Recap / The Venture Bros S 5 E 1 What Color Is Your Cleansuit

Episode - Season 5, Episode 1 (Production Code: 509)

First Aired - June 2, 2013

On the morning after the homeschool Prom, Brock and Shoreleave examine the scene of where Molotov Cocktease and Monstroso have apparently taken their lives, since Brock has to know. Meanwhile, The Outrider has just given Dean a ride back home to the Venture Compound. Despite Dean giving his thanks to the Outrider, the Outrider is still steamed after Dean dropped an F-bomb on him the previous night. Dean retaliates by recalling that he has told the Outrider to go "fuck himself". Dean angrily calls out Hank for ditching him, saying he expects that from Dermott, but not his own twin brother. But it turns out that Hank's not home, having spent the night at Dermott's residence. Hank is awakened by Nikki and discovered by her mother, who is less than pleased with his presence. Meanwhile, Sgt. Hatred is returning his ex-wife, Princess Tinyfeet, to her house, assuring her that he is open to having a fresh new start with her, planning to give Dr. Venture his notice as well as getting his V tattoo lasered off. However, she makes it clear that she has moved on from him.

Nearby, The Monarch and his wife are just returning home after the prom. Dr. Mrs. The Monarch is clearly exhausted, but the Monarch, however, decides to stay outside to wait for Henchman #21, clueless to the fact that 21 quit. Meanwhile, 21 wakes up at the SPHINX headquarters, where he is surrounded at gunpoint by OSI agents and their new leader, Col. Hunter Gathers, who quickly asks who 21 is, what is 21 doing wearing a SPHINX uniform, where are Brock and Shoreleave, and what had happened last night. As that is happening, Rusty is wakened up by the sound of his brother, Jonas Venture, Jr. calling to ask how the ray shields for Gargantua-2 are coming along. Dr. Venture makes up a hasty excuse and hangs up. Exasperated, he nudges the figure on the other side of the bed awake, which turns out to be a mutant fly monster from the prom last night. As Rusty screams for his life, Brock and Shoreleave discover that Mol has vanished and the Monstroso they found was just another decoy. Afterwards, all the members of SPHINX are leaving to be re-entered into the new OSI. However, this doesn't include 21, who questions Brock about what is to become of SPHINX. Handing the keys to 21, Brock says SPHINX is all 21's since the rent is paid up to the end of the year and to have fun.

Just as they are leaving, Rusty holds a meeting with the rest of Team Venture and Conjectural Technologies (Billy Quizboy and Pete White) about building the ray shield for Gargantua-2. Billy points out how such a project would take years and is shocked when Rusty states they have 3 months. Just as Dr. Venture asks where Dean is, he shows up with a tank of gasoline, walking right past everyone in the room to go outside and burn his personal items including his sweater vest, his Bizzy Bee wallet, and his Giant Boy Detective book, along with his learning bed. Rusty approaches Dean and asks him if he is in his "pyro-mania phase". Dean promptly responds by saying how he has realized that despite listening to his "stupid learning bed" his whole life, he hasn't "learned shit" and he does not want to be a super scientist, a boy adventurer, or even a Venture brother anymore and how he wants to be his own man.

To appease Dean, Rusty offers him the attic if Dean helps with the ray shield project. Hank overhears this and is overjoyed since it means that he'll get to have "his own Hank-cave". Team Venture and Conjectural Technologies then refurbish the Gargantua-1 pavilion (renaming it "The Palaemon Project") and the E-Den, while Hank and Dean work on having their own rooms. Afterwards, Rusty, Billy, and Pete are waiting for someone who will give them some start-up cash. Rusty insists that despite the person being a pill, he is Rusty's best customer. The customer is revealed to be Augustus St. Cloud, an old-time rival of Billy (much to Billy's fury).

