Venture Brothers – “Self-Medication” Venture Bro
In the first two seasons, he was always identified as Jonny Quest. (Race Bannon also appeared, but he died.) Since Cartoon Network owns the Hanna-Barbera library, they could get away with that. Rumor is, as of Season Three, there was some interest in resurrecting the Quest property for a movie, and Warner Bros. really didn’t want the name attached to a burned-out recovering addict, so his Venture incarnation changed his name to “Action Johnny”. Basically, he never recovered from the stresses of his childhood. He was a heroin addict for years, then moved on to painkillers. He’s paranoid and bitter, and all in all, he makes Dr. Venture look well-adjusted.And now, on to “Self-Medication”!
“As you look back on your pathetic life, you’ll see that it was just one long, winding road leading inevitably to this moment.” – The Monarch
We open with an action-packed scene – The Monarch’s cocoon attacks the Venture Compound as he taunts Doc. He finally ensnares Doc in cables that make him dance like a marionette. But just when it looks like it’s over, Doc reminds Monarch that it’s Wednesday night, and he has therapy. Seems the Guild of Calamitous Intent has a policy preventing arching from interfering with psychiatric help. The Monarch is thwarted, and they agree to try again later.
–Once again, Guild rules foil villainy. This is a really cool opening, with the Monarch actually being kind of scary. It’s good to see Doc’s still got the old survival instincts – he’s surprisingly physical in this scene. And just that brief glimpse of the battle between Sgt. Hatred and 21 has me wanting to see more. That would be an awesome fight.
“I’m only here because Action Johnny had a little run-in with Johnny Law, and was ordered to attend by Johnny Judge. Not my fault. Somebody else’s.” – Action Johnny
In a flashback, Young Rusty has a therapy session with his father, only Jonas keeps sneaking out of the room. In the present, Doc is in group therapy with other former boy adventurers. There’s Wonder Boy (Patton Oswalt), Lance and Dale Hale (Seth Green and John Hodgman), Action Johnny, and Ro-Boy. They introduce themselves, and the doctor makes them turn off their electronic devices (Wonder Boy just pushes his belt buckle and says “Beep Boop”.)
–I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Jonas Venture was a dick! Just listen to what Rusty has to say here, and it gives you an idea of the crap he grew up with. And he’s even a bright enough kid that he can verbalize what he’s feeling, but Jonas actually leaves the room whenever Rusty talks. And then he turns it around on the poor kid whenever he gets the chance. (“You were telling me about how ungrateful you are for all the opportunities your father’s given you, and you blame me for all your problems.”) The more we see of his childhood, the more Doc just breaks my heart. Sure, he’s got his faults, but the poor guy never had a chance. His scenes with Dean this season show one thousand times more affection than he ever got from his own father. (And even though he and Hank have a contentious relationship right now, Doc would never crap on Hank the way his father did to him.) In the Venture-verse, there’s no reason this poor bastard should have ended up a super-villain, with his screwed-up upbringing.
His present-day therapy is pure gold. We’ve got Captain Sunshine’s former sidekick Wonder Boy, who I assume was one of the first to bear the name. (The one the Monarch killed was number three.) The Hale Brothers are clearly the Hardy Boys mixed with the Menendez Brothers. I love Seth Green’s alpha male act and John Hodgman’s downtrodden performance. Ro-Boy is sort of a mix between Astro Boy and Mega Man (from the Nintendo games). The way the whole dysfunctional group interacts is really fun to watch. I’m also just now noticing how the Hales mirror the Ventures – they’re twins, but one is blond and the other has dark hair. Lance’s knotted sweater mirrors Hank’s kerchief, and Dale wears a sweater vest like Dean. They even have amped up versions of the boys’ personalities. That’s pretty tricky there, and it works well with Doc’s journey over the last couple of seasons. Doc is doing his best to be a better father than Jonas was. (What he’ll never realize is that even despite his flaws, he’s already a better man than Jonas.) He’s taking responsibility for his life, rather than blaming it all on his upbringing. And can you imagine Hank and Dean, no matter how insane their lives get, actually killing their father in cold blood? (It will soon be heavily implied that the Hales did just that.) While Venture Bros. is, most often, a show about failure, there’s another message that’s become a running theme – you can choose not to suck. Doc’s learning how to make that choice. Hank and Dean have already made that choice. There’s something very inspirational there.
And just to change the subject, Doc’s therapist was previously seen running a support group for henchmen in Season Two’s “Powerless in the Face of Death”.
