TV Review – The Venture Brothers Season Seven

The Venture Brothers Season Seven (Adult Swim)
Written by Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer
Directed by Juno Lee

The core theme rippling throughout The Venture Brothers has been fathers & sons. This is seen in multiple relationships in the series. There is Rusty Venture and his deceased dad, Dr. Jonas Venture. There’s Hank and Dean in relation to their father. There were more on the edges of the show: Brock’s paternal relationship with Hunter Gathers, Sergeant Hatred’s desperation to be seen as a father figure, and Billy Quizboy having to accept Action Man as his potential stepfather. But that first dynamic, the one between former child adventurer Rusty and his deeply toxic father, was the fuel for this show. With Venture Brothers Season Seven, we open on a three-parter that finally brings closure to that arc.

Doing some retconning, we learn that before his untimely demise, J.J. Venture uncovered PROBLEM, the super-computer onboard the destroyed Gargantua-1 space station. The PROBLEM computer has been placed in VenTech Tower and has consumed the life energy of cockroaches and rats, eventually becoming powerful enough to take over the building’s systems. Doctor Orpheus and the Triad are brought in when Rusty suspects demonic possession, but eventually, it’s revealed that the computer contains the head of Jonas Venture, still alive in a type of psychosis after all these years.

These first three episodes are essentially a Venture Brothers movie, a tradition Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer would pull off with various season finales and specials over the years. Despite starting in a short format, the Venture Brothers does translate to longer-form stories quite well, especially with the amount of worldbuilding done over seven seasons. While Rusty is dealing with his dead father, there are other subplots, like Monarch (as Blue Morpho), being caught and tortured by Wide Wale. There are the ongoing politics of the reformed Guild of Calamitous Intent, which Dr. Mrs. Monarch is constantly dealing with. 

By the end of this feature-length story, we learn much more about the parentage of Rusty and the Monarch. These new details set up a season-long arc that culminates in the series finale movie, but we’ll talk about that more in a few days. There are callbacks in season seven that go back to the first season, pick up on plot lines along the way, and tie it together beautifully. 

When you look at the first season of this show and the final season, it is astonishing how much growth occurred. It’s a rare instance of a show getting better and better with each season. I don’t think any season was worse than the one before; it was only better. Publick and Hammer care a lot about this world, and as budgets increased, they were able to create characters and stories that really endeared these fictional people to me. 

What I see the creators doing very well is taking silly cliches (Hank and Dean’s corniness & The Monarch’s hatred of Rusty) and diving deep, exploring these ideas as set-ups for jokes and as a means for character development. Dean Venture’s arc over these seven seasons is remarkable, from an anxious, naive kid to someone coming into their own. He doesn’t just want to follow in his father’s footsteps and is willing to speak up for himself. His emo phase in season five was fantastic, but that softened as he matured. Like in real life, we eventually must learn how to live with others & process our anger. I also loved that this season ended in a manner that showed how Dean is still flawed and can make huge mistakes.

After that initial three-part opener, we get some solid one-off episodes that still build on many of these as subplots. The Monarch and 21 continue to struggle with being demoted within the Guild and earning their way back in. This intersects with Dean’s storyline as he’s taking classes with Hank’s girlfriend, Sirena, with hints that there is some major trouble for the brothers in the form of a love triangle. There’s a great return to the ruins of the Venture Compound wherein The Guild and OSI negotiate their treaty with Rusty serving as the emcee. This also allows a return of Dermot Fictel and the continuation of a side plot involving a secret romance between an OSI soldier and a Guild agent.

We get a heist episode where Monarch teams up with the Dean Martin soundalike Copycat to steal teleporters from VenTech Tower. There’s another where the members of the Guild Council must have their last confrontation with each of their arches as the new bylaws mandate they give up that part of their career now. That leads to many worldbuilding and character developments of people like Phantom Limb and the duo of Red Mantle and Dragoon. There’s plenty of comedy to be found for The Radical Left this season, previously a throwaway joke villain. Monarch and 21 get sent on a special mission to stop a villain who has collected lost artifacts, including a weather satellite that is fucking things up in New York City.

With each new season of this show, the creators found ways to inject it with something new. And so, with season seven over, they began to work on season eight. However, after 81 episodes and four specials, Jackson Publick tweeted on 7 September 2020 that Adult Swim had canceled the series. What had already been written would be repurposed for one last go, a direct-to-video movie that would celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Venture Brothers and serve as a farewell – Radiant Is the