Meanwhile, Dean and Sgt. Hatred are at a college getting interns for the Palaemon project. Dean explains to Hatred that his makeover has nothing to do with Triana. Hatred (himself dumped by his ex-wife) insists to Dean that "there are other fish in the sea". Shortly afterwards, a college student named Thalia is intrigued by the Palaemon project, and Dean becomes smitten with her. At night, Dr. Venture has a speech to all the interns (who are there since Rusty accepted all of the applications), which is not well-received with the interns themselves. Regardless, Dr. Venture has the interns split into three groups based on the color of their clean suits (white, orange, and green). Of course, the Palaemon project starts with a bang of the unpleasant, blacking-out kind.

Some time later (over a month later), the ray shield manufacturing is going along decently enough. However, one of the interns, Martin, is not pleased with Dr. Venture's dated computers ("Where'd you find these antiques? The Mayflower?"). Insulted, Dr. Venture has Martin on a 10-minute timeout. But his communicator watch starts detecting massive amounts of radioactivity. Frightened, Dr. Venture has the interns done for the day and has them return to the E-Den. As the interns are leaving, Hatred has an encounter with 21, who has made himself SPHINX Commander. Hatred shows suspicion over 21, despite 21 insisting that he quit henching for The Monarch.

In the evening, at the Monarch's house in Malice, Monarch (dressed as Khal Drogo) is prepped for some sexual role-playing with his wife, only to be caught dumbfounded when she shows up dressed as Rocky. After an intervention with Tim-Tom dressed as Mickey (also from Rocky), the Monarch still insists that 21 is still undercover, even though it has been over a month. As The Monarch is still in denial, they decided not to talk about it.The next day, as the Green Class are departing for the E-Den at the Venture Compound, Dean tells Thalia about his Halloween, feeling extremely conflicted. Thalia comforts him, saying that she's normal in every way, or at least she was. As Dr. Venture encounters the two of them, Thalia shows that she is growing an extra pair of arms and that she grew them just recently. Confused, Dr. Venture says he'll look into it.

That evening, at the residence of St. Cloud, St. Cloud has just finished giving his tour of his place to Watch and Ward, who are there to make St. Cloud an official member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent. As they are to show St. Cloud his candidates for archenemy, St. Cloud makes it very clear that he wants his archenemy to be Billy Quizboy. When Watch and Ward say that St. Cloud can't choose his own arch-enemy right off the bat, St. Cloud bribes them with a briefcase full of money. Watch and Ward accept the bribe without question.

The next day, things start to become very off, when two Orange-Class interns (who look rather bulkier than the other interns) block Dr. Venture's path and only move under Martin (who has grown a second pair of arms himself)'s orders. Entering the door, Rusty finds Billy, who is agitated from the fact that the area has become "a fucking incubator for spontaneous genetic mutations". He goes on saying that the White Class (apart from growing a second pair of functioning arms) are now capable of telekinesis and are processing information "like Einstein-fast" and that the Orange Class are developing a "fucking carapace" a la Ben Grimm. Dr. Venture asks about the Green Class, but Billy replies saying that there is no Green Class. That afternoon, Monarch sneaks into the Venture Compound to get an update on 21, even though 21 insists that he left the Monarch. After being seen by Hatred, Monarch leaves (but not before asking 21 who is the rightful heir to the Iron Throne). In the evening, things get even spookier when an Orange-Class intern is buying new clean suits from Hank-Co. and asks Hank (in a disturbingly deep voice) if they have larger sizes. Hatred offers the intern some snacks from the griddle, but he declines, saying that they eat only "student green".

During the snowy night, Thomas searches around him and dashes outside the Venture compound, only for an Orange-Class intern to stop him in his tracks and asks where he is going. Thomas replies that he is bringing the updated schedule to Dr. Venture. The Orang-Class intern mocks Thomas about him running an errand for "master, like a good little Tom", removes his helmet to reveal a monstrous face and shortly eats Thomas alive. The event is seen by a horrified Hatred, who realizes that "Student Green" is made out of people and is quickly abducted by more of the Orange Class.

