Do you think Jonas Sr really cared about Rusty and his vision was clouded by his hubris or was he only trying to look...

Do you think Jonas Sr really cared about Rusty and his vision was clouded by his hubris or was he only trying to look like a cool caring dad to keep up appearances?

he really cared

that's how perfect Jonas is

>did he cared about rusty?
no, only a mentally ill idiot would put his children in danger. He has no excuses.

Rusty is definitely a fucked up individual as a result of his father's behavior. High standards, neglect, reckless endangerment. Wasn't Rusty forced to kill a man as a child or something?

Do we really know if Rusty was in danger ever and that he isn't just manifesting untrue trauma to deflect blame from his failures to his father?

Multiple I think.
He's definitely shot a guy, and I think killed someone with a set of house keys.
Yes, multiple accounts as well as a few official records.

Actualy, its easier to try to mention moments when he wasnt a colossal shitbag.

For example, when he beat the shit out of the greek kidnappers of his son, even if they asked for forgiveness.

Its weird to think that such man also probably saved the world and countless lifes many times.

>whatcha eatin' rusty?

Is that the shitty moment or the good moment?

Because in Jonas' defense that's a pretty grey area.
They kidnapped Rusty by accident, trying to rob him and his friends.
Then held him ransom until they didn't have the heart to keep doing it.

Uh I guess in unambiouguosly nice moment was whe he tried to call up on Rusty at college to see how he was, but he was also spying on him with a locator tooth.

Mostly nice, I think. Most parents would destroy the shit out of a kidnaper, even if they brought their son back.

Off course, Jonas also forgot Rusty there for weeks.

Jonas was not exactly a well balanced man. He was a third generation super scientist, the guy was basically Doc Savage. From what we've seen of his own life, presumably his own upbringing in that environment left him with incredibly dubious morals and ethics, like treating treating as part of his superhero frat boy entourage rather than a child, or bullying his son for being ungrateful when he served as his psychiatrist. We've seen how utterly fucked up Rusty is as someone who was warped by that lifestyle, can you imagine how bad a person would have to be to thrive in it?

I do think Jonas loved Rusty in his own warped way, he just thought he was giving him the childhood of a lifetime.

Simple way to look at it.
He never did it for others, he did it for himself. What way is there to be more admired than being seen as a hero?

It seemed more like a secret thing.
It even had the cheesy one liner to wrap things up with a smaltzy ending, then they carried Rusty off to safety looking like it was a totally amicable hand off with no hard feelings. Then they beat the shit out of all the guys in there, even maiming their leader.

You hit the nail right on the head. I would say he was just giving Rusty the childhood that he himself had as well. The only problem is that Rusty was never destined to be like Jonas. Like that father who was a star football who ends up having a son that is a scrawny wimp, yet he still forces him to play football. If Rusty was more of an alpha like Jonas than the life he was given would have been perfect. He does love him but he just does not understand why treating him like he did was wrong.

>made hours of instruction just in case Rusty had to grow up in a fallout shelter
>wanted Rusty to build Gargantua 1 with him
>dragged Rusty across the fucking world
He cared, but was shit at expressing it and refused to listen to/ acknowledge Rusty as an autonomous individual.
He wanted a little clone son, he wanted JJ.

>like treating treating as part of his superhero frat boy entourage rather than a child
>like treating treating
I have that same typing tic.

I think user is talking about the adventurer and hero part, not about that scene.

I can quite picture it.

As Rusty was a kid forced to kill a bad guy he was like "D-da, please dont force me to do it!"

While Jonas as a kid probably was "I killed one Dad! are you proud of me!" "I sure am my son, now kill that other guy sneaking right there!" "BANG"

Jonas is also a throw back to dads who had to work all the fucking time and never had to be with his kids

while rusty is the more recent stay at home dad

He was a type of sociopath. He simply didn't realize that Rusty was a normal boy who wouldn't have a growing experience but a traumatizing one on all of his expeditions. Dean and Hank would probably do a lot better psychically and yet they would probably die. Whatever you think about Rusty, he's an amazing survivor, with or without Brock.

