Live-blogging the Venture Bros season finale

[thehefner]

Watching Venture Bros season finale.

ME: I apologize in advance for the two dozen times I'll be saying "Double up, unn, unn!" over the next couple weeks.

HENCHGIRL: (with resignation) Couple weeks, nothing. You're gonna max out before bedtime.

Bear in mind, she speaks as someone who's had to endure me repeatedly saying "Boom! Yummy" in a poor Shore Leave impersonation.

Updates may come over the next commercial breaks.

...

"Meow." I will not become Rusty Venture when I grow up. I will not become Rusty Venture when I grow up. I will not become Rusty Venture when I grow up. (Quoth Henchgirl: hahaha, oh yes you will!)

...

God, please, please don't let the "What is a Rusty Venture?" gag go on any longer. Please. It's actually literally gonna make Henchgirl throw up.

...

WELL. About time we saw him and/or her again! Meow. ... Damn it, it's already happening.

...

Nooooooo, is that truly the end of the 24 saga? God, it evokes memories of the last couple episodes of Cold Feet. ... No one has any idea what that is, do you?


...

FUCK YEAH RETURN OF GO TEAM VENTURE even if it was rather subdued. Even melancholic.

...

Oh Gary.

...

So don't be surprised if the commentary becomes incomprehensible blather from my mind-blown asblsajsaa&&^^n.

...

GENERAL! NOOOOOOOOO.

...

Oh. Never mind. Yay? Yay!

...

Damn, she is cold.

...

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

...

I know this is exactly why you guys read my LJ: you're in it for the witty, eloquent critical insights.

...

OH GOD DEAN NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

...

Welp, Dean, he's right, but y'know what? He's a smug pretty boy who gets to sleep with Orpheus' ex-wife, so screw him, and go you, you poor schmuck you. I just hope that this isn't the first step to Dean becoming his father.

Good ending. I'm both very relieved and a bit disappointed that it didn't end with a "WHAT? NO! FUCK NO NO NO COME BACK NO" cliffhanger like last season's. So there we go. Time to wait another ridiculous amount of time for Season 5.

...

So wait, were the prostitutes actually Mol's girls, or was she lying to screw with Brock? If they were, then damn, Rusty saved the day by being a horrible, horrible person. If not, then Rusty really outdid himself in the horrible, horrible person department.

Comments

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that Gary basically pulled a Brock with this season finale, by triangulating himself (albeit inadvertently in Gary's case) between the two sides, and then telling both sides to go fuck off as he stormed out. Between Gary's newfound unemployment and Dean's rejection of the Outrider's advice, I feel like we're actually leaving this season on an odd kind of emotional cliffhanger.

Both Dean and Rusty seem to have regressed significantly in this episode, don't they? After the feint toward Orpheus possibly fixing his insides, Rusty has become more decisive but also more sociopathic than we've seen him since we found out that he used an orphan's heart to power the dream can, whereas Dean's self-assertiveness in New York and parting on good terms with Triana before were basically wiped out by their reunion here.

I'm wondering how much of the OSI/SPHINX subplot here was intended as a deck-clearing exercise to streamline the organizations of the Ventureverse, but it was still a remarkably well-executed tribute to that whole corner of the characters' world. At the same time, while Molotov's apparent demise works well as a send-off for her and as a capstone to her and Brock's relationship, this is too much of a comic book reality for me not to notice that we never saw her body.

Speaking of which, I actually really loved the Schrödinger uncertainty that was imposed on 24's true nature here, because the fact that he interacts with other ghosts outside of Gary's perception shows that he can't just be a figment of Gary's imagination, and yet, the fact that "Mr. Wendal" is still alive (holy shit, an Arrested Development reference that wasn't about the TV show instead) shows that 24 can't be telling the truth about his true nature, either.

It wasn't especially subtle that, regardless of what he might actually be, 24 in this episode represented Gary's need to let go and move on with his life, but there was something so profoundly moving about the whole scene where Gary sees that 24 has disappeared, and he just breaks down into tears in Orpheus' arms, and what's so weird is that it was all the more beautifully heartfelt because Orpheus and Jefferson thought he was grieving the breakup of Arrested Development.

... Huh. Wow. I just realized; not only the first "Go, Team Venture" in a very long time, but also the first one EVER with all THREE of the Venture brothers.

