The guy who voiced the character of Mike Sorayama was indeed the same Steve Park who played the obsessive, lovelorn Mike Yanagita (“So, uh, you married old Norm son-of-a-Gunderson?”) in Fargo. I guess if you need an Asian guy who can do a hokey Minnesota accent, Steve Park is the man to see…
All in all, a good episode (although any show that doesn’t have at least a cameo by Dr. Girlfriend is a bit of letdown). I loved Otto Aquarius as the half-Atlantean holy roller (“I have some good news to share with you!”).
I loved this episode, mainly because it goes into great detail about many of the characters in Venture Brothers. But, where the hell was Billy Quiz boy? And was anyone else rather purturbed that Dr. Venture Senior hadn’t aged a day between when Rusty was a little boy and when he was a college student
How did Brock become Venture’s bodyguard if he was such an ass in college?
Poor Monarch, he must have gotten hell from everyone hearing his butterfly poetry. And the things they must say about his eyebrows!
I love the style of animation on Venture Bros. so I try to look at it when it’s on but I always seem to be pre-occupied with at least one other thing so I am totally lost on the story. Does anyone want to explain what the hell is going on in this show? Is it like Seinfeld where if I miss the first 3 minutes I’m going to be confused for the rest of the episode, or do I need to see the episodes in order, or am I just dense?
Yes! I wanted backstory very badly and was afraid I wasn’t going to get any. Although I still want to know how the Guild of Calamitous Intent came about. Probably it happened in the following semester after this incident.
Things do happen pretty quickly in this show. And they make tons of references back to earlier episodes. Like you should know that Dr. Orpheus moved in a few episodes back. They’ve refered back several times to Rusty and his super scientist father. To fully catch what’s going on you do need to see everything in order.
Thankfully you can. The pilot is playing again on the 30th at the end of the block. I think they want to sneak it in since it’s not up to par with the rest of the series. In fact many people hated it. Better catch it then because it doesn’t appear to be in the regular rotation for the series.
From there it appears to continue on normally from there with the following saturday getting the 2nd episode. Hmm, interestingly enough Toonzone is saying that Midlife Chrysalis was moved back to 4 spot where it belongs.
Holy carp! Venture Bros. are going to weekdays too beginning the 8th. Man, that’s 10 showings a week (they lose their sunday spot) of course 5 of those are the later repeats but that’s still 5 seperate episodes a week. That’s a whole lot for a show with only 13 episodes. I hope they don’t run it into the ground. Although I think this show can have legs like Futurama which can keep it from feeling stale.
Oh, I forgot to mention my favorite reference. They brought back the Action Man. First introduced in the pirate episode. The later the in season they go the more important it was to have watched every episode. I can’t for tomorrow to watch it again. I was stuck in a birthday party and the cake and song went down just as Hank and Dean contancted the Conneryish guy.
Personally, I was expecting there would be at least a mention of Dr. Impossible during this episode’s flashbacks. We know it was the same semester that Dr. Impossible gave Rusty a “sympathy D” (see Ice Station Impossible).
Nahh. That’s just the mark of real super-scientist. They may get a couple of gray hairs around the temple to emphasize how distinguished they are, but they never really age. The pot-belly and baldness just show you how much Rusty has failed to live up to his old man’s standards. Jonas wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing a rug at a titty bar (see Mid-Life Chrysalis).
Boy that’s a weird relationship, isn’t it? It just reeks of co-dependency, if you ask me.
No matter how much they may deserve it, very few employers would just take a bitch-slap from their bodyguard like Dr. Venture does in this episode. But on the other hand, Brock is so invested in being a secret agent that he can’t even get it up when he has an expired license-to-kill (again, see Mid-Life Chrysalis).
I’m betting that the real root of their relationship has something to do with the boys’ mother (egg-donor?), but I have no idea how.
One final thought about this week’s episode: 10 out of 10 style points to Kano for flipping Brock the origami bird.
I thought it was a decent episode. The laugh track for Dr. Venture’s college years annoyed me, and I like to think of Underjaw as growing up in a foriegn country, rather than just being an exchange student in America. Still, the beggining was nicely done, esspecialy with the way everyone got abducted.
I knew it!
Is TvB out on DVD yet? Is TvB out on DVD yet? IS TvB out on DVD yet? Is TvB out on…
The preacher conducting the funeral service sounded like George Takei. Did anybody else think that?
