Recap / The Venture Bros S 2 E 11 Viva Los Muertos

Episode - Season 2, Episode 11 (Production Code: 2-24)

First Aired - October 1, 2006

From the first-person perspective of a newly recruited Monarch henchman, we see a strike force of Monarch henchmen getting ready to assault the Venture compound. 21 tries to give a pep talk to the newbie but 24 tells him not to waste his breath, as 9/10 newbies don't last a month. After a speech via communicator from The Monarch, the henchmen charge the compound. The new recruit wades through the chaos of thousands of butterflies and fleeing/dying henchmen until he is in the Venture garage. There, a blood-soaked Brock is surrounded by dead henchmen and is holding one against the wall with a push lawnmower. The rookie henchman tries to flee but is chased down by Brock, who breaks his neck. The screen goes black as the henchman is looking at his own back and butt, with his head spun around 180 degrees...

Still in the first-person perspective of the henchman, he awakens on an operating table in Dr. Venture's lab. He has been resurrected as a Frankenstein-type monster. He freaks out and attempts to strangle Dr. Venture, only to have his head bashed in by Brock with a fire extinguisher. He is re-resurrected a short time later, with a new top portion of his head (from a dead black guy.)

Meanwhile, outside the compound, a van full of aging hippies and their Great Dane dog, closely resembling the gang from Scooby-Doo, comes to a stop. Their leader, an overbearing bully named Ted, decides that the compound is haunted and that there is a mystery to be solved. In the front with him are Patty, who wants to go home to her parents house, and Val, a radical lesbian feminist. In the back is Sonny, who is talked to by the dog, Groovy, who only Sonny can hear. Groovy is apparently possessed by a German accented spirit who demands Sonny to kill everyone else. Ted bullies the group into joining him, and orders Sonny and Groovy to search for clues, promising them "groovy treats" (which are pills in a bottle) if they find some.

The Venture family, joined by the recentely reanimated "Venturestein," eats a meal in the kitchen. Dr. Venture explains that he plans to put reanimated corpses to use as manual labor. Venturestein is uneasy around Brock, who is likewise put off by Venturestein. Dr. Orpheus arrives to inform Venture that he is having a small gathering in his apartment. He notices the resurrected corpse and invites Brock to his gathering, which he promises will be spiritual and therapeutic in nature.

Hank and Dean try to find "Africa America" on their maps but obviously fail. Dean wants to use their learning beds but Hank refuses, as Venturestein is in his being "socialized" via a child-labor training film from the 1960s. Hank and Dean see lights from their window in another section of the compound and head off to investigate. Meanwhile, Venturestein breaks out of his learning bed and wanders off.

Ted and his group witness Dr. Orpheus and Venturestein, leading them to believe the compound is a "Dracula/Frankenstein factory." Sonny and Groovy come upon Hank and Dean, and Sonny is terrified of them. In a flashback, it is revealed that he and Groovy encountered the boys years earlier in a cave and killed them after being startled. Ted then helped dispose of the boys corpses. Not aware that the boys are clones, he thinks they must be g-g-g-g-ghosts.

Brock, disturbed over Venturestein, decides to go to Orpheus' gathering. Venture, meanwhile, is on the phone with the military, who are interested in using the corpses as soldiers and offering a lot of money. Due to a shortage of corpses, he asks Brock via communicator watch to go out and kill "at least a full gross" of people. Brock refuses.

Brock is introduced to the other attendees, including the Order of the Triad and an Amazonian mystic. Orpheus passes out cups with a psychotropical plant vine extract in them. As the mystic tells the story of a sexual encounter with a dolphin, the others begin vomiting from the extract. Before he starts hallucinating, Brock admits that he feels bad about killing the henchman that became Venturestein. Brock then vomits and hallucinates about riding on the back of a pink dolphin. The dolphin tells Brock that the path to happiness is through empathy, but the dolphin is then harpooned by Col. Hunter Gathers, Brock's old mentor, in his new female body. He picks Brock up and holds Brock to his breast as he flies up into the sky. Gathers tells Brock that Brock is working for the government, and that it's his entire job to hunt and kill people. "You can't teach a hammer to love nails. That dog don't hunt!" Gathers explains. Brock wakes up and charges out of the party in a murderous rage.

Sonny tells Ted about the "ghosts," and Ted doubts him until he sees the boys for himself. Ted pulls out a gun, planning to kill them for good. The boys run away terrified with the group of hippies in pursuit. Hank and Dean hide in a dark laboratory only to see the tanks containing their own clone slugs. They pass out on the floor in catatonic shock.

The hippies enter the lab and prepare to shoot Hank and Dean. Venturestein enters the lab behind them and startles the group, causing Ted to shatter one of the clone tanks with an errant shot. Venturestein slips on a Hank clone slug and slides towards the group of hippies. Groovy lunges at him, but Venturestein grabs him and breaks his neck. The rest of the group tries to flee but runs into Brock. Brock grabs Ted's gun and twists his arm, breaking it. The gun goes off and hits Sonny in the chest. Brock then headbutts Ted, killing him instantly. Val and Patty manage to escape while Sonny babbles until he dies.

Brock finds the boys just as Venture arrives. Venture makes up a story that the clones were supposed to be the boys' Christmas gift, which brings the boys back around and cheers them up. Venture then counts the new corpses and contemplates killing the clones to use as well before Brock stops him.

The Stinger shows Brock and Venturestein (wearing Hank's Batman mask) in Brock's car. Brock is taking Venturestein to buy him a prostitute's services, hoping it will clear his conscience. Venturestein then cries "Brock good!"

