Days like this, we need humor
Sep. 11th, 2006 11:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI've been working on catching up with the season 2 The Venture Brothers episodes and have all but last night's finally watched. As usual, I've laughed so hard I've choked a couple times, and on the times I forgot the no-drinkie rule while watching, spit or snorted my iced tea a little too often. If you've never seen the show, this is me wearing my pimp hat and telling you You must watch this cartoon. It airs on Comedy Central's Adult Swim showcase of very grown-up, weird, sick, twisted, and mostly delightful shows, and each episode is only about 20 minutes long, give or take a few.
There is so much packed into each episode it's hard to even discuss; it's one of those shows you really have to see to believe what they get away with. The humor is so wonderfully sick, the pop culture references fly so fast, and the dialog is so crisp and sharp that I can't always keep up. I often have to watch eps a couple times to get all the jokes I missed while I was laughing.
It's essentially a riff on the classic boy-adventure cartoons of the '60s, very notably Johnny Quest. Here Johnny and Hadji are replaced by Hank and Dean Venture, the stupidest boys you could ever meet. In fact, they are so dumb that their father, the Dr. Quest character morphed into a vain, self-absorbed, clueless super-scientist called Dr. Venture, actually made clones of them because he knew they wouldn't live to reach adulthood. Fortunately, everyone on Team Venture is protected by Brock Samson (the Race Bannon character taken to ridiculous, hilarious heights), super-spy, former super-military guy, killer with aplomb, mullet-wearing ladies' man. I adore Brock. He's voiced by Patrick Warburton in his best monotone tough-guy mode, and he's hilarious and freakish. He'd do anything for the Venture boys and for Doc, but he won't hesitate to call them jackasses or insult them when they're being idiotic.
Much of the adventure and threat for the Team Venture comes from the Monarch, the lamest supervillain ever (and he knows it -- in an ep from a few weeks ago, he responds to a sharp question about his demographic appeal with a "I'm wearing a f---ing butterfly costume, what age group do you think I appeal to?" He still can't get over losing his villainness honey Dr. Girlfriend (who looks like a bombshell but speaks with a mobster-style deep New Yawk voice), and he always seems to want to make the Ventures pay somehow, even though he never really succeeds. He went to prison for a brief time, during which, he explains, he met a girl "on the Live Journal, which I kept in prison -- I've been blogging. After I posted a picture of my prison-sculpted abs, she commented that I was 'foin' and told me I was 'teh sex', whatever that means." Or something like that, I can never hear everything because I'm laughing too hard.
Dr. Venture has some oddball friends in the weird science community and in the super hero area, including Dr. Orpheus, who mostly gave all that up so he could be a stay-at-home dad. There is absolutely no political correctness about this show -- one of the friends has albinism, which comes in for many jokes as does his swishy behavior even though he doesn't admit to being gay, and he hangs around with a hydrocephalitic, very tiny man who shpeaks like thish, and wears an eye patch. You can kind of imagine how much mileage they get out of all that, and those are only the beginning. Jokes are made at everyone's expense, and it's unfailingly hilarious.
I love the spoofing of Johnny Quest, one of my favorite cartoons of my childhood -- recently they even had a walking eye that looks very much like the one in the credits of JQ. For a while they even had a dog that was a lot like Bandit, only, you know, stupider. And by making Brock obsessed with het sex, you would think they'd have toned down the underlying homosexual subtext that always existed with Race and Dr. Quest (which Harvey Birdman, another Adult Swim favorite, exploited so wonderfully in the Bannon vs. Quest custody battle episode a few years ago), but they haven't at all, really.
They get mileage out of everything on this show, and if you like your pop culture jokes to come thick and fast, this is the show for you. The first season is out on DVD, and I'm sure Comedy Central will re-run a lot of this season when it's done. In the meantime, you can visit their hilarious web site here for a rundown on the characters, special stuff that they put up there, and some clips to see just why it's so damn funny. Run, watch. Seriously, it's great. Go, Team Venture!
