The protagonist of "The Revenge Society" is Phantom Limb, who has undergone a transformation since we last saw him. This is, of course, nothing unusual in the Venture-verse, "transformation" is one of the strongest themes of the show. Phantom Limb transforms in this episode, The Sovereign transforms several times, Red Mantle and Dragoon merge into one (with limited success). Sgt Hatred tries desperately to transform into a good father-figure for the benefit of Hank, and Rusty even continues his delicate transformation into a father-figure for Dean.

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What does D-19 want? That's easy -- D-19 wants to be Dean. He's bound to be frustrated in his pursuit, because there's no way he can actually become Dean. Setting aside the fact that Dean isn't really "Dean," since "Dean" has been dead many times over.

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What does Hank want? Hank wants a father. Rusty is as close to a biological father as he'll ever get, but Rusty has no interest in acting the role of father to Hank (Dean, it turns out, is a different story). Hank loves and idolizes Brock, who is now gone, replaced by the obnoxious, overbearing Sgt Hatred. Hank states outright that Hatred is not his father, and he refers to Rusty as a "honky" (which, to be fair, he is).

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As the title suggests, "Blood of the Father, Heart of Steel" is about, well, searching for fathers and steeling your heart. What does it mean to be a man? Are you a man when you kill your father, or when you find him? Does a father hold you back or complete you? Does a father make his son a man by nurturing him or making him fight on his own? And, in a moment of truth, can a man act? Is that what it means to be a man? Can you steel your heart enough to act? And, where do our notions of manhood, or action, come from?

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The premiere of Season 4 of The Venture Bros snuck up on me -- I've been immersed in a screenplay polish deadline and have not been paying attention to whatever mountain of promotion I'm sure was out there.

Mr. Urbaniak was kind enough to direct my attention to the online presentation. When I watched it, I seriously thought there was something wrong with the website. This episode is far too weird to absorb quickly, this may take a day or two for me to process. Mr Urbaniak explains: "Yeah, the Brock story runs forward from after the Season 3 finale to the present and the Venture family story runs backwards from the present to after Season 3 finale. Crazy kids."

One thing is certain: no one in this episode knows who is doing what to who why.

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

More Sunday after the broadcast. Don't want to spoil anything.

One of the most propulsive, dynamic scripts in the series, "The Family that Slays Together" is also one of the most sincere and thematically coherent. Its action scenes rise to a new level of excitement and there is palpable dramatic tension, which makes the bent humor pop that much more.

Are we doomed?

In her book Dark Age Ahead, the late Jane Jacobs argues, persuasively, that western culture is headed for a new dark age, and that in this dark age the knowledge and expertise we now possess will be lost. She points to Dark Age Europe, where societies that once thrived suddenly collapsed, the people of those societies forgetting how to maintain the bedrock of their cultures: agriculture, irrigation, education, so forth.

How is such a thing possible? How does a society forget how to plant and care for crops? Well, here's one way: there is a shift at the top of the society's power structure, wars are started for the benefit of the ruling class, the society's economic framework is re-purposed to serve the needs of the power-mad, ignoring the needs and interests of the lower classes, there is a societal shift where the caretakers and practitioners of vital knowledge are driven away, or isolated, or killed as knowledge itself is demonized. And inside of a generation, superstition and ignorance become the norm. Suddenly, the center cannot hold and the society collapses, generally overthrown by the next rising power.

(That's the one thing Idiocracy left out -- the fact that, once the US gets as stupid as it is in the movie, they will have been long-before taken over by, say, China.)

Or, as one might call it, "The Rules of the Game."

As Brock explains it, it seems that the conflict between the Guild of Calamitous Intent and OSI exists as an elaborate game to keep costumed supervillains occupied. The intent, as I understand it, is that if demented freaks like The Monarch were let loose in the real world, they could cause genuine destruction and hurt real people. By sanctioning and directing the malediction of their members against "super scientists", who can presumably take care of themselves, the Guild and OSI collude to make the world a more orderly place. The Guild-sponsored supervillains attack the OSI-protected superscientists, nobody gets hurt (except for the occasional henchman, and then only for dramatic purposes) and the world, somehow, keeps spinning.

