Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Skip on over to the Shrink Ray Hut
My spring break is over (and it was sadly sans shark attacks), and as such, we now return you to your regularly-scheduled updates.
So let’s talk Venture Bros. (airing Sundays at 12:30 AM on Adult Swim). My first exposure to the program gave me a very low opinion of it, mostly because it identified itself solely as “raunchy Jonny Quest parody.” In my opinion, the market for Jonny Quest parodies had been thoroughly tapped out, from “Toby Danger” on Freakzoid! to the Benton/Race custody battle episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The latter, I would remind you, is also on Adult Swim. I recall remarking that it would take a lot more than a few off-color gags and double entendres clothed in Questian trappings to capture my interest. But darnit if the show’s creators didn’t put out the goods, completely defying my expectations. (Shows me once again not to necessarily judge a show by its pilot—I was also very turned off from Family Guy on the basis of its pilot, a stance I have since reversed.) While Venture Bros. as a whole has gradually managed to earn a place in my heart, two things stand out as real turning points in my estimation of the program. The first of these was the introduction of the character called "The Monarch", Dr. Venture's self-styled archnemesis. The Venture protagonists are farcical versions of the Quest molds, and most of their foes have proven expectedly one-note, but The Monarch is a delightfully complex enemy. His crazed schemes, ridiculous “killer butterfly” motif, and inept henchmen are at odds with his flashes of an exhausted everyman demeanor (as long as he’s not monologuing) and his surprisingly normal relationship with the man-voiced Jackie O lookalike Dr. Girlfriend. A favorite moment of mine came when he sneaked into the Venture mansion to use the restroom, and finding himself in Venture’s laboratory, the very “belly of the beast”, disappointedly noted, “My god, look at this place! It's like a museum of failure...What can I do to this guy that life hasn't already? I almost feel sorry for him.” This is the sort of introspection only seen in the greatest of cartoon heavies, your Lobes, your Xanati, and such.
The second turning point, and the one that really made me do a double take, if you will, and totally reevaluate the program was a particular scene in the episode “Are You There God, It’s Me, Dean.” In it, The Monarch had captured the Venture clan and tied them above some tributary of the Amazon. In an unprecedented spin on the time-honored “lower enemies into a pool of piranhas” scheme, The Monarch reveals that the waters below teem with candiru, the dreaded urethra-invading parasitic catfish! The candiru has always been a favorite creature of mine, and it has always amazed me how little exposure it gets considering its insanely horrific effects on human victims. In defending Aquaman (yeah, I do that: who wants a piece of me?), I will often note that his perceived lameness is not any failing in the concept of the character, only the execution. That is, he would be much cooler if only his cartoonists knew enough about aquatic biodiversity. If, for example, he summoned candirus to attack an enemy, he would be nigh-indefatigable. (I doubt even Lex Luthor has a contingency plan for penile attack by vampire catfish, after all. [Note: Were we talking Amalgam-verse here, I would concede that Dr. Doom almost certainly has such contingencies in mind. Within DC, it is likely that Batman carries Bat-Anti-Candiru Spray somewhere in his utility belt, but generally, he’s going to be on the same side as Aquaman, so the point is irrelevant.]) So, to get back to Venture Bros., I was quite jazzed to see cartoonists that did indeed give the candiru its due. From that, I started to think that this might just be a more intelligent show than the pilot (and the ad campaign, which consisted mainly of posters emblazoned with the words “Cockpits! Booby traps!”) had led me to believe, and from there, it’s been great guns. Indeed, it may well be the best thing to come down the Adult Swim pipe since the almighty Aqua Teens. Mile-a-minute pop culture references seem to be the status quo for any cartoon comedy these days, but as with matters zoological, the Venture Bros. refs tend towards the obscure. I’m talking things that you’d hear on MST3K if anything, many of which fall into a category that is near and dear to my heart, “80s crap.” I, for one, am loving the current 