Brian has made no secret of his love for Community, and when it comes to The Venture Bros. I can’t help myself either. It’s always been my private joy, a show that I’ve introduced others to, but have never really debriefed with them about how clever, crazy or hilarious it is. It’s always reminded me of hanging out with my smarter (than me, not the friends I have now), geekier friends back in the day, immersed in esoteric pop-culture jokes that would have left the high school lunchtime smoking door crowd scratching their heads. I think that you could argue that the higher your nerd quotient, the funnier this show gets. In that sense I supposed it makes for a good Poindexter litmus test.
Anyways, I finally had an opportunity to check out the second half of season 4 and while I sincerely hope that it’s not the last we’ve heard from the Venture clan, it’s not just because I’m a fan. As the series has grown and evolved over the past 4 years new characters have been introduced to fill out some of the background and help tell new stories. And as those characters have had more time on the vine to ripen, they’ve been getting juicier roles in episodes at the cost of pushing the main characters to the periphery. Perhaps the new crop offered the writers a better opportunity to them living vicariously through – particularly Pete White and Billy Quizboy. Not that I think there’s anything wrong with that in principle, it helps give the show a greater sense of depth. But as what had been rumoured to be the last season starts winding down, I don’t think they should be devoting so much time to characters other than the ones the writers have spent 4 years getting us invested in. It’s not that there was anything wrong with the character arcs they chose to focus on, there are just some core questions that need to be addressed before this awesome show draws to a close. Like, what’s the Monarch’s freakin problem with Dr. Venture? Who is Dean & Hank’s mother? What the heck happened to Jonas Venture?
So while my love for this show remains just as strong, I’d really like it to come back for another season so they can make up for the lackluster job they did wrapping everything up. So this love of mine is tempered with a certain amount of disdain – like any fanboy’s would be.
