Dean Venture
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Dean Venture is one of the two titular Venture Brothers and a main character on the Adult Swim program of the same name, serving as a parody of such boy adventurers as The Hardy Boys and Jonny Quest. He is voiced by Michael Sinterniklaas.
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[edit] Appearance and personality
Dean is sixteen years old (see "Death" and "rebirth" below), tall and thin, and wears his brown hair in a slightly longer style than his fraternal twin brother Hank. His face is freckled and he usually wears a sweater-vest over a button-up shirt with trousers that are slightly too short for his height. At bedtime, Dean wears Spider-Man pajamas. He is (or at least was originally) younger than Hank by four minutes.
While both Dean and Hank seem to have inherited the adventurer's spirit from their grandfather, the legendary scientist Jonas Venture, most of the brothers' athletic prowess seems to have gone to Hank. Dean is rather more like his father, Dr. Thaddeus Venture: bookish, nerdy, and scrawny. He gets dizzy when he stands up quickly and is often overpowered by his brother during horseplay. Compared to Hank, he is also more intelligent, shy, naïve and sometimes logical; both siblings, however, show a tendency to lose touch with reality more suited to much younger boys. Dr. Venture freely admits that Dean is somewhat "more effeminate" than Hank.
Like many teenaged siblings, Hank serves as both best friend and worst enemy to Dean (and vice versa). On a moment's notice, they switch from wrestling with each other to enthusiastically pursuing a new adventure together. Both boys tend to speak and act in an oddly quaint manner, using interjections like "Golly!" and "Gee whiz!" despite the modern-day setting of the show. This is largely a comical acknowledgement of the works they parody (such as the above-mentioned Hardy Boys and Jonny Quest). A possible explanation that fits the show's continuity, however, is as follows. The boys do not attend school and have little contact with their peers, instead being educated via subliminal learning aids installed in their beds. These devices were built by Dr. Venture's father, and he has probably not bothered to update the language used by the program. This seems to be supported by the fact that in "Hate Floats" the beds play a recording about the Grand Coulee Dam read by Jonas Venture Sr. This seems to suggest that the curriculum has not been updated since Thaddeus Venture's childhood.
Despite being the show's title characters, Hank and Dean usually play very minor roles in each episode. They typically conduct laughingly juvenile investigations into what they consider to be mysteries (which are often very mundane matters) and are occasionally abducted by villains.
[edit] Family and friends
Dr. Venture has been a single parent for an unknown period of time, and very little has been revealed about the boys' mother (a likely suspect for their mother was revealed in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" an insane and (possibly) ex-OSI agent Myra Brandish, who for some reason calls Dean "Dean Dean Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean Sausages"). Apparently, Dr. Venture has not shared any of this information with Hank or Dean either; during the episode "Hate Floats," Dean happily jumped to the conclusion that Dr. Girlfriend was their mother when she displayed cursory knowledge about the boys. One of Venture's only references to the boys' birth was an enigmatic comment in "Careers in Science" that he created them in a "moment of passion" and could end their lives in similar circumstances.
Venture is, for the most part, a reluctant father. He frequently expresses nothing but annoyance towards the boys, and shows a general lack of concern over their well-being (sometimes wondering where they are only after they have been missing for many hours). In one instance, Dean admits that Dr. Venture sometimes calls him Don or Dave, implying that he can not be bothered to remember his sons' names. The Venture family's bodyguard, Brock Samson, treats the boys with more respect and affection than does their father, dispensing advice and showing a good deal more patience with their immaturity.
In an uncharacteristically paternal moment, however, Dr. Venture took Dean to the mall as a birthday present to buy him his first "speed suit" -- which turned out to be an identical version of the short-sleeved jumpsuit his father habitually wears. Venture's decision to buy this garment for Dean but not Hank may indicate that he is grooming the more academic boy to be his successor as a "super-scientist."