Later, Rusty is awakened by J.J. on the phone, saying that he's expecting Venture to deliver the ray shield on Friday. Venture tries to ask for more time, saying he can't deliver the shield untested. J.J. laughs it off, saying that Venture would be knee-deep in spontaneous genetic mutations and the last man to attempt that was "Palo the Human Beetle". When Venture asks if he'll see J.J. in 2 days, J.J. corrects him saying they'll be seeing each other tomorrow, since it's Thursday morning. As J.J. hangs up, Venture drops an S-bomb and promptly calls Hatred for the ray shield. But it turns out that Hatred is tied up next to Tommy, the last Green-Class intern. Tommy reveals that the ray shield is already finished, and that Martin plans to use it to rule the world by turning the rest of the world into mutated freaks and that there's a prophecy that tells of a chosen one knows as the Lee-Hun-Took will lead the children of Palaemon to peace. Meanwhile, Thalia (who has continued to mutate) tells Dean of Martin's plan and asks him to challenge Martin for leadership.

In the Flying Cocoon, The Monarch tells his wife about his encounter with the mutated interns and claims that Venture has created a race of supermen, and he asks her to use her "science stuff" to turn their henchmen into a race of "super-er men". Her research uncovered the story of Dr. Paolo Salazar, who was the world's foremost authority on genetic mutation - he was then mutated into a beetle in an experiment gone wrong, re-emerging as the supervillain Bug-a-Boo.

Later that morning, Rusty, Hank, Dermott, 21, Billy, and White are outside the Palaemon pavilion and discovered that the interns have locked the doors, leaving behind a document called "94 theses". 21 takes charge and assigns everyone present to tasks that will neutralize the mutated interns and still ready the shielding for J.J.'s arrival.

Dean is able to beat Martin, the mutant leader, with three "Indian Style" challenges - Indian burns on the arms (the leader has four arms, so it is very effective), Indian feasting (eating a whole pack of crackers at once then whistling), and Indian leg wrestling; he declares himself the Lee-Hun-Took of legend. He and Thalia begin to make out.

Billy and Pete head over to Augustus St. Cloud's residence to raid his collection for Dr. Venture's Floating Platform Device (which he sold to St. Cloud earlier in the episode). When they get caught, St. Cloud is willing to give them what they want, but only if Billy eats $1.00... in pennies (the amount that Billy outbid St. Cloud in a recent eBay war). When Billy refuses, St. Cloud then challenges him to a one-question, winner-take-all trivia contest, which Billy ends up winning by a terminology technicality (getting the Floating Platform Device as well as the H.E.L.P.eR/Walking Eye mash-up robot), returning triumphantly to the Venture Compound.

Rusty has been working on an "antidote" to cure the mutants, which mainly consists of a gaseous mix of roofies and antibiotics. As the Monarch approaches for his attack, he sends the Pupa Twins inside the biodome to cut a hole in it, so he can release his new super-army. 21 attempts to stop the Monarch, but he releases his butterflies into the biodome - but Dr. Mrs. The Monarch reveals the now-cured Dr. Salazar, and that the butterflies contained the antidote to the mutations. Simultaneously, Rusty releases his "antidote", which knocks everyone out in the biodome. The Monarch is initially dismayed, but Dr. Mrs. The Monarch assures him that he still "won" by depriving Venture of his supposed "super soldiers" - at which point one of the Henchmen alerts them that "massive amounts of narcotics" drifting up through the umbilical. Monarch hastily orders a retreat as the gas begins to fill the Cocoon.

J.J. comes and retrieves the ray shield without knowing about the insanity that occurred during its creation. Dean and the grad students have no memories of the mutated society; 21, having avoided being exposed, approaches a still-recovering Hatred and asks him why he still has "tits" despite being exposed to the antidote.

In The Stinger, the Monarch and his Cocoon remember what they did, due to only getting a mild dose of the "antidote" gas, but still act loopy.

