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popculturebuffet · 2 years

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Go Team Venture!: A Venture Bros Retrospective: Season 1

Hello all you happy people! Last year I decided to do something a little special for my birthday, deciding to review something I had a long, personal history with, loved dearly and wanted to start a full retrospective on, resulting in my Scott Pilgrim Retrospective, a long and storied look at one of my favorite comics ever.

This year I decided to continue that tradition... albeit about two weeks late because my schedule slip got really bad combined with my life getting really busy, but the spirits’ the same. And for my 30th birthday, there was really only one option. One show that has been part of my life for over two decades, but i’ve never rewatched in full, and one that’s a true masterpiece, an adult cartoon ahead of it’s time that much like Scott dominated my Teen Years. As you can tell by the top it’s time to Go Team Venture as I take a months long look at The Venture Bros, easily one of my faviorite cartoons of all time and what I consider to be one of the best, most influential and most funny, warts and all.

For those less aware of the show a bit of backstory: The Venture Bros was an adult swim show that started in 2004. Masterminded by Jackson Public and Doc Hammer, a former writer and former artist for the Tick respectively (Both the 90′s cartoon and the 2000′s live action series), the show lasted for a bind bogglingly awesome 14 years, with the creators taking decent hiatueses between seasons to recharge. It was Adult Swim’s most popular show before a certain abusive alcholic took the crown, and is almost easily my faviorite, tied closely with Tuca and Bertie, not an easy task given the network’s long history and great back catalogue.

The show was also ahead of it’s time: while shows with rich continuites, snappy dialouge, pop culture shout outs, and deep, often heavily flawed characters who change considerably are normal, Venture Bros was one of the only ones at the time like this and probably the only one in adult animation. There were other good shows sure, but Venture Bros slowly evolved from a messy if fun parody of adventure shows like Johnny Quest, into a deep involved world that skewered the superhero supervillian dynamic, had characters who changed with every season in interesting ways, deep cut refrences, and a status quo that never settled for more than a season. It’s inventive, hilarous, and throughly itself. I also feel the show is directly responsible for some of my faviorites: the Ducktales reboot plays to me like the Venture Bros if the world wasn’t realistically broken, Bojack took the concept of having a deeply flawed protaganist who struggles to be better and ran with it, and Final Space comes off as the venture version of Guardians of the Galaxy. It was thanks to Jackson and Doc taking the leap, making their singuarly weird show and doing it the way they wanted that other shows could fly along with them and carry on the torch after their gone. This show isn’t without it’s flaws, which I won’t hesitate to point out, but I can’t help but geninely and wholeheartdly love it.

So let’s start at the beginning: back in the late 90′s, a young man named Christopher McCulloch, the future Jackson Publick, was working on The Tick. For those of you who don’t know what The Tick is.. i’m sorry it took you this long to find it you poor bastard, and it’s a superhero franchise that lovingly spoofs the genre, following a cheeful, gung ho, nigh invunerable big blue lunkhead and his nervous sidekick arthur as they fight crime. It’s crossed comics and three tv series and Jackson was working on the first of those, an animated series. There Jackson honed his craft writing and drawing under the watchful eye of his friend and Mentor, Ben Edlund, creator of the Tick and later Supernatural. So we have him to thank for that time Mystery Inc mentally broke down after finding out their world isn’t real. Thanks Ben!

While doing that a co worker brought in some books from a series he used to read, Tom Swift Jr, about a boy adventuerer who was the son of the previous tom swift who had his own boy adventures. He sketched two dorky brothers, one saying “Ma Venture didn’t raise no fools”... and thus the Venture Brothers were born. According to the book Go Team Venture: The Art and Making of the Venture Brothers, a massive and beautiful book from Dark Horse that covers the first 6 seasons of the show that not only reignited my love for the show but serves as most of my background material for this retrospective, Doc had the name venture from the second he sketched their “Dumb little heads” and never wavered on that for good reason. Also just to head this off if your wondering why i’m not using the DVD commentary it’s simple: I don’t have the dvds, I can’t afford to buy all of them, and it’d slow the retrospective down greatly to have to watch each season twice so if I miss something that was on the commentary, feel free to point it out politely.

Anyways Jackson kept these two in the back of his head, slowly coming up with the idea to make them a Johnny Quest pastiche, while having the father be a second generation adventurer like Tom Swift Jr. He tried bringing them to comics while working at Jumbo pictures as the animators there had a regular anthology comic called Monkeysuit, but wanted them more fleshed out. He picked at it for a while and eventually realized it’d just work best in animation.

So he tried one of the only games in town for Adult Animation: Comedy Central. As you can tell by the whole “Adult Swim” thing, that didn’t really pan out and Comedy Central passed on what could’ve been another flagship show.

Granted it’s for the best: the show didn’t quite fit Comedy Central. So Jackson shelved it for a bit to work on the first live action Tick show, moving to LA for it and getting an agent who asked if he had anything to shop around. He had some venture boys to shop around, so his agent brought it to a company that was experimenting with Claymation. Given Dean and Hank never went on an adventure to save baby new year, you can see where this went.

After the 2000′s Tick bottomed out because Fox was a sink hole for good ideas back in the day, in case you were wondering “Gee why didn’t he try Fox?”, Jackson decided to get serious about the Venture Bros, headed back to NYC and made a proper pitch bible for the series, a book that’s a general idea for what the series will be. To my shock most of the stuff in the pitch bible made it to the series. From Dr. Venture’s pill addiction, to his unspoken attraction to brock, to Brock being the Boys true parental figure, to characters like Mol, Monarch and Underbeit. The only really notable bit they never got around to was Army Joe, Brock’s long lost brother whose told what to do by a hallucination of uncle sam on his shoulder. They just haven’t found a way to make it work. And Brock having a brother IS canon and was mentioned in season 3, something Jackson pointed out... he just never found a way to make it work. It happens.

He shopped it around and just happened to be friends with one of the execs at Cartoon Network, who was looking for new pilots for Adult Swim. They said “Sure why not” and the race was on to actually make it.

This is where the other half of our dynamic duo comes in: Doc Hammer. Doc and Jackson were already good friends at this point, having met at a party through Edlund and hit it off. When Jackson had needed a workspace in NYC, Hammer gladly let Jackson use his, christned the astrobase because their that level of nerd and that’s part of why I love these guys. What started as a workspace for a bunch of guys slowly evolved into a fort for two guys to work in the middle of the night, randomly shoot the shit about whatever popped into their heads, make swords or props to fool around with and general shenanigans.

So when Jackson needed help with the editing and music for the pilot, as his production studio NoodleSoup knew how to make cartoons in flash but not edit them. Keep in mind flash wasn’t as ubiquitious as it is today, nor as heavily abused as it’d soon be. So Doc naturally agreed since..

Jackson also needed to cast the core four: Starting with what’s truly our lead, Jackson had only one person in mind for Doc: James Urabanik. He’d seen James at a stage show a few years back and given Dr. Venture looks like a sadder more desperate version of him, something James noticed but gladly agreed to do. Next up are the boys. Jackson wanted to do a voice himself as he’d always WANTED to on the Tick but the weird way the animation industry worked back then, they refused to let writers do character voices. This stands out to me because, in part thanks to adult swim doing just that a lot this show especially, it’s now fairly normal for one of the creators to do a voice if they want, with Alex Hirsch voicing three major characters on Gravity Falls, Ian Jones Quarterly voicing two of the leads on Ok KO and Olan Rogers of Final Space voicing at least two including leading man Gary. It also scratches my head WHY they woudln’t, especially with a creator as it saves on money.

So Jackson ended up just deciding to do Hank and given he was at ease doing this from the pilot, it’s clear he was always meant to be a va. This would be the first of dozens of voice he and Doc would do and god bless em for it, they really have a ton of talent in the craft. Anyways, Hank wasn’t a solo act, yet, but finding that right Dean charm was tricky. Thankfully a friend of Jacksons recommended Micheal Sinterniklas. This and TMNT 2003 have made Micheal a faviorite of mine even if he does games and anime more. Though he did do Kappa Mikey so he has that going for him. He was the perfect dork for the job and that just left Brock, who like Doc Jackson had someone in mind, Patrick Motherfuck Warburton. Warburton was already a name thanks to Seinfield, and had starred in the 2000′s Tick Show, playing the roll to perfection. And he was already a VA at the time, having just started his career with Buzz Lightyear and Family Guy, the latter he’ll probably be doing till a hellmouth opens and finally claims what’s left of the show and the earth. He’d go on to VA for some time and still does, one of the most notable being Sheriff Bronson Stone for Scooby Doo Mystery Inc. Patrick happily agreed and the cast was set with Jackson filling in the gaps. And Mike but... we’ll talk about that when we get to the episodes themselves, and thus the pilot itself.

