Venture Bros: Hate Floats
1. Great title, and illustrative. The characters are separated and teamed with enemies and strangers, and find unlikely alliances due to the only thing they share: a desire to destroy their enemies.
2. High level of carnage. Could be the bloodiest so far. Last week’s episode with the fourteen deaths was hysterical, but this was almost like real violence. Truly disturbing. I’ve never seen an eyeball out of its socket, animated, much less see a “point-of-view” shot of the same thing.
3. Any TV show that includes perverse references to Superman, Turk 182 and “Winged Victory” can’t be all bad.
4. Rusty buys Dean a speed-suit. It’s red. And it didn’t occur to me until they were half-way through their purchase that Dr. Venture’s suit was once red too, but he’s worn it every day of his life since he bought it as a teenager. Now it’s faded to what my old apartment building decorator called “Desert Rose.”
5. Terrific episode-long piece of sustained action. Really, everything cuts together beautifully. It’s not just funny, it’s also genuinely exciting.
6. The most important thing, the show is completely transforming itself. Last season, a good deal of the humor was the humor of disappointment, where they set up the action cliche and then deflate it by having something mundane happen. Here, they set up the action cliche and then turn it on its head, pump it up, twist it inside out, increase the tempo and turn it into something that manages to be both parody and the real thing at the same time.
7. The sustained narrative. I cannot stress how different it makes everything.
Can you read my mind?
So brilliant.
The Monarch sounds so much like the closeted gay puppet from Avenue Q… the Bert one…
Wait, wait, wait — so you read comic books, watch Japanese monster movies and watch Broadway musicals? When do you find time to study?
I *could* write a long comment about how I don’t really watch Japanese Monster Movies and the robolizard identity was just created to annoy Josh Emery and society at large, or how I’ve only seen one musical and my knowledge of them is mainly from complex analasys of soundtracks [its fun too fill in all of the gaps songs don’t explain!], but instead I’ll just write Robolizard needs not to study. Robolizard *knows*. After all, wouldn’t that be easier?
[Btw- here’s Avenue Q’s ‘If You Were Gay’… aaaand, here’s a Star Wars Drunk Driving PSA- http://videosift.com/story.php?id=4768… all equally amazing…]
He’s my twin brother in that respect.
Go team awesome! [lifts hand to make half an ‘a’.]
It was so weird to hear that song, especially after being reminded of the rest of that scene on Friday.
Yeah, uncanny timing on that one.
I’m just hoping the shuttle scene doesn’t also end up being an unfortunate coincidence.
I love the split POVs between Rusty’s eyes! Good catch on the speed-suit. Completely missed that during the crotch-patting.
What, no mention of Mars? O_O
You have out-geeked me on the “Mars” reference. Is that what the henchman was singing as he got into his butterfly suit?
Yes. From Holst’s The Planets. Oh dear lord, I have never laughed so hard at orchestral music.
Now I recognize it. Sheesh, I realize now that I only know it as a King Crimson number. I kept thinking it was from a Batman movie or something.
I’ve seen it in a number of movies, it’s a classic for an oncoming armada, but I can’t think of anything specifically. I think it might have been in the War of the Worlds TV series, because I remember being amused by something like that.
DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! DA! DA-DA-DA! DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! DA! DA-DA-DA! DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! DA! DA-DA-DA! DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! DA! DA-DA-DA! DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! DA! DA-DA-DA! DA-DA-DA-DA-DA! DA! DA-DA-DA!
I played “Mars” in high school, so its rhythm is quite ingrained in me.
And is the King Crimson number you know it as the one on In the Wake of Poseidon? Because they also did a straight cover of it at their early concerts, a recording of which appears on the Frame by Frame box set.
Probably the one on Frame by Frame, although I have a number of other “official bootlegs” of theirs.
I don’t see “Mars” listed on Poseidon, is it part of one of the medleys?
“Mars” is the foundation of “The Devil’s Triangle” on Poseidon. I like their straight cover better.
Don’t feel too bad. I knew to expect it from someone’s comment on Jackson’s LJ and I’d actually used selections from The Planets for one of my student films, so I’d spent hours listening to that stuff.
21’s Batmanesque uniform retrieval was a bit of a red herring there, too.
I especially love that sequence because it has to be seen to be understood. You can’t describe it to someone who hasn’t seen it and have them see the humor in it. Pure cinema! (or television in this case, but cinema sounds cooler)
7. The sustained narrative. I cannot stress how different it makes everything.
I agree whole-heartedly. A sustained narrative lets them take bigger risks and get bigger payoffs. Like, I really love the way the Monarch’s henchmen are coming into their own this season (and the intro–best ever? Sure, there was no “Hungry Like the Wolf” reference, which I really liked, but sweet jeebus!) and how Dr. Girlfriend is also becoming more of an independent character.
However, two of my favorite characters have barely appeared so far this season–Oh where, oh where are the ‘evuh-populah’ Pete White and Master Billy Quizboy, Boy Genius?
Venture Bros: Hate Floats
2. I was very disturbed by the eyeball out of its socket. I could really live without having seen that.
4. Yes, I too thought Rusty’s suit looked like a faded version of Dean’s.
And speaking of Dean, I noticed that Hank has a tendency to hang out with Brock. Is it possible that Dean is related to Rusty and Hank is related to Brock? Just an idea.
And what birth date is on their IDs? How old are they really?
Unmentioned here is Jackson Publick’s uncanny voice work as the female store clerk.
I still can’t wrap my head around that one. Jackson and Doc scare me with the number of unique voices they have in their arsenals.
Of course, it’s still a little hard for me to associate the Phantom Limb with you for some reason.
Amazing.
That’s because you’ve never seen him swish around his apartment in his smoking jacket and cigarette holder.
By the by, Mr. Urbaniak, I hear the George Saunders loud and clear, but is there also about 30% David Niven in there, or am I projecting because of the moustache?
Believe it or not I wasn’t actually thinking of George Sanders (eschew the “u”) when I first did that voice last season. It was only afterwards that I realized it sounded like him. And Niven never occurred to me either but I can certainly see it. The only actor I was partially referencing originally was Ian McKellen in the way he pronounces certain vowels.
It’s like the guy in Broadway Danny Rose who talks about his unintentional James Mason impression.