says:

    In the scene at the Key Party it occurred to me that Jonas might be Tara’s biological father. She has the Venture red hair and looks a lot like Rusty.

    • Anonymous says:

      Luke and Lia

      I think you might be right Jonas and Dr Quymn’s mother seemed to have already have had an affair of some sort by the time of the key party. Also it would be comedy gold for rusty to have to deal with the fact that the only woman he really has a chance of having sex with is his own sister.

      And poor poor Dean was almost raped by his kissing cousins.

      • zaratustra00 says:

        Re: Luke and Lia

        “Key party”? In case this wasn’t clear to some of the readers: Putting house/car keys in a bowl and shuffling is the ‘classic’ way to pick partners in a swingers party.

        • Todd says:

          Re: Luke and Lia

          It’s weird, but the second The Monarch moved in to Malice, I flashed on Ang Lee’s The Ice Storm, but then told myself I was merely seeing things.

        • planettom says:

          Re: Luke and Lia

          I’ve noticed that key parties are becoming rather more common in 21st century movies and TV shows about the seventies than in seventies movies about the seventies.

          Sort of like how bemused Vietnam vets will remark, “You know, I notice in all these Vietnam movies there’s a lot of Jimi Hendrix music playing in Vietnam. I remember more Tiny Tim and The Carpenters…”

    • mitejen says:

      That occurred to me too: Tara’s parents seemed like they were being set up in a lavendar marriage, or at least I got that impression from Horace Gentlemen setting his sights on a young man at the party and Tara saying something like ‘Mom, are you and Horace fighting again,’ indicating some relationship other than paternity. Which would at least give some explanation as to Rusty’s mother and her absence.

      • Anonymous says:

        The mystery of whose rusty’s mother is has never come up in the show before? funny how the boys own mother issues are still not fully answered.

        The more I watch the venture brothers the more amazed I am at how the disasters and mistakes of one generation can have affects that repeat themselves over and over again long after the original sinners are dead.

        • mitejen says:

          funny how the boys own mother issues are still not fully answered.

          There was a line in the ‘Buddy System’ episode where Rusty is scolding Hank about calling him Pop in front of the other Boy Adventurers, and he says something about ‘If they knew that I had had sex etc.’ So I really think they’re setting it up that the boys’ mother is either Myra or is somehow related to Rusty having sex with Myra–maybe that’s been already established on this LJ, I haven’t read that far back yet though!

          I remember wondering about Rusty’s mother during the Careers in Science episode- Rusty was alone a lot, since his father was busy being a Super-scientist. Since most of the characters on the show have problems pertaining to an absentee parent or both parents being absent, I just wondered what the story was with Dr. Venture.

          • laminator_x says:

            Mate Date

            The count of years months and days that Thaddeus rattles off since he last got any more or less jubes with Myra’s account of the timing of the boys’ conception.

            • mitejen says:

              Re: Mate Date

              It totally does, but what I’m saying is that just because he had sex with Myra doesn’t mean she gave birth to the boys–only because of the nature of the show and all the Super-science elements. Rusty could have bagged her and then stolen an egg from her to implant into a synthetic womb on Helper or something. I *want* Myra to be the boys’ mother and for it to have been that simple but I’m just saying they like to throw curveballs sometimes and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turned out that way or something equally fun and bizarre!

      • sanspoof says:

        Not just any young man: young mister Bowie! (or so the hints would seem to hint.)

        • mitejen says:

          Here’s the funny thing: All I saw was a young man with blond hair with big dark chunks in it, so I thought it was some in-joke that they did about Doc Hammer again, like when all the creators were on the Monarch’s jury!

          I will have to go back and look at that more closely!

    • catwalk says:

      the talkback over at aint it cool seems to agree that rusty and quymn are a little too related to have sex.
      also, they’ve bandied about the idea of a live-action venture flick.

