Now that the dust has settled, we can assess Season Four of Venture Bros. like reasonable adults, rather than occasionally screaming out “Awesome!” and high-fiving. There’s still going to be some of that, of course. That’s to be expected. This was a season that opened with some of the most innovative storytelling on TV and closed with an episode that pulled together a whole season and brought several characters to real, irrevocable turning points.
This was an odd season – Brock Samson was absent for six straight episodes in the first half (which ran last year), and in the second half, the Monarch made surprisingly few appearances. Still, that’s in keeping with Venture tradition. Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have never been afraid to upend the status quo. There really aren’t that many episodes where Doc, Brock, and the boys go out on adventure. There are more episodes about what happens to them on the way home from an adventure, or what happened in between expeditions. Still, this is a show where the first season ended with the title characters getting shot in the face. There’s no such thing as a default setting in the Venture-verse.