I need to rewatch the series but did we ever find out when and how Jonas died? Was "Mother" really the boys biological mom?

I think he cared but also viewed Rusty as a bit of a burden. I don't think Rusty cared about Dean and Hank until their backups all died. Or he didn't really show it even in his own fucked up way other than cloning his dead kids.

No.

Myra wasn't actually their mother, but it's strongly implied that Kano killed Jonas as part of his OSI mission to keep him from activating the ORB

You sure Kano didn't kill Blue Morpho instead?

Been awhile since I watched em but he probably cared a bit in his own VERY autistic way. He thrust all that shit on Rusty and treated him more like his wacky murder adventure buddies rather than as his 10 year old son. He was also a huge cunt like the "pranks" he pulled at Rusty's birthday (again possibly treating him more like his adventure pals)

Dunno if it is a good comparison but I guess he is kind of a far more jerkass / less caring Goku (only instead of fighting its science and adventuring)

but they still kidnapped a child

they prolly did it to other people

you can't really blame a parent for doing this

Kidnappers felt even felt bad for Rusty and kept the fake festival going for decades, they loved the money but they partly did it for Rusty because it was one of the few things that brought him joy that wasn't in pill form.

There's still a difference between people who picked crime as a career and people on a poor island who turned to crime only because it's the single way available to them out of poverty. You can tell that they are really nice people by the fact that not only did they treat Rusty well, but because they also didn't hold any resentment towards him in the future. And the reason they were punished was not for kidnapping Rusty, they got beat up because "touch my shit — get hit". So in the end even if they did deserve a punishment, they got it for all the wrong reasons.

I don't think he ever really tried being a father to his son. He acknowledged Rusty as his son, but that's about it.

If he's really dead, I think he lived his life to the fullest, leaving the consequences of his success and failures to the unfortunate living.

When you think about it, Rusty really is sort of a badass for surviving through all of it as a kid and becoming a most well adjusted adult. Hank and Dean have died countless times, most of the other boy adventurers ended up dead or psychotic and there aren't that many multi generational costumed families cause it's a lethal profession.

What if Jonas was really a cool dad? Ans Rusty was really a bitter-spoilet bratt?, Rusty is NOT a good source of information...

The scenes are flashbacks, not told stories. They should be accurate unless the writers are hacks.

To be fair, "touch my shit, get hit" is a bit simplistic.
I've seen parents become ridiculously ununderstanding, and in this case it's not even a case of being obtuse or aggressive because they perceived there might be a threat to their child, these are people who very much did intend to extort and exploit Rusty and just lost the heart half way through. If someone yanked a kid, and then just walked back half heartedly and said "I felt like a dick, sorry" the parent probably wouldn't be willing to let bygones be bygones.
Some are told stories, and some are flashbacks from their perspectives.
I think Jonas WANTED to be the cool dad, listening to the commentary the show is built around seeing half baked boy adventurer pulp to its ultimate conclusion. The shows were meant to appeal to young boys, but they're just young boys thinking short term what would be cool and thrilling without regard to the impact it'd have on them in the future. Jonas is pretty much the personification of that mentality. He wanted to give Rusty a thrilling amazing life, but then he omitted all the "lame" stuff that makes you a balanced human being. Like the promise of safety, actual peers, or a mother.
Jonas thinks how much Rusty would love to test out an amusement park, because on paper having an amusement park to yourself sounds awesome. But really it's just dangerous and horrible.

>I would say he was just giving Rusty the childhood that he himself had as well
Is this confirmed? Because going off the Doc Savage inspiration, he would have been raised in a high gravity chamber.

Nah. To him Rusty was little more than a symbol, a tool to make him look good.

Jonas' priorities

His career > Pussy > Rusty > Everything else

One of the things I like the most about Jonas Venture is that his existence reassures me I'm not the only person who thinks Doc Savage is a terrifying sociopath.
Apparently so did the creators of the show.