80s retro craze, although that love is admittedly bittersweet. On the one hand, everything I love about the 80s is back! On the other hand, everything I hate about the 80s is back! That’s not really the problem, though, as things I hate about the 80s have their own sort of twisted camp appeal (yeah, women’s fashions!) No, the problem is more along the oft-whined-about-on-the-internet line of “Curse you, corporations, for raping my childhood!” I mean really, seeing Strawberry Shortcake dressed like a tramp, showing off her midriff and talking on a cell phone, that’s just wrong. I also hate attempts to update 80s properties and make them “cool” without any understanding of what made them cool in the first place. “OK, Ghostbusters, eh? Give ‘em skateboards, a sass-talking punk girl, and a steady diet of Mountain Dew and slap an X-TREME label on ‘em, the kids these days’ll love it! Oh, and throw a cripple in there to fill our diversity quota.” This sort of soulless marketing ploy will not stand. Now I know what you’re saying, “But wait a second—all those shows you loved in the 80s…weren’t they nothing but half-hour toy commercials fostering unhealthy gender boundaries and featuring forced, contradictory prosocial messages amidst carnage?” Well, yes. Yes they were. But don’t you see? They became so much more. As kids, that’s all we had. We internalized those shows, embraced them, and came to find that there was true goodness beneath the blatant product placement and hastily thrown-together moral conclusions (which is why, for example, we were able to recognize Transformers as being awesome while Centurions was crap: it was clear even to a five-year-old that the latter was nothing but product placement and hasty conclusions). To this day I consider Transformers: The Movie to be Great Cinema (and if anyone tries to say otherwise, I’ll gouge their eyes out.) Ergo, it gives me great pleasure to see that some folks out there in the entertainment industry share my views and are doing justice to the grand titles of old. Case in point: the new Masters of the Universe series that ran, all too briefly, on Cartoon Network. This was clearly a show made by fans of the original. In my opinion, they managed to keep everything that was great about the classic series while getting rid of the bad. Thus, epic fantasy universe and a cat that turns into a giant, killer cat stay, abysmal animation and oft-nonsensical plotlines go. Some have decried Teela kicking butt anime-style, but man, some things are just too cool to complain about. And I really liked the fact that the creators of the new show really managed to treat the entire cast as serious characters with a good deal of depth. This is downright incredible considering that all the charaters from the original show were based on completely ridiculously-named action figures (and originally conceived as such, then forcibly written into the show). I’m still amazed that they did a whole episode centered on Mek-a-Nek (a cyborg man whose sole power consisted of a telescoping neck). Oxymoronic though it may sound, I believe that one should respect campy source material even while mocking it. The early episodes of Harvey Birdman pulled this off really well (with the mafia Flintstones episode being the apex of the series), but sadly, the subsequent seasons lapsed into strained attempts at nonsense humor that are better left in the Aqua Teen court. Happily, there is now a whole set of entertaining programs that, like Venture Bros., fall on the positive side of the 80s nostalgia kick, both poking fun at and reveling in the wacky excesses of the decade. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is one, for sure, what with its constant references to flicks like Highlander and Wolfen and nods to the long-haired Gods of 80s Rock. Also squarely in the hair metal reference bin are, believe it or not, Spongebob Squarepants and the Strong Bad e-mails from homestarrunner.com (a recent episode concerning the lost pilot for a “Limozeen cartoon” almost had me in tears, such was its spot-on parody of both hair bands in general and Hanna-Barbera spinoffs based on popular musical groups). Oh, I’ve gotten on quite the tangent, haven’t I? Well, that’s what we’re all about around here. I guess to sum up, I recommend you check out Venture Bros. If you can get past the crass exterior there really is a gem in there. And it certainly beats repeatedly jabbing a rusty, rattlesnake venom-laced fork into your eyes, a.k.a. watching Tom Goes to the Mayor. Go Team Venture!
