4. Powerless in The Face of Death
In this Season Two premiere episode, we are given a glimpse into how Doc is coping with the death of the boys, featuring a block-rocking-beat electric montage set to Aquagen featuring Roxette’s “Everybody’s Free to Feel Good,” as Doc embarks upon a world-spanning drug campaign through opium dens, African jungles, and raver hotspots, taking enough narcotics to make Hunter S. Thompson’s nose go back in time.
In the meantime, Orpheus embarks upon his Inferno-like journey to redeem himself for the brothers’ death while under his watch, visiting the frozen circle and encountering Hell-locked frat boys. Much like the Marvel Universe, this episode introduces the recurring theme of The Venture Bros. that magic is just a different form of technology, making it an alternate to science.
The episode really shines however in The Monarch trying to adjust to his new life in prison, not unlike a super-powered episode of Oz, but with a talking, molesting Gorilla man named King Gorilla standing in for Christopher Meloni’s role.
Monarch’s prison crew includes your standard-issue animal themed villain Tiggerific, Mr. Monday, a Calendar Man analogue, and White Noise, a former television repairman turned rouge with a face of static and a heart of white supremacy.
In addition to the introduction of one of my favorite duos on the show, Watch and Ward, the techno-loving, reptilian sounding, DBZ scanner-device wearing, tech guys of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, this episode features my two favorite lines of The Venture Bros., which for the sake of hilarity and journalistic integrity I now present to you sans context:
“He is calling you a crumb bum…or possibly a crampon…”
“Out from the shadows steps a man wielding a molecular destabilizer and in a flash poof— what was once your penis is now a tasteful reproduction of a ‘Gucci coffee table’ by Herman Miller.”
Finally as the status quo is returned to The Venture Bros. we are treated with a grotesquely beautiful smorgasbord of death, as the Venture clone slugs are introduced in this episode, as well as the boys’ death-prone nature, in full mortifying montage.
