Bro, everyone’s noticed that your work hasn’t been the same since you had that unfortunate run-in with James Bond at the disco pool party last week. You’ve neglected basic tasks, like picking up prickly pear juice and cocaine when taking the helicopter into Madrid, or remembering to promptly immerse the jumpsuits in a baking soda solution when they get sodden with viscera or sexual fluids.
Your plans, schemes, plots, and even subterfuges have been lackluster at best, and thoroughly derivative at worst. As if that weren’t enough, you mope around the villa without saying hello to any of the call girls, and siphon raw opium into large nondescript barrels in a generally listless and torpid manner.
And I think I know what’s going on. You’re bald now, and increasingly flabby and flaccid. With the likely exception of James Bond himself, you were probably the oldest person at the disco pool sex party by at least 15 years. The rest of the henchmen, like Axel, Menelaos, and Doug have hard, lithe, and oily bodies. They have lustrous manes of jet-black hair, and can chase prowlers, or errant British agents through the thick Iberian underbrush without needing to warm up first with groin stretches. If you plop them in the middle of a disco pool sex party, they’re going to play tetherball and engage in cunnilingus with the catering staff, whereas you’ll probably sit in the shade and read The Financial Times.
So let’s break down the moment where it really went wrong at the party. James Bond is captured, and looking thoroughly non-threatening in his earth-tone sweater as he’s led towards the shark dungeon. You’re relaxing by the pool when the mysterious Cuban hitman, Hector Gonzalez, gets shot with a crossbow and collapses into the pool. Then Zuzu and Maria Elena are shrieking, and suddenly James Bond starts throwing punches around.
This moment is really disappointing, because you almost get your revolver out of your shoulder holster fast enough to subdue James Bond, and show everyone that experience counts more than a dearth of love handles.
You didn’t, of course. Your reflexes were slow, and a deft swing of the deck umbrella knocked you into the pool.
In your prime, you would have shot James Bond right through his saggy, leathery forehead, right? Of course, you would have. The fact is, though, there’s a moment where every henchman’s body starts changing, and even strangling, say, a NATO nuclear weapons inspector in a submarine control room becomes more of a chore than a pleasure.
But let’s really look at this fateful afternoon, and reframe what went down in a more positive light. While the henchmen without heel spurs were chasing James Bond across the olive grove, who took charge and fished Gonzalez’s waterlogged corpse out with the really big pool net? Who woke Diesel from his quaalude stupor, and asked him to bring up some First Aid kits from the hydroplane? Who understood that there were a lot of really upset and well-toned pool boys who needed a friendly ear, so that they could really process what had just happened?
It was you, sport! You did all that stuff, and I want you to know it was super important.
You’re still a major part of this terrorist/crime/Communist organization. It’s time you put your feet up a little, relaxed, and loved the henchman inside. All of the henchman inside. Can you do that? Of course you can!
Now when you’ve had a few moments to get centered, we’ve got an East German double-agent tied up in the solarium who’s not exactly gonna dismember himself, if you get my drift. You’ve got this!