Monsters of Television

“They’re like The Notebook sad.“

Meh, you win some, you lose some.

“Any Which Way But Zeus” is a smattering of jokes, none of which really come together, even at the end of the episode which is often when the show salvages itself with a solid turn of the screw. Part of the problem is structural, as all the characters are kept separated from one another  but since there’s three on-going plots, none get developed to the point of providing laughs or emotions. It all falls flatter than that Zeus cardboard cutout.

The idea that some malevolent force is kidnapping sidekicks and prized henchmen is actually pretty cool, and a promising premise for an episode. However, the execution is muddled and lackluster. Let’s start with the Venture Compound.

Isolated from the rest of the story entirely, Rusty’s disappointment at not being kidnapped is amusing and only feeds into his delusions of grandeur (which I thought Dr. Killinger had helped squash a little bit), but it goes no where pretty quickly. The emotional beat of Hank interrogating his own father to find out why he seems to prefer Dean should resonant more than it should. Part of it is that Hank’s (and Hatred’s) lines get garbled to the point that I can’t understand either of them half the time, but part of it that, with the other two underdeveloped plots going on, this one feels the least baked of all the three. (Also: shouldn’t Hatred have been kidnapped, not Rusty?)

Equally promising is the summit between O.S.I, S.P.H.I.N.X, (sphinx!) and the Guild (along with Phantom Limb’s burgeoning Revenge Society) to figure out who is behind henchmen abductions. Now, I get that the show is about failure, and we get to see how useless these organizations are when someone doesn’t play by the rules, but because the stakes really don’t seem to matter, the threat doesn’t seem all that real.

And The Venture Bros. is great at creating actual stakes. I hate to say “Remember when?” but remember when season two managed to create legitimate consequences? Remember when things mattered? It should be utter chaos that someone is taking unionized members of the major organizations, there should be a major fallout. Instead, there’s boring conference table jokes and people falling asleep.

Finally, the henchmen doing battle at a farm, to the death, is again a good idea. Couple it with the fact that it should be populated with a bunch of scene stealers, it should really work. But like the rest of this episode, it all crumbled into incoherence and a failure to highlight those excellent characters. And while I loved the idea that Henchman No. 1 managed to survive his brush with death, how great would it have been had he joined up with Phantom Limb’s Revenge Society, targeting Henchman No. 21?

“Any Which Way But Zeus” is a massive misfire. Here’s hoping next week’s noir-inspired episode hits all the right notes.