The Pilot was enough of a success that after a short wait, the show got picked up and Jackson was happy to procede as usual. The show switched to traditional animation, got simplier backgrounds jackson hated and moved on for season 2.

There was a hiccup though: Writing a show by yourself.. is incredibly hard espiecally when your also showrunning it. This is why most shows have multiple writers on most episodes and even ones that have the creator write every episode usually have at least two. So Jackson naturally went to Ben for help since he knew how to do this, but Ben, while a great guy and still friends with Jackson to this day, was also busy with his own stuff and couldn’t commit to a full season workload. So Doc, who was in the room because of course he was, agreed to help so Jackson could keep a show. While Doc hadn’t written before, Ben could teach him the ropes, then pass it off to him when he was ready. In Theory. In practice Ben helped a bit, enough that Doc knew the formatting and stuff, but had to leave the learning curve to the poor guy as he got pulled away. So through this Doc became one half of a team, and the two scrambled through the season. The season ended up being a sleeper hit, not too much bigger than adult swim’s other shows but enough to get them renewed. But is “Good enough for a sure why not renewal” good enough for today’s fat guy at a computer? Find out under the cut!

So since this is my first review of a full season of a show in months, i’ve streamlined things a bit, breaking it down into three sections. More sections can be added based on the show, but for this one we have

Seasonal Stylings: The style of a certain season, how it feels unique, what it changes from last time, what it fixes or messes up, that sort of thing, or in this case what’s different from future seasons.

Roll Call: Going into the characters and their development each season, how they grow and evolve or if they step back any.

Episode Breakdowns: Going through each episode and giving my opinon on them, what I liked, what I didn’t that sort of thing along with some fun counting gags.

Super Good and Holy Dammit Christmas Awards: The best and worst episodes of each season.

Now we have that settled

Seasonal Stylings:

Season 1 of a show is where most shows, ESPECAILLY animated ones find their legs, taking time to find out just how to tell their stories the way they want, slowly set up the world, and work out that awkward sweaty puberty their going through to get to the adulthood most season 2′s achieve. Venture Bros is no less sweaty in it’s first outing.

Season 1 is very much the show at it’s most basic plot descritpion: A neurotic wreck of a legacy hero super scienteist with no scruples, no care for his sons, and a desperation for cash goes around the world on various adventures with his naive, sheltered and mildly dimb sons and best friend/bodyguard/sweedish murder machine... and instead of the bigger more typical genre adventure stuff, we see the awkward messes that result instead due to Doc’s greed and reality smacking this world on the back of the head: Doc’s desperate attempts to prove he’s still young and get some lead to him getting jabbed with science and turned into a caterpillar, the local Dr. Strange becomes their tenant and tries to stop Doc’s orphan heart powered wish machine, Dean gets testicular tortion and has to have it humiatingly treated while Brock and Hank serve as hostages and help the Monarch have a truly happy birthday, The Monarch and Baron Underbeit argue over who gets to arch venture over orderves. The misson statment of tempering a cool, super science, comic book world with the pain of failure and real life constraints is there from minute one and works perfectly. It feels like your picking up a comic in an already well involved shared universe with plenty of past stories, volumes, and weird side stuff that’s been going on for decades yet the characters, our main ones anyway, haven’t aged a ton. The venture bros universe is essentially the marvel universe with large dollops of johnny quest, other boy adventure stories, the music doc and jackson like, and any refrence they want, major or minor, all mixed together into this loving brew and while it takes some time to reach peak awesome, the heady mix is there from the start.

The thing that makes season 1 stand out though is all the pieces aren’t quite settled yet. Jackson hasn’t quite figured out HOW much marvel style nonsense he can dump in (the answer being ALL OF IT), and thus costumed supervilliany isn’t the major focus it would be. The reason for this is simple: it’s focusing point, the Monarch, wasn’t INTENDED to be a main character

Yeah I was stunned too but the Monarch was originally intended to be one of many guys making Dr. Venture’s life hell, hence why Baron Underbeit exists, with episodes having more unique antagonists. Instead he just kept popping into scripts, with them realizing slowly it was far easier to just have one weirdly dedicated jackass assault our hero with silver age nonsense and wave after wave of his own men then come up with some new threat or rotate them out. With the Monarch the show slowly develops the core of it’s unvierse, one built on costumed villany that also has strick rules in escaltion, threat levels and who can attack who. It’s mind boggling to think that the Guild isn’t properly introduced till Trial of the Monarch but from then on the show knows what it is and has a ranting, butterfly obessesed, manically laughing, green gobliny center to it to progress the core of it’s world while the Ventures various antics build out the rest. The Monarch’s still important, appearing in about half the season and having his own dedicated subplots, but it woudln’t be till the end of the season he firmly became the show’s duteratognist, with his own involved story arcs every season.

Instead Season 1 is built entirely on the other core concept and character of the series: Rusty, and as a result almost every episode is focused on him and his failure to live up to his dad. It’s weird to look back and see just how Rustrycentric the season is: every plot ballances on him in some way or form. Even the Dean-Focused “Are you there god it’s me dean?” is just as focused on Doc trying to help him as it is the poor boys humilation. As the series went on it involved to make all four of the core of Team Venture involved and give them plots and development so i’ts weird to see the show essentially focused on one lead witht he Monarch, The Boys, and Brock all supporting players to rusty’s life instead of being leads in their own right.

While the season is diffrent though.. it holds up SHOCKINGLY well. I found myself laughing a hell of a lot and even episodes i’d dreaded going back to were wonderful to revisit. The show has some rough patches here and there of course: as Doc and Jackson fully addmited in the book, they hammered on both “Go Team Venture” and RUSTY IS ADDICTED TO PILLS WE HAVE TO BRING THAT UP every episode because they felt they needed to be well established. The former would be scaled back while the latter is just.. no longer a thing honestly. Rusty probably is still on a bunch of shady perscrption drugs, but given it was never the yukfest they seemed to think it was outside of two really good gags, they made the right call.

Overall though it’s utterly hilarious, with great timing, parody concepts and animation. It’s stilted compared to the later seasons, but even for the early 2000′s it looks gorgeous. Some bits haven’t aged well comedy wise but for the most part Season 1 is an enjoyable ride the whole way through, a loving parody with a sense there’s a deeper world there.

It’s only real drawback is the characterization is limited: while Doc and Brock come out of the gate fairly realized, the boys are two dumb peas in the same dumb pod. Their slightly diffrent: hanks a jock , dean’s a nerd, but it takes the season for them to really evolve into who they are: A shy withdrawn boy whose slowly growing tired of this adventuering life but is scared to admit it, and a reckless weirdo living in his own world of alter egos, grinder sales, and adventure. This is something they corrected quickly though and both the network and the crew wanted to make the boys more distinct and vital to the story. The Monarch slowly emerges from his cocoon as who he is, but at this point 21 and 24 are just two especially chatty minons (Though 21′s geekiness is starting to shine through) and Dr. Girlfriend the Monarch’s.. well girlfriend and #2. There’s hints she’s far more capable and has more of a past, but we again won’t really see that in full till next season. The pieces are there.. they just haven’t been moved into the proper position yet.

But despite this and the ocasional joke that amounts to “haha brock has a giant penis, haha dr. venture pissed himself, ha ha brock has to masturbate loudly”, which are few and far between, the first season is STILL throughly enjoyable and watchable almost 20 years later. It’s remarkable a season crunched by time and by two guys not quite in step yet turned out as good and memorable as it did and it’d only get better from here.

Roll Call:

Onto our casts, who as I said are at their most basic starting positions here, with most depth being added next season. Still there’s plenty to pick apart so pitter patter, let’s get atter.