What does Jonas Venture, Jr. want?  He has founded a museum in his father's honor, a father he never knew.  If I'm not mistaken, he has turned his own home, Spider-Skull Island, into that museum.

Pity Dr. Dugong. No matter how lame his backstory, or how inadequate his one-robot security system, he still apparently has had enough success with his study of "gentle sea-creatures" to build himself a Stromberg-like undersea fortress. Does he deserve the fate he is given here, a point-blank blast in the face from The Monarch's not-at-all-phallic over-sized electronic bazooka thing?

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"The Buddy System" asked the question "What is a father?" "What Goes Down, Must Come Up" seems to ask "What shall we tell the children?" Everywhere in this episode we see parents, pseudo-parents and quasi-parents dispense advice and level threats. Clearly someone needs to learn something, but who is teaching and who is paying attention? And, most important, in the end, what is actually learned?

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Rusty is threatened by Ginnie's impressive weapon.

There's something Shakespearean about "Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman." It's full of twins, mirrored story-lines, star-crossed lovers, frustrated couplings, all taking place in an Arden-ish (if not quite E-Den-ic) forest. It even has supernatural creatures flitting about the woods to spice things up.

What is a father? That's the question on everyone's mind in this episode of The Venture Bros.

Action Johnny says fathers are "caring, protective men." Rusty seems to have a different definition: a father, to him, is someone who shirks all responsibility, exploits the weaknesses of children, gripes about the time and effort it takes to guide them, but who will nevertheless clone a new, improved child if one is, by chance, killed in a surprise gorilla attack.

The Venture Bros continues to mine the deep vein of the theme of Identity in ever-more subtle and intriguing ways. "Home is Where the Hate Is" is much lighter in tone than many VB episodes (adult swim.com put "Viva Los Muertos!" on right afterward, a real shock to the system), but as skillfully crafted as any.

In this case, the identity in question is the Monarch's (the Monarch is quickly becoming the protagonist of this show). The Monarch has given up arching Dr. Venture and gotten married to Dr. Girlfriend; this should have been a positive change for his sense of identity, abandoning his old grudges in order to become a loving, integrated costumed supervillain. But here we see that he's having second thoughts about his decision.

Part-way through my third viewing of "The Invisible Hand of Fate" it occurred to me that The Venture Bros is a show so wide-ranging in its conception and subject-matter, so ambitious in its scope, that there is, for all intents and purposes, no "typical episode" of the show. A show like Scooby-Doo, or VB's inspiration Jonny Quest, were, of necessity, the same show over and over again, but while The Venture Bros. repeats and strengthens themes and motifs and plot devices, it also repeatedly upends audience expectations to the point where you can tune in and be confident that your concept, whatever it is, will be blasted.

This episode opens with what I think is a first for the show: a topical political joke. In the middle of the desert, Dr. Venture pulls up in his hovercar to some itinerant Mexican workers and asks if they want $50 a day to work on his compound. I have to assume that this is a comment on John McCain's speech a while back where he mentioned that Americans would not work for $50 (an hour) picking lettuce. The significance of this joke in this episode won't become apparent until the post-credit coda.

Sonic Youth's album of b-sides and rarities The Destroyed Room begins with a ten-minute-long jam session. The object of this is to separate the fans from the noobs. Similar demands are made by "Shadowman 9: In the Cradle of Destiny," a dense, flashback-laden, complexly-structured season-opener that gives no quarter to casual viewers.

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SAM (6): I was wearing my Fancy-Schmancy Ultra Limited Edition Secret Stash In-house Promo Venture Bros shirt today, which attracted Sam's interest.

SAM: Who's that?
DAD: This? This is -- [dramatic voice] -- The Monarch!

(no response)

DAD: He's a bad guy.
SAM: I can see that!

Meanwhile, KIT (4), has taken it upon herself to put together a new lineup of The Beatles:



To those who believe that Ringo is irreplaceable, here is your answer: Ringo is replaceable, if he is replaced with BATMAN FROM THE FUTURE and A SHARK ON A POSTAL DELIVERY TRUCK.