Tropes:

• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: St. Cloud's "superpower" is having "an inordinate amount of money."
• Ascended Extra: St. Cloud first appeared way back in season 1's ''Tag Sale, You're It!" He finally gets a name and characterization here.
• The Cameo: Aziz Ansari voices Martin, one of the students working on the project.
• Comically Missing the Point: 21 tries to tell Doc about Martin's plan to use the ray shield to mutate the world. Doc, however, only cares about the ray shield actually being finished.
• Cooking Duel: Dean wins leadership of the mutants by challenging their current leader Martin to three challenges "Indian style". They involve enduring Indian burns, completing an Indian feast (eating a whole pack of crackers then whistling), and engaging in Indian (leg) wrestling.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The entire opening segment is one long nod to Operation: P.R.O.M, showing the aftermath of that night's events for all parties involved. It also serves to help remind the audience of where things stand, as that episode aired in 2010, which had been 3 years ago by the time this one aired.
  • The gorilla from "The Buddy System" returns and is revealed to have bred, but not before getting quickly killed by Sgt. Hatred.
  • The Outrider is still sore from the time Dean did his Precision F-Strike to him after The Stinger to "Operation: P.R.O.M.".
  • When Dean moves into the attic, he finds it just as his deformed clone had left it in Perchance to Dean.
  • One of the possible arches presented to St. Cloud is Dr. Quymn from Dr. Quymn, Medicine Woman.
• Crimefighting with Cash: Inverted. Augustus St. Cloud decides to join the Guild to arch Billy Quizboy and states that his supervillain power is "having a lot of money".
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Dean can't concentrate well enough to hold a conversation with Thalia in telepathy and keeps thinking about her breasts, Triana's breasts, and how soft breasts can be. The second time all he's thinking about is how the thought of Martin hitting him is scaring him enough to make him crap his pants.
• Evil Is Petty: St. Cloud was willing to give up what Billy and Pete wanted, IF Billy would eat $1.00 worth of pennies. Why $1.00? Because that is how much Billy outbid him by in an eBay auction. Also, he only deigns to join the Guild of Calamitous Intent in order to legitimize his decades-old rivalry with Billy Quizboy, allowing him to arch Billy with impunity; he even bribes Guild agents Watch and Ward an undisclosed sum in order to fast-track his membership and arching rights.
• Foil: Augustus St. Cloud is this to Billy Quizboy: both are former Quizboys contestants and collectors of pop culture memorabilia; however, whereas Billy is generally well-meaning and frequently struggles to make ends meet, St. Cloud is a preening narcissist and heir to the world's largest plastics company. He even has an albino sidekick like Billy, although his sidekick is Asian, making him "more collectible". Additionally, while Billy displays a constant and genuine adoration for the things he fanboys over, St. Cloud only cares about collecting as many trinkets as possible and lacks the deeper knowledge and affection Billy has for memorabilia.
• Freak Lab Accident: Happened to Dr. Paolo Salazar in the past. He gets turned into a giant gold-colored beetle and supposedly joined the circus. Eventually, he got himself cured and is a leading expert of reversing genetic mutation.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: St. Cloud's robot collection trivia question. When Billy Quizboy answered "four" to the number of robots in the collection, it wasn't due to him not noticing Dr. Theopolis attached to Twiki (which was the trap that St. Cloud set for the question), but rather him knowing that Nomad is actually a deep space probe instead of a robot.
• The Horseshoe Effect: 21 realizes that although Doc and the Monarch are supposedly on different sides of "good," their cavalier attitude towards other people's well-being in regard to their own selfish desires makes them nearly identical.
  21: Don't take this as an insult, but working for you and the Monarch...it's like the same thing.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Brock's early line "Looks like we're not done yet" after finding that the Monstroso "killed" in the limo was a decoy could also be taken as a subtle reference to new episodes of the series airing after a three-year layoff since the end of the previous season.
