The writers ditched exploring the more vast, complex storylines for a return to their more rapid fire (mildly absurdist) humor style. As good as the Morphic trilogy was, and episodes 4 and 5 definitely delivered, they’ve spent so much time back referencing and exploring the mythos that some of the actual jokes have felt forced or a little bit like a shadow of the wit we were used to (admit it, the treaty of tolerance summit dialogue had more potential than was utilized!), but hot damn did they come out swinging in this episode!

The concept alone was a recipe for success with two parallel storylines following The Monarch and 21 tutoring the returning, rich villain Augustus St. Cloud to help him advance past being a level 1 villain, while Rusty and Brock train Billy and Mr. White in preparation for the pending arching. The parallelism is great, and instead of the third storyline focusing on the younger Venture brothers, we get a more hilarious Dr. Mrs. The Monarch storyline as she interrogated double agent S-464 and agrees to help him win back Agent Kimberly McManus in return for him becoming a Double reverse quadruple agent for the Guild to spy on the Peril Partnership. This, and the episodes other tropes, were very well summarized by TVTropes.org and you check those out here!

Rather than double recap an episode that doesn’t really need it, we are going to run through our favorite hilarious bits the episode delivered!

So this feels like a very just-me type of thing, so I want to address the elephant in the room before getting too into it – I love St. Cloud as a character. I find him absolutely hilarious, ridiculous, and a hilarious social commentary and I’m 100% biased because I can do a spot on impression of him and am FULLY aware everyone around me finds him annoying and me obnoxious. And that just makes episodes with him more fun, so I’m glad he’s not a regular and he has a lot of untapped potential when an inevitable team up happens. That being said I thought it was a mistake to not include his albino assistant in the training and if they won’t be utilizing him as a character maybe he needs a new one!

Venture Bros – Adult Swim

My absolute favorite moment is a tie between Dr. Mrs. The Monarch’s confrontation with Agent Kimberly McManus and Rose’s standoff with St. Cloud. We’ve seen it hinted at that there’s more to Billy’s mom than has been revealed, but to what extent we don’t know, so add her beating the snot out of her son’s rival as a furthering continuity item and throw it on the open items list of reveals we are still waiting for. Add in the hilarious voice acting done between the three (well two, considering Doc Hammer voices Rose while Christopher McCulloch does Colonel Gentleman AND St. Cloud (to me the most surprising of the long list of characters he voices). This scene had me rolling, I mean, she JUST took her Humera!

Venture Bros. – Adult Swim

Now let’s dive into the Councilwoman’s best segments starting with an honorable mention for the gruesome milk intimidation while interrogating S-464 (so good my friends are still talking about it). So why does the standoff with Agent Kimberly McManus stand out so much? It reminds us that Dr. Mrs. The Monarch is a bad bitch villain in her own right. Too often she plays the voice of reason and is more calculated than ever getting her hands dirty (yes i also loved when she took out Wide Wale’s guards). So when she reminds us of how truly badass she is and commands respect I sit up straight. I had a very brief debate on if the councilwoman could take the OSI agent and I shut that shit DOWN because it isn’t a debate. Not only have we seen her go hand to hand with Wide Wale’s men or psychologically manipulate H.E.L.P.e.R in an early season, but she took down a team of henchmen trained by Kilinger and has his earned respect, whereas agent Kimberly McManus is not even in the top tier of OSI agents and is assigned babysitting duty to a level 1 arching?!? If anyone has a valid argument for how Dr. Mrs. The Monarch wouldn’t straight up destroy her PLEASE message me because i want to hear it!