Alpha-Dog!

no way dude, he did way too much real fathering to not value rusty as a son on some level

like calling him in college, trying to get him to help build gargantua-1, making the instruction tapes and MOTHER, and wanting to share the adventurers life with him

jonas loved the shit out of rusty, hes just a terrible person

Or he only did those things to LOOK like a loving father in public.

Honestly it could go either way.

Yes.

The way one cares about any long term project intended to reach a specific personal goal until it becomes clear that it will never reach that conclusion.

I.E. Lil' Rusty failed his chance to be Jonas' key to lineage based immortality and he stopped giving a shit about his semi-disposable offspring.

how is calling his son in college or making the instructional tapes a public act?

based

>unless the writers are hacks.

Boy I hate to be the one to tell you this

Jonas's father was a super scientist and I think his grandfather was as well. In the flashback pertaining to the Orb, you can see that that kind of lifestyle was pretty much the same. With the bodyguards and various battles with costumed villains.

these are the correct answer.

>Doc Savage
>terrifying sociopath
Seeing as Savage had a hospital in upstate New York that lobotomized criminals, I would say that's an accurate description.

I think it's more a product of it's times. A lot of pulp heroes of the times were cold-hearted sociopaths or at least terrible hypocrites. For example John Carter bemoans how savage and violent Martian customs are, but kills everyone who crosses him as well as people accidentally in the way. And then there are dozens of sci-fi novels where the "hero" mows down aliens just because they look weird. And then when the aliens have the gall to fight back and kill one of his crew members, he's all in tears and wows to wreak vengeance upon those "murderous scum", which he promptly does in a terrific genocide.

Chaykin's Twilight is a piece written by someone who clearly has read a lot of pulp and Golden Age sci-fi and recognizes their incredibly fucked up nature but still likes them anyway.

Sounds like the ideal man honestly.

Was he a good guy for beating up the kidnappers, or was he a shit guy for failing to notice his son was gone for a week?
(I'm kind of genuinely asking, I don't remember this one in clear detail. I feel like Jonas' neglect kind of enabled Rusty to be kidnapped and he took a long time rescuing him but I could be wrong)

Both.

He left his son on a yacht with an intelligent robot. I assume he had everything he would need on the yacht and Helper is smart enough to take care of him. But it didn't even seem like he felt the need to check in with Rusty at any point.

He left him with his Nannybot, and the next time we see him he's in the middle of a battle with L Ron Hubbard who's kidnapped Jackie O and for some reason is on their boat.
I guess he could've assumed that the Scientologists took him too. while he raced off to save the Challenger Landing but really this just illustrates more why Rusty shouldn't be in his care.

I think he did, he just didn't have the ability to relate to people who weren't ultra successful badasses, ie: most children.

It seems he just expected Rusty to turn out all right by absorbing his success. Instead he gave his son a life of always being the side kick, ether being taken care of by robots or thrown into danger and having to survive long enough to be rescued. He raised a son to be an extension of himself. Jonas did put a lot of effort into his kid but it always came back to him, he was the centre of Rusty's world.
I don't think he ever realised that being amazing wasn't enough. And I'm not sure he knew how to be anything else.

In relation to it's kind of right, but an ideal man isn't a good dad. Ether leave the kid to do kid stuff and learn to be a man or take the time to teach him. Rusty grew up knowing that in his world it was:
Jonas>Jonas' friends and lovers>Himself>everyone else. He's a looser to the hero community, the people he cares about, but he still has the justification to be entitled and dickish.

I'm on board with this theory.

>He wanted a little clone son, he wanted JJ.
Wit makes it super heartwarming as well as sad that his last sacrifice to save everyone, JJ did something Jonas Sr. probably would have never done.

I can't see Jonas really doing much in that situation other than save just a little few, let the rest to die and then sweep it under the rug. He was never one to be compassionate and probably would have saved the tech more than the people inside.