Since he’s the center of the season and the star of the show and what not , we’ll start with Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture. Rusty, as should be obvious is a massive deconstruction of the kid hero, or boy adventurer as the series puts it. While on paper going around the world, fighting evil and getting to do all so with your larger than life parent and his rougish band of friends sounds fun, this series shows just exactly what that would’ve been like in the 60′s: Getting carted around by an egotistical asshat and his unhinged friends, traumtized all the time, and never making any real friends while your dad gaslights you into enjoying it, then getting trapped in having to fill his impossibly big shoes when he mysteriously dies and leaves you everything, failing because you were never properly prepared for it. Granted nowadays this kind of deconstuction is common: Steven Universe, Owl House, Amphibia, Kid Cosmic, Ducktales the list of shows that have the kid heroes themselves realizing this isn’t easy as it looks goes on. Granted in those cases theirs actual hope of getting better as an adult and growing, but here it shows what’d happen if that moment of self relization and growth and change.. never came. If you spent your whole life wallowing in the mess it was. You get Rusty, a bitter, abusive, selfish shell of a person who constnatly lashes out at his kids and the world and desperately tries to get cash through horrible means. And while a lot of his problems are on his uprbringing and being thrust into a legacy he wasn’t prepared to honor in the slightest, a lot are also just a lack of self awarness: he sees himself as this stifled genius, trapped with two dopey kids and a failing compound who longs to be better than dad. But he just dosen’t put the work in. He dosen’t WANT to get better at super science and at his core hates this world. He’d of been better off leaving it but his own pride , his own love of the craft and his stubborness to one up his dad and prove himself worthy of his legacy means he’s trapped in a world of costumes and scietnfic progress gone boink. It’s the great tragedy of the character: he’d of been WAY happier leaving this all behind.. but he never had a remote chance of letting himself do so and even if he tried, it’s doubtful the original team venture or scoiety itself ever would’ve LET HIM escape his dad’s shadow. He was trapped in this irony sciency cage since birth and can never seem to forge the key out.

While the abuse part is only hinted at this season, with the brisby test ride and learning beds, and the former child star aspect not fully shown to the audience, both would be more promienint in seasons 3 and 2 respectively, we do get a sense Rusty is a guy whose best years are behind him, his worst currently ongoing, and who can’t get past his own ego to better himself as a person.

It takes a bit though for the full rusty to emerge: in the pilot he’s more an oblvious scientest who, while not a good parent at all, seems more out of touch with things than actively incompetnet, not getting why a death ray wouldn’t be welcome at a peace confrence. By the series proper his scheming nature, drug addiction and neglect of the boys is there, best exemplified with one of the series best stingers “I picked two beautiful kidneys, I feel freaking amazing!’. By the way not only were they doing that long before marvel but the stingers are easily one of the shows best touches, allowing an extra joke or some resoultion the main plot didn’t provide.

But while it gets how slimy the guy is, it isn’t as well ballanced as the rest of the series. The reason for this is simple: He has no friends at this point> Brock keeps a wall between them, Billy and Pete are barely around, and Orpheous WANTS to be his friend but Doc’s an ass to him so tha’ts not happening. WIthout those three to bounce off of, Doc is often just either being belittled by people, snarking off to people or yelling at his boys. Later seasons keep him a dick, but by having him have more snappy patter, the bitter medicine of putting up with this jackass goes down smoother and he gets to be more funny. It dosen’t make him a good person, fuck no, but being a good person and being watchable are two diffrent things.

The other thing that makes him hard to watch is he’s a far worse dad. Yes that’s actually possible. He yells at the boys a lot more, is a lot more horrible to them (even if one instance of this in eeny meeny miney magic, the flames speech, is really funny). Later seasons would better ballance it either playing this shit for dark laughs or making it clear the effect he’s having on these poor boys. Season one just dosen’t quite yet get how to make his disdian for his kids as funny outside of a few occasions. But credit where it’s do my memory has him getting better, and season 7 bears this out. Not as a person but as a charcter, he’s far more intresting from season 2 onward. Urabanik is still good at the roll mind you, and Doc gets some great lines, he’s juts not quite to peak rusty yet. He’ll get there.

Brock likewise is a bit more simple. In season one he’s almost entirely just a stoic, murdery happy badass, the only resonable person in the room. He isn’t nearly as close with the family ,keeping doc at arm’s length and while he’s more of a parent to doc than the boys, he still has more slip ups, calling hank a wuss for you know, not wanting to snap a man’s neck. That said his scene in Eeeny Meeny Miney Magic where he and hank hang out is one of the most adorable and one of the definting moment sof his character, cementing the two’s bond and how much he cares. He let’s hank hang out, says scuba with him, let’s the boy look at his tapes, when you’d THINK the guy would throw him out. He even makes up for snapping at hank by taking him with him to fix helper. We see Brock’s nobility quite often, from gently turning down a mexican wrestler hitting on him (And throwing the guy his shirt as a compensation), to helping smuggle a sasquatch, to applauding the boys injunity in eeny meeny miney magic, only mad they didn’t have a plan past “wake brock up” and not letting it show too bad. Brock’s a good guy. .even if ther’es .. one trait of his we’ll talk about next time that’s pretty fucking bad and has aged like fine cheese. Brock is an enjoyably badass macho spy guy and will continue to evolve as the series goes to become both more badass and more of a person.

The titular Venture Bros, my boys Hank and Dean easily needed the most work. By Season 3 I absolutely loved them , with Dean being my faviorite character as a teen and Hank being my faviorite character currently. But at the pilot stage they were just two barely diffrent dorks who loved solving mysteries and were blisfully unaware how terrible the world they were trapped in. They were mostly put off to the side for subplots in season 1 or in supporting role. The most they had diffrent was dean was bookish and Hank’s a wannabe jocks, both neither quite making the roll.

It’s once the show slowly started making them into their own persons they became the characters we know and love. The best examples of this to me are Eeeny, Meeny Miney Magic!, Mid LIfe Chyrsalis and Tag Sale, You’re It! It’s those three episodes where the boys feel most like themselves.

Starting with Mid Life Chrysalis while Hank and Dean still play Jock and Nerd a bit, their personalites start to percolate in how they help Brock prepare for his liscense renewal. Dean tries teaching Brock the written test and when given an awesome and hilaroiusly complex response by brock on how our resident badass would handle the issue his response is simply “The answer is C”. He has the demanor of a dorky school teacher despite being 16. Hank in contrast puts on his best sweats, and tries to immitate rocky, being rough on brock, telling him to eat some eggs he most definetly spat in, and getting a bit too into his drill seargent nasty routine before Brock reminds him “Hank you realize when I get my lisence i’m aloud to kill you right?”. Dean’s inherntly dorky energy put towards pretty normal stuff and Hank’s unique brand of bonkers both shine through here.

It starts to peak through more with Eeny Meeny Miney Magic. Here the two go to seperate corners for the first time and both get definting parts of their personalties as a result. Dean gets his hopeless crush on Triana, as well as an utterly hilarous and awkward bit where he talks about “the box his pop made”, leaving triana speechless. He’s adorably awkward around the poor girl, later kissing his hand and “practicing being a boyfriend pop!” in the bathroom. And hte fact he calls it that tells me he’s not ready. Hank meanwhile is in adorable pie eyed dork mode, fawning over his hero brock as he stacks nickles, says scuba and acccidnetly presses a button. It emphasies the two’s bond which would become the lynchpin of hank’s character in season 4 and as I said i’ts adorable. The ending also shows the boys dynamic well with Hank lightly razzing dean

“She was all over you” “really?” “No” It’s a nice change from earlier epsiodes where Hank’s more of a bully to Dean. here he’s just popping his bro’s bubble like most brothers do.

The two finally emerge in full in “Tag Sale! You’re It!”. With Dean’s hidden reluctance towards adventure and Hank’s exuberance and batshit nature set up, Tag Sale fully fleshes it out: Dean is utterly awkward around triana, can’t process the real world but deseprate what’s the chunk of it he sees in her. Hank meanwhile gets one of his shining moments: Upon finding his dad selling his stuff, he decies to start his own buisness. Now most kids and teens would probably sell food and drink, the gap in doc’s selling, that’s not too abnormal. Hank’s got hustle. But Hank being hank takes it a step further by having everyone wear hats and aprons, dubbing the stand “Hankco’s Lemonade and GrinderWorld” and specifically selling grinders, griling dean when he dosne’t upsell a lemonade with the grinder. He let’s dean have a break to talk to Trianna becaue of “Union roles’ and when the rest of his employees (Dean, Helper and Triana) abandon ship when a supervillian riot breaks out, Hank vows he will not be moved before getting clubbed in the head with an errant shoe. Hank was truly born that day. This kind of nuts would stick and by next season Hank would hit his peak crazy and become who he was always desitned to be: the Bat. So while it took till season 2 for Doc and Jackson to make a concetrated effort to make the two both indivdiuals and a full part of the series instead of just the easy joke of “well it’s called the venture bros but it’s not REALLY about them”, they were gearing up to and the execs asking for it likely wasn’t a tall order.

