Does every episode of the Venture Bros. have to be about the Venture family? I don’t think so! Dr. Orpheus, one (of many) of my favorite peripheral characters, gets an episode that revolves around him, called "Fallen Arches." The Guild of Calamitous Intent assigns worthy superheroes to their own arch-villains. Until now, Dr. Orpheus didn’t have a villain to call his own. Now he’s about to get his chance to have an enemy to call his own, but the catch is that he has to be part of a superhero team to get one.

Orpheus then visits his fellow fighters of supernatural evil to get them to form a proper team. The first is Jefferson Twilight, a balding, black vampire hunter who cuts off the teeth of Blackulas to keep as trophies. The third member is The Alchemist, a brilliant, um, alchemist who decides he’d rather join Dr. Orpheus’ team than continue his attempt to find the cure for AIDS. I guess he has his priorities straight.

This is an obvious take on the supernatural Marvel heroes like Dr. Strange and Blade, but when the Venture Bros. cartoon gets a handle on something to send up, they do it in a marvelously hilarious way. One riff on Aquaman almost made me fall on the floor from cracking up too hard. It’s easy to goof on Aquaman, but it is almost always funny.

The Guild of Calamitous Intent decides to hold henchman auditions in the Venture compound, which allows Dr. Venture to stick his nose in their business. While Dr. Venture tries to push his crazy walking-eye robot on a horde of super villains, Dean and Hank are charged with the simple task of keeping watch over Dr. Orpheus’ daughter. Like most things the Venture twins are involved in, just hanging out with the lovely daughter of a supreme sorcerer goes wrong. Dean also gets a lengthy lesson in the birds and the bees.

In Monarch’s giant cocoon base, the Monarch tries to get over the loss of his woman, Doctor Girlfriend by using the cure for what ails any man — hiring a hooker. In another area of the cocoon, America’s favorite henchmen, number 21 and number 24, strike out on their own and plot what they can do to be cooler and get chicks to notice them.

This is one of those episodes of the Venture Bros. that has more jokes per minute than an average episode would. I wonder if there are days when the jokes are just flowing like water when the writers get together? Besides the usual lines from the Venture Clan, there are geeky, obscure references from Marvel comics, DC Comics, Double Dare, Johnny Quest, James Bond, The Damned and so forth. You even get to learn a little more about the Venture family and the Guild of Calamitous Intent.

A near perfect episode! Nine out of 10.

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