Venture, Brother!

I think I fried my brain yesterday engaging in a Venture Bros marathon, yesterday. (Truth is, my brain was already fried from a hellacious week at work - I am still employed but I am currently expected to do the work three people used to do in half the time while my two direct supervisors are engaged in a locked cage match to see who will keep their job and thereby win the right to continue micro-managing me (!) - so I was in the proper mood to vegetate). I had all 39 episodes of the Cartoon Network's The Venture Bros on my DVR (a fact I didn't realize until AFTER I had deleted more than half of them after viewing) and I powered through 27 of them.

I stated in another venue that watching The Venture Bros was like watching Jonny Quest on acid and that is no understatement! Watching the episodes in the order they were recorded, I realized I had watched Season Three first and then began watching the totally excellent episodes from Season One (with Season Two still to go).

My two new favorite episodes are Season One, episode 7, "Ice Station - Impossible," a wicked deconstruction of both "The Incredibles" and the "Fantastic Four" ouvre and Season One, episode 10, "Tag Sale - You're It!" wherein Dr. Venture holds a yard sale to raise money and all his super powered friends and enemies come to pick up high tech bargains (and chaos and hilarity ensue when Dr. Venture's arch enemy, The Monarch, creates a diversion so he can use the bathroom inside the Venture compound).

Choice bits in "Impossible" included the fact that the Invisible Girl disappearing act is limited to her skin (revealing all the meat and muscle underneath), the Human Torch bursts into flames AND excruciating pain every time he is exposed to oxygen - not to mention the hilariously cruel death of Race Bannon - said program frequently cuts back to little children riding a dead Bannon down the street (every time the wind catches and inflates his parachute) while rifling his pockets for cool super secret gadgets.

Let me give a special shout out to episode 4, "The Incredible Mr. Brisby," a devilish take on Roy Disney and the whole (evil) Disney Empire and his struggle with the dilettante "Orange County Liberation Front."

I have twelve of season two to complete but, as I said at the onset, my brain is currently deep fried.