  3. craigjclark says:

    I wasn’t as enamored of this episode as I have been with the rest of this season to this point, but I’m about to give it another look on television, which usually helps.

    I wonder how many viewers actually remember the Sean Connery movie Medicine Man, in which he’s searching for the cure for cancer in the jungle.

    • mimitabu says:

      i liked it quite a bit myself. just as theme-heavy, but not as bogged down by pre-existing venture mythology as recent episodes (which i also loved, but i’ve wanted them to break out and do something new–preferably going on an “adventure”). also, a lot of the jokes really worked for me (most of all the extended “pan over to someone watching on suspiciously” scene).

      • popebuck1 says:

        Yeah, but it wasn’t bogged down with pre-existing Venture mythology, because it had a buttload of NEW Venture mythology to dump on us!

        To name just one other thing that no one has mentioned so far – Ginny seemed to accuse Rusty of “ruining” Tara and being the father of Nancy and Drew, although Rusty argued that the timing made it impossible. What was up with that, anyway?

        • Todd says:

          I think Ginnie was saying that Dr. Venture, since he is a man, has ruined Tara, just like all other men. I don’t think she was accusing him of anything specific.

          • Anonymous says:

            My brother had the theory that Ginnie may be confusing Rusty for another former boy adventurer. Given Nancy and Drew’s blonde features, he argued that Action Johnny might be their dad. Genetic damage from heavy drug use could explain the “partially identical” thing…

            — N.A.

          • edgarpond says:

            It’s too exact to be dismissed and Ginnie singles Rusty out quite specifically. Rusty clearly remembers the last meeting and it WASN’T the incident that Ginnie is accusing him of.

            We must remember how smart our young writers are.

            And we must remember our Chekhov. No writer introduces a revolver without it being used.

            Ginnie remembers quite clearly… only she’s accusing the wrong man. And understandably so.

  4. Anonymous says:

    “Ok. This is what’s going to happen…”

    In considering this episode it felt spiritually connected to the last episode at the scene the point of the disasterous result of Venture choosing to enter for the first time into the glass-enclosed biotopic Eden-ick experiment of his father, of whom he said died before he taught him “how to care”.

    (At the point after Billy escapes, bloodied, laying in front of the door)

    Billy: I wasn’t alone in there. We lost one.
    Venture: Where was his buddy? He had a buddy. They all had buddies.
    tone of the soundtrack music darkens, as does Venture’s:
    You always wanted to be an adventurer.
    Not like answering trivia, is it boy.
    less menacingly
    Ok. This is what’s going to happen ….

    There Dr. Venture noticeably changed in voice and action, and the music encouraged this point. He was in command as he was in his melieu – that of having to survive the years of father-induced fuck-ups of “boy adventurers” narratives where buddy-systems fail (behind a glass screen) by doing what it takes to find his own way, i.e. another survival narrative, that tries to deal with his past, his father’s past, and so on.

    Right there, in this theme-park/science-day camp re-imagineering his tv-show-life, in his own way he does show he knows he is an adventurer, and a doctor (the last scene recalls he is able to clone human life and correct DNA.) But he refused to inherit it.

    In last week’s episode, to present these kids (all wanting to imitate him as a kid) he had to decide to not be one, to lead and to re-enter the stench and primordial ooze of his father’s locked-up experimental “life” staging grounds.

    He confronts – which is what Killinger wanted him to do with entering his “bag”.
    Each time, he returns, different.

    He refused Killinger’s contract to become the arch-villain (go after his own brother). He also resigns himself to put up with the frustrating feebleness of ersatz arch-villain Sargeant Hatred’s attempt at a “burning bush / Moses” arch. But in this last episode, he in fact does confront, enter and return from his father’s “den”, and reveals at that moment of necessity something else of his character.

    So that allows in this recent episode, a next stage (although these are all overlapping really) in an absentee father / mother world. The the play of “adventure” is more directly related to overall sexual tensions, that hint to the formation of gender, taboos and obviously kinship.

