“I wait for Death’s casual hand to finish the job that Fate began at my uneventful puberty.”

Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick, creators of The Venture Bros, make the mistake of telling newcomers to skip the first season because they’re insecure about its quality, which is perplexing to me – right from the first episode, it’s an incredibly funny and emotionally sophisticated show, and that season has one of my favourite episodes that works as a good standalone example of what it’s doing: “Ghosts Of The Sargasso”. The plot is fundamentally that of any Scooby-Doo episode mixed with any Johnny Quest episode – Team Venture are looking for an old, lost ship belonging to Rusty’s father, and in investigating it they are attacked by ghost pirates who are actually real pirates in disguise, which uncovers a real ghost.

“Do you have a pen, Hank?”
“To use as a magic wand?”
“To use… as a pen, Hank.”

It’s a great example of a stock plot enhancing the qualities of an author; obviously, there’s the cynical humour, but the episode works as a great example of the show’s emotional realism intruding, amusingly, on absurd situations. The story is driven forward because Rusty is trying to dig up the remains of his dead father’s career to sell it for easy cash, and he manages to fuck up every step of the way, blaming his father right to what he thinks is his dying breath. Meanwhile, this has some of the funniest examples of Dean and Hank’s respective childlike natures; one of my favourite jokes is them mutually enthused about whizzing off the top of the boat (“It makes a cool arc!”).

“Nobody ever said pirates don’t exist, Hank.”
“So you agree with me that this is impossible!”

And it ends with one of my favourite cynical punchlines. Rusty accidentally awakens the ghost of the pilot of the ship; the reveal of it is a great example of a parody having to come from a place of love, because the revealing shot is right out of any kid’s show of the Sixties. The ultimate punchline is, as horrifying as it initially seems, the ghost is actually just really fucking annoying, doing nothing but screaming incoherently, and it ends up disposed of when Brock just beats the shit out of it the same way he does everything. It’s an episode of a comedy up there with any episode of Futurama in terms of comedy and up there with The Sopranos in terms of cynical commentary, and this isn’t even as ambitious as the show gets!

“It’s up my ass.”
“… Are you serious?”
“Why don’t you check?”
“Well… check.”
“What if he’s lying?”
“If he were telling the truth, that would be better?!”

What’s an episode of a show (or any entry in a series) which does the basic goals of the series really, really well?