Superhero Media: The Venture Bros. - Season 4

You know The Venture Bros. has you hooked partway through the fourth season when, Sergeant Hatred, a reformed villain and recovering pedophile, is the emotional centre of an episode. By the time the season closes, with Brock running against the clock to prevent the death of his surrogate family, The Venture Bros. is no longer just clever and funny, it's somehow one of the best series on television. No, really. The same progamme, the same episode, that features a wonderfully gross running gag about what a sex move called a "Rusty Venture" is, brings together the core cast in a way that would define the next few seasons, and is genuinely heartwarming as mutated fly-women vomit acid on everyone. The first episode of season four is a time-jumping soft reboot in which the cast are reshuffled into new roles whilst a group of Nazis are trying to get Doc to extract Hitler's DNA from a dog and clone them a baby Hitler. If any of that throws you off, then how did you even get this far? 

For those handful of tragic nerds that read my blog, season four of The Venture Bros. gets the deep lore going with a look back at the formation of The Guild of Calamitous Intent, as well as expanding the origins of several characters, slowly peeling back some of the layers of mystery that exist in the setting. However, by far the best decision Doc Hammer and Christopher McCulloch made with this season was increasing the role of Shore Leave, a one-joke character of cringy gay stereotypes that is somehow the funniest person in every scene he's in; even if his only line is "Sphinx!" Part of it is the vocal talent of Doc Hammer pushing into almost offensive territory, only to loop back to pastiche and that many of the "worst" lines are delivered whilst the character is blowing away ranks of goons. Interviews with the writers tend to indicate that a lot of the script is improvised, and watching some of the ensemble scenes, I can believe it, but it really works because McCulloch and Hammer are so in-sync creatively that everything fits together, even the conversations about how "sad" a stripper's breasts are. 

Are you watching this series yet? Seriously, get on it, the DVDs are pretty affordable and it pops up on AppleTV every now and then. I'm starting to lose track of how many friends I've induced into The Venture Bros. fandom by slipping it on at the end of a Movie Night or as a party was winding down, even when I jumped in mid-season and spent the next hour explaining to drunk people why Captain Sunshine's butler was asking Hank to smear lube on his thighs and buttocks. In many ways, The Venture Bros. is the victim of timing, being a little too early for the streaming boom and too late for 1990s late-night cult animation. Trust me, if the programme was on Netflix and tagged in suggestions for people watching Rick and Morty, it would be huge. So until such time as The Venture Bros. gets the love it deserves, get those DVDs, block out a weekend and take a journey into the ever strange, sometimes repulsive, but always compelling world of Hank and Dean. There are no apologies for being what it is or how good it is, so it's only fitting that the last words of this season are "Fuck you!"