My spring break is over (and it was sadly sans shark attacks), and as such, we now return you to your regularly-scheduled updates.
So let’s talk Venture Bros. (airing Sundays at 12:30 AM on Adult Swim). My first exposure to the program gave me a very low opinion of it, mostly because it identified itself solely as “raunchy Jonny Quest parody.” In my opinion, the market for Jonny Quest parodies had been thoroughly tapped out, from “Toby Danger” on Freakzoid! to the Benton/Race custody battle episode of Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. The latter, I would remind you, is also on Adult Swim. I recall remarking that it would take a lot more than a few off-color gags and double entendres clothed in Questian trappings to capture my interest. But darnit if the show’s creators didn’t put out the goods, completely defying my expectations. (Shows me once again not to necessarily judge a show by its pilot—I was also very turned off from Family Guy on the basis of its pilot, a stance I have since reversed.) While Venture Bros. as a whole has gradually managed to earn a place in my heart, two things stand out as real turning points in my estimation of the program. The first of these was the introduction of the character called "The Monarch", Dr. Venture's self-styled archnemesis. The Venture protagonists are farcical versions of the Quest molds, and most of their foes have proven expectedly one-note, but The Monarch is a delightfully complex enemy. His crazed schemes, ridiculous “killer butterfly” motif, and inept henchmen are at odds with his flashes of an exhausted everyman demeanor (as long as he’s not monologuing) and his surprisingly normal relationship with the man-voiced Jackie O lookalike Dr. Girlfriend. A favorite moment of mine came when he sneaked into the Venture mansion to use the restroom, and finding himself in Venture’s laboratory, the very “belly of the beast”, disappointedly noted, “My god, look at this place! It's like a museum of failure...What can I do to this guy that life hasn't already? I almost feel sorry for him.” This is the sort of introspection only seen in the greatest of cartoon heavies, your Lobes, your Xanati, and such.
The second turning point, and the one that really made me do a double take, if you will, and totally reevaluate the program was a particular scene in the episode “Are You There God, It’s Me, Dean.” In it, The Monarch had captured the Venture clan and tied them above some tributary of the Amazon. In an unprecedented spin on the time-honored “lower enemies into a pool of piranhas” scheme, The Monarch reveals that the waters below teem with candiru, the dreaded urethra-invading parasitic catfish! The candiru has always been a favorite creature of mine, and it has always amazed me how little exposure it gets considering its insanely horrific effects on human victims. In defending Aquaman (yeah, I do that: who wants a piece of me?), I will often note that his perceived lameness is not any failing in the concept of the character, only the execution. That is, he would be much cooler if only his cartoonists knew enough about aquatic biodiversity. If, for example, he summoned candirus to attack an enemy, he would be nigh-indefatigable. (I doubt even Lex Luthor has a contingency plan for penile attack by vampire catfish, after all. [Note: Were we talking Amalgam-verse here, I would concede that Dr. Doom almost certainly has such contingencies in mind. Within DC, it is likely that Batman carries Bat-Anti-Candiru Spray somewhere in his utility belt, but generally, he’s going to be on the same side as Aquaman, so the point is irrelevant.]) So, to get back to Venture Bros., I was quite jazzed to see cartoonists that did indeed give the candiru its due. From that, I started to think that this might just be a more intelligent show than the pilot (and the ad campaign, which consisted mainly of posters emblazoned with the words “Cockpits! Booby traps!”) had led me to believe, and from there, it’s been great guns. Indeed, it may well be the best thing to come down the Adult Swim pipe since the almighty Aqua Teens. Mile-a-minute pop culture references seem to be the status quo for any cartoon comedy these days, but as with matters zoological, the Venture Bros. refs tend towards the obscure. I’m talking things that you’d hear on MST3K if anything, many of which fall into a category that is near and dear to my heart, “80s crap.” I, for one, am loving the current 80s retro craze, although that love is admittedly