And while I suppose I can understand me being the first person on my F-list to point out that the appearance of Triana's boyfriend was obviously modeled after Robert Pattinson as Count Sparklepenis, since the rest of you might have considered it too obvious to mention, why is no one else noting that Hank has officially become a SERIAL MILF-hunter? Not only did he lose his virginity to the girl that his dad impregnated with his half-brother, but he did his good and goddamnest to tap his mail-lady's awesomely broad 47-year-old ass, even after she pointed out that her kids are older than he is. Nice passing nod to Kim in the dialog, too.

I'm not even gonna lie, though; the moment where Shore Leave tells Gary to suit up? Best of the episode for me, especially when Shore Leave points out to Gary that he stopped being a villain and started being a hero a long time ago. It was one of many reasons why Gary's rant to The Monarch was a long time coming, and so very much deserved.

Treister forcibly passed the baton of leadership on to Hunter, but out of all of them, Gary was the only one in this episode who, of his own volition, chose to GROW UP.

And that deserves a cheer. :)

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

The Onion offers its own insightful review here. I didn't even notice it until they pointed it out, but Dean closed out the episode with the first honest-to-God swear word he's ever uttered on the air. They also provide the exact lines exchanged by Shore Leave and Gary:

"Dude, I'm not a good guy."
"Oh yes you are. Now scoot.

... Jesus Christ, am I actually crying over this? I totally am.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Looking ahead to Season 5, which I'll be astonished if it doesn't happen? Holy SHIT that Cocoon is going to FALL THE FUCK APART without Gary there.

What struck me most about the scene immediately following Gary finally having it out with The Monarch was that, perhaps for the first time ever, The Monarch seemed even more pathetic than Rusty. Yes, Rusty resorted to date-rape drugs with horrifically inhumane consequences just to try and get laid, but the fact that he was even bothering to stage a home-school prom in the first place, while an embarrassingly out-of-touch gesture, still demonstrated more genuine concern for his family and friends than anything The Monarch seems to be capable of anymore.

In a sense, The Monarch's half-assed attempt at salvaging a "win" from this scene is arguably his worst failure EVER, since not only does his number-one henchman quit in disgust, in a highly public and deeply humiliating fashion, but his sworn arch-enemy doesn't even care — and indeed, barely even notices — when The Monarch makes a desperate bid for a big dramatic speech declaring his "victory."

As bad as Rusty is (and he's pretty awful throughout this episode), it's telling that he's ultimately surrounded by relatively decent people who stick up for him (even when he arguably doesn't deserve it), whereas The Monarch's last scene in this episode sees him and Sheila choking in a noxious cloud of his own making, utterly alone.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

And yeah, this all went into my own reaction post. :)

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Y'know, between this and the episode with the Monarch trying to get Rusty to kill himself, I realized that... damn it, I haven't liked the Monarch lately. When watching this episode and hearing him bitch in his usual way, I actually thought, "Damn, 21 really might be better for her."

Which brings me to this: they swing? Wait. No. No no no. No fucking way that someone as petty and obsessively possessive as the Monarch would ever stand for letting someone even eyeball his Queen Butterfly. They'd get a face full of dart, a dart filled with tiny shark nanobots that would spit toxin while chewing on the victim's... oh hell, I can't come up with anything. Point is, that seems seriously out of character from what we've seen so far.

That's a great observation about Rusty vs. Monarch by the end here.

[themadhatter26.livejournal.com]

Dude, that was covered all the way back in Season One in "Are You There God, it's Me, Dean," and "Mid-Life Chrysalis." The Monarch likes the swinging as long as HE feels like he's in control of it.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Which he wasn't with the 21 kiss. And I forget the exact context of the "Are You There God, It's Me, Dean" bit, but in "Chrysalis," he liked it mainly because he was using it as a means to strike at Dr. Venture, and even then, he broke down into his default jealous possessiveness the second he thought she might actually have sex with Rusty!

So being okay with it? I really don't see it. At all. He's a petty, possessive little man. Especially after what he went through to get her back.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

Before, The Monarch could at least claim to be, if not always a threat, at least a pain in the ass to Rusty. This time? He didn't even manage to annoy Rusty, and Rusty is one of the most easily annoyed men on the planet. The irony is that, as a direct result of spending so much time mocking Rusty's failures, The Monarch has become an even worse failure. That pitiful attempt at a dramatic exit? Totally a retread of his similarly failed would-be dramatic exit at the end of the yard sale. He's not even bringing anything NEW to the table anymore.

