Review: The Venture Bros. “The Rorqual Affair”

The Morphic Trilogy continues.

Overview (Spoilers Below)

The Monarch’s gotten himself into trouble again. A disastrously failed assault on the Wide Whale compound leaves Monarch as “The Blue Morpho” the prisoner of Wide Whale and his tough guy henchman, Rocko. This leaves Henchman 21, whose tardiness is what got The Monarch into this situation in the first place, to find a way to rescue him.

He confesses what’s been going on to Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, who is faced with a difficult problem; she needs to bring The Blue Morpho to atone for his crimes, but can’t go about executing her own husband. Red Death also returns, offering his services to find the Blue Morpho, in exchange for a seat on the council of the Guild of Calamitous Intent.

As The Monarch gets tortured by Wide Whale, it turns out that Whale knew who his secret identity the whole time. If that wasn’t enough, Wide Whale is also the brother of Dr. Dugong, who The Monarch killed unceremoniously after being forbidden from arching Dr. Venture.

This takes us to the present, where Hank is offered by Wide Whale to shoot The Monarch in exchange for his daughter’s hand. Red Death and Henchman 21 arrive just in time, though, to save the day, with the help of an old acquaintance.

Our Take:

This week’s foray into the wacky world of The Venture Bros is the second half of the story from episode one that we didn’t even know was going on. This time, it’s all villains, and I couldn’t be happier about that. The Monarch, Henchman 21 and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch were suspiciously absent from the first episode, but we they get a lot of love this episode, which brings the Blue Morpho arc to something of a close

You get all the bells and whistles here. The jokes are excellently timed, and go with the flow of the story instead of breaking it up, while still giving enough time for our favorite villains to do their thing. Henchman 21’s struggle has never been more real, and he still brings a lot of heart to the villain’s dynamic, is a great contrast to The Monarch and his cynical bullying. The season favorite, Red Death, is back too, clearly given a much more prominent role in the story after his tremendous introduction last season. He was funny before but is now a main player in the story, too. Midway through the episode, he delivers a chilling monologue about “Movie Night” on Gargantua 1, which will no doubt become a major plot point in the future.

Wide Whale is the breakout star of this episode. While he was mostly just a mob boss stand in for the Monarch to mess with last season, this episode makes him of the funnier additions to the cast and even gives him a pretty good backstory to boot. His Italian mafioso veneer is basically just a front, we find out; he’s not Italian or a real supervillain, just kind of a low-time crook who got a cool name from being in a marine biology accident. His particular brand of clownery and rapport with Rocko had me cracking up in basically all of his scenes. His interrogation of the Monarch, where he reveals his relationship with Dr. Dugong, was funny, clever and more than a little intimidating all at once. He fits right in with The Venture Bros. cast, and I can’t wait to see what he gets up to next.

It would appear that there is going to be a part three to this season opener, apparently dubbed “The Morphic Trilogy”, which will probably explain the cliffhanger ending and give a little more insight into what other members of the cast were up to while this all went down. If its as good as this episode, I’m sure it will be an excellent time.