Episode - Season 4, Episode 3 (Production Code: 4-42)
First Aired - November 1, 2009
In a Flashback, younger Dr. Venture is showing his the newly assigned Brock Samson around his lab on Brock's first day. As Venture notes the progress of his (baby) clone slugs, he finds one grossly malformed, D-19. He "aborts" that clone slug, draining its tank as if he is flushing a toilet.
In the present, Dean is taking a shower. He picks up a large chunk of his own hair from the shower drain. Sgt. Hatred yells into the bathroom at him for taking too long, as Hank badly needs to go. When Hank finally gets his chance, Rusty yells at him and reminds Hank that he is grounded (for insulting Rusty in front of company,) not even allowed to leave his room to pee.
Venture, pushing Dean towards a career in super science, takes Dean to the panic room which has been set up as Dean's own junior laboratory. He also introduces Dean to his muse, a collection of Progressive Rock albums.
High above them, in the attic of the compound, the deformed clone slug D-19 apparently survived and is living there, completely deranged. He resents Venture's favoritism of the real Dean down below, and hallucinates an apparition of Dr. Venture. D-19 has been constructing a suit of skin from the various Dean clones that have died over the years, needing only one more piece to complete it.
Sgt. Hatred gives a scale model demonstration to Venture of a new security idea he has for the compound: explosive Rusty look-alikes. A black UPS driver arrives with the explosives for Hatred's full scale models and passes by Hank, who, as part of his punishment, is being forced to move boxes with a hand-truck. Hanks asks the driver if he can read Hank's thoughts, which Rusty mocks him for, saying, "Just because he's black doesn't mean he has The Shining."
Venture suddenly realizes that he left Dean alone with the records and goes to check on him with Hatred. He finds Dean passed out from a "Floyd hole," and revives him in a bath of ice water. Dean shouts "Eureka!" and runs off to get to work on a scientific breakthrough. Meanwhile, Hatred makes a body cast of Venture for his full size explosive dummies.
While Hank is still doing chores, Dermott shows up. He notes that one of Hank's chores is to wash Rusty's car. Instead of doing that, they start doing donuts on the compound lawn. Nearby, D-19 is digging up another Dean corpse for the skin. As he's dragging it back to his room, he has to drop it in order to dodge Hank and Dermott in the car. Hank hits the dead Dean body and thinks he has killed the real Dean. Dermott convinces him to "go off the grid" and flee to Mexico, but not in the car, as that is the murder weapon.
The UPS delivery man, who apparently does have The Shining, gets a premonition and calls the police, telling them that something horrible is going to happen at the Venture compound. They observe the compound from afar, believing that the (explosive) Dr. Venture statues Hatred has been placing around are actually brainwashed cultists. They send an officer to scout the area, and he finds the open pit of dead clones that D-19 was digging up. The police decide to raid the compound.
While Dean is shown hard at work in his lab, D-19 rages that Hank ruined his plan and ruined the final dead Dean clone with the parts he needed. His Dr. Venture hallucination suggests that there is one more Dean: the real, living one. D-19 resolves to kill him and take the skin that he still needs. Dean puts his experiment (at attempt to regrow his lost hair) in the oven and leaves. D-19 enters the kitchen and knocks out Sgt. Hatred before grabbing a knife. Dean returns to the kitchen and runs into D-19, believing D-19 to be his failed experiment. D-19 chases Dean to the panic room where they accidentally start a fire. Sensing the fire, the compound defense system drops Dr. Venture into the panic room, but he manages to stop himself from falling into the flames. The sprinkler system goes off and wakes up Hatred, who goes to help just as the police raid begins.
Hank and Dermott, thinking the police have come for Hank, flee. They can't use the car, since it was the murder weapon, so they take Dr. Venture's "people mover" from The Buddy System. The police arrest Venture and Hatred as Hank and Dermott get away, with Hank dropping Dermott off at his house since he has a "curfew."
Meanwhile, Dean tries to escape from D-19 using his rocket boots. D-19 grabs on and the two end up on the compound lawn. Venture talks to D-19, telling him that he doesn't need to kill Dean and that he loves D-19 the way he is. D-19 goes in for a hug but it turns out to be one of the explosive Venture dummies Hatred placed that D-19 hallucinated was talking to him. The dummy explodes, killing D-19, as the real Dr. Venture shouts "who the hell was that?" while in police custody.
The Stinger shows Hank wearing a sombrero, listening to tropical music, and sitting on a beach in Mexico, apparently having made it there. Dr. Venture wakes him up from this fantasy, as Hank was only listening to one of Hatred's Jimmy Buffett albums in Rusty/Dean's prog rock "pod." Venture blames Hank for all of the problems in the episode and tells him that he will be grounded for the rest of the year.
Tropes:
- Clone Angst: D-19 was a Dean clone "aborted" due to his deformities. He wishes he were the "real" Dean and, after making a "Dean-suit" out of the skins of the other dead clones, tries to usurp the real Dean's place.
- Continuity Nod: Hank escapes the compound during the police standoff on the "people mover" from "The Buddy System.
- Genuine Human Hide: D-19 is making a skin suit out of all the dead Dean clones from over the years.
- The Grotesque: D-19 is an aborted, disfigured clone of Dean who only wants to be accepted by Dr. Venture as his son.
- The Power of Rock: According to Rusty, Progressive Rock is the inspiration for his science. He tries to impart this on Dean as well.
- Run for the Border: What Dermott is trying to help Hank do after Hank apparently kills Dean.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode title is a play on the line "perchance to dream" in William Shakespeare's Hamlet.
- The plot with D-19 is inspired by Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with D-19 being a deformed hunchback living in the Venture compound attic and coveting what he saw below him. (Quasimodo is a hunchback who lives in the highest bell-tower of Notre Dame.)
- Rusty saying Hank must believe that the black UPS driver has "the shining" comes from the movie of the same name, The Shining.
- The skin suit D-19 is creating is a reference to the serial killer, Buffalo Bill/Jame Gumb in The Silence of the Lambs.
- The Progressive Rock albums mentioned or shown by Dr. Venture include:
- The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd.
- In the Court of the Crimson King by King Crimson.
- 2112 by Rush can be seen on the floor.
- Fragile by Yes can be seen at the back of the collection.
- Asia is mentioned but no album is shown.
- Dr. Venture says that Dean was named for famous album cover artist Roger Dean.
- When arguing with Venture over his being grounded, Hank shouts "Attica! Attica!"
- Hank claims that he isn't "Bill Nye the Science Guy" when Dermott asks him to find some hydrochloric acid.
- Dermott mentions that he snuck in to see Fight Club as a child when his mother dropped him off to see The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland.
- The police mention the Waco Siege
when storming the compound. - Hank is listening to one of Hatred's Jimmy Buffett albums at the end.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: D-19 badly wants to be "the real Dean" and gain Rusty's love. He attempts to make a "skin suit" out of deceased Dean clones and hallucinates a conversation with a fake Rusty (really one of Hatred's bombs) that results in his death.
- Worf Had the Flu: Subverted when Hank brings up the time Dean beat the shit out of Dermott. Dermott claims he was "cheap-shotted when I wasn't ready" and "had a massive stomach flu". Obviously, he's lying.
