TV Rewind: For The Venture Bros. and Fandom, It’s All About Love
Photo Courtesy of HBO Max
Editor’s Note: Welcome to our TV Rewind column! The Paste writers are diving into the streaming catalogue to discuss some of our favorite classic series as well as great shows we’re watching for the first time. Come relive your TV past with us, or discover what should be your next binge watch below:
In Venture Bros. Season 6, “Maybe No Go,” evil zillionaire Augustus St. Cloud has archnemesis Billy Quizboy and Quizboy’s sidekick, Pete White, tied up and at his mercy. With a flourish, he unveils his secret weapon… a red rubber ball.
Ah, but this isn’t just any mere red rubber ball, you see. It’s from Duran Duran’s music video “Is There Something I Should Know?” Formed by Marc Bolan, inflated by Roxy Music, its power passed down to every New Romantic band ever since. No ball, no music video. No music video, no New Romantics. Spandau Ballet never writes “Only if You Leave,” John Hughes never writes Pretty in Pink. Molly Ringwald never leaves The Facts of Life to star in Pink, and by proximity her charisma propels Kim Fields from the small screen to the White House.
From this Jenga tower of references, St. Cloud teases out a threat: Either Quizboy sells to him all his worldly possessions in exchange for the ball (and a single cent) or he’ll send the ball back in time. Goodbye, Soft Cell. Hello, President Tootie.
Even for a hero entirely themed on trivia, this is hard to buy. “You’re completely nuts!” Quizboy exclaims. “It’s a red rubber ball!”
He doth protest too much. In short order, Quizboy is trudging home with White, shiny penny and rubber ball in hand, and trying to justify their homelessness. Without the New Romantics, then Nu Rock would have happened earlier. Linkin Park and System of a Down would have formed in the ‘80s and ruined the future of hip-hop. “And I lost my virginity to Side A of Wu-Tang Forever,” he concludes. “We had to do it.”
A mega-collector supervillain and a quiz show superhero conduct a time travel plot solely through pop culture references. It’s a concept so high (in both senses of the word) that it’s in the clouds. It’s the sort of trip Venture Bros. takes often. So many jokes revolve around an encyclopedic knowledge of ‘80s music, comic book minutiae, and a fondness for old Hanna-Barbera cartoons. A lot of it is downright esoteric to anyone who didn’t live within a narrow band of American pop history.
I’m an example of someone who should be alienated by that. Through no fault of its own, modern music has eluded me. I became infatuated with polyphonic music, an outdated style, at a young age. With the exception of, say, John Tavener or Eric Whitacre, my musical world stretches from the ninth century to 1949. Friends take immense pleasure in comparing me to Rip van Winkle.
An episode of Venture Bros. should feel like Family Guy, whose endless send-ups drive my heart pressure up and my life expectancy down, but I’m laughing as hard at St. Cloud as my more civilized wife. That’s due in part to the snap and crack of its dialogue. It was one of the first animated sitcoms to perfect the lightning-quick patter which makes Archer and Rick and Morty such sonic delights. Still, that doesn’t fully explain it.
Under the guise of David Bowie and comics lore, a lot of Venture Bros. is about fan(atic) dom(ains). Not in a facile way, mind you (we have Big Bang Theory and Robot Chicken for that), but in a roundabout, more worldly one. It’s about the impressions left on our youth, the disillusionment, how much useless junk we cram into our brains, and how tightly we clutch that baggage even while it’s killing us. Fanaticism is part of who we become.