Episode - Season 3, Episode 6 (Production Code: 3-31)
First Aired - July 6, 2008
Dr. Venture is in the Amazon, fleeing angry natives after having stolen their phallic gold snake idol. He is finally snagged by a rope trap as the natives close in. However, an unknown attractive woman jumps in to save him.
In a Flashback, Jonas Venture Sr. is hosting a key party. He greets Col. Horace Gentleman, his wife, Ms. Quymn, and Gentleman's stepdaughter, Tara. Jonas slips his keys to Quymn, to ensure their pairing. Tara, Rusty, Kano, and H.E.L.P.eR play a jungle adventure fantasy where Rusty rescues Tara from the natives, but Kano gets called away.
In the present, Dr. Venture awakens to Tara wiping his head with a cool rag. She is now Dr. Tara Quymn, a famous scientist and adventurer in her own right. She lectures him for stealing the idol and about dehydration in the jungle. Rusty claims to have stolen the idol as part of his research for a cure for impotence for "his clients," though it is obvious that it is for his own treatment. Quymn tells him that she is pursuing a cure for cancer, and believes she is close to a breakthrough. She then introduces him to her identical twin daughters, Nancy and Drew, as well as her masculine bodyguard, Virginia ("Ginnie.")
Brock, Hank, and Dean are attempting to teach an orangutan to box at the order of Dr. Venture, who hopes to enter it in ape fighting matches when they return home. Venture and the Quymn family arrive, and Quymn is aghast with Venture. Venture manages to convince her with a lie that they rescued the animal and were rehabilitating it for release into the wild. Hank becomes infatuated with Nancy and Drew, while Nancy and Drew become infatuated with Dean, who isn't interested. Venture orders Brock to "release" the orangutan.
The group travels to the Quymn camp, while Venture asks Brock to distract Quymn's bodyguard, who Venture mistakes for a man named "Jimmy," so that he can seduce Quymn.
While in the village of the local tribe, Quymn explains that the tribesmen are wary of outsiders, as a lumber company has been trying to force them off their land. The tribe leader explains that a "wereodile" (were-crocodile) attacked the village and blames Dr. Venture for its appearance because he stole their idol. (He then returns the idol to please Quymn.) The two spend the rest of the day together exploring the jungle.
At camp, Hank and Dean get to know Nancy and Drew, who also solve mysteries and go on adventures. Ginnie warns them to stay away from the Venture boys however. Meanwhile, Ginnie makes some awkward passes at Brock, who is confused and uninterested. Nancy and Drew flirt with Dean, who is more interested in solving the mystery of the wereodile. Likewise, Hank is unable to get the girls' attention, as they are fixated only on Dean.
Venture and Quymn climb a tree so that Quymn can show him the rare fruit she is studying for its cancer-curing properties. Venture kisses her awkwardly, causing her to return to camp. Venture slips and is left dangling helplessly in his climbing ropes.
Later that night, Brock brings Venture's unconscious body back to camp. Brock announces that he saw two wereodiles in the jungle, and that the camp is on lock down. Everyone is ordered into their tents and huts. Ginnie and Brock stand watch for the wereodiles.
In another Flashback to the party, she and young Rusty are playing out their jungle adventure fantasy. They are inside a cardboard box "jungle fort" about to have their first kiss, when Jonas Sr. and Ms. Quymn enter the room drunkenly making out. They fall onto the children's "fort," crushing it.
In the present, Quymn realizes that she does love Venture, and wants to ask him to become her assistant. She tells Ginnie, who shares her hut, and Ginnie responds with anger and jealousy. Their conversation reveals that Ginnie helped Quymn recover from addiction and mental illness caused by the man who fathered her twins abandoning her. Quymn angrily orders Ginnie to leave the hut and later asks Venture to join her in her "jungle fort."
Dean tries to convince Hank to join him in solving the mystery of the wereodiles, but Hank is too focused on Nancy and Drew to help. He seeks out Brock, who is standing guard on an elevated platform in the jungle, on the lookout for wereodiles. A frustrated Ginnie joins them on the platform and tries once again to seduce Brock but fails. Dean thinks everyone else has "jungle fever," and goes off to solve the mystery himself, certain that the wereodiles are two members of their camp.