Now onto our Villian Protaganist. The Mighty Monarch, as i’ve said, wasn’t INTENDED to be as recurring as he was, let alone a main lead. But it’s also easy to see much like Opus or Fonzie WHY he broke out from being one of many enemies venture sighed about to being his obessive one true arch enemy. He’s the perfect mirror for Rusty: unlike Rusty he’s actually sucessful in his own way: he has tons of minons, a cash flow so near-endless it dosen’t run out till season 6, a cool base, and a loving and capable partner in both senses of the word. Yet like Rusty he’s own worst enemy: as the show will go on to point out, he could have a top tier nemsis enemy.. but his weird vendetta with Doc for reasons he dosen’t even remember keeps him tied to a washed up dickwad who sees their rivalry not as some epic, years long war like Monarch wants.. but as some petty annoyance, like the Monarch was some guy letting his dog crap on venture’s lawn. Though I wouldn’t be suprised if the monarch once adopted several dozen dogs, dressed them in butterfly costumes and had them take dumps on venture’s lawn. He’s stuck hating someone who just dosent hate him the way he does, and deludes himself into thinking otherwise. As Dr. Girlfriend puts it in “Mid-Life Chralyis” “You two have a lot in common”. Their both pathetic.. but in their own unique ways that make them the perfect foils.

He’s also just damn funny. Practically every scene with him has a good laugh. Chris never fails to kill with the guy, sometimes literally. He’s an utterly captivating presence and the series was right to make him the duetragonist from Trial of the Monarch on.

Dr. Girlfriend, as I mentioned isn’t at full develoment yet, but makes a great partner: she’s understanding to the Monarch but also blunt, pointing out things like not wanting kids, but truly and clearly loves her deranged boss/boyfriend. She dosen’t really break out though till Trial, where after the Monarch REALLY piles on the asshole, calling her a slut was way fucking out of line, she ends up going back to her ex phantom limb... more on him next season... and rightly calls Monarch’s ass out.. yet at her heart still cares enough to both feel bad he’s going up river.. and to pass the blame to the boys.

Finally on Team Monarch we have 21 and 24. There’s not much to say here really. Their the monarch’s two henchman and much like the man himself they weren’t meant ot be as big as they were.. but Doc and Jackson liked voicing them and it just made sense, much like the monarch himself, to have a few recurring guys. While their screentime here is limited what they get is TRULY amazing: the lightsaber bit in tag sale, SMURFS DON’T LAY EGGS, their publishing of the flight of the monarch with Gary’s utter stupidity in putting the man’s face on the cover, and the finale which has the two just sorta dick around before accidently acomplishing their goal of murdering hank and dean in the most idotic way possible. The two are a delight, one a loveable fanboy living out his best life, the other a middle aged clone of ray ramano. Can’t wait to see evne more next season.

Suppoting cast wise we’ll start with Dr. Orpheous who at this point is easily the biggest member of the supporting cast and would continue to be for the next season or two before being mostly ignored in the latter half of the series. But for now he’s another good foil for Doc: As the men themselves put it, he’s a succesful parent and career man to Doc’s abusive failure. He dotes on his “pumpkin”, at worst embarassing her at a christmas party by announcing her maidenhead is not a prize to be won (Though given the guy hitting on here was Pete aka someone Dr. O’s OWN AGE, I can understand), making sure her dinner’s on teh table. IN short he’s a sweetheart of the mystic arts as well as the master of them. It was also a bold choice to parody Dr. Strange LONG before he had a movie let alone much audience recognition. Even in comics while well loved by writers, he wasn’t a big name at the time. This would change soon with Bendis (HISSSSSSS), raising his profile again, but the point was it shows the guys don’t care how deep the cut is, they just do what they want and it’s what gives the show it’s flavor.

Orpheous is just a hammtastic treat every time he shows up, from talking about his cat being in heat, to mocking the hidden passageway trope, to trying desperately to get a nemisis, a bit where the guys set a thread without realizing it. It leads to the man’s only real moment of weakness, agreeing to the guild’s terms to get him an arch at the cost of the Monarch, but given he both dosen’t know why Phantom Limb wants monarch out of the way and the guild would likely try and get rid of the poor guy otherwise I can’t blame him. Compared to the fuckups of the rest of the cast and the closet thing we’ll get to next time, it’s minor.

Finally we have Pete and White> Their just kinda around at this point. We’ll get more into them next time. ONTO THE EPISODES!

Episode Breakdowns!

Here’s how it works: i’ll go into each ep, what I like about em, and then get into some recurring bits, counting gags and such. They are Rusty Sucks Surprising No One Count: This is any time Rusty is an asshole. So probably once an episode but given how terrible he is this season, funny or otherwise, I needed it. This Didn’t Age Well Count: Again more for my mental health. Bits that just didn’t age well. Can’t be helped on the guys parts but still. Hanktastic: For Hank’s shenanigans. Deanarific: For Dean’s doings. This bit wasn’t ORIGINALLY in the review but I thought of adding it for season 2 and rather than have a segment that will likely run series long start with the second and things be weird I went back and added it here. I usually try to AVOID george lucasing my work, but in this case I felt the acception was warranted. It’s one thing to erase mistakes you made, it’s another to simply add something neat so the whole retrospective is more cohesive. Best Moment: Self Explanitory. First Apperance: Since this show has a LOT of characters, it’s only fitting. If I miss one in the background that’s on me. I’m mostly focusing on the bigger recurring players here though. Super Good Award: Best episode of the season Pissed in God’s Eye Award:Worst Episode of the season. Questions for Later: Bits of Foreshadowing, or things that get followed up on.

Also going by airing order. While it’s not correct order, it’s what HBO Max had. I do feel the DVD order, used by Hulu flows better, but the HBO Max airing has the bonus episodes, so my choice was clear.

0. The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay Summary: The Ventures head to New York for a conference and have to deal with prostitues, public humilation, sterotypes and the Mighty Monarch. My Thoughts: Terrible Secret is a decent pilot. While the animation is rough, the plot holds decently and I still consider some form of it canon... as does the show as the Monarch’s orginal outfit here, as well as the minon outfit shows up a few times. The characters are in a rough state, but it works well enough and the spirit of the series is there even if it’s not at full steam yet. What holds it back is one VERY grating flaw. So about that... This Didn’t Age Well Count: 3. The first is making a joke over two underage boys accidently soliciting a prostitue and it’s minor, if still ehhhhh. The second is giving Dr. Girlfriend an adams apple as part of that clear “Get it SHE’S TRANS THAT’S A JOKE RIGHT” runner with her. I’ll talk about that more next time but it dosen’t sit well with me even two decades on. The major one.. is Otaku Sensuri... an asian man. Voiced by the very white Michael Sinterniklas using one of the most horribly offensve fake asian accidents i’ve ever heard. This isn’t okay now and it sure as shit wasn’t okay then. Granted since then Jackson and Doc have TRIED to stay away from sterotyping. At worst Dr. Z is borderline and really shoudnl’t be voiced by a white guy, but otherwise they learned their lesson from this. Still makes the episode hard to watch for me whenever he’s on screen though. The fact the payoff for him is that he diddles himself to machines.. does not help. It’s very HE HE MASTRBATION instead of making an actual joke. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 1, shocking given even slightly nicer here he’s still annoyed at the boys existance. But no all he did was turn a Dog inside out.. which is still ungodly horrible, RIP Scamp, but is somehow not the worst thing he does all season. Best Moment: Easy winner. Otaku Sensuri trying to escape in a cloud of smoke, the UN Guy saying he escaped only for Dean to casually point out “He’s over there”... cut to the ninja hiding in plain sight in a potted plant. First Appearance: Rusty Venture, Brock Sampson, Dean Venture, Hank Venture, Billy Quizboy, Pete White, Professor Impossible, The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend.

