Song: "Like a Friend" by Pulp
Released: 1998
Why's it part of the "Rock Box" playlist?: This awesome track--written by Pulp and composer Patrick Doyle for the 1998 Great Expectations remake that Doyle also scored--showed up in The Venture Bros.' recent fourth-season finale "Operation P.R.O.M."
Which moment in "Operation P.R.O.M." does it appear?: It was the most effective use of an existing song on TV in 2010. I'm referring to the finale's closing montage, where the wildly funny animated series briefly hits pause on the comedy to deepen the character of badass SPHINX operative and former Venture family bodyguard Brock Samson, with the help of "Like a Friend." In less than four minutes, the sequence brings closure to both Brock's love/hate relationship with love interest and nemesis Molotov Cocktease and the season-long thread about Brock's self-imposed separation from the Ventures.
 |
| Artwork by Annie Wu (Photo source: Wu) |
Alan Sepinwall, the biggest championer of NBC's cult show Chuck, once said he found The Venture Bros. to be unfunny (huh?) and unappealing. Of the two pop culture reference-heavy action comedies, which are both about losers who are trying to make sense of a crazy universe full of comic book supervillain-style adversaries who constantly want them dead, The Venture Bros. is clearly the more consistent and superior show. It's more willing to shake things up in its universe, like keeping Brock separated from the Ventures for most of the fourth season or having The Monarch's meek and flabby underling 21 gradually morph into a more capable, assertive and muscled henchman, yet still retain a bit of his previously buffoonish self when he continues to talk to his dead best friend 24 as if he's still alive. (As someone who often finds the Buy More hijinks on Chuck to be less entertaining than the spyjinks and thinks the Morgan character is better utilized in the latter because of Josh Gomez's chemistry with Adam Baldwin, I was hoping the destruction of the store at the end of last season would mean no more stories at that limited and increasingly tiresome setting. But that was not to be when the CIA rebuilt the Buy More this season.) Team Venture is also far less reliant on music montages than Chuck. Like The Wire, the animated series is aware that music montages have more of an impact when they're used sparingly.
Storytelling drawbacks aside, there's a lot to like about Chuck, but the more flawed and screwy characters in The Venture Bros. make Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer's creation a more interesting show. Chuck is ultimately about triumphing over cowardice and self-doubt to win both the girl of your dreams and the respect of the U.S. government (or the respect of the Buy More). It's a nerd's fantasy that presents how nerds would like to see themselves. That's not a bad thing, but it can also make for formulaic viewing (Chuck's current season has been an uneven one where I've found my attention wandering, despite whatever Yvonne Strahovski's almost wearing that week and the presence of Timothy Dalton, who has to be the show's greatest casting coup so far). Meanwhile, The Venture Bros. isn't concerned with triumph. It's about failure, the inability to impress or satisfy women and the difficulty of overcoming inner demons like cowardice, self-denial or unhealthy sexual appetites--in other words, it shows the ugly reality of how most nerds really are.
Okay, now I see why Sepinwall doesn't like The Venture Bros.
