Mine is “Ghosts of the Sargasso” mostly for the scene where Brock goes @#@# during a cavity search. One of the “ghosts” keeps screaming “he’s got my arm” or something like that. I actually died laughing. Take that “Still Standing”!
Definately “Ghosts of the Sargasso.” Pirates are funny. Fake pirate stealing from Toys R Us ships are hysterical.
Mangled scene:
-Ground control to Major Tom! Ground control to Major Tom!
-I think my ship knows where to go.
-Can you hear me Major Tom?! Can you hear me Major Tom?!
I like the last one. You got Dr. Orpheus who’s got his theme music going even if he’s just made PIZZA ROLLS!!! The scared straight bit. Rusty’s brother. And wow, what an ending.
I wish they’d run a marathon, there are still a few I haven’t seen. AND I wish they’d roll out the next season. Waiting for it and Curb Your Enthusiasm to come back on with new epis is killing me. Go Team Venture!
“Tag Sale-You’re It!”
“I’m not even flushing. Let them see the wrath of the Monarch!”
Return to Spider-Skull Island is excellent … but. I believe it is Home Insecurity that gives us insight into Baron Von Unterbheit, his henchmen (including Manic Eightball - who splits my sides whenever I see him), the Baron’s ‘Mandatory Tourism’ program, etc. “Ohhhh… Tiger BOMB.”
Honorable mention to Eeeny, Meeny, Miney… Magic! for the exchange between Dr. Venture and Orpheus regarding the use of orphan parts in the construction of his machine… and Ice Station - Impossible! for the best Fantastic Four parody I’ve ever seen.
The Incredible Mr. Brisby is my favorite for several highly idiosyncratic reasons.
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When I was a kid, I had those wildlife cards that Dean was reading at the beginning.
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The whole winning-a-panda-in-a-trivia-game-with-David-Bowie thing absolutely slays me for no apparent reason. ( . . . but, then, Bowie always was a trend-setter . . . )
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Brock’s boner. Hee! (No, I never did mature emotionally beyond the age of thirteen . . . why do you ask?)
Overall, though, Ghosts of the Sargasso is, IMHO, thee perfect Venture Bros episiode. It’s got a fantastic Johnny-Quest/Scooby vibe treated with the perfect sarcastic touch, about a bajillion hi-larious lines, and some great character development. And the first time the hubby and I saw it, the scene with Brock’s ass had tears running down our faces. Plus, hey, another Bowie joke! Bowie is comedy gold, obviously.
And, yet, strangely, neither of those episodes has the Monarch, who’s my favorite character. He’s who hooked me on the series with exactly one line in, Home Insecurity, the first episode I saw. “A deadly game of cat . . . and also cat.” God, the mileage I’ve gotten out of that line . . .
All my candidates have already been mentioned. Ghosts of the Sargasso is my first choice – that episode is pretty much exactly what I imagined when I first heard the concept of a Jonny Quest parody series.
Ice Station - Impossible is brilliant as a high-concept episode, but most of the gags themselves just fell kind of flat.
And I, too, love The Incredible Mr. Brisby for weird reasons – all the gags about Disneyland, the boner, the Rear Window reference when Dr. Venture gets interrogated, and the Orange County Liberation Front.
And supposedly, it’s more clever than even I gave it credit for – when I showed the episode to a friend a while back, he started cracking up after the first conversation with Brisby. He said that in real life, Walt Disney suffered from some kind of eye movement disorder that caused his eyes to twitch back and forth like Brisby’s did. (I’ve never read a Disney biography, so I’d never heard that and wouldn’t be able to verify it; a Google search didn’t turn up anything). If that is true, I can see that being the kind of subtle thing that Venture Bros. animators would put in.
And where are y’all getting the episode titles from?
The pilot episode, The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay is still the best.
Brock unzips and takes a piss on the battered corpse of the mummy
Dr. Venture: Brock, was that really necessary?
Brock: You have to defile a mummy completely or it’ll come back to life. You know that.
Brock is covered with blood after killing an Alligator that stowed away on the X-1
UN guard: Sorry, sir. You can’t have weapons on the premises.
Brock: eye twitches Go ahead. Take it from me.
I agree that Ghosts of the Sargasso is the best from the regular rotation so far, but nothing has managed to beat the pilot yet. The Christmas episode was good too. Dr. Orpheus’ description of the Klampus and how Santa Claus got sucked into a jet engine was priceless.
I checked www.tv.com, the poor, stripped shambling thing that tvtome.com has become.