“I can’t even get an erection now unless I’m tied to a chair with a time bomb strapped to my chest.” – Wonder Boy
Sgt. Hatred takes the boys to a movie, which appears to be the third part of a fantasy trilogy aimed at kids. 21 and a couple of other henchmen are also there, sitting right in front of the Ventures and blocking the view with their wings. Back in therapy, the former Boy Adventures all get
confessional scenes. Johnny talks about getting drugs from his father’s lab. Doc talks about how he wasn’t allowed to wear long pants and didn’t lose his virginity until his 20’s. The Hales offer a convoluted explanation as to why their fingerprints are on the gun that killed their father. Ro-Boy talks about his anger issues. And Wonder Boy discusses sexual dysfunction. At the movie, Dean has to explain the movie to Sgt. Hatred. Hatred becomes enraptured by the elf-boy onscreen – “He looks like a white chocolate doll-boy”. When Dean explains that his people don’t age and just stay 13 forever, Hatred really gets flustered and runs out of the theater.
confessional scenes. Johnny talks about getting drugs from his father’s lab. Doc talks about how he wasn’t allowed to wear long pants and didn’t lose his virginity until his 20’s. The Hales offer a convoluted explanation as to why their fingerprints are on the gun that killed their father. Ro-Boy talks about his anger issues. And Wonder Boy discusses sexual dysfunction. At the movie, Dean has to explain the movie to Sgt. Hatred. Hatred becomes enraptured by the elf-boy onscreen – “He looks like a white chocolate doll-boy”. When Dean explains that his people don’t age and just stay 13 forever, Hatred really gets flustered and runs out of the theater.–It’s worth noting here that it’s pretty much canon that Doc has only had sex once. His age has been given as 43, and it’s been referenced multiple times that he lost his virginity at 24. In last season’s “Dr Quym, Medicine Woman”, he mentions that his dry spell has lasted 19 years. (And this works with Hank and Dean’s ages, since it’s also been established that the originals would have been 19, and the current ones are 17 now.) That’s more than you wanted to know, isn’t it?
I love the little details we get about the movie they’re watching (Sgt. Hatred “There sure are a lot of realms in this thing”). This scene is really funny, because I enjoy Hatred’s discomfort. They tread a thin line with the pedophilia angle, but the real humor comes from Sgt. Hatred fighting temptation. It’s delicate, but they’ve really done a good job with it. And Hatred’s line about the movie, “Who wrote this script, Henry Darger?” is a reference to the 20th Century painter who obsessed over horrific brutality against children, and occasionally portrayed women and young girls with penises. (Note: This episode is already referenced in Darger’s wikipedia entry. Man, I love the Internet.)
“That is a Vietnamese Two-Step Viper. One bite, and you’re dead before you take two steps.” – Action Johnny
The therapist and Action Johnny engage in some Puppet Therapy with a hand puppet of an angry native. Johnny has a breakthrough and hugs the puppet. When it’s Doc’s turn, the therapist has a fit and collapses to the ground, dead. They inspect the body, and Rusty notices a strange smell in the therapist’s tea. Wonder Boy has a good laugh about the doctor’s posthumous erection, until it starts to move and a poisonous viper craws out of his pants. The snake pursues Doc until he realized that the tea is laced with snake pheromones. Doc tosses the tea (onto Wonder Boy), and finally Ro-Boy torches the snake with his flamethrower. They decided to solve the mystery, and their first clue is a matchbook from a strip club.
–Not much to say here, except that their interactions are still really funny. I would have watched a whole episode about the therapy session, I think. And I didn’t mention it earlier, but Action Johnny is voiced by Brendan Small, the genius behind Home Movies and Metalocalypse. Johnny actually sounds a whole lot like Dethklok’s Pickles. I like that Doc recognizes the smell of snake pheromones – that Boy Adventurer training never really goes away. Also neat is the way that Dale really focuses on solving a mystery – he’s the first to check the body, he picks up evidence with tweezers. Dale knows what he’s doing.
“Looks like you got a little… herpe on your lip there. You been kissing you’re wife’s ass? After I put herpe in there?” – Action Johnny
Sgt. Hatred rushes to the bathroom, only to see a bunch of men helping their children. Panicked, he hides in a stall and tries to inject himself, only to realize that he’s out of “Nomolestol” (hee!). He tries to make a run for it, but he runs into a small boy running around shirtless and proclaiming himself “Prince of Elves”. Hatred locks himself in the stall again. Meanwhile, Doc and friends arrive at “Nightin Ales”. Dale spots a guy in scuba gear and recognizes him from the therapist’s files. A biker hassles Action Johnny, and then a bunch of toughs surround the former boy adventurers. Surprisingly, our boys acquit themselves pretty well, largely due to Doc’s Ro-Boy powered jet kick. They still get their asses kicked, but not as badly as you might think.
