The Venture Brothers

No you may not mambo dogface to the banana patch.

Man. I guess my standards of quality are way low because I loved the entire season. I thought every episode was damn hilarious.

Maybe I’m just easy to please. Though I must admit, it’s a lot more fun than the reverse.

No, it was still a really good season. Zylon just hates good things.

No, you’re both really easy to please.

(and by Anti-Bunny logic, I hated the first two seasons. so that’s funny too.)

Was S4 (and S3) a disaster worth of George Lucas? Of course not. But it pales in comparison to S1/2. I find it very disappointing that people who gave us Escape to the House of Mummies, pt2 or 20 Years to Midnight dropped the ball so completely.

I don’t judge the different TV shows I watch in comparison to each other (i.e. if I judged WEEDS against, say, BREAKING BAD, for example, I’d never watch it). In that same regard, I try not to judge seasons against previous seasons and focus on their own merits.

There are too many shows that have had phenomenal freshman seasons, only to have them followed up by comparatively-later seasons. DEXTER, for example. or FRiDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. or SKINS. If I judged all their later seasons against the first, I’d barely watch half of them.

Yes, the recent VENTURE BROTHERS fare isn’t quite as good as a lot of the earlier episodes. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t good episodes in their own right.

I consumed the whole series between early August and the late Nov season 4 finale, and I think the series has maintained its quality throughout. In fact, season 4 was more enjoyable to me because of the constant evolution and addition to the series canon.

Instead of trying to freeze the elements of the series in place, they allowed characters to (no spoilers) grow up, change alliances, die, and in the case of Rusty, stay the same miserable cur he’s always been. I’ve enjoyed every bit of universe-building they have done.

There seem to be two kinds of shows that get broadcast on Adult Swim - the Aqua Teen Hunger Force mold where nothing ever changes, and the Moral Orel form where everything always changes and people are people. Venture Brothers seems to fit into the second group, and it might be the only show of its kind that I have enjoyed throughout. When Moral Orel turned into an actual story I started wondering why Dino Stamatopoulis wanted me to slit my wrists. Venture has avoided straying too far into anti-comedy in its quest for seriousness, which I appreciate. You have to admit, however, that if the joke you liked was the joke they started out with (like me with Orel and the God’s Chef episode), everything since the point in the early seasons where they jumped into a living story is going to seem like a progressively growing ball of crap. I can’t blame anybody for disliking it for departing from the original send-up of Johnny Quest it started out as. That was a cool show too, and I miss it a little bit sometimes, but I still like what they’re doing now.

I dislike how the show has softened over the years. Rusty used to be an obvious drug abuser, but now that is only occasionally referenced. They’ve also shown the original Venture crew to really depraved and degenerate, which sort of excuses Rusty’s behavior. Brock shouldn’t be tender towards the boys, he should barely tolerate them. It really started to be a very different show starting in season 2. And while it is still enjoyable, I miss season 1.

Adult Swim started rerunning VB from the beginnning this weekend, so we’re in for a few months of undiluted Venture-Prime awesome.

Note how the first episode (the one where he gets his kidneys stolen in Mexico) establishes him as a repellent, cowardly jerk, but also as a pretty darn competent scientist, when need be. Later seasons Flanderized him into just a jerk with barely any scientific aptitude. I found this shallow take on the character to be much less interesting.

If you haven’t yet, you should read up on [b]what we [i]didn’t[/i] see in s3[/b]. It’s amazing, though a hell of a lot bleaker than what we saw already. I personally loved season three and consider it one of my favorite seasons of any show I’ve seen. It’s an absolutely brilliant character study and insight into what people are truly like, behind the sheen of moral conceit. I keep waiting for news to come down that Dino’s getting the band back together but I know it’ll never happen. He’s making all that Starburns money now. Why go back?

I also love s3 for introducing me to The Mountain Goats.

I don’t see it as excusing Rusty as much as it’s explaining the consequenses of being a less-than-heroic human being among the heroic adventurer archetypes. The Venture crew may have been capable of heroic deeds, but they were also self-involved and unable to respect the sensibilities of anyone outside their group. I think the point of the show is to illustrate that there are sacrifices made (and of course ignored in a cartoon world) when a person like Dr. Venture is focused on adventuring and inventing to the exclusion of other things, and also to illustrate the personality characteristics of an individual who would choose that lifestyle.

One of the most telling character moments for Rusty was in season 4 where he told the story of his 16th birthday party thrown by his father, who was incapable of making it an event for Rusty, and instead made it an event for himself while his friends humiliated Rusty in front of everyone.

Rusty’s a broken asshole, but he didn’t break himself.

That’s the thing, I thought he was a more interesting character when it was his fault he is the way he is, rather than his dad’s fault. Who can blame him now? It was a more interesting dynamic when Rusty was just a failure, rather than someone who was failed.

Not that simple. Rusty is (was?) a pillpopper, a failed superscientist, a shady landlord who aids/abets meth dealers, a creepy pervert, and still a horrendous father. New insights coming to light about his past show that less-than-honorable behavior might have been influenced by people other than him (which gives the character more depth and possibly makes him more sympathetic), but he’s still as shrill and unpleasant as ever and still a terrible father and misogynist. His long-dead father’s ghost isn’t forcing him to order whores by phone, it’s his own idea. In this season’s broadway episode, Rusty was his usual burdensome, oblivious self and drove his son Dean crazy. Rusty’s condition isn’t “all” the fault of someone else any more than how any other modern American pampered, spoiled-brat manchild who blames his parents for everything can or should be absolved of all responsibility for his actions.

Merry Christmas from Team Venture

Christmas time is here again

Christmas time is here again

Christmas time is here again

Christmas time is here again

Christmas time is here again

Ho Ho H-almost…

P.S. One last Christmas gift: I promised “news” the last time I was here. And though I’m not at liberty to disclose the full details just yet, I am happy to at least be able to tell you that we were not lying in the end credits of our season finale: The Venture Bros. will indeed return. More on that later… Happy Holidays!

Bump.

Jackson Publick confirmed (on LiveJournal of all things) that Adult Swim has ordered 2 more seasons of the show and a 90 minute movie. They’ve also been producing an 11 minute special in house, as opposed to their usual overseas animation studio. They’ve started writing season 5 but no dates have been confirmed for anything.

Really? I thought this thing was wrapped up now, at least as far as seasons were concerned. I guess I assumed that the return would mean a few movies.

??

Another season was confirmed in the credits for the fourth season finale. I’m a little surprised that Adult Swim would go in for two years after the production delays for the past season, but they definitely confirmed at least one.