| "Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner?" | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| The Venture Bros. episode | |||
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| Episode no. |
Season 2 Episode 9 | ||
| Written by | Jackson Publick and Ben Edlund | ||
| Production code | 221 | ||
| Original air date | September 10, 2006 | ||
| Episode Chronology | |||
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| List of The Venture Bros. episodes | |||
Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner? is the ninth episode of Season 2 and the overall twenty-second episode of The Venture Bros.
Plot
The space station Gargantua 1 is going down. Lt. Baldavitch leaves her seat and approaches Colonel Bud Manstrong. Gargantua 1 crashes into a desert, supposedly into a terrorist camp, and Manstrong is declared a hero.
Later, Dr. Venture, Brock, Bud Manstrong, and his mother attend a dinner given by the President. Manstrong is wearing a black mourning armband and Lt. Baldavitch is never heard of again, implying that she died in the crash.
Lincoln's Ghost sees a microchip on Manstrong's neck, which he believes the Colonel's mother is planning to use to make her son assassinate the President. He recruits Dean and Hank to help stop the assassination.
Dr. Venture has invented a portable force-field generator, which he plans on selling to the government.
Dr. Venture, Brock, Agent Hauser, President Breyer, Bud, and Mrs. Manstrong end up being trapped inside the Oval Office after Hauser breaks the control for the force-field generator.
Episode Cast
- James Urbaniak: Dr. Venture, Dr. Jonas Venture Jr.
- Patrick Warburton: Brock Samson
- Chris McCulloch: Hank Venture, Lincoln's Ghost, Pirate Captain, Ned, General Manhowers, Additional Voices
- Michael Sinterniklaas: Dean Venture
- Terrence Fleming: Col. Bud Manstrong
- Joanna Adler: Mrs. Manstrong
- Dana Snyder: President Breyer
- Jarboe: Maid
- Brendon Small: Agent Hauser
- Mia Barron: Sally Impossible
- Nina Hellman: Lt. Anna Baldavitch, Cassie
First Appearances
Connections to Other Episodes
- Colonel Bud Manstrong, Lt. Anna Baldavitch, and Gargantua-1 all first appeared in the Season 1 episode Careers in Science.
- Sally Impossible and her cousin Ned have moved into Spider-Skull Island with Jonas Venture Jr. and the Pirate Captain. J.J. and Sally were seen expressing romantic interest in each other at the end of the Season 2 episode Twenty Years to Midnight.
Cultural References
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
- Colonel Bud Manstrong's line at the end of the episode "Oh, my God! It's full of stars!" is a reference to Dr. Dave Bowman's final words in the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey. The line isn't spoken in the corresponding Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
- Colonel Bud Manstrong's line at the end of the episode "Oh, my God! It's full of stars!" is a reference to Dr. Dave Bowman's statement in 2010: The Year We Make Contact, the film sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- The ghost of sixteenth president Abraham Lincoln is shown haunting the White House this episode. Throughout history there have been reported sightings of Lincoln's ghost in the Lincoln Bedroom and surrounding areas of the White House.
- Lincoln's Ghost says he is only able to affect/move objects that bear his image, which includes pennies, five dollar bills, and souvenir replicas of the Lincoln statue from the Lincoln Memorial.
- Lincoln's Ghost inhabits Dean's body and attempts to kiss Hank, prompting Hank to declare "Honest Abe's a 'mo!" Abraham Lincoln's sexuality has been much debated, with many academics believing he was bisexual or fundamentally homosexual.
- When Lincoln's Ghost attacks Bud Manstrong, he yells, "Here comes the Railsplitter!" "Railsplitter" was one of Lincoln's nicknames.
- President Breyer is fond of cigars, has sexual relations with a secretary in a blue dress, and runs an administration mired in scandal, similar to President Bill Clinton.
- President Breyer mispronounces "nuclear" as "nuke-ya-lur" and runs an administration mired in scandal, similar to President George W. Bush.
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967)
- The title of the episode is a reference to the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
- Lincoln's Ghost wants to "earn his wings" to move on from haunting the White House and go to heaven instead, similar to the angel Clarence's desire to earn his wings by helping out George Bailey in the classic Frank Capra Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life.
- Hank Venture tells a "Johnny Deeper" joke to a visiting dignitary at the White House. Johnny Deeper jokes are crude anecdotes that generally involve a boy named "Johnny Deeper" coercing an authority figure like a teacher or a babysitter into fornicating with him, with the punchline involving a play on his surname "Deeper".
- Lincoln's Ghost mentions the toy named after him, Lincoln Logs.
- Cassie, the secretary who is having a not-so-secret affair with President Breyer, is based on former Clinton White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
- Lincoln's Ghost uses the term "score", which means the number twenty. President Abraham Lincoln's most famous speech, The Gettysburg Address, begins "Four score and seven years ago", which translates to eighty-seven years.
- Lincoln's Ghost refers to young Rusty Venture staying (and masturbating) in the White House's Lincoln Bedroom a "score and a half years ago", which would be roughly thirty years prior.
- Lincoln's Ghost is supernaturally able to use his "Lincoln Sense" to sense what other people are doing elsewhere in the White House. "Lincoln Sense" is a reference to "spider-sense", the superhuman "sixth sense" that alerts Marvel Comics superhero Spider-Man to danger.
- The entire episode is a loose parody of the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate and its popular film adaptation, which is explicitly referenced by the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln mentions both the 1962 original film adaptation with Frank Sinatra and "the remake with Denzel" from 2004.
- Agent Hauser's name is probably a reference to one of the recurring characters in the William S. Burroughs books Junky, Naked Lunch, et al.: the infamous cops Hauser and O'Brian.
Production Notes
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Guess Who's Coming to State Dinner? |
- One of the animation directors (Kimson Albert) has a "nickname" inserted into his credits. The nickname is an unusual line or word from the episode. For this episode the credit reads Kimson "Budley? Budward?" Albert.
- The end of the voice cast credits for this episode reads "Special Thanks to RON LYNCH".
| Preceded by: "Fallen Arches" |
The Venture Bros. episodes Original Airdate: September 10th, 2006 |
Followed by: "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" |