Episode - Season 5, Episode 4 (Production Code: 503)
First Aired - June 23, 2013
In a Flashback to the late 1960s, Jonas Venture Sr. is diving for treasure at the wreck of an ancient trireme off the Greek coast. He is interrupted by the Action Man, who reminds Jonas that they have a wedding to attend. (That of "Jackie O.") A young Rusty is pretending to be a Greek warrior while playing with H.E.L.P.eR. Jonas berates him for playing when he is supposed to be "studying the classics." Col. Gentleman appears in another boat to take Jonas and the Action Man to the wedding. Rusty is left alone with H.E.L.P.eR.
In the present, Rusty is showing a slide-show to Billy, Pete, and Sgt. Hatred of his favorite Greek island: Spanakos. He explains that he attends the festival of "Spanakopita" there every year. Because Hank and Dean aren't attending, Rusty wants Billy and Pete to attend in their place. Billy accepts without question, but Pete tries to get out of it. After arguing for a while, Pete finally reveals that he doesn't want to go because he is an albino.
Outside, as the group continues to argue, they are being watched by a mechanical owl.
After the opening credits, the scene shifts to the X-1 landing on a small island. Rusty emerges and is upset that the usual greeting party isn't there. He also noticed the X-2 present at the island and assumes that his brother is there. Billy emerges from the X-1 excited while Pete emerges less so, covered from head to toe in a white robe and large sun hat. They make their way through the village where they are noticed by the local leader. Hatred asks Rusty how he found this place, and Rusty explains that he found it while "lost at sea" as a kid and stayed there for days until his father found him. Every villager that Rusty passes shouts "Spanakopita!" at him.
Rusty greets the local leader, Giorgios, who gives Rusty a hearty "Spanakopita!" greeting. Rusty asks for his "usual room," but Giorgios explains that a "wealthy American" arrived that morning and took the room. Giorgios upgrades Rusty to a better room, for $200 more. Hatred thinks it's fishy, but Rusty pays without care. As they go to head upstairs, they run into Augustus St. Cloud coming down them. On his shoulder is the real Bubo from the original Clash of the Titans. He explains that he also recently purchased the original, restored X-2. (Which was destroyed in 1968.) As Rusty and Hatred head up to their room, St. Cloud remains with Billy, explaining how he intends to "destroy [Billy's] vacation."
Hatred enters Rusty's room to find him tied to a chair, blindfolded, and surrounded by villagers. Hatred attacks, but is stopped by Rusty who explains that it is a Spanakopita tradition. The villagers then carry Rusty out of the room on the chair in a celebratory fashion.
That night, a big feast is held with music and dancing. Pete mentions that he has never seen Rusty this happy. St. Cloud interrupts Billy and Pete while wearing the outfit of Auric Goldfinger. Elsewhere, Hatred is still trying to get to the bottom of the "alleged" Spanakopita festival. Giorgios' story starts to fall apart as Hatred questions him, but he tells Hatred not to think so much. He then mentions the "Spanakopita games," and St. Cloud offers to simply buy the crown that goes to the victor. Giorgios refuses, and Rusty assures that he will win it. He and St. Cloud agree to make a wager, St. Cloud's $1 million dollars vs. Rusty's X-1 jet. St. Cloud then reveals that he plans to buy the island at the end of the games, regardless of the winner.
The next day, the guests prepare for the first game: a goat race. The guests begin running and are chased by a herd of goats. St. Cloud jumps onto the back of his albino manservant, Pei Wei, which Rusty views as cheating. Pei Wei, carrying St. Cloud, uses his parkour abilities to take the lead and win the race.
Back in Rusty's room, he is complaining to Billy and Pete about St. Cloud ruining his vacation. St. Cloud is once again using Bubo to spy on them through the window.
The next day, the guests prepare for the next game: sponge diving. Hatred decides to sit it out and uses the opportunity to call Brock. Brock immediately recognizes how Hatred describes the Spanakopita celebrations and tells Hatred to just "let it go" and to let Rusty "have a good time, it's the high point of his whole year."
During the sponge diving competition, which Rusty performs naked, he brings up four sponges, expecting to win. However, St. Cloud has had Pei Wei in a scuba suit below the water collecting an entire bag of sponges. St. Cloud easily wins.
In a dream sequence in the style of Clash of the Titans, the original Team Venture are in the role of Greek gods overlooking the action below. St. Cloud emerges from the sea as the "kraken," with Pete as Pegasus, Billy as Perseus, and Rusty as the severed Medusa head. Billy tries to use Rusty's head to defeat the St. Cloud kraken, but fails. Pete panics and flies high to escape and his wings start to melt. Billy complains that "this isn't Icarus, you have the wrong myth!" and then wakes up from his dream with an idea on how to defeat St. Cloud.