• Lost Him in a Card Game: St. Cloud challenges Billy Quizboy to bet Pete White on a quiz competition. Billy accepts immediately. Fortunately, Billy wins.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Given how the Green Class are the only students with "house privileges" and the way in which Rusty uses them to perform domestic chores, the fact that they're all named some variation of "Tom" is likely an allusion to Uncle Tom, of the eponymous Uncle Tom's Cabin.^note As Wikipedia notes: "Uncle Tom – sometimes shortened to just a Tom – [is] a derogatory epithet for an exceedingly subservient person or house negro."
  • Martin, the author of the 94 theses, is named for Martin Luther, the Augustinian monk who famously nailed his 95 theses to the doors of the All Saints' Church in Wittenberg.
• The Native Rival: Martin. Except he's a mutant intern doing a nerdy constructed-tribal-culture thing instead of an actual native.
• Never Found the Body: Brock and Shoreleave pick through the crash site of the limo from "Operation PROM" at the beginning. Molotov is nowhere to be seen while the Monstroso body proves to be a decoy.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The ones who actually stop the Palaemon mutants are The Monarch and Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, who "foil" Dr. Venture's "plan" of a mutant army by attacking them with electronic butterflies containing the antidote to the mutation. (Though Rusty's "cure" at least contains enough roofies to make everyone who inhales it forget about the last several months.)
• Nose Bleed: Dean falls prey to this when having a fantasy of Thalia touching his crotch in various situations.
• Notary Nonsense: Hank (a teenager of uncertain legal age due to being a clone) claims to offer notary services to an inquiring Dr. Orpheus (who needs to change the terms on his child support). Considering that Hank's "company" is basically a Lemonade Stand Plot after Rusty forced him to get a job that he runs in the garage selling items he swipes from the compound, serving crappy food, and offering a variety of services (tailoring, printing, etc.) with his only "employees" being Sgt. Hatred (a recovering supervillain) and Dermott (also a teenager), it is highly unlikely that any of them are actually qualified notaries.
• One-Steve Limit: The Green interns have an inordinate number of people named some variant of "Thomas", with Rusty calling several of them Tom, Thomas, or Tommy. This eventually becomes an Artifact Name as all Green interns are referred to as "Toms" by the other cleansuits.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The Guild waives the 90-day waiting period for new members and the rule forbidding villains from picking their own arch in the first year for St. Cloud because he gives them a bunch of money.
• Shout-Out: Naturally.
  • St. Cloud's collection includes:
    • The Staff of Ra and the Ark of the Covenant, along with Billy and Pete quoting the "They're digging in the wrong place" exchange between Indy and Sallah.
    • The TARDIS
    • Twiki and Dr. Theopolis
    • Max
    • A Colonial Viper
    • The Nomad space probe, along with Billy quoting Kirk: "You're flawed, St. Cloud - you must sterilise. Sterilise!"
    • An arm from a T-800
  • St. Cloud himself shares his last name with Bruce Wayne love interest Silver St. Cloud and arrives in this episode driving a vintage Batmobile limo.
  • Billy compares the orange class's carapace to that of Ben Grimm.
  • The "94 Theses" are written in Klingon and Sindarin, or maybe Quenya (Elvish).
  • The Monarch is roleplaying as Khal Drogo to have sex with Dr. Mrs. The Monarch, who mistakes it for Ivan Drago.
  • "Student Green" is a reference to Soylent Green. Sgt. Hatred shouts "student green is people!" just like Charlton Heston's character in the movie. Later, when he is captured, Hatred also quotes another Heston character, this time from Planet of the Apes (1968): "It's a madhouse! A madhouse!"
  • St. Cloud and Billy quote A New Hope repeatedly in the episode.
  • A Dethklok poster can be seen on the wall in Dermott's room.
  • The Monarch quotes the lyrics from The Incredible Hulk's segment on The Marvel Super Heroes at one point.
• Sole Survivor: Tommy, the only intern from the green class to receive any real characterization, is shown to still be alive after Dean defeats Martin and becomes new tribe leader, having been spared the grim fate of his other classmates for whatever reason.
• Synchronous Episodes: The entirety of A Very Venture Halloween takes place during the first "commercial break" of this episode.
• Too Clever by Half: The quiz showdown asks how many robots are in a display. While it's predictably a trick question, there are actually two tricks that cancel each other out (one of the robots is actually two, but another isn't actually a robot). St. Cloud loses because he catches only one trick, if he'd just given the obvious answer he would have won.
• We Will Meet Again: St. Cloud delivers an extremely straight-faced version to Billy Quizboy at the end.
• Wham Line: "What Green Class? There are no Green cleansuits."