Which*

He clearly cared about Rusty on some level, he just had his priorities screwed up and assumed he could treat a child like an adult and have them turn out alright from it.

Other characters have talked about how shitty Rusty's life was and Colonel Gentleman and the Action Man have both confirmed at least one or two of Rusty's stories, so he's definitely not making shit up.

I hated the start of the latest season bjt absolutely loved it when the blue morpho was revealed. Fucking kano needs to stop being a bitch and talk about his past

Does Rusty actually care about Hank and Dean?

The season gave a nice fresh start to things but i am afraid that the show will never wrap up neatly. I was re-watching the show and Operation PROM would have been a really good ending point. The show is still great after the fact, but if it needed to it could have ended right there.

ah shit I didn't mean to quote

A lot more than Jonas ever did for him. As misguided and like his father Rusty is, he at least cares enough about his kids to realize they don't want the life he has and doesn't try to pressure them into it.

I think in his own way Jonas Sr. did care for and love Rusty. I think all of the original Team Venture cared for Rusty. The problem is that they weren't particularly decent/wholesome people, so the way they treated him, didn't look appropriate to outside observers.
Take the Action Man for example. Rusty tells the story about how he (Action Man) use to wake him up in the middle of the night, by pulling the trigger of an unloaded gun that he had put to Rusty's head. To a normal person, that sounds like a horrible, terrifying thing to do to a kid. But then you see through Sgt. Hatred doing something similar, that it comes from a place of care and wanting the boys to be prepaid so that they don't get hurt for real, which I think JP and DH even mention as such in the commentary. Or even still, look at the flashback in Monarchs explanation for Guild levels, where Action Man beats the absolute shit out of Turnbuckle because he present as even a minor threat to Rusty.

I think it comes down to these people being warped by the lives they've lived and the things they've seen. Like Brock talks about that at one point if I remember correctly. And look at the first episode of season, where they reveal to Orpheus that the boys are clones. Rusty and Brock both end up being more concerned with laughing at the stupid hair styles and what not they had when each set of boys died. Orpheus even kinda called them out on this. But at this point, the boys have died and been cloned, like 14 times. At some point it must have just become the norm for Brock and Rusty. Let that sink in, your sons dying and then cloning them back to life, becoming a normal occurrence.
The life these people live, fuck them up

The sidekick kidnapping episode had Rusty unknowingly tell Hank that Dean is his favorite and that Hank is his unfavorite, because Hank loves the boy adventurer lifestyle while he's consciously aware that he fucked Dean up from day one and prefers Dean as a result since (unlike Hank) Dean is like Rusty in that he's trapped by the lifestyle and the circle of pain that comes from being a Venture.

>He was a third generation super scientist
>Jonas's father was a super scientist and I think his grandfather was as well.

Isn't Jonas just second gen? We haven't had any info on his grandfather, just his father Lloyd, who seemed to actually be a pretty decent guy. Or have we and I've just missed it?

>JJ did something Jonas Sr. probably would have never done.

I can't help but think that JJ was only willing to sacrifice himself because he was already dying of cancer. Like if he wasn't, he would have just ordered one of the robots to do it or something.
Gargantua-2 was obviously suppose to be JJ's legacy, so when he had the chance to go out with a bang and change his legacy to that of a heroic sacrifice, I think he took it.
I think Jonas Sr. probably would have done the same.

An organization of supervillains had to put together a set of laws to not endanger children as badly as Jonas endangered Rusty.

I think he's a great dad! Why, in my home town of... Japananowa, I would have killed to have him as my dad. Maybe then I wouldn't have turned out all evil, now.

as do we all, my thouroughly japanese friend, who is easily, EASILY, 6'2"

you missed the point of his confession bro. he doesnt favor dean, he pities him

You entirely missed the point of the confession, man. Rusty doesn't prefer Dean over Hank, he actively pities him because he thinks that Dean's gonna fall in to the same super scientist lifestyle that he did that it's gonna crush him given how emotionally stunted and sensitive he is. He doesn't coddle Hank because he knows Hank is emotionally mature enough to cope with growing out of the boy adventurer lifestyle, and is gradually becoming a normal kid (wanting to get a part-time job, making friends with his neighbors, chatting it up with girls, etc), whereas Dean is a stunted manbaby who struggles with interacting with anyone his age other than his brother.