This episode is notable as being the only one in the series to date not written by Jackson Publick or Doc Hammer. (It was written by Ben Edlund, creator of The Tick and friend of the creators.)

Tropes:

• Brick Joke: Much to his consternation, Dr. O is still getting Hector's mail, long after Doc fired him back in the season premiere:
  Orpheus: WHO IS HECTOR MOLINA, AND WHY DO THEY KEEP SENDING ME HIS JUNK MAIL?
• Composite Character: As mentioned below the group of hippies combine the cast of Scooby-Doo and famous serial killers.
• Dark Parody: The Groovy Gang of Scooby Doo. Beyond each of the gang also representing an infamous killer, they come across as a group of drifters who live in a van and their breaking into the Venture Compound in search of a "mystery" gets three of them killed.
• Exact Words: Ted begs Brock not to shoot him, who instead kills Ted with a headbutt.
• Expy Coexistence: Several mentions are made throughout the series of the gang from Scooby-Doo being real, meaning this is the case for the "Groovy Gang".
• First-Person Perspective: The first several scenes are seen through the henchman/Venturestein's perspective, crossing over with Eye Cam.
• Frankenstein's Monster: Venturestein
• Global Ignorance: When Doc corrects the boys that Venturestein has an “African American” head, not a black head, they try and fail to find Africa America on a map or globe.
• G-Rated Drug: The "death vine extract" is clearly ayahuasca (liquid vine extract traditionally taken as part of South American shamanistic ceremonies; induces vomiting and hallucinations), but no one ever actually says "ayahuasca". Possibly less to avoid excessive drug talk, and more because "death vine extract ceremony" sounds more like something Dr O would say than "tripping balls on ayahuasca".
• Heel Realization: Seeing Venturestein walking around forces Brock to realize that he can't kill indiscriminately anymore.
• Horror Hippies: The Groovy Gang all have the look of the Scooby Gang and various infamous figures from The '60s and 70s, all of them different flavors of Ax-Crazy.
• I'm Cold... So Cold...: A berserk Brock promptly kills Ted, Sonny, and Groovy. As Sonny dies, gut-shot and bleeding out on the floor, he whimpers, "So cold, man...."
• Men Are the Expendable Gender: Ted, Sonny, and even the dog, Groovy, are killed for their crimes, but Val and Patty, the two female members, presumably escape with their lives. To be fair, you could argue at least Patty is probably just as much a victim in all this.
• Mushroom Samba: Those who drink the vine extract at Orpheus' party get one. The only one we see is Brock's, who rides the beautiful dolphin into the bosom of his wisdom-dispensing mother-father figure.
• My God, What Have I Done?: "Hey... you know what? I think I... I feel a little bad about killing that guy."
• Neck Snap: How Brock kills the henchman who becomes Venturestein. (Around the full 180 degrees...)
• Pet the Dog: At the end of the episode, Brock tries to make amends to Venturestein by taking him to a brothel to get laid.
  Venturestein: Pros-duh-toots!
• Scooby Stack: Naturally, the Groovy Gang does this while prowling around the compound.
• Shout-Out:
  • Two-for-one with the group of hippies, as both the Scooby-Doo crew and sociopathic killers:
    • Ted is Fred and serial killer Ted Bundy.
    • Patty is Daphne and Patty Hearst.
    • Val is Velma and Valerie Solanas.
    • Sonny is Shaggy and David Berkowitz (Son of Sam.)
    • Groovy is Scooby and Berkowitz's dog. He also seems to take influence from the role of Torgo in Manos: The Hands of Fate.
  • Brock riding naked on the dolphin is another of the many references to David Bowie, as Bowie had a tattoo of a naked man riding a dolphin on his calf.
  • Venturestein is based on the portrayal of the monster in Young Frankenstein. His first-person resurrection scene also calls to mind Murphy's resurrection in RoboCop (1987).
  • When Ted realizes Dean and Hank are in fact clones, he calls them out as The Boys from Brazil.
• Spoofy-Doo: The episode features a team of middle-aged mystery solvers who combine the Scooby Gang with infamous criminals from the '60s and '70s. Ted, Fred combined with Ted Bundy, is cheerfully abusive to the others and threatens the wrath of God if they don't obey him. Patty, Daphne combined with Patty Hearst, was abducted by Ted and just wants to see her family again. Val, Velma combined with Valerie Solanas, cynically spouts radical feminist talking points. Sonny, Shaggy combined with David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), is a mentally-ill man who hallucinates that their dog Groovy can talk, telling him to kill for some unholy higher power. Ted controls Sonny using "Groovy Treats", which is just Sonny's medication. The group enters the Venture Compound in search of a mystery, assuming that it must be abandoned, only to be killed by Brock for trespassing.
• Vision Quest: The vine extract causes Brock to go on one, ultimately realizing that while he is a killing machine, he doesn't have to be a "mindless" one.
• What Measure Is a Mook?: Brock notes that he feels guilty for killing Texas/Venturestein.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Rusty revives a dead Monarch henchman "Frankenstein"-style. He plans on "Frankensteining" more dead people to sell as cheap labor, only to change his mind via a phone call with the military and eschew the plan in favor of using the "Venturesteins" as what amounts to zombie suicide bombers. Brock is disturbed enough by this (including his role in killing the henchmen in the first place) that he has a What Measure Is a Mook? breakdown and tells Rusty off at the end.