Venture Brothers Season 3 DVD Review
Adult Swim's Late-Night Parody Cartoon Comes to DVD and Blu-Ray
May 15, 2009
The third season of Adult Swim’s parody of Johnny Quest, Marvel Comics, G.I. Joe, and everything else from the ’60s onward has come to DVD and Blu-Ray. It’s the perfect time to jump … well, actually it’s not a good time to jump on the bandwagon, at least without some confusion.
Super-science 101
The Venture Brothers takes place in a world where the marvels promised by the Space Age fall flat and the New Frontier never pans out. Hardy Boy-types Hank and Dean Venture are clueless boy adventurers who are inept at even staying alive. They live with their father Doctor Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture and bodyguard Brock Samson. Once a boy adventurer himself, Rusty lives in the shadow of his famous super-scientist father, eking out a living repurposing his father’s inventions and taking pills. Brock is both a violent secret agent and the father to the boys that Rusty never was. They face off against The Monarch, a butterfly-themed villain who has constant relationship problems with his now-wife, the manish-voiced Doctor Girlfriend.
The realistic approach to corny adventure cartoons is both tragic and hilarious, and series creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer make insert everything from Henry Kissinger to dugongs into the mix. Simpsons fans who break out a DVR to catch all the references will have a field day here. The ‘60s art style makes the show visually impressive, with Season Three marking the first time the show was produced in HD quality.
“What do you remember?” “Everything.”
After addressing Season 2’s cliffhanger, The Monarch and Doctor Girlfriend (now “Doctor Mrs. The Monarch”) adjust to wedded life in a super-villain gated community, where he struggles to comply with orders by the bureaucratic Guild of Calamitous Intent to not pursue the Ventures. Meanwhile, viewers learn more about the less-glamorous aspects of Rusty’s father as Hank and Dean grow up and apart.
Thrown into the mix are the Ventures’ new Guild-sponsored antagonist, former pedophile Sergeant Hatred, and enemies and allies from Brock’s employer the Office of Secret Intelligence. And that’s not counting Monarch Henchmen 21 and 24, Dr. Orpheus and the Order of the Triad, Pete White and Billy Quizboy, Jonas Venture Jr., Phantom Limb, the 1960s Team Venture, Colonel Hunter-Gathers, Molotov Cocktease, and the Murderous Moppets.
Venture Brothers Season Three Not for Newbies
As it can probably be guessed, with so many background characters and plot points Season 3 isn’t the most newbie-friendly starting point. A third season gives a certain amount of freedom to explain background information that wouldn’t be tolerated earlier, which is used to full extent. While there’s nothing immediately confusing about the show’s premise because nearly everything is a pastiche of another pop-culture property, some jokes and plot points can be lost in this season without knowing the show’s continuity. Then again, in the age of Wikipedia it’s hard to fault a show for a lack of accessibility.
However, series regulars might also find the background exploration dull. Two early episodes are almost entirely flashbacks, and every episode deals with the series backstory in some way. Of course, the entire series is about dealing with the past, but since so many events were hinted at the first two seasons seeing those events occur isn’t always necessary. The flashback episode “The Invisible Hand of Fate” is probably the worst offender: How Billy Quizboy lost his hand and how Phantom Limb got his powers have already been discussed in Season 2, and the ambiguous resolution is arguably better than the definitive answer here, awesome OSI theme song be damned.
Special Features
Publick and Hammer perform commentary on every episode, discussing the show’s production, comic conventions, and spoiling the season finale whenever possible. For the first time the episodes are uncensored, and a selection of deleted scenes is on the second disc.
The Venture Brothers is probably the only series where DVD packaging is a valid talking point. The third season comes in an Atari-inspired casing with ’80s video game box art with vintage creases and wrinkles. Even the DVDs menus are decorated with blocky 2D animations and bleeps for ambience.