1. Dia De Los Dangerous!

Summary: The Venture’s trip down Mexico Way finds the boys kidnapped, Helper getting a sweet paint job, Brock buried alive, Doc missing a kidney and The Monarch missing his adopted family. My Thoughts: A truly excellent episode and second pilot. The cast is more defined, the jokes come fast and furious and the pacing is divine. The Monarch’s tragic and utterly silly backstory coupled with Doc’s kidney shenanigans (the way he counts it, Helpers makeover and their half assed tethering are all classic). Brock also gets an iconic moment with “They hit me with a truck” Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 5. Assuming a doctor will give him pills just for being mexican, calling dia de los muertos “crazy dead people christmas” and stealing his son’s kidney’s. Granted their clones but THEY don’t know that. Best Moment: The Kidney gag. “And I got two beauitful Kidneys! I feel freakin amazing! Hanktastic: Re Helper “He looks liked a dried out turd on a bad Stretch of Road” First Appearance: H.E.L.P.E.r (Not spelling it properly most of the time because it’s a lot), Henchman 24.

2. Careers in Science

Summary: The Ventures go where several men have gone before to fix Jonas’ old satalite. Rusty hallucinates his dad, the boys hunt for a phantom spaceman and brock cucks a pent up manchild by accident. My Thoughts: This one’s a bit of a mess. Doc freely admits the pacing isn’t good, and it’s far slower than it needs to be. Not enough good jokes and Brock beats up a guy for merely touching him and gets punished for.. being upset his girlfriend cheated on him. If she wanted to break up with the guy for you know, not having sex with her, that’s fine. It’d be awkard being stuck with him., so I get why she hadn’t yet, but it’s still wrong to have sex with him instead of just.. telling bud she wants sex. Overall not a great ep, though it has some standout gags. Questions For Later: Sadly Manstrong comes back one more time. Shockingly though the problem light, i.e. the light that turned on to trigger all this in the first place is a VITAL chekov’s gun.. it just took the guys 14 years to fire it. Best Moment: Rusty happily scarfing down some pills to make his hallucination dad go away. Deanarific and Hanktastic: “It’s on it’s off it’s on it’s off” “That’s called blinking boys First Appearance: Manstrong, Baldovich, Jonas Venture (As a hallucination but it’s the first time we both see his appearnce and hear his voice so I count it)

3. Home Insecurity

Summary: Brock goes on his annual wolverine style sabatical, leaving Doc to create a new robot that ends up being more of a problem than a solution, while Underbeit and the Monarch argue over who gets to arch venture this week. My Thoughts: This episode is fine. I remembered not liking it but honestly it has some things going for it: it’s parody of the six million dollar man (whose stuck being unable to pay back those parts), his love of a sasquatch, the shaved bigfoot gag, and the Monarch and Underbeits minons shooting the shit while their bosses have a polite meeting. But overall it’s just.. there. It’s not bad, but it’s not all that memorable nor impactful on the show as a whole. And one of the problems with that. is the Baron himself. Doc and Jackson meant for him to be a bigger character but felt taking him as far into evil as needed to make him funny would be too over the top. Great for the tick but not fitting in this universe. It’s telling the guy shows up three times this season, once next season.. and then disappears for a season and a half. He’s just not funny or intreresting and dosen’t really fit in the world this show becomes. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 6. His yelling at Hank, not getting hank was in his own stupid way trying to revivie him. Leave my boy alone. His also not realizing Helper was sentient... decades into knowing the poor robot. Best Moment: Dr. Girlfriend putting out snacks for Monarch’s meeting with the baron. Just the common banality of it. It gets me. First Appearance: Baron Underbeit.

4. The Incredible Mr. Brisby

Summary: Rusty takes his kids to Brisby land for a buisness deal and in typical Rusty fashion leaves them in the plane while he goes to talk to owner Roy Brisby. He soon finds himself kidnapped as part of Brisby’s grand design, while Brock finds himself working with his black widowy x to track him down and the boys find themselves brainwashed by a bunch of soccer parents. My Thoughts: This is another one I didn’t really care for when I was younger. But on rewatch I found it was ONLY the Mol and Brock stuff I didn’t like. The overblown parody of sexual tension between spies just.. never worked for me and Mol never felt like she had more character than “russian superspy”, that she was more than her parody like the rest of the cast. It’s a shame too: the Ventureverse is very light on female characters.. and one of the only important ones.. is a shallow black widow parody who has no real character outside of “sex pot wild card who plays whatever side’s winning”. It’s a character type i’ve seen before and done better and for this show I expect better. I don’t belivie in adding female characters JUST to up the count but I do feel Jackson and Doc could’ve done more with Mol over seven seasons to make her actually entertaining and just couldn’t. It’s one of the few problems with venture bros that seems to stretch over the whole work: I love Doc and Jackson but they just don’t seem to get that women can pathetically fail too, and often struggle to flesh out female characters, with Dr. G, Warina Sirena and Sally (With time) being some of the only exceptions. I don’t think their sexist or intentionally saying “Nyeah no women in our club”, I just feel it’s easier for them to make male schlubs because that’s easier to write and there’s more characters to pull from pastiche wise.

The other two parts of the ep though? Their divine. Doc’s interactions with Brisby are peak doc, with him smarting off the guy greatly and his Drug addled monologue in a southern belle voice is fucking brilliant. The real star of their plot though is Brisby himself, a paralized man with a rictus grin played to perfection by Chris Parnell, who just steals every damn scene he’s in. From calling Le Le his “Companda”, to having said panda put a sack over Doc’s head, to “coming aflame’ to getting rightfully pissed his base has stairs, there’s not a moment the man’s on screen that isn’t entertaining. He also cleverly sets up the cloning thing for next season, one of the few times the guys fully planned ahead.

Finally the boys bit is decent. While the stuff with them trapped in the x1 is not entertaining at all, the orange county liberation front being a military extermist group stocked with subruban parents is fucking amazing. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 7, as bringing his sons to Brisbyland and NOT letting them you know, go putter around while he does his meeting is a dick move even for Rusty. And given we’re only 5 episodes in and already up to 7 on this count, that threshold is vast. Best Moment: “Mandalay i’ve come aflame!” It’s mostly in the delivery. A paralized man being set on fire isn’t funny in itself. But him saying so like this happens all the time, as well as the question of WHY he keeps the fireplace around if this happens. That’s comic gold. Questions for Later: Our first hints of two major things: That the boys are clones, as Brisby comes to doc specfically for his cloning expertise (With Doc likely refusing not to avoid the heat but because he knows his clones have to grow from infancy), and that Jonas was a terrible dad with him taking his son wanting to help as a sign to test dangerous rides on him. Hanktastic: While i’ts more early hank than the later loveable loon, Hank asking his dad if he’s “on the rag” clearly not knowing what that means is still hilarous, especailly Doc just sighing at his son’s stupidity. Deanarific: Dean spotting all the animals. Such a precious boy. I feel bad for the crapstorm of a life he’s already had and that’s only going to get worse. First Appearance: Roy Brisby (Who will show up in the background from time to time so fair enough), Moltov Cocktease

5. Eeeny, Meeny, Miney Magic! Summary: Doc let’s a Dr. Strange rent a room just in time for one of his inventions powered by a forsaken child to ensnare Brock, forcing the boys to rescue him. Meanwhile Dean falls for the new tenant’s teenage goth daughter, and does the mature thing and kisses his owns hand to practice for her. My Thoughts: Another one I glossed over. But on rewatch.. this was a season highlight and VERY nearly got the super good award. Orpheus instantly adds a lot to the show: an intresting foil for doc, another side to this show’s universe we don’t see a lot, a goth daughter to serve as an intresting foil for the boys while also allowing him to be a good dad to Rusty’s shouty one. Add in some all time great jokes, the boys slowly coming into their own, and an orphan heart and you have an all time classic. Talking about the Orpheous Family for a second I feel both are underutilized a bit. With Dr. O while he’s used fine for the first four seasons, he vanishes for most of season 5 and all of season 6 and only gets two episodes in season 7 as part of the morphic trilogy. Triana meanwhile is someone the guys flat out admit they dropped the ball on, that they coudl’ve done more.. but just didn’t quite know what to do with her. I feel she could’ve been a great foil for the boys, and could’ve evolved into just being dean’s friend instead of his love intrest with time, since nothing was ever going to happen there. They had no intention of dropping her entirely either, planning to write some more stuff with her i’ll get to when we get to her exit in a few seasons, it’s just likely like Dr. O they didn’t know where to squeeze her in. It’s the double edged sword of the magic characters: Their a great break from the usual super science.. but as a result it’s harder to fit them in sometimes without writing an episode around them. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: We’re up to 12 folks! There’s his hilarious rant at Dean about the house being on fire, his FAR less hilarious and more cringy one shouting at hank for TRYING to get his help. I mean I get Hank cries for attention but come on. He then caps it off with two for using an orphan heart, and an additional one for not wanting to shut off what’s clearly a dangerous, rouge machine. That said while this is easily Rusty’s douchiest ep of the season, it’s also one of his most hilarious so fair play to him. His trying to downplay how awful his actions are are hilarious. Speaking of which. Best Moment: The trope namer itself. There was no other choice, this is peak Doc and sums up the character in a few exchanges.