There is so much packed into each episode it's hard to even discuss; it's one of those shows you really have to see to believe what they get away with. The humor is so wonderfully sick, the pop culture references fly so fast, and the dialog is so crisp and sharp that I can't always keep up. I often have to watch eps a couple times to get all the jokes I missed while I was laughing.
It's essentially a riff on the classic boy-adventure cartoons of the '60s, very notably Johnny Quest. Here Johnny and Hadji are replaced by Hank and Dean Venture, the stupidest boys you could ever meet. In fact, they are so dumb that their father, the Dr. Quest character morphed into a vain, self-absorbed, clueless super-scientist called Dr. Venture, actually made clones of them because he knew they wouldn't live to reach adulthood. Fortunately, everyone on Team Venture is protected by Brock Samson (the Race Bannon character taken to ridiculous, hilarious heights), super-spy, former super-military guy, killer with aplomb, mullet-wearing ladies' man. I adore Brock. He's voiced by Patrick Warburton in his best monotone tough-guy mode, and he's hilarious and freakish. He'd do anything for the Venture boys and for Doc, but he won't hesitate to call them jackasses or insult them when they're being idiotic.
Much of the adventure and threat for the Team Venture comes from the Monarch, the lamest supervillain ever (and he knows it -- in an ep from a few weeks ago, he responds to a sharp question about his demographic appeal with a "I'm wearing a f---ing butterfly costume, what age group do you think I appeal to?" He still can't get over losing his villainness honey Dr. Girlfriend (who looks like a bombshell but speaks with a mobster-style deep New Yawk voice), and he always seems to want to make the Ventures pay somehow, even though he never really succeeds. He went to prison for a brief time, during which, he explains, he met a girl "on the Live Journal, which I kept in prison -- I've been blogging. After I posted a picture of my prison-sculpted abs, she commented that I was 'foin' and told me I was 'teh sex', whatever that means." Or something like that, I can never hear everything because I'm laughing too hard.
Dr. Venture has some oddball friends in the weird science community and in the super hero area, including Dr. Orpheus, who mostly gave all that up so he could be a stay-at-home dad. There is absolutely no political correctness about this show -- one of the friends has albinism, which comes in for many jokes as does his swishy behavior even though he doesn't admit to being gay, and he hangs around with a hydrocephalitic, very tiny man who shpeaks like thish, and wears an eye patch. You can kind of imagine how much mileage they get out of all that, and those are only the beginning. Jokes are made at everyone's expense, and it's unfailingly hilarious.
I love the spoofing of Johnny Quest, one of my favorite cartoons of my childhood -- recently they even had a walking eye that looks very much like the one in the credits of JQ. For a while they even had a dog that was a lot like Bandit, only, you know, stupider. And by making Brock obsessed with het sex, you would think they'd have toned down the underlying homosexual subtext that always existed with Race and Dr. Quest (which Harvey Birdman, another Adult Swim favorite, exploited so wonderfully in the Bannon vs. Quest custody battle episode a few years ago), but they haven't at all, really.
They get mileage out of everything on this show, and if you like your pop culture jokes to come thick and fast, this is the show for you. The first season is out on DVD, and I'm sure Comedy Central will re-run a lot of this season when it's done. In the meantime, you can visit their hilarious web site here for a rundown on the characters, special stuff that they put up there, and some clips to see just why it's so damn funny. Run, watch. Seriously, it's great. Go, Team Venture!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 07:02 pm (UTC)*giggle*
Oh, I HAVE to see that!
Date: 2006-09-11 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 07:20 pm (UTC)(And that Livejournal joke it still one of my favorites!)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 08:02 pm (UTC)Jet Adoor
no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 09:27 pm (UTC)I've seen the DVD for Venture Brothers at Target, but I haven't seen or heard about the show. Thank you for the pimpage. :)
no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 01:55 am (UTC)/flees towards TiVo
no subject
Date: 2006-09-12 04:23 am (UTC)