¡Viva los Muertos!

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“¡Viva los Muertos!”
The Venture Bros. episode

"Prostitoo!!"
Episode no. Season 2
Episode 11
Written by Ben Edlund
Directed by Jackson Publick
Production no. 2-24
Original airdate 1 October 2006
Episode chronology
← Previous Next →
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" "Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part I)"

"¡Viva los Muertos!" is the eleventh episode in the second season of The Venture Bros. This episode is written by Ben Edlund, creator of The Tick and friend of the creators of The Venture Bros.

Contents

[edit] Plot

The episode begins from the first-person visual perspective of one of the Monarch's henchmen as the Monarch is preparing to storm the Venture compound yet again. It goes badly. The henchman finally sees a blood-drenched Brock in the process of destroying his comrades; he attempts to escape, but his head is twisted completely around by Brock and the screen goes black.

After the title sequence, the show continues on through the perspective of the henchman as he is resurrected as a Frankenstein-esque monster, reanimated by none other than Thaddeus Venture himself. As he becomes aware of what has happened, he (afterwards known as "Venturestein") attempts to strangle Dr. Venture out of horror, and is subsequently re-killed by Brock and subsequently re-resurrected. Meanwhile, outside the Venture compound, a van containing a quartet of aging hippies and large dog comes upon the Venture compound. The newcomers resemble the cast of the Scooby-Doo series, as well as celebrated criminals of the late twentieth century. Ted, overbearing and something of a bully, decides the place must be haunted and that there is a mystery to be solved (simply on the basis that if they stopped here, there has to be a mystery to solve), and forces everyone else to investigate. Everyone else seems uninterested, as Val spouts radical-feminist vitriol such as how a man is an incomplete woman, and once comes onto Patty implying that she is a lesbian, Patty just wants to go to her parents' house, as she has for the last 10 years, and Sonny is repeatedly ordered by the dog Groovy (possessed by a German-speaking demon whom only Sonny can hear) to kill everyone. Ted eventually bullies everyone into coming with him, except for Groovy and Sonny, whom he orders to go search for clues on their own by shaking a pill bottle of "groovy treats."

Inside the compound, the Ventures are eating in the kitchen with Venturestein, and Venturestein learns he now has an African-American cranium complete with Afro hairstyle. Dr. Venture explains his experiment: he can put corpses and dead people to good use as manual labor and keep them productive even after death. The zombie seems perturbed by the presence of Brock, who in turn is genuinely put off by Venturestein, but the zombie begins to cheer up when the boys teasingly tell him that "Brock bad" for killing him. Dr. Orpheus arrives and informs Dr. Venture of his plans to have a get-together in his portion of the compound. Orpheus is suspicious about the resurrected corpse, and invites Brock, who he suspects is troubled, to the event which he promises will be both spiritual and therapeutic in nature.

Later, Hank and Dean are distraught when they can't find "African America" on a map. They mention that they can't get into their "learning beds" because Venturestein has been put in one to learn how to "socialize" (though actually he is learning how to be a child laborer, watching old training films produced in the 1960s). The boys hear odd noises in the hall and investigate. Venturestein, upon hearing the word "zapato" (shoe) from the phrase "Viva los zapatos" which means "Long live the shoes," he smashes out of the bed and crashes around the compound; hoping to find one.

Meanwhile, the hippies come across Dr. Orpheus and Venturestein and assume that the compound is a Dracula/Frankenstein factory. Sonny and Groovy come upon Hank and Dean, and Sonny is scared out of his wits. In a flashback, we see that he and Groovy murdered the boys two years earlier in a cave. Sonny "freaked out" after bumping into the boys, Groovy tore Hank's throat out and Sonny beat Dean's head in with a flashlight; Ted helped to toss the boys' corpses into a mine shaft. Sonny concludes that Hank and Dean are "g-g-g-g-GHOSTS!!!"

Brock is now clearly in a funk, and after several failed attempts at throwing knives for target practice, decides to go to Dr. Orpheus' party after all. Meanwhile, Dr. Venture is thrilled to find that the military wants to use his reanimated corpses as soldiers, providing a much more lucrative business deal. When confronted with the shortage of corpses around the compound, he blithely asks Brock to go kill some people; Brock refuses.

After introductions of the other attendees (including the Order of the Triad and an Amazonian mystic), Dr. Orpheus passes a round of drinks made from psychotropic plant vines (similar to a ritual DMT ceremony). The mystic excitedly relates the story of his sexual encounter with a dolphin as Dr. Orpheus and the others begin vomiting with the onset of the hallucinatory effects. Brock knocks back the strange brew and complains of the wretched taste. In a moment of pre-hallucinatory regret Brock admits that he feels bad about killing the henchman that became Venturestein; he had already thrown his gun down and was running away, but Brock killed him anyway just for the hell of it. Brock vomits, accuses the Amazon shaman of poisoning him, then collapses to the floor. Brock's hallucination begins by riding nude on the back of a pink dolphin in the middle of a vast, pink ocean. The dolphin tells Brock that the path to happiness is through empathy; however, the dolphin is soon harpooned by Brock's ex-mentor Hunter Gathers (post-op, but with pre-op face). Hunter blasts into the air with Brock, telling him (while he is hugging onto Hunter's breast) that he's working for the government and that his entire job is to hunt and kill people, and that "You can't teach a hammer to love nails. That dog don't hunt." Brock then awakens from his trip, and charges out of the party in a homicidal rage.