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Hanktastic: Scuba! Do not Eat that Ghost Pie also counts. Deanarific: The ENTIRE Box My Pop Made conversation. I don’t know why it took me this long to truly appricate the hilarous and dark awkwardness of this. First Appearance: Dr. Orpheus, Triana Orpheus.

6. Ghosts of the Sargasso Summary: Doc tries to rob a watery grave while the rest of the family runs headfirst into a Scooby Doo Plot. Also ghosts. My Thoughts: Another banger with a great concept: what happens when one of those Scooby Doo Schemes has to run in perpetuity? Or runs into a REAL ghost. Granted the franchise had done the latter by Witch’s Ghost but still. The Pirate Captain is an instantly awesome addition to the cast, being uniquely hilarious for his bizzare life choice of being a scooby doo villian, pirate accent and genuine nature. His interactions with Dean are some of the funniest things here. Add in Brock teaching hank how to murder and Doc monloguing to himself while trying to grave rob and you have an all time great 7 seasons on. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 13. Robbing a man’s grave after his dad left the test plane down there out of respect for the dead. It says when Jonas “Take his friends corpse and make it a robot slave” Venture is more respectful of the dead than you. Best Moment: While Dean’s goofy “Maybe” when asked if he’s not a good liar nearly got it I have to give it to the entire sequence with the Action Man’s ghost, from it just shrieking a lot, to the “Your dead sweetie” conversation to the action man making it so much worse, all capping in Rusty being Scarred for life for the 99th time. One more and he gets a free sundae. Hanktastic: Hank whizzing off the deck while making weird sound effects. Questions For Later: We see our first glimpse of Old Team Venture... and our first indication the action man is an asshat. Deanarific: It could only be this exchange. Pirate Captain: Your not a very good liar are ye dean? Dean: (Goofily as shit) Mayyyybeeee First Appearance: The Pirate Captain, The Action Man, Kano, Col. Gentleman.

7. Ice Station Impossible

Summary: Dr. Venture and Conjectural Technologies get recruited for a think tank for Silver Age Reed Richard Richard Impossible Naturally Rusty has to deal with urine tests, degraded copies of the rest of the ff, a woman being intrested in him and said woman’s husband leaving him for dead. Meanwhile Hank gets conked with a super serum made by Impossible and Brock has to scramble to save him. Oh and some kids fiddle around with Race Bannnon’s corpse. My Thoughts: A decent ep, it mostly fumbles from the first fourth of Doc’s plot, where he mostly struggles with a urine test and not much happens that’s actually funny. It dosen’t help Pete and Billy still aren’t defined just yet and are just kinda there. It won’t be till later this season we actually figure out who the heck they are. The impossibles are a great addition to the venture verse though: Having their reed be the same smug, abusive, gaslighty dick he was early on because, while a loving husband, Stan Lee clearly had issues writing women, mostly with having Hank Pym and Reed Richards constantly rebuff their girlfriends and downplay their thoughts and feelings like condescending dicks while having the x-men all horn over poor jean grey a bunch. The boys take that and run with it, having Sally be desperate to escape while her reed is a smothering dick who keeps her hidden out of shame, mentally gaslights her, and tries to murder a guy for giving her the attention he won’t. The other deconstructions are more unique: having the torch not really be a character because his trait is constantly in pain from being constantly on fire, but without the powers johnny has to make tha tnot an issue, and Ned being entirely unique, being a mentally handicapped version of the thing whose in pain moving due to his mutation making him a callous instead of a golem. Ned is also surprisingly well treated for the time: Doc’s mom used to work with mentally disabled kids, so as such Ned is treated as a human and when someone calls him the r-word later on, their framed entirely as an asshole, as is richard for essentially penning up a disabled man. Despite the pain of his mutation ned is easily one of the nicest, sweetest characters in the venture verse and I honestly wish we saw more of him.

The Subplot here steals the show a bit, as Jackson got away with murdering race bannon and using his actual name. This would fade by season 3 as it was clear these werne’t just parodies but characters in the universe, and thus CN wasn’t comfortable with them outright using warped versions of the Johnny Quest characters. Still this marks a turning point: not only are our heroes a Johnny Quest parody on some level, but Johnny also lives in this world.. and as we’ll see next season when he debuts properly it hasn’t treated him well. But the kids playing around with Race’s spy gear, Hank’s slow death and dean panicking once he realizes his dad CAN’T fix this if they find him and their all going to die.. it’s all great.

Two more things ot note. One, Richard is played by Stephen Colbert, yes THE Stephen Colbert. Colbert is a perfect fit for Dr. Impossible, plays the guy to smary, clueless, abusive perfection, and is part of why the guy is so entertaining despite being a monster. Sadly Stevie would only hang around one more appearnce. It’s why Doctor Impossible only shows up ONCE in season 3, voiced by Chris, before returning in full in late season 4 voiced by THE Bill Hader. Colbert would return for the Gargantua Special which, for now, is Richard’s swan song, so it’s a fitting full circle thing. Richard is also the V-Bros character with the most va’s, clocking it at four (Chris’ brother peter voiced him in the pilot).

The other is that this has one of Rusty’s few shining moments early on. When Impossible wants to shoot Hank, Rusty steps in front of him. There’s no one else around at the time, Pete and Billy come in right after, he KNOWS the boys can be cloned.. but he steps in anyway when Hanks in real danger. It shows that while he hates his sons.. he DOES also love them somewhere deep down.

Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 17. First a minor one but having your kids piss in a bag to pass a drug test is pretty yikes. The major one though, which gets orphan heart level double points, is his treatment of sally. Shockingly i’m NOT putting him clearly wanting to sleep with Sally on the list. While yes she is cheating on her husband... her husband is an abusive, coldly distant dick who sees her as an embarrassment to hide due to a mutation HE CAUSED. She can’t leave him: he’s rich, powerful and at this point in the series lives in an arctic base away from anyone who could help her. So her wanting to sleep with the first man she finds attractive.. I can’t blame her. I can blame Rusty though for abandoning her. I get not wanting to escalate into a relationship with her but dude, you have room in the x1. Just take her and her family with you. Just up and ditching her. This also leads to a surprise count! Sucky Sampson: When Brock fucks up. In this case going with Doc’s plan. He also gets post added counts, since I came up with this on the fly, for Careers in Science (choking a man for touching him) and Terrible Secret (Leaving the boys to bang a prostitute) totaling up at 3. Best Moment: No contest. It’s when Brock arrives to get Impossible’s help only for Richard to assume “You just want to beat me up” He procedes to form weird boxing stances while stretching. Brock’s response is iconic to me, as is Warburton’s shouty, pitch perfect delivery.