  5. Anonymous says:

    I’d offer that it’s not that Dean doesn’t want to have sex — it’s that he wants to have sex with Triana, not Nancy and Drew, and he’s avoiding any situation that, in his mind, would make him unworthy of the girl he’s placed on the very highest of pedestals. That’s not to say Dean’s not sexually repressed; his view of Triana on the whole is very formal and chaste, with only the occasional desire to kiss her emerging in his subconscious. But I think his hysteria came more from his frantic need not to have his illusions about his chances with Triana shattered.

    I also dug Dr. Quymn’s needlessly sexy handstand as she and Rusty climb the tree, complete with sexualized little grunt. I see Messrs. Publick and Hammer spent many hours playing Tomb Raider in their youth…

    — N.A.

    • teamwak says:

      That handstand is straight out of a movie. I’m fairly sure Michelle Pfieffer in Batman Returns did something like that. Or possibly Daryl Hannah in Blade Runner. Damn, my knowledge of sexy movie handstands is not up to scratch!

      This show is so full of movie references that its hard to keep up. Maybe Jackson will answer as he does read this blog sometimes lol

      • catwalk says:

        that handstand always reminds me of the animated aeon flux and her odd, sometimes unnecessary, gymnastics…

      • unwiredben says:

        The handstand was totally a Lara Croft:Tomb Raider move. I’d be shocked if the character wasn’t partially modeled on her, albeit a much more-human version.

        • teamwak says:

          TOMB RAIDER!!!

          Thats the baby! It wasn’t even a bloody movie lol. Damn Zeitgiest too darn big lol

          Thanks 🙂

  6. ytoabn says:

    Ginnie

    In reference to Ginnie seemingly all over the place, she told the girls (though we’re not even sure they’re both girls anymore) that she had never found anyone who was man enough for her. I think when she saw Brock, suddenly she was faced with someone who might be the one that coudl handle her and didn’t know how to take it. She had put her potential mate on such a high, imaginary pedastal that when someone even came close to it she acted strange. She wasn’t sure if she should expect him to come to her, or if she should flirt it up or what.

    • Anonymous says:

      Re: Ginnie

      I noticed a consistent theme in this episode of elaborate expectations giving way to disappointing reality. (Or maybe that’s the series as a whole?)

      Ginnie seems to at least partly build up a romantic fantasy of Brock in her mind, even though Brock is baffled and disinterested (except, of course, when he gets to fight her.)

      Doc’s desire for Tara gives way to horror when he realizes that she is a) possibly a wereodile, and b) definitely an epileptic. Tara’s romantic longings for Doc, if a bit more nuanced, are thoroughly crushed when he reveals his utter spinelessness.

      Hank and Dean each get what the other wanted; Dean, hoping to solve the mystery of the wereodile, nearly gets an initiation into another very different sort of mystery, and is horrified; Hank, hoping for romance with the girls, solves the mystery of the wereodile in the least fun possible way. For their part, Nancy and Drew are clearly disappointed, and a little grossed out, to realize that the boy they’ve been crushing remains, uh, au naturel.

      The wereodiles aren’t supernatural; in fact, their swanky, Swedish-outfitted pad indicates that they’re total hypocrites, in addition to being phonies.

      And even young Rusty and Tara’s romantic childhood jungle fort is literally crushed by the thoughtless intrusion of their parents’ traumatic lust. (You know, I assumed that Rusty’s blaming his dad for everything that went wrong in his life was a cop-out, but episodes like this are making me wonder whether he might not partly be right about that…)

      In short, I think about cartoon shows way, way too much.

      — N.A.

      • ytoabn says:

        Re: Ginnie

        Well that is our purpose here.

        In the first season and into the second season of the Venture Bros, Jonas Venture was showed to be the perfect father and scientists. But hints of him being uncaring or unaware of Rusty were all around. In the 1st season, using Rusty to “test” the rides in funland, leaving him unsupervised when building the space station.

