TV Review – The Venture Brothers Season Four

The Venture Brothers Season Four (Adult Swim)
Written by Doc Hammer & Jackson Publick
Directed by Jackson Publick

The Venture Brothers is a show that still needs to improve its representation at the end of its fourth season (please stop using the r-word), but damn if this wasn’t the best run of episodes so far. The season finale clearly had more production value & time put into the animation, showcasing a level of craft that makes the pilot look like a parody. The cast has also bloomed this season, with Jackson Publick & Doc Hammer finally finding that perfect balance of the Venture family and their supporting players. I will even admit that the final moment at the boys’ homeschool prom got me teary-eyed as Brock looked at this found family. And this is just the halfway point in the overall series.

Hank & Dean get the spotlight once again after a third season where they were often background players. Due to the destruction of the clone banks, these are the boys’ last lives, so Doc doesn’t take them adventuring much this season. The focus is instead on moving from teenage boys to young men. They are both seventeen, and their character designs are altered to reflect that. Dean is taller than Doc Venture now and sports the thin wisps of a mustache. Hank lets his hair grow out and spends the first half of the season wearing one of Brock’s jackets he left behind. Their stories often center on experiences of growing up they failed to have due to their “untraditional” life. Is Doc repeating the same mistakes his own father made? Sort of. But he has a greater awareness, and the show is slowly unfolding how he’s trying to not make those same mistakes.

Dean is expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a superscientist. He protests weakly; the boy’s dream is to be a reporter. This leads to “Bright Lights, Dean City,” where the young man gets an internship at Impossible Industries. This comes on the heels of Phantom Limb’s re-emergence, first as the villainous Revenge and then in forming The Revenge Society. Dr. Impossible has joined the baddies but is keeping that secret for now. Poor Dean is stuck doing all the expected duties & more of an intern, not knowing, until the end, that he’s working for the bad guys. If that wasn’t bad enough, Doc shows up after catching the Broadway bug when he dropped Dean off, becoming an unwanted roommate while trying to break it big on the Great White Way.

Hank spends his summer hanging around the compound, told to get a job. Instead, he turns the airplane hanger into a HankCo store where he sells groceries (reselling stuff he finds around the house), provides banking & notary services, and moonlighting as a private eye. That last job reveals the truth behind his best buddy, Dermott Fictel. We’ve assumed Dermott was a love child of Brock’s the whole time, but the story gets a lot more twisty than that. Hank eventually loses his virginity but, due to the circumstances around the event, has to have his memory wiped, but not before secretly recording a message on his wrist communicator so he can remind himself.

Brock starts the season by leaving, only to get caught up in a situation that sees him joining Hunter Gathers’ reformed SPHINX. The former bodyguard pops up throughout the season, often in his own side stories, but eventually, it’s discovered that SPHINX has been operating out of a derelict building on the Venture property. They keep memory-wiping the boys; however, they keep rediscovering the base. Replacing Brock as the Venture protector is Sergeant Hatred. I find Hatred to be a mixed bag, and I suspect fans probably have extreme opinions about him as well. The show makes light of him being a pedophile (he’s reformed and on meds), but I didn’t find those jokes particularly funny. Hatred is a more interesting character when he’s simply being insecure because it contrasts him with Brock in that way. It also doesn’t help that pedophilia was a source of several jokes this season, including when Hank gets kidnapped by the Batman/Superman-analogue Captain Sunshine.

The character on the villain’s side who has the most significant transformation in season four is Henchman 21. His best friend, 24, is dead after the events of the season three finale. However, 21 has hallucinations where he thinks he’s speaking to his deceased friend. The henchman also has a growing attraction to Dr. Mrs. Monarch and a general malaise over his life going nowhere with this job. 21 takes up a more comic book-edgy appearance with retractable blades in his gloves, and he exudes more confidence and character complexity than just being a nerdy guy. By the end of season four, he seems set on a brand new journey, and I’m curious to see where he ends up when the series concludes. I can’t imagine him ever returning to be a henchman for The Monarch unless something drastically changes.

Billy Quizboy and Jack White are promoted to regular cast members, seeming to pop up in every episode. We get more of Doctor Orpheus and his Triad. Shore Leave, formerly of OSI and now SPHINX, gets much more screen time. The world, in general, continues to be expanded, and familiar characters are given more depth. Even poor King Gorilla receives an early release from prison due to his cancer and dies. By the time we get to the season finale, “Operation PROM,” we have this incredible cast who we’ve come to know as multi-dimensional figures. Hence, it’s a beautiful moment when Brock pauses at the hangar’s door, and we cut to his perspective, scanning these people as Pulp’s “Like A Friend” plays. It’s immediately followed by comic mayhem, but for that brief minute, I realized just how beautifully & organically the characters & their relationships on this show have been developed.

I’m ready to see what season five has in store.