While both boys express a vague, wide-eyed interest in "pretty girls," Dean has become particularly smitten with Triana Orpheus, the gothy teenage daughter of Venture ally and tenant Dr. Orpheus. Unfortunately, Dean appears to share his father's ineptness with women; he often babbles incoherently and manages to embarrass himself in Triana's presence. In private, he engages in childish fantasies of rescuing her from dangerous situations and "practicing being a boyfriend" with her (kissing). Hank is well aware of this crush and needles Dean about it at every opportunity. His feelings for Triana may be more than a childish infatuation, however; in the episode "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!" Dr. Orpheus theorized that the machine in which Hank, Dean and Brock had been trapped could only be opened by true love. Shortly afterwards, the doors opened when Dean heard Triana speak his name. Triana has shown no sign so far that she knows about Dean's feelings for her, though she did describe him as "kind of cute."
[edit] Episode-specific information
In "Eeney, Meeney, Miney... Magic!", Dean first met Triana and was infatuated with her almost at first sight. When Dean, Hank and Brock became trapped inside Dr. Venture's virtual reality fantasy-fufillment "joy can" invention, Dean was able to find the way out through the power of true love when he heard Triana speak his name.
The plot of "Are You There, God? It's Me, Dean" largely revolved around Dean's case of acute testicular torsion and its subsequent treatment, particularly the humiliating aspects. He was awkwardly unable to convey the location of his pain (other than "down there" or "in the rocks") and shyly refused to let his father examine him. After Pete White and Billy Quizboy were improbably able to correct the condition with emergency surgery, a parade of family and friends (including Triana) visited him while his crotch was wrapped in bandages. Dr. White thoughtfully presented Dean with an envelope containing the remains of his recently-grown pubic hair, since the operation required its removal, and Quizboy told Dean that during the operation, he had "hooked him up with the complete package," the meaning of which was lost on him.
Dean's slightly superior intellect often proves no match for Hank's slightly superior strength. In many situations, Dean finds himself the unwilling subordinate to Hank's wishes; he was forced to serve as his brother's slave after losing a bet in "Mid-Life Chrysalis" and became an employee at Hank's grinder and lemonade stand in "Tag Sale -- You're It!".
In "Past Tense," Dean refuses to believe Hank's assertion that Brock kills bad guys; he insists childishly that the police carry them away in sleeping bags rather than body bags. When their father and Brock are both kidnapped soon afterwards, however, Dean thinks clearly enough to ask the original Team Venture for help in rescuing them while Hank panics.
Dean finally got a date with Triana in "Victor. Echo. November.", a double date also which also included Hank and Triana's friend Kim, arranged by Dr. Venture and Dr. Orpheus as part of a deal involving the Orpheus' family's rent payments. The date went predictably badly, partially due to Hank's bizarre behavior and partially because The Phantom Limb, The Monarch and Doctor Girlfriend happened to be at the same restaurant and an argument between the Limb and the Monarch led to the former calling in a Guild hit on the Venture family. Dean, however, performed admirably during the fiasco, although finally embarrassing himself with Hank at the date's conclusion.
When the Venture family was waylaid in Ünderland on their way back from a costume party in "Love-Bheits," Dean's Princess Leia costume caused Baron Ünderbheit to mistake him for a woman and the Baron decided to take Dean for his latest bride. Dr. Venture, Brock and Hank were unable to stop the wedding from taking place, but when Dean revealed his true gender the Baron was deposed for violating Ünderland's same-sex marriage ban law and the Venture family was able to depart with the blessings of the country's new, democratic government.
He helped the spirit of Abraham Lincoln save the current president in "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?" by eventually building Lincoln a suit made of five-dollar bills, after unsuccessful possession of Dean's body. To Dean's horror while under Lincoln's control he nearly kissed Hank. Lincoln (who indicated that he had access to Dean's memories) expressed knowledge that the boys had experimented with each other previously.