And your Canon-Fu is WEAK, bitch, because The Monarch and Sheila have been established as swingers since the FIRST SEASON. When he kidnapped Brock and Hank, Sheila mistook them for additional sexual partners in a way that clearly indicated that they'd had guests in their bedroom before ("The big guy is alright, but the boy is too much. Can't we just use the puppets again?"). Likewise, when The Monarch was watching Sheila seduce Rusty via spycam, he was clearly about to rub one out to it before one of his henchmen wandered into the room. Indeed, I've seen a few folks say online that even the three-way with Manta Claus was at least hinted at before.

While you're absolutely correct about how petty and jealous The Monarch is (recall his misogynistic tirade when he found out about Sheila's previous liaisons from the tell-all book), what I don't think you're quite getting are the nuances of his controlling possessiveness. He HATED Phantom Limb sleeping with Sheila, yes, but that was because Limb was COMPETITION. By contrast, when it's a three-way, swinging or voyeur scenario that he's orchestrated, Sheila having sex with other men is not something that she's choosing to do so much as it is something that he (via the proxy of the other man) is having done TO her. Because he ORDERED Sheila to engage in sexual relations with Rusty, he can get off to it, because Rusty (and even Sheila, to a lesser extent) is merely a PAWN that he's manipulating. By contrast, when Sheila exercises her own agency — as she did by dating Hamilton, or when she was hooking up with the celebrities listed in the tell-all — The Monarch completely flips his shit over it, because he didn't give her his prior permission for those sexual encounters.

In that sense, his easy dismissal of Gary "making out" with Sheila (it was only a kiss, but for all he knew, it was much more) offers even more of a reason for Gary to get pissed at him. At first, The Monarch's constant praise of Gary as loyal and reliable seems almost like respect, until you realize that what it actually means is that The Monarch takes Gary's subservience for granted. I mean, yes, that's kind of part and parcel of being a henchman, but we're talking about a guy who's achieved LEGENDARY status in the Ventureverse, and even when Gary is clearly spoiling for a fight with The Monarch, The Monarch shrugs off the admission of Gary getting close to Sheila without even any bruises to his ego (even though The Monarch has a very easily bruised ego), because he so strongly sees Gary as being SUBORDINATE to him. Even when Gary TRIED to tell The Monarch that he was, in effect, committing treason, The Monarch still took it as a GIVEN that Gary was as dependable as ever, which was why he started coming up with wild ideas about Gary having been drugged or mind-controlled. ANY other henchman would have gotten a poison-dart in their ass INSTANTLY.

[thehefner.livejournal.com]

Okay, the more I think about it, the more some things bother me about the episode.

For one thing, the regression, as you mention, of Dean and Rusty. With Rusty, it's a bit disappointing, as I'd really hoped to see more growth from him, but I was also fully prepared to see him continue to be a horrible person. The real redemption, I was hoping, would be for his sons to carry out.

In that respect, I feel like Dean has crossed over into a dark territory of resentment that, unless he pulls himself out of it, has him right on the path of becoming his father.

The Dean/Triana subplot has always bothered me, probably because my teenage self sympathizes with the idiot. Look, I know exactly where his "fuck you" is coming from. I never did that to any of my friends giving me the "get over it" advice, but damn it, at that point, it's not the advice that's going to sink in till later. As the AV Club said, sometimes it's the only thing you CAN say. And again, the Outrider is not really the sorta person I'd want to hear it from, either. Unless he went through a severe awkward phase, I'd doubt he has any personal experience with what Dean's going through.

I'd really hoped the Dean/Triana subplot was finished as of last half season, with that elegant ending. I don't quite understand why they brought it back. Let her go off, and let Dean have his sweet, sweet delusion. Argh, but I guess, such delusions live to be shattered in the Venture-verse.

Man... this whole episode was a climax of unrequited love. One of my least favorite subjects ever. It never ends well even in the best of circumstances.

[box-in-the-box.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Dean might not take up with the Revenge Society after all, at least for a short while. If anything, Hank is already OVERqualified for OSI, while Gary just looks too right in that SPHINX uniform for it to be a temporary thing (especially given how well he and Shore Leave spark off each other), but that leaves Dean to do ... what? There really don't seem to be any lone agents in the Ventureverse since The Monarch finally got officially inducted into the Guild. I could actually go for this, but only if Dr. Killinger stepped in at the last second to help Dean pull himself back from the brink. Indeed, given his current trajectory, going all-out villain for a while might be the only thing that saves Dean from becoming Rusty.