Dia de Los Dangerous!

"Dia de Los Dangerous!"

"Dia de Los Dangerous!" is the first episode in the first season of The Venture Bros.

Plot

Dr. Venture is appearing as a guest lecturer at a Community University in Tijuana, Mexico, although his audience consists only of a few bored students. Venture concludes his presentation and finds that the low turnout may be because today is Día de los Muertos. Brushing off the apology, he asks for his honorarium, but is disappointed to find that it is in pesos. Stepping outside, Venture finds that even his bodyguard Brock is indifferent to his "speech thing." Hank and Dean, his annoyingly perky fraternal twin sons, approach and enthusiastically point out the sombreros and sugar skulls they have acquired.

A seemingly innocuous Monarch butterfly that settles on Venture's shoulder is actually a tiny robotic spy drone for The Monarch, the super-scientist's self-avowed enemy. The villain complains to Dr. Girlfriend, his second-in-command and romantic interest, that Venture must have followed him to Mexico in hope of foiling his latest plan. The Monarch orders a young henchman-cadet named "Speedy" to lead a group in observing Dr. Venture. Eager to earn his wings, Speedy is further delighted to be entrusted with the keys to the "Monarch-mobile."

Venture gives his sons some money and tells them to buy fireworks (or anything else to get them away from him) and sets off on his actual goal of acquiring questionable prescriptions. The doctor he finds is reluctant despite his rundown office, and Venture offers him $100 American as a bribe.

On their own for the day, Hank and Dean decide to take H.E.L.P.eR. to a car-painting garage. Speedy, impatient to prove himself to his boss, urges his fellow henchmen to capture the teens. They knock out Hank and Dean with darts, but Brock spots them loading the unconscious teens into the Monarch-mobile. The panicked henchmen shoot the enraged, charging bodyguard with dozens of tranquilizers, but they seem to have no effect on him. He grabs the closest henchman, who happens to be Speedy, and begins strangling him one-handedly. In desperation, the Monarch-mobile's driver throws the vehicle into reverse and slams into the enraged Samson, finally knocking him down. Brock has maintained his iron grip around Speedy's throat, however; when his fellow henchmen are unable to free him, they shoot Speedy as a mercy killing.

Back in the cocoon lair, The Monarch is initially furious that his henchmen defied his orders. His anger turns to delight when they inform him that Brock Samson is now dead. Without Dr. Venture's "Swedish murder machine" to worry about, The Monarch can demand anything he wants from Venture using his sons as hostages. He takes one of the boys' satellite-linked communicator watches and attempts to contact his foe. When Venture does not answer, The Monarch records a message.

Venture wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with a note taped to his chest and bandages around his midsection. The note tells him that he should seek immediate medical attention, and he discovers that one of his kidneys has been stolen. Upon reflection, Venture realizes that this is the second kidney he has lost to theft, leaving him without kidneys entirely. When Brock fails to answer his communicator watch, Venture summons H.E.L.P.eR. instead, who now has a number of automotive decorations. The doctor clambers onto the robot's back and tells it to take him to the X-1, where he modifies H.E.L.P.eR. to act as a dialysis machine. When Venture attempts to locate Brock again, he notices the dozens of messages The Monarch has left describing his abduction of Hank and Dean. Using the signal from Brock's watch as a beacon, H.E.L.P.eR. carries Venture through the Mexican desert. The doctor is horrified to find that the indicator leads directly to a shallow grave marked only with Brock's combat knife.

Lying in bed (but still in full costume), The Monarch displays clear signs of agitation, prompting Dr. Girlfriend to ask him to talk to her. At first he vents about Venture's seeming indifference towards his sons, but Girlfriend senses something deeper and asks about The Monarch's own parents. The anguished villain finally tells her about the plane crash that killed his parents, leaving him orphaned as an eight-year-old. He became enchanted by the Monarch butterflies in the area and began imitating them. One day, he awoke to find his "adoptive family" gone. He confesses that his current "scheme" is a sham excuse to search for what he considers his foster parents. Dr. Girlfriend urges The Monarch to try to be a father to Dean and Hank rather than searching for the butterflies (which only live for nine months).

Sobbing over the loss of his bodyguard, Venture guzzles tequila and builds a meager shrine over the grave. As he babbles drunkenly, Brock emerges from the ground still clutching Speedy's corpse. Brock chugs the rest of the tequila and demands to know where the boys are.

The Monarch brings the boys cookies. They jump him, but he thinks their feeble attacks are good-natured horseplay.

As Brock and Venture near the cocoon in the X-1, Brock disconnects Venture from his robotic kidney so that H.E.L.P.eR. can continue to pilot the jet. He hustles Venture towards the rear of the plane, where his Dodge Charger is stowed. After a brief altercation with a chupacabra hiding in his car, Brock loads the doctor into it and before Venture can object, opens the cargo bay door and backs the car out of the jet in mid-air, briefly deploying a parachute. He releases the parachute and the car plummets towards The Monarch's lair.

The Monarch is still wrestling with the boys when Brock's Charger crashes through the ceiling. Brock orders Venture to get out and take care of the boys. He exacts his revenge on the henchmen by running over dozens of them. The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend flee in an escape pod as Brock continues to slaughter his goons. Venture lethargically shuffles towards the boys, who render a joyous Team Venture salute.

Back on board the X-1, Venture explains to his sons that he will need a kidney transplant from one of them. The boys play rock, paper, scissors to decide who the donor will be, but they wake up to find that Venture has taken one from each of them; as it turns out, they tied with "rock."

Cultural references

• Dr. Venture's "colleague" shares a name with Cuban revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
• The "earn your wings" line is a reference to the Frank Capra movie It's a Wonderful Life.
• The title of this episode is a play on the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead; much (if not all) of the episode's action takes place on this day, as mentioned by the dean of the community college.
• The chupacabra (literally 'goat-sucker') is a mythical beast that drinks the blood of livestock. Chupacabras appear in the folklore of Mexico, Puerto Rico and the southwestern United States.
• Dr. Girlfriend can been seen reading Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche as well as Memoirs of a Geisha.
• Speedy's voice is a prototype of the voice that Doc Hammer would use for Henchman #21 five episodes into the series (Tag Sale -- You're It!).
• The scene in which Brock throws his shirt to the Mexican dressed in a wrestling outfit is a parody to the 1979 Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola commercial.

Connections to other episodes

• The subplot involving Dr. Venture dreaming of a goatee-sporting fetus attacked by another fetus (that of his parasitic twin brother Jonas, Jr.) begins with this episode.
• Although not specifically named, this episode marks the first appearance of Henchmen number 24.
• Hank's comment about Baron Ünderbheit is the character's first mention in the series. Ünderbheit himself does not appear until the third episode, "Home Insecurity," but is depicted in the opening sequence for the first season.

Production notes

• 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 this episode, Dia De Los Dangerous!, the nickname provided is Kimson "Don Alberto".

Goofs

• The monarch butterfly is poisonous, contrary to what Dr. Venture's colleague tells Hank and Dean. However, it's only poisonous if ingested.
• When Dr. Venture is drinking tequila at Brock's grave, it is seen going through both tubes connected to H.E.L.P.eR. when it should only go in through one as they are a complete circuit.