Monsters of Television

“They discover us like every other week!”

Oh thank David Bowie, The Venture Bros. is back.

After a 9-month hiatus (for which I assume that torturing me was the only reason for), The Venture Bros. returns with an episode forces you read between the lines to understand what’s going on. But, then, Venture has always been like this. Like  Jeremy Mongeau tweeted by in August, The Venture Bros. is a show obsessed with its continuity while doing episodic, anthology-esque work week-to-week (Mongeau highlights this season in particular, but I think we can apply it fairly well across the show).

It is “a contradiction” even moreso in that new viewers should be able to come in and understand what’s going on with with little in the way of clearly defined expo speak. But, again, The Venture Bros. straddles the difference, being a show that gives solid and recognizable pop culture references and daring-do nostalgia for new folks, but rewards viewers who are as familiar with the series as the creators.

So, reading between the lines. The hiatus began with an episode tag that had Brock, back in his non-Sphinx outfit, eating cereal in the compound’s kitchen. Yes! Brock returns to protect the family and the compound, and will send Sgt. Hatred packing. No. “The Diving Bell vs. The Butter- Glider” opens in media res as Hatred and the boys protect Rusty from No. 21 leading his first solo assault.  Where’s Brock?! Why is Hatred still here? What’s going on?!

Turns out the boys are getting mind wiped every week, and the episode allows the inference that after having a nice moment with Hank, Brock simply wiped the boy’s memory again, after noting that they’re having to wipe the boys’ memories so much that they’ve developed a form of aphasia (“Hank, what color is my tongue?” “It’s like a Wednesday… a light Wednesday.”). The poignancy of the previous episode’s tag coupled with the thought of having to wipe memories every other week (and I would assume this week as well), puts Brock in a tough position, but one that he ultimately knows is for the best.

But the poignancy is missed if you haven’t been watching the show, if you only decided to tune in after an especially unfunny episode of Family Guy and because there was nothing else on. But the episode still works, to a degree without that background. References to Tron, Ghostbusters, Interspace, House, Fantastic Voyage, Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, and Spider-Man (the glider!) keep the episode moving briskly, but jokes like “Oh, that’s what happened to the sevens” as Brock, Shoreleave, and the boys find the Venture sub with the skeletons of Dean and Hank inside Rusty’s body. No knowledge of the boys being clones prevents that mythology gag from making sense, or even being really funny. Sure, there’s the sense that at some point the Fantastic Voyage idea happened before, and that the boys screwed it up, but that’s only half the gag.

But the randomness of the gag stills works within the expected audience demographics that Adult Swim captures, but not watch Venture Bros. Odd, random pop culture humor is what Adult Swim thrives on with its original programming (on top of the surreal violence). However, Venture Bros. is still in a weird place in that it’s the only Adult Swim show to actually have a continuing narrative, and to have a continuing narrative that matters. Despite the appearance of having hit reset button, the show doesn’t do that (sure, they toss aside things that they build up like O.R.B., but that’s the writers having a laugh on their fanboy audience).

Instead, they build an intricate mythology (The Monarch realizing he listen to Pete’s radio station at college, because everyone in this freaking show went to the same college, as season 3 told us), but for the sake of humor. In this way, The Venture Bros. is a more successful version of How I Met Your Mother. Sure, HIMYM has a mystery is looking to solve, but it plays with and builds it own mythology as Venture Bros. does. The difference, however, is that Venture Bros. does it better.