bittersweet. On the one hand, everything I love about the 80s is back! On the other hand, everything I hate about the 80s is back! That’s not really the problem, though, as things I hate about the 80s have their own sort of twisted camp appeal (yeah, women’s fashions!) No, the problem is more along the oft-whined-about-on-the-internet line of “Curse you, corporations, for raping my childhood!” I mean really, seeing Strawberry Shortcake dressed like a tramp, showing off her midriff and talking on a cell phone, that’s just wrong. I also hate attempts to update 80s properties and make them “cool” without any understanding of what made them cool in the first place. “OK, Ghostbusters, eh? Give ‘em skateboards, a sass-talking punk girl, and a steady diet of Mountain Dew and slap an X-TREME label on ‘em, the kids these days’ll love it! Oh, and throw a cripple in there to fill our diversity quota.” This sort of soulless marketing ploy will not stand. Now I know what you’re saying, “But wait a second—all those shows you loved in the 80s…weren’t they nothing but half-hour toy commercials fostering unhealthy gender boundaries and featuring forced, contradictory prosocial messages amidst carnage?” Well, yes. Yes they were. But don’t you see? They became so much more. As kids, that’s all we had. We internalized those shows, embraced them, and came to find that there was true goodness beneath the blatant product placement and hastily thrown-together moral conclusions (which is why, for example, we were able to recognize Transformers as being awesome while Centurions was crap: it was clear even to a five-year-old that the latter was nothing but product placement and hasty conclusions). To this day I consider Transformers: The Movie to be Great Cinema (and if anyone tries to say otherwise, I’ll gouge their eyes out.) Ergo, it gives me great pleasure to see that some folks out there in the entertainment industry share my views and are doing justice to the grand titles of old. Case in point: the new Masters of the Universe series that ran, all too briefly, on Cartoon Network. This was clearly a show made by fans of the original. In my opinion, they managed to keep everything that was great about the classic series while getting rid of the bad. Thus, epic fantasy universe and a cat that turns into a giant, killer cat stay, abysmal animation and oft-nonsensical plotlines go. Some have decried Teela kicking butt anime-style, but man, some things are just too cool to complain about. And I really liked the fact that the creators of the new show really managed to treat the entire cast as serious characters with a good deal of depth. This is downright incredible considering that all the charaters from the original show were based on completely ridiculously-named action figures (and originally conceived as such, then forcibly written into the show). I’m still amazed that they did a whole episode centered on Mek-a-Nek (a cyborg man whose sole power consisted of a telescoping neck). Oxymoronic though it may sound, I believe that one should respect campy source material even while mocking it. The early episodes of Harvey Birdman pulled this off really well (with the mafia Flintstones episode being the apex of the series), but sadly, the subsequent seasons lapsed into strained attempts at nonsense humor that are better left in the Aqua Teen court. Happily, there is now a whole set of entertaining programs that, like Venture Bros., fall on the positive side of the 80s nostalgia kick, both poking fun at and reveling in the wacky excesses of the decade. Aqua Teen Hunger Force is one, for sure, what with its constant references to flicks like Highlander and Wolfen and nods to the long-haired Gods of 80s Rock. Also squarely in the hair metal reference bin are, believe it or not, Spongebob Squarepants and the Strong Bad e-mails from homestarrunner.com (a recent episode concerning the lost pilot for a “Limozeen cartoon” almost had me in tears, such was its spot-on parody of both hair bands in general and Hanna-Barbera spinoffs based on popular musical groups). Oh, I’ve gotten on quite the tangent, haven’t I? Well, that’s what we’re all about around here. I guess to sum up, I recommend you check out Venture Bros. If you can get past the crass exterior there really is a gem in there. And it certainly beats repeatedly jabbing a rusty, rattlesnake venom-laced fork into your eyes, a.k.a. watching Tom Goes to the Mayor. Go Team Venture!
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