This episode of the Venture Brothers is all about The Blue Morpho, the Trio looking for new invention as they settle on mind control gas. Hank is getting ready to get his date on while Brock goes through a crisis as he deals with an arch.
The wiki summary goes a little like this:
With his relationship with his wife continuing to sour, the Monarch struggles to come to terms with the truth about his father. Meanwhile, Dr. Venture, Billy and Pete try to come up with an invention to present at a conference J.J. had scheduled an appearance for prior to his death. After rejecting several of Billy and Pete’s proposals, Dr. Venture discovers the existence of “God Gas,” a gaseous weapon capable of making targets susceptible to mind control, and enthusiastically orders testing. Harangutan, a brutish supervillain, attacks the building and injures Sgt. Hatred, then gets into a war of egos with Brock until Warriana, one of the members of the mercenary superhero group, interferes. When Harangutan returns, Venture uses the God Gas on him and accidentally afflicts Billy and Brock with it as well. Under the effects of the gas, Brock hallucinates Warriana as an actual goddess and goes to her apartment for a tryst, while Harangutan suffers a mental breakdown and violently attacks Billy. The Monarch and 21 – having adopted the Blue Morpho and Kano identities for themselves in order to eliminate competition to the Monarch’s claim on arching Venture – intervene, kill Harangutan and rescue Billy, who mistakes the Blue Morpho’s identity as Dr. Venture himself. Dr. Mrs. the Monarch catches the Monarch and 21 when they return home, angrily believing that he went out on “date night” with 21 to spite her. The Monarch allows her to believe this in order to hide his activity as the Blue Morpho.
With that part out of the way, let’s get into the thick of it. The Monarch is still hung up on of the idea being a hero which he clearly disapproves of but this is a time for change and in order to break the cycle as well as regaining what he had (mostly the arching rights to Venture) – he must become something else, someone else.
When you take a moment to think about how long the Venture Brothers is going and how many tropes/situations it either does a parody of that range from goofy jabs at something like the Scooby Gang to the more complex jokes of the relationships between good and evil boiled down into good guys vs bad guys as organizations, it’s a wonder that there’s still secrets and more material to keep the show refreshing.
While previous episodes have given hints at what might be the facts when it comes to The Monarch’s past. A lot of times, it’s similar to how Rusty remembers his childhood – A perspective of some cliche filled over the top adventures that made him famous as he is today (within the scope of the show) but also had it made him a mess. In many ways, the mirror of this childhood is presented as The Monarch and just like Batman/Joker or Superman/Lex, the duo have this bond that is explored in expected funny ways but sometimes, there’s something that has been building up for awhile and the ball starts rolling in this episode
It isn’t just the Monarch coming to terms about accepting who is father is, there’s a lot of unsure people feeling a lack of confidence when they’ve have at least faked it on a surface level.
Hank has managed to look cool enough to impress Serena to go on a date but he has no clue about girls aside from maintaining an appealing image so of course, he seeks out Brock’s advice. This leads into Brock’s own crisis – he really hasn’t had a proper relationship with a woman at all, at least in an imitate way. Since the show is all about failure, it makes perfect sense for Brock’s action hero image to have to come to terms and his only outlet is a life full of violence or duty of being a soldier, bodyguard to the Ventures or a member of the OSI.
When you think of it, most of his history was frustration and foreplay with Molotov Cocktease, it never ended well as in the end, she’s completely out of the picture. This lingers in his mind as he deals with some villain (Harangutan) trying to arch Dr Venture as Sgt Hatred is once again incapable of handling the situation.
Since dealing with situations with violence is naturally something Brock does well, it just devolves into a shouting match between the two until Warianna shows up to break up the fight. With this added factor of Warianna being as having just as much raw physical strength as Brock, he later shows up at her door to beg her to rock some socks together.
Going back to the Monarch, despite having a new outlook on who his father is, he still can’t accept what he is. It’s interesting to note that up until now, The Venture Brothers never touched on an anti-heroes as a part of their world so a throw back homage to Green Hornet and Kato inspired duo that becomes The Blue Morpho and Kano is a nice touch.
It’s the perfect cover for him and Gary to take on the mantle while getting back at the villains that are on the arching rights to Venture list as it takes some coaxing to get The Monarch to understand the concept. The straight up parody of Empire Strikes Back as Gary is in full Jedi Robes as he informs The Monarch of the destiny that waits for him in the cave. To sell the parody further, the ghostly voice of Henchmen 22 chimes in with the appropriate Obi Wan lines to Gary’s Yoda observation.
“The paint can, you will not need it.”
“What the hell is this? Cosplay? What did you do down there?”
“Only what you take with you – Aw, c’mon on, I promise it’ll be really cool.”
“Ok fine, whatever.”
“He has much anger in him.”
“Was I any different when you trained me?”
Classic riffing.
It’s hilarious that the very thing to convince The Monarch to become The Blue Morpho was a hidden cam sextap footage as The Monarch begins to understand what kind of man his father truly was but to also freak out when the women show up.
In admist of this origin story the trio of Rusty, Billy and Pete as they go through failed inventions. Each one is flat out lame and unimpressive to meet Rusty’s standards until they start messing with the God Gas. It’s suppose to stimulate the brain into giving a religious experience and leaves the person open to suggestion thoughts.
There’s this running gag of what happens to the mice that were exposed to it as Billy and Pete fiddle around with the delivery system – it goes full circle and gets a bit dark.
The final sweep of events leads into this misunderstanding of The Monarch and Gary actually saving Billy’s life while Gary accidentally kills Harangutan with a punch to the throat and he falls into the pit left behind when Wide Wale’s henchmen broke into the Venture building.
Some close calls almost give away The Monarch’s identity as Billy figures that he’s actually Rusty Venture and even Ms Monarch is convinced that Monarch/Gary were on night out to spite her.
With two villains off the list, how long will Monarch/Gary be able to maintain the Morpho/Kano gig without anyone figuring out that it’s them? Will Brock be a changed man now that him and Warianna did the thing? Will Hank mess up somehow when he goes on his date with Serena? All in due time or at least until maybe next Sunday.
On a side note, there’s a daily t-shirt thing that Astrobase/Titmouse does that has a shirt of the week that ties into the theme of the episode of the week. Of course, this week is the Blue Morpho logo, pretty slick and they go really quickly – you can order yours at this link
GO TEAM VENTURE
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