So the Oni was mistaken?
i guess even the Oni thought Myra was their mother? lol
shareThe Oni was trying to play matchmaker on behalf of Dr. Killinger. They wouldn't *need* it to be the case that Myra was the boys' mother to want to try and make that happen. Dr. Killinger's motives are about as inscrutable as anyone on the show (the only people I think we know less about are The Investors). For all we know, it may have been an earlier attempt to get Dr. Venture to join the Guild (which he attempted more directly in "The Doctor is Sin").
Point is, the Oni and Dr. Killinger wouldn't need to know, or even necessarily believe, that Myra was the boys' mother to do what they did. Given the sort of Faustian bargains that Dr. Killinger seems to specialize in, I heavily doubt that his motive was an altruistic desire to reunite a family.
"Dean! Have you been shooting dope into your scrotum?! You can tell me.... I'm hip!"
good point :)
shareNah, the intent from the writers was clear. We call this a retcon.
There's a benefit to losing: You get to learn from your mistakes. - Megamind
From what do you derive this clear intent? I'm genuinely curious; Myra seems to think she's the boys' mom, but Dr. Venture's main line on the subject is "All right, so I *beep* her; what of it?" We never see her pregnant, or in childbirth; the closest we get is when she's being hauled off when the boys are really young and her consistent claiming that they're hers, and given the fact that she's, you know, crazy, that doesn't necessarily prove anything either way. Dr. Killinger's talk with the Oni in the epilogue of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" refers only to "failing to reunite them" (it's apparent from the context that the "them" being referred to is Myra and Rusty) without any explanation of the reason that Killinger was attempting to reunite them or a reference to "them" as being the boys' parents.
I'm not saying it couldn't be a retcon, but I don't think the intent was any clearer at the end of that episode than it was regarding who Dermott's father was at the end of "The Buddy System." Rusty admitting to sex with Myra =/= Rusty admitting to Myra being the boys' mother.
"Dean! Have you been shooting dope into your scrotum?! You can tell me.... I'm hip!"
That's where the intent lies. He admits to *beep* her. The Oni tried to get the two back together as tried with the Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend. We saw a flashack of Myra being escorted out of the house wanting to get "her babies" (who were both in the arms of Dr. Venture). I think all of this is a pretty clear sign the writers meant to imply that she was their mother. When you take into account the totality of circumstances before the season five retcon, everything points in the direction of Myra being the boy's mother.
From what do you derive this clear intent? I'm genuinely curious; Myra seems to think she's the boys' mom, but Dr. Venture's main line on the subject is "All right, so I *beep* her; what of it?"
Dermott's father was more or less implied to be Brock, based on their encounters throughout the episode as well as the similarity in appearance.
There's a benefit to losing: You get to learn from your mistakes. - Megamind share
not to mention how she basically looks like a female hank, and said "ten and two" while driving just like dean.
shareI agree, all of those things would lead one to believe that Myra was the mother. But once again, my counter is that there was plenty of innuendo to believe that Dermott was Brock's kid, but that turned out not to be the case.
I'm not saying they couldn't have theoretically retconned that too, but based on the way the creators talk about the show, the creation of expectations and then failing to deliver on those expectations is supposed to be one of the concurring themes of the show (see, e.g., the saga of The Orb).
Were Myra not being the boys' mother the only instance of Doc and Jackson doing a 180 with regards to what was expected based on the previous available information, I'd be more willing to believe it was a retcon and something that was not a carefully designed misdirection on the part of the creators.
The fact that they reuse that "lead everyone to believe X, then reveal the truth to be Y" may be an insidious storytelling trick in itself when repeated, but the point for this discussion is that it is something that they do frequently. So when I see a pair of show creators lead the viewer to believe X, then reveal Y to be the truth in multiple instances, I'm going to assume that any other instance I find of that type of phenomenon that they do is intentional.
So, based on the misleading information we get regarding the Orb (and, somewhat conjointly, Colonel Venture's death), about Dermott's father, and similar instances, I am led to believe that when the early evidence leads to the intuition that Myra is the boys' mother, and then that turns out not to be the case, that it is another situation in which the creators deliberately misled their viewers and not a retcon.
Granted, it's admittedly convenient to throw all of the similarities between the boys and Myra out the window on the basis of Myra being crazy, but, well, she is. Hank looks nothing like Dr. Venture, but his place as Hank's father is generally assumed, and the "10-and-2" bit is both a common driving technique and something that Dean would have learned when first learning how to drive; he wouldn't have learned it from Myra (since the first time she says it in their presence is after he's already said it). A similar paranoia about hand position while driving is not enough to prove familiarity.
Once again, I'm not saying that a retcon couldn't explain certain things being the case; I just find other explanations based on what I know of the show more plausible.
"Dean! Have you been shooting dope into your scrotum?! You can tell me.... I'm hip!"
The fact that they reuse that "lead everyone to believe X, then reveal the truth to be Y" may be an insidious storytelling trick in itself when repeated, but the point for this discussion is that it is something that they do frequently. - wizeguy8357
That's true. Another example is when they lead us to believe that Scott Hall, AKA Henchman #1, died at the hands of Brock Sampson in "The Lepidopterists", only to bring him back as the villain in "Any Which Way But Zeus".
share
Not quite. In those cases, we don't actually see Scott Hall die on screen.
"If the king does not lead, how can he expect his subordinates to follow?" - Code Geass
... they lead us to believe that Scott Hall, AKA Henchman #1, died at the hands of Brock Sampson in "The Lepidopterists"... - alpha128 (me)
... we don't actually see Scott Hall die on screen. - Trafalgar-Law
True, but in "The Lepidopterists" we do get the following exchange:
THE MONARCH
I hate that you're my best men. Honestly. Wai- what happened to Henchman 1?