Hanktastic: Once brock shoes off some local kids playing with Race Bannon’s dead body “Someone killed him” “Those kids? Dammit and we let them get away!” Deanarific: Dean’s utter faith in his father to fix this.. and his utter breakdown when it’s clear he can’t. Questions For Later: Introducing the Johnny Quest Cast in the first place. Also the pregnant stinger at the end... likely not INTENDED to be anything more than a cruel button on things, but it ends up being vital to the followup to this episode next season. First Appearance: Sally Impossible, Cody Impossible, Ned

8. Mid-Life Chrysalis: Super Good Award Winner!

Summary: A stop by the airforce leads to identity crisis for both the venture adults: Rusty is desperate to prove he’s still got it and goes out looking for women.. and finds Dr. Girlfriend who injects him with Science Juice and turns him into a caterpillar for her boyfriend. Brock meanwhile finds out his lisence to kill has expired and the boys rally to help him get it renewed. My Thoughts: The first ep Jackson and Doc did together and unlike other shuffling around with the episodes this one was intentional, wanting Brock’s badassery to be built up before i’ts yanked away. It’s also one of my personal favorites. The jokes are dense here, from “Eat eggs and crap eggs” to “What’s a matter you don’t like zep” , The runner with the strip club guy that pays off with brock shockingly NOT killing him , as he’ll return, but taking an eye. There’s too many gags here to mention and as I mentioned before Hank and dean truly come into their own. Doc’s plot is also fucking great, showing some humanity in Rusty by showing just how.. pathetic the poor guy is. He’s aging badly, his attempt to deal with it is to go out looking for women, I empathize with the guy... and thank god i’m not quite as bad or awkaard, but it’s one of the first times in the series Doc is nakedly sympathetic. It humanizes the bastard. Add in the Monarch’s awkard jealousy, and you have one of theseries best on Jackson and Doc’s FIRST try as a team. Good gravy. Winning best of the season... was a tough competition. Eeeny Meeny and Tag Sale both were serious competition.. but ultimately it’s character that wins this one out. We see Rusty in his most pathetic state, Dr. Girlfriend show she has a heart by refusing to let him turn into a butterfly monster, and Brock gets an excellent showcase. We see him vunerable for once, having lost everything.. and see how despite his attempts at distancing himself at this point... he’s truly PART of this family. The Boys put in a true effort to help him pass, and Brock apricates it even if he dosen’t show it. Seeing HELPR hug him was also really cute. The climax of his arc is also awesome, tanking the written by drawing icarus from Led Zeplin, but utterly decimating the fire arms course without taking a shot. Treister’s speech sums up what a legend Brock is.. and how it dosen’t phase the guy. Overall a deserving winner. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 20. Making change in a stripper’s G-String, they work hard for that money bitch, and bragging about his sex life while his kids are right there. The rest of his creepiness this episode is too pathetic to count honestly, though he gets one more for trying to make his robot nanny shoot him in the head. Best Moment: A fucking HARD choice. There’s so many great ones, from the montage to Brock’s return at the end. But I gotta give it to the reveal of Caterpillar rusty. Rusty’s summation of why he thinks this happened “I pissed in god’s eye and he blinked”, may be Rusty’s second best line, but Hanks lack of reactoin to it, from casually poking his dad to marveling at his shed skin is great, and truly defines the kid. Hanktastic: The aforementioned casual dad poking. Phrasing. Deanarific: Dean’s acting like your nerdiest high school friend helping Brock perpare for his test. Questions For Later: General Tresiter is mentioned, and once again a barely mentioned character becomes vitally important. But only this once does it result in us getting peak Toby Huss and that’s magic. The boys mom also gets brought up for the first time outside the pilot. This will be teased to all hell for the rest of the series till it’s shocking reveal at the end of the final season. First Appearance: Strip Club Guy

9. Are You There God? It’s Me, Dean Summary: Just as the Monarch is on the cusp of sweet victory in the amazon involving urethra fish and Grover Cleavland’s Presdential Time Machine, our heroes arching gets benched when Dean has testicular torsion. While Dean deals with the most embarrassing day of his life, Brock and Hank are kept as leverage and end up salvaging the Monarch’s birthday for the guy. My Thoughts: Another banger that plays to the series strengths: superhero cops and robbers being hit over the head by the needs of reality and beruarcy and some good old fashioned humiliation.

This results in two great plots: First off we have poor Dean put through the ringer, literally as his testicles twist and figuratively as he has to deal with a ton of embarrassment. While dickish as always, Doc’s integration on him, wondering if he put heroin in his balls and blaming Triana for it is fucking amazing for how utterly stupid it is. Things only improve when Doc’s forced to call an actual doctor (or his closest thing), giving Billy and White their first real adventure and setting up who they are: a sensitive opsitmstic guy who gets shit on by life and his snarky useless partner he keeps around anyway who reguarly bill their best friend and only client for money because Rusty has no other friends and this would be sad if it was anyone else they were bilking. We have Billy referring to himself as a “Boy genius” even though he’s like 40 (and it backfiring as Dean understandably didn’t want a child touching his nuts) and White’s usual criticism. But we also see that billy IS shockingly talented, easily solving Dean’s issue.

Really most of the humor in this one is from dean’s humiliation cumulating in the poor guy in a diaper while everyone, including Triana, lines up. For once though the two have something resembling a moment as she asks if this is the most humilating moment of his life showing evne if she dosen’t find dean attractive.. she still likes the guy. The answer: “Easily”

As for the other plot i’ts pure fun as the Monarch tries to impress his captives, from an attempted “I am your father” even hank dosen’t buy, to an attempted call. Brock however sympathizes with his captor and has some fun going on a rampage, which allows monarch to go full bore .. and both to have to cove rit up. The ending is also perfect with it being hank’s turn to get his nuts in a twist. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 21. The diaper thing is well meaning dad stuff, which is rare for him. But accusing Triana of being a drug addict for being a goth is so stupid it hurts. For one who is he to judge someone’s parenting and for another, if anyone would shoot drugs into their nuts it’d be hank and it’d be by accident and we both know it Rusty. he’d try throwing a needle like a long dark, it’d reflect, hit his junk. Sucky Sampson: We get our first peak into the worst part of Brock of Ages: His transphobia. Which is TRIED to be plied as a joke. He refuses to sleep with Dr. Girlfriend... because he thinks she’s trans, something played for LAUGHS. Good god. The guys REALLY need to apologize for this and shit we get to next time but in general the Dr. Girlfriend is trans LAUGH AT IT gag was really fucking bad and thankfully not used often apart from “She has a deep voice GET IT FELLAS”. It was also thankfully stamped out in Season 3 by explaining it by smoking so.. there’s that at least. Still fucking awful, 2 points sampson. 5. This Didn’t Age Well: GUESS. Also 2 points. 5. Best Moment: Doc’s resignation at the fact his teenage son say things like “My no no’s hurt” in front of other people was close. But I have to give it to the darth vader fakeout, from even HANK not buying it to the fact Monarch really dosen’t notice he dosen’t. Deantastic: Dean’s “easily” when Triana asks if this is the most humilating moment of it’s life. It’s one of the first small glances that dean is, and wants to be, the most “normal” of the group. Questions For Later: The Guild is properly set up for the first time. First Appearance: 21. SMURFS DON’T LAY EGGS.

10. Tag Sale- You’re It! Summary: Hard up for cash Rusty gets the OSI’s help in holding a Yard Sale to sell dangerous stuff his dad left behind, attracting every supervilian under the sun for the social event of the season. As Rusty tries to make a buck, Brock sweats security, Hank starts a grinder empire to make his own cash, Dr. O window shops for an archenemy, 21 wastes a lot of money and the Monarch grapples with difficulty arching and taking a dump. My Thoughts: An all time favorite and the episode that launched easily my favorite type of venture bro episode, which I call the tag sale ep. It’s one where a large amount of the cast gathers in one place to hang out, shenanigans happen, and their easily some of the best in the series. Almost every season has one and the first set the high standard for the others to follow. It also set the standard of their being a plot.. but a lot of the ep just being the characters own subplots going on. Rusty tries to make money, Brock is rightfully antsy this thing is going to explode, 21 and 24 try shopping, The Monarch tries to take a dump before it dovetails into trying to get his mojo back, and Hank enters legend. All fun stuff that comes together for a terrific climax.

Speaking of Hank, Hank is at his peak here. As I mentioned earlier he could’ve jsut sold lemonade or sammichs.. but chose specifically to set up a grinder restraunt, set it up with specific branding and then treat his sandwitch and sugar water stand like a real business. If previous eps poked and prodded at the real hank, this one yanks him all the way out.

