The Venture Bros. – The epic season four came to an end this week with a one-hour finale, the longest original episode of anything that Adult Swim has ever seen. We’ll have more to say in next week’s two-part Dossier, but for now it’s just worth noting that the season finale was fantastic. Ostensibly, it was about Hank and Dean’s high Senior Prom (even though their “school” was a series of subliminal lessons piped into their brains while they slept), but it ended up resolving virtually every subplot and offhand reference from the entire season. Season Four was an amazing example of how to structure a season, with everything from Molotov Cocktease’s mysterious motives in the premiere to the strangely designed mountain road outside the Venture compound all paying off in the end. But it wasn’t just a continuity-fest – by turns it was hilarious (Hank and the postal worker), heartbreaking (21’s meltdown), and exciting (we got the big Brock Samson action sequence we’ve wanted all season, and it was awesome). With most of the recurring characters turning up in one form or another, it was the perfect way to wrap a really groundbreaking season. It really felt like the characters grew and changed this year and Season Five, whenever it gets here, will bring us a very different look at the Venture Universe. It was beautiful work all around.