HENCHMAN 21
Death by Samson.
http://mantiseye.com/episode/the_lepidopterists
Given the number of people Brock had killed by then, it's nothing less than a miracle that Scott Hall survived. share
There is a lot of misdirection, but I believe this case is the exception. If you watch the episode with the Oni, Dean and Hank are flat out questioning whether Myra is their mom. Annoyed, Rusty flat out shouts "Alright, I f-cked her, so what of it?" in response to their question. Unlike the Orb, that's a pretty clear resolution to a subplot. It wasn't a simple case of "lead the audience to believe X; it was the writers flat out telling the audience that "X is X and we mean it!" In light of that, I'm quite certain that this was a last minute retcon.
"If the king does not lead, how can he expect his subordinates to follow?" - Code Geass
Sex doesn't always lead to pregnancy. I believe the full exchange goes something like this:
BROCK: Myra used to be an American Gladiator; she's nuts, and brakes out of the asylum to kidnap you every couple of years.
DEAN: How come we don't remember her?
BROCK: Because you're clo... nevermind.
DEAN & HANK: I still feel like we're not getting the whole story here.
DOC: All right, so I f-cked her. What of it?
The whole story, according to Doc, is that they had sex. Doc's not the most trustworthy source, but given the context (the boys were pestering him, and they nearly revealed to the boys that they were clones), it would seem that this was an exasperated, truthful admission to shut the boys up. But the admission wasn't, "OK, she's your mother; what of it?" It stopped at sex.
I'm not saying that there wasn't doubt about whether or not she was the boys' mother at that point; I'm just saying Doc admitting he had sex with her isn't proof that she was and that they later changed it.
Yeah, I don't think the sex was meant to imply the pregnancy.
I don't even think there was a pregnancy. If anything, knowing Doc's personality... it seems more likely that Doc would have taken her DNA without her consent and created one or both of the original Venture clones as test tube babies.
Myra would have found out and gone crazy and Doc would have told her to stop being so emotional about it... It's just a little of her DNA in this experiment. She would have said they were her babies, and he would have had her dragged off.
Seems like typical Doc to me. Dr. Killinger was spot-on about him.
I actually really like this theory. It would also help explain why Myra was obsessed with having Dean come out of her womb in "Momma's Boys"; she would be the boys' genetic mother, but never have actually carried the boys in her body. Being a mother without having experienced any aspect of motherhood (assuming it was done without her permission) could be enough to send her over the edge.
The only point against it is Doc's story arc from that same episode: Doc says he was lying to her when he said she was the boys' mother in that same episode, but and you would assume that since he thought he was going to die that he was being truthful (after all, he admitted to being Dermott's dad shortly thereafter). Still, it's possible he just has a definition of "mother" that is specifically referring to birth mothers, and doesn't allow for genetic donors for test-tube children. Seems weird, but it's possible, I guess.
Yeah, I just rewatched Momma's Boys and Doc seemed pretty matter-of-fact about her not being the mother. Oh well.
shareA retcon would suggest that the facts were changed after the fact. The writers intent was to give you a thread on a possible mother for the boys, they also wanted Dr. Qymn to be the same thing (in early versions of that episode). The intent was to give possibilities but to keep the mystery. It's not clear in the episode without making assumptions one way or the other.
Them not getting a straight answer about their mother has happened before. No continuity established in this episode was retroactively changed here, so by definition it's not a retcon.
I think the disagreement we had here wasn't about the definition of what a retcon is, but whether the "fact" of Myra being the boys' mother was established as canon by the previous information we had (from "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" and other sources). If that had been established, then it's a retcon.
I said that while heavily implied, it was never definitively established, and was therefore in keeping with Doc and Jackson's previous history of misleading implications. Apparently someone read the ending of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Kills" differently than I did, and thought that Myra's motherhood was established as a fact by that scene.
It's never outright said by any sane person with knowledge of the truth (i.e., Rusty); his admission stops at sex, and so I disagreed with the person who read Myra's motherhood into that statement. If that person is convinced that their interpretation is correct, there's not much I can do, but I don't think it is, and so I presented my case so that the other people who frequent here could determine for themselves based on the evidence.
Whatever the writer's intent was at the time, it was just stupid to set it up like that and then years later undo it. "Mamma's Boys" is by far my least favorite episode of the show. It's the one episode I hate. I hate it for undoing one of the few pieces of information about the Venture's past that we had gotten. I hate it for the fact that three groups of characters all end up at the asylum just by sheer coincidence. I hate it because as dumb as Doc Venture can be at times, believing that Teddy Ruxpin was a real guy was just stupid.
After that episode aired, I had said that at this point in the show's run, they need to be answering questions, not creating new ones. One of the early questions was 'Who is the boy's mother?' and after a few years, we got an answer and it was a good answer. "Doc's former bodyguard that went crazy" was a fine answer to the question. There were many other questions that have been unanswered and Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick could've easily moved on to those, but not only have not answered most of them, but they undid one that they did answer and why? Why do that? Just to be clever? Just to do a twist? Just to pull one over on us? I can't imagine who they could name as the boy's mom that would be satisfying after all these years. Maybe, just maybe, the answer will be great and shocking and surprising, but more than likely, if we get an answer, it'll be disappointing. Sometimes the simple answer is the best one. Writers can get too clever for their own good, sometimes. They want to 'Set up X and then do Y' but sometimes X is better. There was nothing wrong with Myra being their mom. It worked. It made sense. I'll give them credit if they pull off a reveal that works better, but I just don't think it's going to happen.