        By the end of Season 1 we find out that a living being has been inside Rusty all this time, shouldn’t his dad the scientist have picked this up? Then the mental anguish that comes with being a boy adventurer comes up.

        And now in the 3rd season, we find Rusty was more ignored by his father then embraced. Perhaps Rusty is almost justified in his hatred, at least partially. And Dean is building that same resentment.

  7. dougo says:

    (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.)

    But Rusty already has a twin. So they’d be triplets?

    • Todd says:

      Oh boy! And there could be an ultra-icky romantic triangle between Rusty, Jonas and Tara!

    • ytoabn says:

      Triplets

      Actually, you may have just proven they can’t be twins, don’t we have flashbacks of Rusty in the woob eating Jonas Jr? If those flashbacks are accurate, then there were only two people in that womb.

      Then again, we’re talking about a 43 year old pill popper remembering stuff before he was technically a human. Maybe that’s a stretch.

      • Todd says:

        Re: Triplets

        Do we know that Rusty was in a womb?

        • dougo says:

          Re: Triplets

          I think he was in a woob.

        • ytoabn says:

          Re: Triplets

          Oh please don’t tell me we’re going to assume that Rusty is a clone as well, making his womb flashbacks entirely based on his own paranoia of there being a brother in his gut.

          • Todd says:

            Re: Triplets

            Well, he wouldn’t need to be a clone exactly to be grown outside a womb, but I don’t see any reason why a clone couldn’t have an absorbed twin. And Jonas really is the spitting image of his father, in a sawed-off, runty kind of way.

            • edgarpond says:

              Re: Triplets

              Or let’s look at this another way… are we sure that’s Jonas in the womb with Rusty?

              • selectnone says:

                Re: Triplets

                I think everyone assumed that was The Monarch before Jonas turned up, the beard suggests it probably wasn’t Tara.

                (wait… fetuses with beards? why did I not notice the wrongness of that before?!)

                • Anonymous says:

                  Re: Triplets

                  also it brings up the very likely reality that it was Thaddeus who built the cloning technology not Rusty. Rusty has never actually built anything. He only half-heartedly maintained his fathers equipment. What if Rusty is a clone too it explains him not having a mother. and would make Tara the only real child of Thaddeus venture. also on another note it explains why rusty is so unlike his father physically because he inherited all his fathers weaker genes.

                  • Anonymous says:

                    Re: Triplets

                    In the video game metal gear solid it is revealed that both the protagonist “solid snake” and the antagonist “liquid snake” were cloans of a former super soldier “big boss”. solid snake is supposed to be a collection of all of big boss’ dominant genes and also happens to be his exact image. Liquid snake is supposed to be the left overs, all the recessive genes. That’s what the concept of the older venture twins being clones makes me think of.

  8. 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

    Why do you say pretends? I didn’t catch anything that would suggest anything except sincerity in her pursuit. Do you believe she just glommed onto a strange fruit as an excuse to avoid pursuing a healthy life?

    Shame Tara and Rusty couldn’t work things out (assuming they’re not related). They strike me as being two boxes, each with a random half of the pieces to a single jigsaw puzzle.

    • Todd says:

      Oh, I believe she’s sincere — the “save the world” types generally are. But she’s also deluded.

  9. catwalk says:

    now that i think about it… again…
    is the twin thing a bit twelfth night?
    and the romantic lines a tad a midsummer night’s dream?

    • Todd says:

      There are two pairs of mismatched identical twins in Comedy of Errors, as well. And Midsummer has a guy with an animal head too.

  10. 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?

    I thought the description of the event (“it was like someone shook up a 6-foot can of blood soda and suddenly popped off the lid”) was morbidly hilarious.

    The Lara Croft handstand and the faux-wereodiles’ IKEA appointed hut also made me burst out laughing.

  11. kornleaf says:

    you failed to mention the girls getting skeezed out that dean ain’t cut.

