TV Review – The Venture Brothers Season One

The Venture Brothers Season One (Adult Swim)
Written by Jackson Publick, Doc Hammer, and Ben Edlund
Directed by Jackson Publick

In the early days of Adult Swim, it was always a surprise to see what would pop up beside the standards like Space Ghost, The Brak Show, and Aqua Team Hunger Force. One of these surprises was a one-off pilot for The Venture Brothers in 2002. The show combined elements of Jonny Quest and The Hardy Boys to make a spoof of both these shows and their associated genres. The Venture Brothers would run for seven irregularly scheduled seasons and recently culminated with a streaming film on Max that serves as a series finale. It has been about a decade since I last watched the show, so I decided to go back to the beginning to revisit familiar episodes and see where the series went after I moved on to other things.

Dr. Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture (James Urbaniak) is the son of the late great Dr. Venture Sr. He is profoundly underachieving and unethical when it comes to promoting himself and ensuring he can continue to live in comfort as a nepo baby. He usually takes on jobs that keep the lights on or tries to salvage money from his father’s old projects. Bodyguard Brock Samson (Patrick Warburton) is consistently by his side, a former special agent with the Office of Secret Intelligence (OSI). Brock has sex with many different women and is a stereotypical portrayal of a standard pulp action hero. And then there’s Hank and Dean Venture (Jackson Publick & Peter Sinterniklaas), the dim-witted but well-meaning sons of Dr. Venture. Hank sees himself as more worldly-wise than he actually is and is prone to pushing back against the rules. Meanwhile, Dean often believes that doing what’s right is the correct course of action though he is spurred to rebel along the way.

Plaguing Team Venture at every turn, though often they don’t seem to notice, is The Monarch (Jackson Publick, again), a butterfly-themed megalomaniac who lives in a giant floating cocoon. He’s flanked by his seemingly infinite butterfly henchman and his loyal but unsatisfied Doctor Girlfriend (Doc Hammer). Other villains show up in this first season, such as Baron Ünderbheit (an obvious pastiche of Doctor Doom), Phantom Limb, and other members of The Guild of Calamitous Intent. There are other one-off villains here and there, but the tone is always irreverent, and rarely are we meant to take the threats of these bad guys too seriously.

The humor here is most reminiscent of Fox Kids’ The Tick, which makes sense as Jackson Publick was a writer on that show, and Tick creator Bed Edlund even lent a hand on a script early in season one. Where much of adult animated comedy relies on references (see Family Guy, Robot Chicken), Venture Brothers does reference genre tropes but not specific characters. For instance, Brock goes on a weekend vacation in the mountains only to meet Steve Summer, a bionic man, and his lover, The Sasquatch. This refers to a specific episode of Six Million Dollar Man, which is about as direct as The Venture Brothers gets. Otherwise, it’s just poking fun at the types of stories you find in comic books and pulp media. You can enjoy the Venture Brothers without seeing all these things; the humor still hits because it is centered on characters and situations rather than your ability to catch a nod to some other film or show.

One of season one’s best episodes is “Tag Sale, You’re It,” where Doc Venture decides to have a yard sale and unload many of his super science gadgets and household knick-knacks. Someone like him cannot have a regular yard sale, and OSI sends agents in to act as security. Villains are allowed on the property if they don’t cause any mayhem. The Monarch and Doctor Girlfriend show up and have fun, but the episode explores their deteriorating relationship. Doc Girlfriend was initially attracted to the Monarch because of his passion for being a nemesis to Venture. That luster has faded as the years have passed, and now they are settling into a routine. The episode is peppered with tons of visually interesting background characters who make up the customers. Dean & Hank have a subplot about selling lemonade and hoagies that is quite funny and plays up Hank’s runaway imagination.

Another fantastic episode is “Ghosts of the Sargasso,” where Doc brings the team to the Bermuda Triangle, where he hopes to recover an experimental spacecraft his father built and lost. While Doc trawls the depths in a unique underwater suit, Brock and the boys get ambushed by ghost pirates. They turn out to be living pirates who pretend to be ghosts and are stuck there because their boat no longer works. A recurring gag involves the pirates using what they plundered from a cargo ship moving products for Toys R Us. The show’s cold open introduces the original Team Venture, Doc Venture Sr, and some of his associates, who become recurring characters and are hilarious homages to a host of archetypes. That cold open also contains a direct reference to David Bowie, someone the creators are huge fans of, and he even shows up in season two as a character within the series.

The front half of season one is the weakest part of the series. You can see Publick and Hammer trying to figure out what kind of a show they want to make, how close to hew to the media they are parodying, and when to move away and do their own thing. Thankfully, they come to settle on the latter in the second half, where the season’s best episodes are. We even get a season finale that is one of the best, Hank & Dean running away from home while Doc Venture deals with a figure from his past. I picked up on some choices made in the writing that didn’t sit well for me now. There is frequent use of the word “retarded” as a derogatory term. I’m willing to bet that as the series goes on, they will become more aware of inappropriate things like that. There are some racial stereotypes early on, nothing egregious, but it hasn’t aged well. If you are new to Venture Brothers, those are some things to be aware of. I’m interested to see how the creators evolve in being more sensitive to those things as the show progresses while still finding humor in the silliness of the setting.