EPISODE REVIEW: The Venture Bros. : “Pinstriped and Poltergeists” (Season 4, Episode 8)

with all this, we see Shoreleave and Brock breaking in to a generic evil genius compound and killing him, and a few other moderately humorous scenes.

The End

OBSERVATIONS

Ok, so let me get this straight: SPHINX was an evil terrorist organization dedicated to ruling the world, and it was the OSI’s job to stop ‘em, which, apparently, they did in 1987 (About the timeGI Joe went off the air, actually, that‘s probably an in joke). Then a bunch of OSI agents decided to go rogue and re-form SPHINX as a good-guy operation, but the OSI continues to fight them? Thus OSI, which is ostensibly a good guy organization is fighting SPHINX, which is also a good guy organization. Why did they go rogue, anyway? I assume they figured the OSI wasn’t actually a good-guy organization? Or perhaps they just weren’t doing their job? Whatever.

This confusion, however, pales in comparison to the massive, massive retcon they drop to try and make Colonel Gathers’ sex changes (He’s male again), Shoreleave’s fundamentalist Christianity, Molotov Cocktease’s framing of Brock, and all that other crap into part of one labyrinthine scheme to…well, again, I don’t know what. Go rogue? Get Brock? Some third thing? I’ve got no idea, I really don’t. It makes no sense. It’s funny, mind you, but it doesn’t make a lick of sense, which is presumably the point: it’s funnier because it doesn’t make sense.

Whatever happened to Mol, anyway? Clearly the last scenes of her last year were a setup for a major conflict this season which seems to have been dropped, and which doesn’t really fit into Gather’s retcon, but then nothing really fits into his retcon, so that’s par for the course.

Brock mentions that it’s been a year since the end of last season.

In the super-offensive category, Sgt. Hatred is back, and 24 tells 21 that everything - even spinach - has a soul, *excepting* babies until they’re six months or a year old. Up to that point, it’s perfectly ok to abort them.

There’s a pretty hilarious (And typically uncomfortable) flashback to 21 as a kid, and some leering shots of a completely clueless Dr. Girlfriend leaning over him. Man. Everyone pays attention to her chest, but really there’s just something about the way they draw her hips in her Dr. Mrs. The Monarch costume that - yow - just kind of…well. Yow!

Monstroso is simultaneously a good villain and kind of a waste of time, though I like how he compulsively offers people cigars. I also love Dr. Girlfriend's comment, "You trusted him? He's a lawyer and a supervillain - that's like a shark with a gernade launcher strapped to his back!"

We don’t get the normal “Venture Brothers” opening credits. Instead we get “SPHINX” titles and music. They also show a SPHINX title card before and after commercial breaks. Aside from giving JG Thirwheel a chance to show off, it’s not all that funny, but as it’s a one off gag, I’m not too concerned about it.

The boys get their memories wiped. Again. Rusty’s back in full-on bastard mode in this episode, by the way, and taunts them by telling them things he knows they won’t remember.

So that’s about it, really. Lots of gags, in-jokes, mass-culture references, and extremely articulate dysfunction and violence. It’s good stuff, really, and yet it suffers from a unique kind of pacing problem that seems to plague only this one show. You know how Stargate shows occasionally don’t show you the conclusion of the story because they’ve given you enough information to know how it ends up? “Time” on SGU did this most recently, but there’s lots of other examples. Or if you don’t follow Stargate, the end of “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” does the same thing. Well, anyway, The Venture Brothers tries that a lot, and generally they pull it off, but occasionally they don’t, and the whole story feels rather out-of balance because of it. We *don’t* have quite enough information to know how it ends, so not seeing the conclusion, while being overloaded with retcon just kind of makes the whole thing asymmetrical and unwieldy, despite the fact that there’s a lot of good stuff in here.

And that’s it for now. The show will be back for another eight episodes in 2010 sometime, and after that? Season five? Cancellation? No clue. Could go either way, though I’m leaning in the “Cancellation” direction.

How about all of you? Let’s get a discussion going: Is the show as good as it ever was? Getting better? Getting worse? Do you want them to come back for a fifth year, or should they be wrapping it up?