Dean's messed up, but I don't think he's quite as bad as Rusty was. Maybe it's having Hank there to help him out but he's had a few moments of maturity between his emotional degradation

dean would be more fucked up if he had all his memories
rusty has been one person his whole life, so you cant directly compare him and his kids like that

Anybody here liked the Brown Spider and wants him to have a happy ending?

He is an actual nice person, one of the only heroes that does what he does for the sake of helping people and was a bro even to his coworker that discovered his identity.

I hope he becomes the owner of the conpaby or something like that.

Actualy, what are your favorite heroes and vilains of the last season?

He did care, it doesn't make him a good father, he was terrible all things considered, but it wasn't out of malice or indifference, but rather out of ignorance.
The scene where Jonas tried calling Rusty while he was in college comes to mind.
Not to mention he wouldn't go through the trouble of creating all those educational videos if he didn't care.

No, he didn't really care. He was going out of his way to fail as the primary caretaker of his offspring by placing Rusty in alot of danger.

Who is Rusty's mother?

Who is Hank and Dean's real mother?

I don't think you understand how people like that think. They would never admit that to themselves so they convince themselves they care no matter how fucked up it looks to the rest of the world.

Well it's pretty obvious Rusty's mom is Blue Morpho's wife

>Blue Morpho's wife

oh shit lol, i haven't seen the latest season

Don’t you mean that the Blue Morpho him/herself is Rusty’s mother?

It's not confirmed in any way.

The blue morpho and just everything involving him

the BLUE MORPHO

and I wonder where copy-cat is going next season

Didn't Doc Z confirm Blue Morpho having a vagina?

what if the blue morpho is a shapeshifter

Kano was silent while Jonas was alive. He didn't kill him

Blue Morphos can change sex or something like that.

I wouldn't be surprised.

What I find weird is in the first season rusty was the same to hank and dean. However with the plot reveal in S2, its kinda understandable. And Jonas did at least spend time with his son so he wasnt the worst father. Id say he cared about him even if he wasnt "sane".

I was trying to imply he might've been the sovereign, I know it sounds dumb and I haven't worked out all the kinks in this theory yet but I think Vendatta being Monarch's father was a red herring.

Chaykin openly admitted he didn't give a shit about pulps, didn't read them and was riffing on them anyway.
Which explains his work on the Shadow.

Unless it was a throw away gag, then yes, it was implied by Doc Z that he wasn’t sure how it would have been possible to have sex with him/her if it was a costume.

The other thing that points to Blue Morpho being Rusty’s mom was the whole speech about how Jonas Sr was insanely upset and inconsolable after BM died. That leads back to the whole Venturion/Vendata thing of Jonas resurrect BM and turning him to a cyborg. But who really knows.

Monarch and Rusty are step brothers right?

>Isn't Jonas just second gen?
I could be wrong, I watched the show again recently and Rusty said something like "My father was a super scientist, and his father was a super scientist and his father was super scientist, no wait he was a blacksmith or something". I don't exactly remember where he cuts the pattern off.

Either way it is pretty clear that, that kind of lifestyle did not start directly with Jonas.

Working theory; Brainulo is Billy's biological father, and a product of rape.

Possibly but not confirmed.

"greatest" gen vs. boomers

Half brothers

Also Dr.Quymn might be Jonas's daughter as well.

The title of the show was never a reference to Dean and Hank. Rusty probably has other siblings all over the world.

no, he said it was the 60's and everyone was doing wild shit.
I always thought it alluded to him not giving a shit about a dick.

No he says it was a woman as far as he could tell. Which is why I think Morpho is secretly a duo.