Review: The Venture Bros. “The Forecast Manufacturer”

The forecast for this week: Betrayal.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

New York has been burred in snow during a sudden blizzard, trapping Dr. Venture and his immediate associates within Venture Industries HQ. Rusty gets a sudden call from OSI, summoning him to action to stop the dastardly source of this unnatural snow. Of course, the others are unavailable, so its up to only Rusty and Billy Quizboy to put a stop to the problem. New York is in great hands.

At the same time, Henchman 21 and The Monarch show The Sovereign their latest attempt to curry favor with the Guild: a pre-teen karate class. When that doesn’t work out, Henchman 21 and The Monarch are dispatched up north to deal with the growing problem coming from The Peril Partnership’s (The Guild’s Canadian equivalent) rogue splinter group. Namely, they have to assassinate a rogue villain known as “The Creep”, who is apparently responsible for this storm.

While Rusty and Billy fly out to stop the storm on the X-12, Hank freaks out back at HQ because his girlfriend isn’t responding to his texts. To that end, he heads out into the storm to find out the fate of his young love. Hank, being Hank, accidentally dives headfirst into a streetlight and passes out in the snow. He gets rescued by a strange serial-killer looking man in a bear outfit and dropped off at Dean’s dorm.

The Monarch and Henchman 21 eventually find their way into the lair of The Creep, who turns out to be some kind of intense ex-OSI collector villain who steals equipment from the guild and doesn’t believe in safety. To enact their plan of pretending to defect to his side, they have to play a game of deadly lawn darts. Up above, meanwhile, Rusty and Billy try to stop the device causing the snowy weather by having Rusty poop out a suppository thermal regulator into the weather machine. They succeed and pick up a rogue guild agent along the way.

Things resolve as The Creep accidentally kills himself with a lawn dart, and Hank enters Dean’s dorm room to find him sleeping with Sirena, his girlfriend. Hank is heartbroken but passes out from blood loss onto Dean’s bed.

Our Take:

What originally seems like another buddy-cop silly escapade of The Venture Bros. cast takes a turn for the dark this week, in an episode that keeps the Venture train a-rollin’, and has an excellent last-minute twist that makes the whole venture feel worthwhile.

The meat of this episode comes from the parallel buddy comedies of Rusty/Billy Quizboy and The Monarch/Henchman 21 going on separate missions to stop this sudden weather issue. As always, the dynamic between these characters is tight and hilarious; their back-and-forth banter chews on all the scenery, with Rusty and Billy proving themselves the episode winners of “Funniest duo.” Henchman 21 and The Monarch are still funny, but their comedy seems to be mostly observational humor/nerdy references, and I think its starting to wear out its welcome. These two have been arm in arm since the beginning of last season when they were embroiled in the “Blue Morpho” plotline, so it would be prudent for the show to mix things up and put these two in some new situations.

Hank’s story is something of a sleeper, which jumps out at you like the dark shadow of the silliness this episode brings. The creepy bear is back once again, and Hank’s struggle to find shelter feels more like a tragic survival story than anything else. Seeing Dean in bed with Sirena inspired real feelings of betrayal in me; it was a powerful moment that slaps you in the face with how unexpected it is. This also does a good job of shooting forward the Hank/Sirena plot that had been brewing a couple episodes ago. No need to fiddle around with an elongated “will they/won’t they” plot when we can just zip forward right to the good stuff.

Once again, there’s a lot to love about this episode, but I think it lacks the kind of wit and characterization that would escalate it to one of the classics. This season has had The Venture Bros focus on more adventure scenarios that play up to the drama and greater conflicts present in the show. This is all well and good, but there is a little something that gets lost here with the over-reliance on the buddy cop formula and a greater plot focus. It’s good, it’s funny, but there is an itch here that this episode just doesn’t quite scratch. In the war of inches that is episode quality in The Venture Bros, this one tries hard but comes up a little short.