"Shadowman 9: In The Cradle Of Destiny/Dethcarraldo/Mud Days And Confused/Bikes For Bombs"
The first episode of The Venture Bros. I ever saw was "The Incredible Mr. Brisby." It's from the first half of Season One, and it's pretty good; I'd argue that the series didn't really find it's groove till "Tag Sale–You're It," when the Venture-verse reached nerdgasm levels of continuity, but that's like saying the second season of The Simpsons wasn't quite as perfect as the third. "Brisby" has a frozen-grin stroke victim as a Disney surrogate and the first "real life" appearance of Molotov Cocktease. It's good stuff.
I hated it.
Oh, it was funny enough, sure, and I dug the references. But I found the whole ep deeply unpleasant, in a way I couldn't shake off. The Adult Swim line up is not known for its kindness to animals, so to speak; its humor comes largely in surreal, theater of cruelty style chunks, and tearing up when Sealab explodes for the umpteenth time is a fool's game. Venture was different, though. There was something pathetic about its heroes, a vulnerable quality that gave the jokes made at their expense more bite than I was used to. I wrote the whole thing off as yet another cynical attempt to strip-mine the youth of my generation, and moved on.
I was wrong, obviously. I didn't realize it till the S1 hit DVD; something convinced me to buy the set against my misgivings, and watching the whole run from start to finish, I got hooked, and hooked bad. The Venture Bros. is, no question, a cynical show. It features a psychotic, murderous college drop-out, two borderline retarded permanent adolescents, and the purest representation of loser id this side of George Costanza as its heroes. But buried underneath all the endless failure, misery, and humiliation, there's a surprising depth of compassion for the series' many wash-outs and freaks that changes it from just another wallow in the misery mire.
Venture's defining moment is arguably the S1 cliffhanger, "Return To Spider-Skull Island." When the show's teenage leads Hank and Dean are inadvertently killed by an Easy Rider homage, the result is shockingly moving; even the post-credits sting ("All right, get their clothes") works to the moment's advantage. This wasn't like Master Shake getting damned for sandwich consumption. Hank and Dean were dead. Dead dead. And it blindsided you, because for the first time you realized that mattered.
But then comes the Season Two premiere, when we learn that this isn't the first time Hank and Dean have died, or the second; given the brothers constant exposure to costumed villains and science gone amok, their father, Dr. Venture, keeps a supply of clone slugs on hand in case the worst happens (as it apparently did fourteen times) (gas leak–the silent killer). Normally, a clone twist is a neon sign pointing towards creative bankruptcy, but it works brilliantly in Venture because it fits in neatly with both the Doc's character and one of the main themes of the show. As a former boy adventurer himself, Venture is constantly trying to live up to the shadows of both his super awesome scientist dad and his own past exploits; reviving Hank and Dean over and over again, loathing himself but pretending that there's nothing wrong, that he's as good a father as anybody, is a perfect example of nearly every character in the series pathological inability to let things go. And in a way, we're with them–every cultural reference, every action figure we don't let out of the box or Atari system we pay a hundred bucks for on eBay, is another shot at bringing back to life the childhood from which we can never entirely escape.
Also, the show? Really funny. Grasping metaphors aside, it's a goddamn hoot.
"Shadowman 9: In The Cradle Of Destiny" seems an odd choice to open Season Three. For starters, the Venture family is nowhere to be seen; Brock makes a brief cameo, but only in long shots, like in that awful Angel episode when Angel and Spike track Buffy across Europe, only Sarah Michelle Gellar never showed. But it does have variant opening credits, much like "Powerless" did in S2, with Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend standing in for Hank and Dean. It also picks up on the closest thing to a cliff-hanger that S2 gave us, with Dr. Girlfriend's revelation that she's–something. We don't really know. It's probably important. (Okay, you can infer that she tells him about her relationship with the Guild. But you gotta be smart to do that.)
After a cold open with a heated battle between Monarch and Girlfriend and a bunch of Slaughterbots, we find the shattered remains of the Monarch's cocoon, left to rot at the end of "Showdown At Cremation Creek," and Henches 21 and 24 at a loss of what to do next. Dr. Girlfriend's little people of doom, Tim-Tom and Kevin, step up to fill the leadership void and get the cocoon back in the air, and it's a good thing, because that's not the real focus here–turns out, this is a mythology ep, so it's nice that someone competent works to restore the status quo while we focus on the important things.