Nancy and Drew toss an invitation into the boys tent (meant for Dean) to meet them in the clearing in the 10 minutes, but only Hank is present. Dean accidentally runs into the girls, who invite him back to their hut. The twins pin Dean down and begin to undress. When one of them takes off her (stuffed) bra, Dean screams, convinced they are the wereodiles.
One hut over, Venture and Quymn begin making out. Quymn throws Venture onto the bed but they are interrupted by a furious Ginnie. She throws Venture out of the bed and begins arguing with Quymn. Brock arrives, responding to Venture's cries for help, and attacks Ginnie. As the two fight (which they both seem to actually enjoy,) they knock over a lantern, setting the hut on fire. Quymn collapses, having a seizure. Dean and the girls arrive, with Dean beating Quymn with a chair, now believing her to be the wereodile in the midst of transformation. Ginnie disengages from her fight with Brock to knock Dean away and rescue Quymn, revealing that she isn't a wereodile, but an epileptic. (Rusty is disgusted by this.)
Hank is still in the jungle clearing waiting for the girls, assuming them to be "fashionably late." Instead, he is attacked by the wereodile. As he flees, he is caught in a rope trap while the flames from the camp engulf the surrounding jungle. The wereodile approaches him while he hangs there helplessly, but the boxing orangutan from earlier jumps in to attack the wereodile.
The next day, it is revealed that the camp and much of the surrounding jungle has been burned down. The mood of the hour is tense and awkward for both sides, as Ginnie and Brock pack up their respective jets while Dean speaks with Nancy and Drew. Hank was "rewarded" by the villagers with a warrior circumcision. Nancy and Drew deduce that Dean is not circumcised, which immediately turns them off.
The two families fly away, with Hank and Dr. Venture shown to be miserable after the recent events.
The Stinger reveals that two of the natives were pretending to be wereodiles in order to scare off the Quymns and Ventures. One berates the other for not helping him when he was attacked by the orangutan.
Tropes:
- All Amazons Want Hercules: Ginnie hates most men...but is attracted to Brock.
- Always Identical Twins: Played straight with Nancy and Drew, after being averted for so long by Hank and Dean, and Rusty and Jonas Jr.
- Best Her to Bed Her: Ginnie, a pseudo-Butch Lesbian, is clearly attracted to Brock and considers him the only "real man" she's ever met. She is clearly turned on when wrestling him.
- Creepy Twins: Nancy and Drew nearly rape Dean.
- Fake Boobs: When the Quymn twins have Dean in bed, one of them removes her bra (offscreen) only for some padding to fall out - they land squarely on Dean's nipples.
- Last Unsmoked Cigarette: Dr. Quymn wears a crystal necklace throughout the episode. We find out after she suffers an epileptic seizure and her home burns down that it's her last cigarette, which she proceeds to smoke to deal with the stresses of the evening.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The Wereodile scare was just a ploy by the natives to get rid of the Quymns and Ventures.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode title comes from Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman as well as Medicine Man, where the main character (played by Sean Connery) lives in a jungle researching a cure for cancer.
- Some of the guests at Jonas Sr.'s "key party" include Black Panthers founder Bobby Seale
, 1960s supermodel Twiggy, Sammy Davis Jr., David Bowie, and Van Williams. - Colonel Gentleman, upon seeing David Bowie, remarks "Oh, you pretty thing!" A reference to the Bowie song by the same name.
- Ms. Quymn, Tara's mother, is modeled after Silver Sable.
- The Quymn twins are named after Nancy Drew.
- When the Quymn twins are discussing Dean, they compare him to Iggy Pop with a "Weezer sort of style".
- Hank calling the boxing orangutan "Clyde" is a reference to Every Which Way but Loose.
- While beating Dr. Quymn during her seizure, Dean shouts "the power of Christ compels you!"
- The way Dr. Quymn dives and hoists herself onto a tree limb are similar to Lara Croft.
- Similar Squad: The Quymn family are all Distaff Counterpart's to the Ventures, some more obviously than others.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Brock calls Rusty trying to solve his money problems by stealing an orangutan and teaching it to box "a new personal low" in this vein.
- Yandere: Ginny nearly kills Dr. Venture for almost sleeping with Dr. Quymn.