In "Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part II)", Dean suffered an episode-long series of hallucinations loosely based on The Neverending Story; while hallucinating he smashed the main engine of the Monarch's cocoon, causing it to crash. As part of his hallucination, Dean freed some enslaved orphans, extolling the fact that their were now free to live normal lives. He goes on a diatribe reflecting his true feelings for his father and the life he has created for the boys. Dean, while seemingly more naive than his brother concerning the carnage and perversion that surrounds them is actually quite aware of his often manic and abnormal life. His only wish is to live a life in his own room and away from the supervillains trying to kill him on a daily basis.
[edit] "Death" and "rebirth"
The Venture Bros. provided a surprising finale to its first season as Dean and Hank apparently died in a fiery explosion. The last scene of "Return to Spider-Skull Island" shows Brock and Orpheus looking at the boys' charred corpses in horror as Dr. Venture says "Get their clothes" in a matter-of-fact tone. The second season's first episode, "Powerless in the Face of Death" revealed that Venture easily cloned the boys; in fact, they had died more than a dozen times previously (according to Brock, they died fourteen times, thus they are in their fifteenth versions). Development pods accelerate the clones' growth until they roughly match the boys' age at the time of their death, and an audio system implants recorded memories and basic knowledge into their minds as they "incubate." Myra Brandish claims to have given birth to them 19 years ago, though, so it is assumed that either the cloning does not accelerate them exactly to their time of death, or that the cloning process does not factor the time required to clone them into the aging process, thus causing a "lag" between their chronological and biological ages.
Neither brother is aware that they are clones. When the latest version of Hank and Dean were awakened at the beginning of the episode "Hate Floats," Brock and Venture pretended it was their sixteenth birthday. The boys were presented with ID cards apparently reused from the previous set of clones; when Hank questioned his ID's incorrect date, Venture brusquely dismissed his questions with "curiosity killed more than the cat, boy." The boys also once stumbled into a room containing spare clone-slugs of themselves and were traumatized until Dr. Venture, in a rare moment of quick thinking, managed to convince them the clones were to be a gift for the boys. Then he offered the boys macaroni and cheese, effectively tricking his sons into their normally affable state again.
Due to Dr. Venture's reluctance to discuss his sons' mother (not to mention his "super-science" background and lack of social skills), some fans have speculated that Dean and Hank were never born in the conventional sense and are merely clones of their "father." This is somewhat far-fetched, however, since the clones' identical appearance in every "generation" would imply that they would both look like a young Dr. Venture if this were the case. (As shown in "Past Tense," the college-aged Thaddeus Venture looked very different than do Hank and Dean.) Further, Dr. Venture has vaguely referred to the boys having an actual mother on two occasions -- once he said that he created the boys in a moment of passion, and another time they asked him about their mother, he said he realized he never told them about her, but was then cut off. Nobody knows if Myra Brandish's claims of motherhood are accurate, but it seems likely, as Dr. Venture freely admits that the two have had sex.
| The Venture Bros. | |
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| Characters Main | Secondary |
Hank Venture • Dean Venture • Dr. Thaddeus Venture • Brock Samson • H.E.L.P.eR. • Jonas Venture Junior Dr. Orpheus • Triana Orpheus • Pete White • Master Billy Quizboy • Molotov Cocktease • Myra Brandish The Monarch • Doctor Girlfriend • #21 • #24 • Baron Werner Ünderbheit • Phantom Limb |
| Organizations Prominent | Minor |
Team Venture/Venture Industries • Order of the Triad • Monarch Henchmen • Guild of Calamitous Intent |
| Cast and crew | Paul Boocock • Lisa Hammer • Steven Rattazzi • Michael Sinterniklaas • James Urbaniak • Patrick Warburton Jackson Publick • Doc Hammer • J. G. Thirlwell • World Leaders Entertainment |
| Episodes | Pilot • Season 1 • Season 2 • Specials • Phone Calls |