In Rusty's room, as he sleeps, Hatred decides to explore. Meanwhile, Billy and Pete row a raft toward St. Cloud's boat, planning to take away his source of power: his money. Inside, they find St. Cloud's vast hoard of nerdy treasures. Pei Wei is standing guard however, and fights them. They defeat him, but St. Cloud is present and uses the treasure from Raiders of the Lost Ark to launch two tranquilizer darts into Billy and Pete's necks.
Hatred, following the sounds of gunshots, enters a room where the villagers are playing video games and Giorgios is counting large stacks of money. Giorgios tells Hatred to calm down, and explains the story of Spanakopita, the same as he did for Brock the first time Brock "came snooping."
Flashing back to 1968, Giorgios explains that Spanakos was in a bad state and the people were barely surviving. They decided to rob the rich tourists vacationing in Greece, and sneak aboard the X-2. A young Rusty is playing with H.E.L.P.eR and climbs into a large chest, pretending that it is the Trojan Horse. The villagers knock out H.E.L.P.eR and rob the ship, including the chest that Rusty is hiding in. They brought their haul back to Spanakos, and, while celebrating, find Rusty inside. Giorgios recognizes him as the son of a rich American scientist, and plan to hold him for ransom. However, they are unable to reach Dr. Jonas Venture Sr.
Elsewhere, Jonas Sr. is busy battling a robot controlled by one of his enemies: L. Ron. Jonas defeats the robot while Action Man and Kano save Jackie O from L. Ron's servants. Jonas inspects the robot where L. Ron reveals that this was all a ruse to divert attention from his real target, the Apollo spacecraft set to touch down later that day. They all abandon the ship as the L. Ron robot self destructs.
Days pass with Giorgios and crew unable to reach Jonas Sr. Rusty is becoming more and more upset, and the kidnappers feeling worse and worse about the situation. Giorgios tries to cheer up Rusty, and invents the "Spanakopita" festival. It works to cheer Rusty up until his father eventually comes for him, by which point the kidnappers forgot all about the ransom. Then, 20 years later, an adult Rusty just shows up for the "festival" and has kept returning ever since. The villagers are happy because it makes them a lot of money, and Rusty is happy with the vacation. Hatred agrees not to spoil it for Rusty.
Meanwhile, Billy and Pete are tied up in a remote part of the island as the sun is coming up. Pete is completely unprotected from the sun but the two are unable to get untied. Surprisingly, Bubo arrives to untie Billy along with Pei Wei. Pete says it's the "albino code," and the two escape just before the sun hits them.
The third game, the pumice carving event, is going on. St. Cloud easily wins with a Han Solo frozen in carbonite pumice statue. Giorgios asks for the guests to turn in their drachmas, but Pei Wei does not have all the ones St. Cloud had won. Billy and Pete arrive, with Billy holding St. Cloud's drachmas, allowing him to win. St. Cloud calls it a Pyrrhic Victory, as he simply bought the island from Giorgios. He leaves with Pei Wei as Rusty complains to Giorgios. Giorgios happily reveals that Giorgios didn't sell the island, but instead sold St. Cloud some spanakopita, the Greek spinach pie.
Happy at the result, Rusty talks about returning next year, to which Hatred, Billy, and Pete all reply "No Fucking Way."
The Stinger reveals the end of the Flashback story from earlier. Jonas Sr., the Action Man, Kano, and Col. Gentleman arrive on Spanakos for Rusty. After sending Rusty away with Kano, they lock the door and beat down the Greek kidnappers mercilessly. A young Giorgios, his eye having been damaged, swears that he will make "Dr. Venture pay." Flashing forward to the present day, Giorgios happily counts all of the money he has made from Rusty's visit.
Tropes
- Boring, but Practical: Giorgios swore revenge on Jonas Venture in the past and that grudge transferred to Rusty. However, his idea of "revenge" is simply scamming Rusty out of his money at an event the man enjoys enough to keep coming to.
- Church of Happyology: The robot Jonas Sr. fights in the flashback is under the control of L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the church of Scientology. His associate holding Jackie O hostage blasts Action Man with "Engrams", the Scientology concept of alien spirits that attach to human beings and cause them all sorts of illnesses and mental trauma.