Aside from that the episode is packed with classic moments: Dr. O’s self promotion, “Girlie Mags”, “I used to dream of taking a whiz on this”, and 21′s humilating lightsaber incident that gets a great callback later. All in all the ep i’d recommend to get people into the show Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 22. Just some petty dickery this time of trying to sell Dr. O’s weed wacker and the boys stuff without permission. The Tag Sale is honestly one of his better schemes, only backfiring due to outside forces and even then, the ensuing brawl is no worse than usual. Rusty makes it out of the chaos with a pocket full of money, as do Team Hankco presumibly. And he didn’t have to use an orphan’s heart to do it this time.

Best Moment:Another hard decision, but I have to go with Hankco as a whole. Not really moment but easily one of Hanks finest hours. Hanktastic:Hankco. True hank has emerged from his coocoon. Deantastic: The very reason I went back and added these: Dean playing with his mr. microphone. just that head bob, you can’t help but love it. Questions For Later: Dr. Girlfriend’s history with Phantom Limb is set up for the final two eps and next season, we see St. Cloud LONNNNG before he became an actual charcter, Dr. O’s desire for an arc is seeded, and Hankco first shows up, becoming one of Hank’s running things for the rest o fthe series. First Appearance: Phantom Limb, St. Cloud, Plug Guy, That one ghost dude, and Hankco.

11. Past Tense (Pissed in God’s Eye Award Winner)

Summary: Rusty’s college days are explored as we find out Rusty, White, Brock, Underbeit and even the Monarch all went to school together.. and the former four all tormented the same former friend whose seeking revenge from beyond the dead, kidnapping our “heroes”. It leaves Hank and Dean scrambling for help and turning to the original team venture to set things right. My Thoughts: When I went into the season, I honestly thought Home Insecurity or Brisby would easily take the crown for worst ep. But both ended up being good. No the crown goes to an ep that like those I didn’t like when I was younger.. and unlike those still sucks horribly today. Our inagural pissed in god’s eye winner is just a miserable trek. It start’s okay, with Hank boggling at how interconnected venture’s circle is.. but it slowly becomes a parade of flashbacks to Rusty, Pete and Verner making Mike Soryama, based on Mike Yamagata from fargo down to getting the other mike’s actor, miserable. They give the guy oregano that nearly kills him, Pete talks about mike masturbating to his crush on air (Though it did get his show canceled so.. ther’es some justice nit hew orld), Rusty fucked a golem of her in dad (And somehow for once isn’t the worst one here as Mike making an OP golem of his crush is all kinds of creepy), and Brock beat all of them to hell and gets no commpuance for it, also beating up old team venture. The fact Mike himself is a creepy stalker towards Leslie dosen’t help, having gotten himself a restraining order and built creepy sex bots of her. Even I, a guy whose screwed up plenty coming on too strong to women in the past, am horrified at him.

The Subplot is fine though, properly introducing old team venture even if Poor Otto barely appears after this. But it can’t save the plot and even with what dicks they turn out to be, brock beating them up is still needelsly mean spirited. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: 24. Again the DnD thing isn’t that bad, creepy and mean yes but no more creepy than making a golem of someone you have a crush on in a fantasy game. But his laughing at Pete’s bullshit and willingly particpating in the cloves prank, even given how young Doc was at the time, still count. Sucky Sampson: We’re up to 7. His brutal beating of our heroes over his loosing his scholarship after his tragic muder of his deaf teammate Tommy (not counted here or before because it was a genine tragic mistake that still haunts the guy) and in the present of Old Team Venture easily count as some of Brocks Lowest Points. Best Moment: “2 years, 3 months and 17 days” “from what?” “A stroke. Goddamn dr.O. Questions for Later: The Stroke pays off in the last season. First Appearance: Otto Aquarius

12. The Trial of the Monarch

Summary: The Monarch goes on trial for murder with Doc gladly sitting in... but brock notices the guild’s fingerprints all over it as the Monarch airs his messy breakup with dr. girlfriend and Phantom Limb plots to get rid of the competition. My Thoughts: A fan favorite that I think is just fine. That said, I can’t ignore that it’s a watershed episode. The Guild is finally revealed in all it’s shadowy glory, setting up one of the most important part sof the entire series. Phantom Limb makes his move, and we get the start of our first Monarch story arc as the guild sends our villain up the river, Dr. Girlfriend goes back to phantom limb, and the status quo is changed for good. From this point on nothing is set in stone and anything can happen and the show gleefully and slowly progresses, with at least one major shakeup like this at the end of every season. And it’s not the only one but give it a minute. Packed with solid jokes, worldbuilding, and charcter stuff, this is the show finally having crystalized into what it was alwasy meant to be: a show full of parody but taking it’s characters beyond their basic premises into fully fleshed out fully sad indivduals. Best Moment: The Cold Open easy. It’s why I didn’t bring it up sooner. It’s a lovely peak into the boys heads, from the fact Hank, Dean and Brock are suddenly Indiana Jones, Magnum PI and Knight Rider, a treasure filled with craft suplies, the monarch feeding orphans to mutant puppies, and of course Mecha Shiva. The fact the boys apparently GENINELY think that they once turned into a mecha shiva gets me every time. I don’t think it was lies or inetnional embleshiment, that’s just how they saw the world. And honestly, how hank still sees it. Hanktastic: Brock sums up our boy in one perfect line “It’s like he channels dead crazy people”. Hank’s earnest response is what really sells it though. Questions For Later: We get our first mentions of Monstroso, who ill be brought up a lot in the background at this point. The fact they made him a genuinely interesting character later and not only that but made TWO excellent kingpin analogues is fantastic. First Appearance: Watch and Ward, The Strangers

13. Return to Spider-Skull Island

Summary: Doc’s weird dreams all season i’m only bringing up now cumilate in the brother he absorbed in the womb coming back for revenge(Charles Xavier knows how you feel man), the boys thinking he’s pregnant and super running away, and the Monarch giving the best scared straight lecture of all time. My Thoughts: The first finale and while the next 3 would blow it out of the water, it set the foundation of how the series went out each year at it’s best: big stakes, payoffs and a total flipping of the game board for next time. Only seasons 5 and 6 don’t follow this and given their easily the weaker finales, with the following special and season premering three parter functioning as the actual payoff to those seasons, it’s not a GOOD thing. That loose famework is what works here: Doc’s pit up against someone who knows him inside and out, brock’s strapped to a car while dressed as rocky and the boys get blowed up real good. They’ll be fine once ressurectoin protocols kick in. The jokes and character stuff is great here: Joke wise while the boys thinking their dad is pregnant is pretty stupid, the boys going on the run and dr. o following them as their non embarassing guardian angel is nice and leads to Dr. O trapping too rednecks in a homeboy figurine, easily his best line. Character wise Rusty once again shows there’s SOME good in him by refusing to let brock kill JJ. Given how bitter and quick to go for an easy solution the guy is, NOT letting brock hurt someone who already tried to kill him is big and pays off karmically down the road. Add in some truly wonderful prison antics with the monarch and you have a classic that would’ve made a great series finale... but thankfully it was only the beginning.

Best Moment: The Monarch in jail. Everything about that. His endlessly chuckle inducing scared straight rant “your diherrha in a dixie cup” and his frustration when the boys keep taking his attempts to set them straight literally “They’ll chew you up and spit you out.. and I don’t mean mechamouth hank” Questions For Later: We get our first mention of Captain Sunshine and WONDERRR BOYYY. We still don’t know what the hell happened there. First Appearance: Jonas Venture Junior

C. A Very Venture Christmas Summary/Thoughts: Really should’ve got to this by christmas but here we are. Our last ep for this one. The Ventures throw a christmas party for all their friends and the Monarch plans to blow him up with the baby jesus, while the boys unleash the Krampus. Call Adam Scott! It’s not one of the series BEST outings but it’s a passable christmas special with some good moments. It’s also apparently a dream but also canon. I see it as the party happened, doc and fam got called away, the crash happened, and doc was remebering the party minus the krampus and the explosion actually working in the dream. Rusty Sucks Surprising No One: Responding to having personal growth in his dream with ‘Thank god i’m not a pussy” 25 to close us out. Best Moment: “No one wants a dean in the box!” Hanktastic: First Appearance: Tiny Joseph.

In Closing: So that wraps up our first season. Will the boys come back from the dead, will the monarch be stuck in folsom prison, how will doc grapple with a new brother? The answers... are yes, no, and poorly what else is new. Find out how next month!

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