    • catwalk says:

      so they’ve seen… more than one?
      and they have a preference?

      • laminator_x says:

        Preference may be a bit strong. Dean’s was likely the first intact foreskin they had encountered. Presumably they’d previously seen those belonging to the natives. As both the idol Hank’s initiation show us, the locals are trimmed.

    • selectnone says:

      I thought Hank already had been – I don’t quite rememeber which episode it was, but his Dad tells him to “stop bragging about your circumcision” after he mentions that Trianna might be frightened by Dean’s “weird dog dong”

      It was something like that, but I really don’t want to google all those terms.

      On the other hand, Rusty’s knowledge of his sons is shaky at best, and the clones probably don’t all get snipped to match.
      (Hank must have quite a warped sense of himself if that were the case)

  12. Anonymous says:

    I saw the whole thing, and I immediately pegged Ginny as a lesbian in love with Tara, and a Tara that was mildly aware of it but tried her best to ignore it until Rusty started acting like an asshole.

    For example, with Ginny and Brock. She was trying to hit on him while clearly spying on Tara and Rusty in the distance. Once Rusty leaves, she loses interest in Brock and he’s all WTF.

    And then there’s the ‘Tara-bear’ that Ginny uses while she’s arguing with Tara in the hut before she kicks her out; and later Tara herself says something like ‘Ginny-dearest’ in the end. In fact, that whole conversation seemed full of lesbian undertones.

    I don’t know where you guys got the whole ‘twins girls are chimeras’ idea though. I thought they were acting like normal teenage girls, stuffing their bras to look sexy.

    Now that I think about it, maybe they’re more than sex-up teenages, considering they already have preferences and one of them tied Dean up while the other got down to business. Kinky little girls, don’t you think?

    • My thought about the Ginny-Brock interaction is that, just as Doc instructed Brock to get Ginny out of the way, Tara instructed Ginny to hit on Brock. Ginny isn’t really interested in Brock, but she’s willing to take one for team Quymn. She probably isn’t ready to explain to Nancy and Drew, who seem just as sheltered as Hank and Dean, just what a lesbian is. Once it looks like Tara and Rusty have finished their adventure, Ginny loses interest. When Ginny finally does intervene in the Tara-Rusty liaison, it is because her duties as bodyguard (and her affection for Tara) have overridden her duties as wingman. Rusty and Tara have already had plenty of alone time in the jungle.

    • st_rev says:

      Dean calls the girls “semi-identical twins”. Google that phrase and see what turns up…

      • Todd says:

        But when would Dean have had the opportunity to learn that one was a hermaphrodite?

      • catwalk says:

        the girls called themselves ‘semi-identical’ when they were talking to hank and dean in the back of the truck on the way to the camp, saying that sometimes even their own mother couldn’t tell them apart…

        • Todd says:

          Well, then that doesn’t seem to indicate that one is a hermaphrodite. Their mother may be a little inattentive, but certainly one would think she would have noticed that detail by this point.

        • Anonymous says:

          The whole “semi-identical” thing was explained when Dean states that they are monozygotic twins who formed differently with Drew having a freckle on her nose. I don’t know why everyone is so quick to jump at the hermaphrodite thing, which is way less likely for two twins that clearly share DNA.

  13. ndgmtlcd says:

    “Hank and Dean, who, as recently as last week had never met a real teenager, now meet two attractive, apparently normal teenage girls.”

    But what about Triana?

    • Todd says:

      Triana is certainly a “normal teenage girl,” but she has not been presented as sexually available. Until last week she has been mostly off-limits. Although something tells me that will change.

  14. I was confused about the circumcision part. I could swear the first season featured something along these lines:

    “Did he see your creepy dog-dork?”
    “Hank stop bragging to your brother about your circumcision.”

    Perhaps through Hank’s clone-immortality he’s doomed to a cycle of incessant circumcision.

  15. Anonymous says:

    How’s Snacks?