- Comically Missing the Point: St. Cloud misinterprets Rusty's Spit Take from announcing his plans to buy the island as a sign that the drink they're having tastes terrible."Oh, you're right. That is unpleasant."
- Classical Mythology: Many references are made to it throughout the episode.
- Continuity Nod:
- Rusty's clothing on his first return trip to Spanakos, mentioned under Freeze-Frame Bonus below.
- Col. Gentleman being upset that L. Ron is going to attack Apollo VII, because "Wally" is on board. In Now Museum - Now You Don't, Col. Gentleman revealed in his autobiography that he has been part of a four-way including astronaut Wally Schirra, who was on board Apollo VII.
- Exact Words: At the end of the episode, St. Cloud reveals that he's bought the entire island and makes it clear that he intends to bar Rusty from visiting again, Except he refers to the island as "Spanakopita" and not "Spanakos". Mere moments after he leaves Giorgios reveals to Rusty that he'd scammed St. Cloud by selling him, as Hatred puts it, "several million bucks worth of spinach humble pie".
- Freeze-Frame Bonus:
- The couple in the boat with Colonel Gentleman and Kano are the Monarch's parents (seen in the photograph that the Monarch found in the previous episode).
- When Rusty first returns to the island of Spanakos after being there once when he was a kid, he is wearing his college attire as seen in season one's "Past Tense" - the same clothes he was wearing when he learned his father just passed away and went back to where he had the time of his life.
- Grammar Correction Gag: Even while they're setting out to rob their archenemy, Pete objects to Billy using nonstandard words:Billy: Irregardless!
White: Ewwwww.
Billy: Sorry. Regardless! - Hereditary Hairstyle: Brock fathered a bunch of bastards with the women of Spanakos, all of whom inherited his mullet.
- I Have to Iron My Dog: Upon being confronted by one of the local women of Spanakos and a boy who looks suspiciously like him, Brock quickly says he's busy and cuts the line.
- Inherently Funny Words: Spanakopita!
- Lima Syndrome: Giorgios and his fellow kidnappers toward Rusty after his father fails to respond to their ransom demands.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Rusty has no idea that the Spanakopita games are completely made up. Brock found out and keeps it hidden from Rusty because it's one of the few times of the year where Rusty is truly happy. Hatred finds out and chooses to do the same.
- Noble Demon: Parodied. Pei Wei remains thoroughly loyal to St. Cloud, but refuses to allow him to leave Pete White out to burn in the sun. Pete attributes this to the "Albino Code" and states it overrules Pei Wei's loyalty to his boss.
- Not What It Looks Like: Sgt. Hatred sneaks past St. Cloud's hotel window and sees St. Cloud with his albino manservant kneeling in front of him and seemingly giving him a blowjob. Turns out the manservant is just drawing abs on him.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Subverted. St. Cloud tries to pull one on Rusty and Billy by announcing he bought the island where Spanakopita is held after they win the final event, unaware that the locals had sold him "Spanakopita," the spinach pastry, rather than "Spanakos," the actual name of the island. What's more, the locals were scamming him as well as Rusty the entire time.
- Revenge by Proxy: As it turns out, the entire Spanakopita festival is a non-lethal and subtle version of this. Jonas Venture died before Giorgios could exact his revenge for brutally beating him and his men, but through Rusty willingly coming to Spanakos every year and spending thousands on their "festival" Giorgios can exact his revenge without hurting a soul by quite literally making Dr. Venture pay.
- Sadly Mythtaken: Invoked with Billy's stop-motion dream sequence. It mixes up multiple classic myths, with Billy calling them out.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: St. Cloud once again uses his superpower of "having lots of money" to bribe and cheat his way through the Spanakopita events.
- Shout-Out:
- Many to Star Wars, just like the last episode featuring St. Cloud.
- Many to Indiana Jones as well.
- There are several references to Clash of the Titans, including St. Cloud owning the original Bubo and Billy's stop-motion dream sequence.
- Pei Wei is dressed exactly like one the Immortals from 300 when he rescues Billy and Pete from St. Cloud's death trap.
- Suddenly Always Knew That: White lampshades this when Billy picks a lock. Possibly justified by the fact that, like rowing to the boat and doing a totally pointless somersault, Billy just does these things because he's an Ascended Fanboy and it's fun for him."You know how to pick one of those?"
- Truth in Television: Pete's reticence to come to Spanakos is well-founded, as people with albinism are at increased risk of getting sunburn and skin cancer, and also tend to have light-sensitive eyes.
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: Billy does one on St. Cloud's boat. It's completely unnecessary but pretty clear he just thought it would be cool.