Also, am I the only one who thought Jonas Venture looked like he passed more of his physiognomy to Brock Sampson than to his own son Rusty? Not that I’m saying he’s Brock’s father. But to paraphrase Dr. Venture, "it makes about as much sense as anything else that’s happened. "
The Late Dr. Venture Senior was a super-scientist who created such wonders of the modern world as Gargantua-1, a massive space station, and experimented with cloning technology. His son, Rusty, was your typical innocent child, and seemed more of an unwitting bystander to Dr. Venture’s projects than a contributor, such as being a test subject for Walt Brisby’s rides. At the same time, a young boy was orphaned when his scientist parents’ jet crashed, leaving him the only survivor. He was raised by Monarch butterflies but when they died off in autumn he was driven mad with grief and vowed revenge on the world. He got a fat inheritance from his deceased parents which allowed him to follow his vile plans. Meanwhile, Rusty Venture tried pathetically to follow in his father’s footsteps, going to the college all great genuises go to (can’t remember if they even mentioned the name). It was there where he was roomates with Brock Sampson who later became his bodyguard. Rusty Venture, Billy Quizboy, Whitey, and likely Underbite were all classmates in Dr. Impossible’s class. There is also the passing mention of The Monarch being a classmate in English class, writing wierd poems about butterflies and overall acting rather limp-wristed. Ironically enough, his class was, well ‘impossible’ to pass, but it just so happened that Rusty’s father died somehow, so Dr. Impossible gave Rusty a ‘Sympathy D’. It is suggested that Rusty dropped out of college shortly after the loss of his father and went on to inherit Venture Industries. Once at the head of Venture Industries, the new Dr. Venture proceeded to run the company to the brink of bankrupcy, and much of his inventions were merely an effort to frantically regain lost capital. Dr. Venture rented out space to a Dr. Orpheus, a single dad (and pracitioner of Dark Arts) who lived withh his daughter, Trianna. He also hired Brock Sampson as his bodyguard, who supressed the trauma of accidentally killing a football teammate in college.
I better put this in a spoiler.[spoiler]One of Dr. Venture’s college acquaintances has died, and he (along with Brock and the boys) is attending the funeral service. Also in attendance is an albino named Paul (White?), and an iron-jawed fellow called Baron Underbite. The only other attendees are four suspiciously identical women dresed in black. The four men are asked to be pallbearers, and when they take hold of the casket handles, the kidnap program is activated. The black-clad women accompany them on their journey.
Hank and Dean notify the members of the original Team Venture (a bunch of super-competent chums of their late grandfather, Jonas Venture). Team Venture regroups and investigates the likely whereabouts of Dr. Venture and Brock. Various bits of nostalgia are recapped in this part of the story. The most significant bit (for the purposes of the investigation) has to do with the fact that Jonas Venture had implanted a homing device into Rusty Venture’s molar. They follow its beacon to the college dorm room where most of the flashbacks from the rest of the episode take place. There they learn that the molar has been there since Rusty’s college days, and that Professor Sorayama (the subject of the funeral) is the likely perpatrator.
Back at Professor Sorayama’s hide-out, we learn that the professor has been nursing a grudge against all of the men ever since their undergraduate days, when he was just Mike Sorayama, college geek-boy, dungeon Master, and obsessively smitten admirer of Leslie Cohen (with a restraining order to prove it). What else do we learn? That the four women in black are robots who look exactly like Leslie Cohen.
We get flashbacks that explain why Mike Sorayama felt injured by each man. Baron Underbite conned him into smoking a bowl of oregano (turned out he was allergic, and had a bit of a reaction). Paul dissed him on the air from the broadcast booth of the campus radio station. Rusty had his character successfully seduce an NPC that was heavily based on Leslie Cohen (and Brock actually slept with her, although he thought that was Rusty too). Brock came home from being kicked off the football team, and kicked the crap out of all of them in a drunken rage (this was when Rusty’s tooth was knocked out and why it came to be under the bed). In among the flashbacks, Brock makes his escape, while the old Team Venture is taking out the Leslie-bots.
Team Venture is dressing up as the Leslie-bots (the better to infiltrate the stronghold), when Brock comes upon them. Mistaking them for enemy personnel, he kicks the crap out of them, knocking the head off of Professor Sorayama in the process. Professor Sorayama was a robot himself, as it turns out. The real Professor Sorayama is hiding in the casket from the funeral. Well, his body is, anyway. He actually is dead, and he’d programmed his robot self to hate all of his tormentors from college.[/spoiler]That should cover the essentials.
You know, I’m not convinced that Master Billy Quizboy was in Dr. Impossible’s class. The conversation between White, Quizboy and Dr. Venture at the beginning of Ice Station Impossible makes it clear that White and Venture were in that class (White flunked, Venture got a “sympathy D”), but I got the impression that Quizboy was not a student in Impossible’s class. In fact, I’m not even sure Quizboy was at college with the rest of the gang. He didn’t show up during the flashbacks in Past Tense (although that certainly doesn’t prove anything–Impossible didn’t either).
Don’t forget that in the flashback, Brock’s rage in the dorm room not only knocked out Rusty’s homing molar, but he also knocked out Underbite’s lower jaw (thus why Baron Underbite has an iron jaw).
I went back and replayed that scene. Here’s how I interpret the fight:
Brock headbutts Ünderbheit , knees him in the groin (parallel to the knee he gives to Kano) and then tosses him aside.
Then he tosses White into the bunkbeds (with a parallel toss of Col. Gentleman over the Action Man).
Then he punches Rusty in the mouth and his molar goes under the bed (parallel with a punch to the mouth of The Action Man which knocks out his dentures–is this what you saw Moriah?)
Finally he spins Mike out the window (parallel to spinning Aquarius through the wall into the robot Mike).
So I think Ünderbheit still had his lower jaw after the fight with Brock in college. The reason I’m pretty that those were The Action Man’s dentures is that it’s pretty clear that both the lowers and the uppers got knocked out. Presumably, if it were Ünderbheit’s teeth hitting the ground, we’d only see the lower jaw.
Now I freely admit that this was a very confusing scene with all the intercutting between the present day and college life, so I may have gotten this wrong. Anybody want to watch this again and either confirm or deny my version of events?
And the things they must say about his eyebrows! 