–For some reason, the kitty keychain that falls out of Sgt. Hatred’s pocket just kills me. As for Doc and friends, they arrive at the strip club in what looks like the front segment of the Fantastic Four’s Fantasticar. I’m pretty sure we’ve seen the Impossibles use something similar in the past, actually. But that would make sense, given who they’re parodying. Action Johnny mentions that Velma (from Scooby-Doo) is a slut, also. Note that the Hales arrive in their own car, which is the only thing their father left them. I just now notices that the “Nightin Ales” logo is a bird with giant breasts, and I’m creeped out. By the way, this is Brock’s favorite strip club, and Hunter Gathers danced there in Season Three, when he was a woman. I like the onscreen sound effects when they fight the toughs, especially Wonder Boy’s “Torn Meniscus!”. And I love that Johnny keeps referring to herpes in the singular. Oh, and I almost forgot – when Johnny refers to the scuba guy working for “Dr. Z”, he’s referring to the Jonny Quest villain, Dr. Tzin. He’s appeared on the show, too, but like Action Johnny, they changed his name with Season Three. (And for what? Does anybody really think that there’s actually going to be a Jonny Quest movie?)
“Dean, wouldn’t you like to have a beautiful little brown brother-sister?” – Sgt. Hatred
Hank and Dean look for Sgt. Hatred after the movie, and Hank finds that he’s got a bunch of messages on his wrist communicator. They’re all from a rapidly collapsing Sgt. Hatred. He’s out of meds, and OSI isn’t answering his calls, so he locked himself in the panic room. Then, he starts drinking. Hank and Dean ask 21 for a ride. Meanwhile, the injured boy adventures show up at Dr. Z’s house. Johhny accuses him of killing their therapist, but Dr. Z denies it. Back at the Venture Compound, the boys try to talk Sgt. Hatred out of the panic room. Hatred’s losing it, though. He talks about going to Thailand to pick up a “beautiful brown boy-girl”. Dean tells him that boy-girls aren’t the answer, and he has to fight the urges. Hatred says that Princess Tinyfeet is the only one who can help when he gets overwhelmed like this.
–To Sgt. Hatred’s credit, he really does try to protect the boys from his dark side. Even when he’s talking about going to Thailand, he tells them to hide first. And you can look up the Gary Glitter reference on your own, because I already feel dirty having “Henry Darger” in my Google history. Suffice it to say, Gary and Sgt. Hatred probably subscribe to a lot of the same magazines.
“So, a snake kills your psychiatrist, and you fly all the way down here in the middle of the night to beat up an old man because of a matchbook?” – Dr. Z
Dr. Z and his wife, the Dragon Lady, make dinner for the detectives. They admit that they were acting insane, and Dr. Z tells them to give it all up and “leave it to the next ten-year old boy with a jetpack and a spyglass”. Ro-Boy asks Dr. and Mrs. Z to adopt him and Doc has a revelation – he’s not as messed up as those other guys. He has his own family to care for. Back at the compound, Hank dresses like Princess Tinyfeet to lure Sgt. Hatred out of the panic room, then 21 and the henchmen toss a net on Hatred and knock him out with tranquilizer darts.
–This is a great moment for Doc. It comes back to what I was saying earlier, where Doc takes some responsibility for himself. Let me get the quote down, because it’s an awesome revelation for the guy: “What the hell am I doing in therapy? I’m no drug addict. I don’t have an eating disorder. And as much as I resented my father, I never wanted to kill him. And most importantly, I grew up. I’m not a boy adventurer – I have my own business, my own family. And if you’ll excuse me, I think it’s high time I got back to them.” I love that so much. This is Doc renouncing self-pity and taking control. It’s kind of amazing, really.
And let’s just enjoy the sheer stupidity of Hank and Dean’s plan. Hank dresses like Sgt. Hatred’s wife, to lure the drunk pedophile out of hiding and then they have their dad’s archenemies drug their bodyguard. There’s no way that could have gone horribly, horribly wrong. Right?
“I was just podblogging… casting… diary…” – 21
In the tag, 21 tells 24’s skull about the movie, but when the Monarch walks past, he quickly covers up the head. He and Monarch make conversation about the film, then Monarch asks whether 21 took care of “that thing”. 21 confirms that he put the snake in the therapist’s office, and Monarch is thrilled because that means he can attack once more.
–Mystery solved! Also, only Doc could have an epiphany and then suffer for it, since without therapy, he doesn’t qualify for the mental health arch exclusion. I love how casual the Monarch is here, wearing a robe and drinking cocoa. It’s neat that he makes small talk with 21, too. So either Monarch is genuinely interested in the movie, or he’s started paying attention to the guy. Either way, pretty cool.
Sadly, Adult Swim has not been providing workable embed code lately, so there’s no clip of “The Better Man”. However, it’s available on their website. And while there’s no sign of Brock, it does feature Dr. Orpheus and the Order of the Triad fighting Cthulhu. I think we can all agree, that’s pretty sweet.
