Monsters of Television

“We sold ourselves to vampires!“

This is not the way to go into a month-long hiatus, The Venture Bros.

It isn’t that “The Silent Partners” is a bad episode, but it’s just not particularly good. It’s the kind of flabby, aimless storytelling that has marked the show for much of this season, and some of last. I don’t object to the in media res storytelling (Billy’s working at a hospital? He and Pete suddenly have tons of cash?) since the episode does explain it, but I do object to the lack of throughline in the episode’s purpose.

The key problem is that this should be a genuine Pete and Billy story and the episode goes to great lengths to prevent that from happening. Indeed, with a title like “The Silent Partners” I expected the episode to be about Pete and Billy’s relationship in some way. Instead of having Pete go with Hunter, Shore Leave, and Brock, he’s just locked in a room with Hatred (I’m assuming for his protection), and S.P.H.I.N.X teams up with the Captain for no discernible reason.

As a result, there’s no emotional heft to the episode. Even brief moments of emotion elevate this show (Rusty’s brutally honesty confession to Hank in the previous episode, for example), and that brief moment is what is missing here in “The Silent Partners.” What do Billy and Pete learn from this? Nothing since they didn’t experience the journey together. There’s no strengthening or breaking of their relationship as a result of this episode. There were hints that the episode had intentions of doing this, as Hatred briefly confronts Pete about leeching off of Billy (“You’re a starfucker.”) but it never really matters since Pete never leaves the panic room.

So while the episode was a loss in regards to Pete and Billy as a unit, there’s still some solid humor to be mined here. Brock, Hunter, and Shore Leave are particularly funny in this episode with their exchanges, as well as Brock and Shore Leave bantering as they invade Monstroso’s boat/yacht/sea tank thingy. Thankfully they’re present enough to keep the episode from being a complete wash in terms of humor. Brock and Shore Leave’s encounter with the Investors in particular, thinking knives from their backs or magic bullets from their fronts, worked really well.

And Billy on his own was funny, too. Of course his scene with the “vampire women” (prostitutes) was pretty funny (“I don’t want to be bitten. Can you just do the sucking part and not the biting part?”), and a nice call back to his request in “Escape from the House of Mummies Part II.” His scenes with Monstroso (who seemed to have survived his encounter with 21 and Brock from earlier in the season) worked well enough, but the big reveal just never mattered all that much to me since, well, Monstroso doesn’t matter all that much.

Now there’s a month wait for the one-hour season finale. I’m hoping for something pretty spectacular.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• Kind of glad to see that Hatred didn’t sleep with Billy. And I don’t see Hatred lying about that given his guilt complex.
• While I may not have enjoyed the first half of season 4 all that much, I really do love the box art for the DVD. Almost enough to buy it, too.