Sonny in the meantime has told Ted of the resurrected Venture boys ("No groovy treats until you find a clue dirtbag!"); the arrogant Ted doubts him until the boys find the hippies in a dark corridor. Ted produces a gun, intending to put those 'zombies' out for good, and the hippies pursue the terrified boys. Hank and Dean run into a dark lab room, only to find many life-support tubes holding their many yet-to-be-animated clone-slugs. In their terror, they break open a tube and a lifeless Hank-slug falls out. Both boys fall to the floor and curl up in the fetal position, whimpering. The hippies run into the clone lab and Ted prepares to shoot the brothers, just as Brock and Venturestein also come in. Brock kills Ted with a head butt; Ted's gun goes off and kills Sonny. Venturestein strangles Groovy (Val and Patty—who took no part in the attempted murder of the Venture brothers—manage to escape.) Brock snaps out of his rage when he see the boys on the floor, and realizes the shock of seeing their clones has sent them into a catatonic state.

Dr. Venture comes and tells his sons the clones were supposed to be their Christmas present: a whole army of them, doing their chores and dangerous missions, etc. The boys leave, happily and oblivious to the nature of the clones. Dr. Venture counts the new corpses, and briefly contemplates killing the clones for his death quota before Brock stops him.

After the credits, Brock is seen driving Venturestein (wearing Hank's Batman mask) to buy him prostitutes' services as a way to make up for his murder. Venturestein thinks he can pay for their services with a shoe made from Groovy's severed paw, but Brock assures the monster that he will pay for their services. Venturestein, now obviously over his fear of Brock, cries out "Brock good!"

[edit] Cultural references

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
  • The resurrection scene is a homage to the movie RoboCop.
  • The name "Venturestein" and the concept of the reanimation of the dead is an allusion to Frankenstein and Frankenstein's monster.
  • In the opening scene there is a portion in which Brock is killing men with a lawnmower. This references the film Braindead.
  • The opening dialogue spoken by Dr. Venture to Brock during the resurrection is similar to that of Dr. Frankenstein in the 1931 film, Frankenstein.
  • The scene in which Brock shows up to Dr. Orpheus' party drenched by rain alludes to a similar scene in American Beauty.
  • The group of vagrants who show up at the Venture compound parody the characters of Scooby-Doo and infamous killers and/or radicals:
  • Both David Koresh and Patty Hearst have been mentioned in previous episodes.
  • The mentions Brock and Dr.Orpheus make to Brock being a "tapestry of quiet desperation" are references to either (or both) the Henry David Thoreau book Walden in which Thoreau claims that most men in urban contemporary society "lead lives of quiet desperation" or the Pink Floyd song Time which contains the line: "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English Way (this quote in itself is presumably also a reference to Walden).
  • Before he dies, Sonny utters "I'm so cold; I'm so fucking cold," a reference to Snowden from the book Catch-22.
  • Ted calls Dean and Hank the "boys from Brazil"; this is a reference to the novel and film The Boys from Brazil, which is about an attempt to clone Adolf Hitler.
  • When Dr. Orpheus passes around the cups of Death Vine Extract, Brock asks, "Is this some kind of Jonestown deal?" He is referring to the Jonestown Cult suicides in which members drank poisoned Flavor Aid.

[edit] Connections to other episodes

  • The Scooby-Doo franchise was created by Hanna-Barbera (the predecessor to Cartoon Network Studios, which airs The Venture Bros.). This allowed them the use of the zany sound effects found in the Scooby-Doo series, just as it allowed them the use of characters from Jonny Quest in previous episodes.
  • Another death sequence of Hank and Dean is revealed in this episode. Two years before the events of this episode, they were murdered by Sonny and Groovy in a cavern somewhere in Baja California. This was not referenced in the list of Hank and Dean's deaths in "Powerless in the Face of Death", as neither Brock nor Doctor Venture had been around to see how they died and so would obviously be unable to give an explanation of how it happened to Dr. Orpheus. This may or may not be the first of their deaths.[1]
  • One of the henchmen being killed by Brock in the opening scene is one of the Henchmen recruited in "Hate Floats."[2]

[edit] Production notes

  • The title is rough Spanish for "Long live the dead!" or "Hail the dead!". The correct way of writing it would be "¡Vivan los Muertos!".
  • Ben Edlund previously helped develop the stories for the episodes "Careers in Science,"[3] written by Doc Hammer, and "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?"[4] written by Jackson Publick.
  • One of the animation directors (Kimson Albert) has a "nickname" inserted into his credits. The nickname is an unusual line or word from the preceding episode. For "¡Viva los Muertos!" the credit reads Kimson "Quiet Desperation" Albert.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Episode "Powerless in the Face of Death"
  2. ^ Episode "Hate Floats"
  3. ^ Episode "Careers in Science"
  4. ^ Episode "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?"


Preceded by:
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills"		 The Venture Bros. episodes
original airdate:
October 1, 2006		 Followed by:
"Showdown at Cremation Creek (Part I)"


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