Unfiltered Smoke

Why The Venture Brothers is the smartest show on television.

by Matt Jones

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If there’s one thing we can all relate to, it’s failure.

Admit it. We’re all failures in our own way. Maybe it’s failure as an employee, an employer, as a parent, as a lover, or just as a decent person who doesn’t do bad things. We have all tasted the bitter tang of just not being good enough, or being so blinded by the defenses we’ve erected that we never try. Let’s blame it on something external, or maybe someone specific. It’s all their fault. It’s something that is universal to us all.

And The Venture Brothers, an animated comedy/adventure show in its fourth season, is a study in failure. “Beautiful sublime failure,” said Doc Hammer, one of the two driving forces behind the show. His partner, Jackson Publick expanded on this thought.

“If you’ll permit me to get ‘big picture,’ this show is actually all about failure. Even in the design, everything is supposed to be kinda the death of the space-age dream world. The death of the jet-age promises.”

And indeed, there have been many promises. Fiction writers throughout the years dreamed of the world of tomorrow and promised a glittering future of pristine efficiency: flying cars, holograms everywhere, the whole deal. Back in the post-WWII years, when atomic power was young, technology was advancing quicker than ever before. No wonder we expected so much by the year 2000. Unfortunately, the future hasn’t lived up to our past dreams. There is a yawning chasm of failure between what we expected civilization to be like now, and what it actually is. The Venture Brothers exists within that chasm; it exists in the comparison between the fabulous dreams of fiction and dismal existence of reality.

We can learn more about the show from its primary inspiration. Jonny Quest began as an attempt to bring high-tech, globetrotting adventure like James Bond’s “Dr. No” to an animated program. The idea developed into a simple format: the boy adventurer. Jonny Quest is the son of the esteemed scientist Dr. Benton Quest. As such, Dr. Quest pursued many an adventure in the name of science. Thus, his son found himself in a new dangerous and exciting situation every week. With the help of his stereotypical friend from Calcutta, Hadji, and his father’s bodyguard, Race Bannon, the “family” escaped death and weirdness on a regular basis. The show was also infamous for its violent content, with many on-screen deaths.

Enter Jackson Publick. Presumably a fan of Jonny Quest (or at the very least, familiar with the show’s conventions), Publick may have asked a logical question: what would a childhood like that do to someone? What psychological issues would plague someone who spent their youth in the shadow of a brilliant scientist, while being dragged to windswept corners of the earth by that same scientist and getting shot at by frog men and kidnapped by Incan blood cults on a regular basis? What would Jonny Quest be like as an adult?

He might be a lot like Thaddeus “Rusty” Venture, the son of the renowned Dr. Jonas Venture. With the same basic back-story as Jonny Quest, we meet up with Rusty as an adult. His father is long dead and his days as a boy adventurer a distant memory. Now a super-scientist himself, he has cracked under the pressure of trying to live up to his father’s legacy. He’s compensated for his childhood trauma with a pill addiction, rarely applies himself fully and when he does, his motivation is generally financial (he has sold off many of his father’s old inventions over the years, literally giving away his father’s legacy for a quick buck). He lacks in morality and basic decency, perhaps desensitized by a childhood spent watching frog men’s heads explode.

Interestingly, when the show finally went into development on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block, the creators found themselves with access to old Hanna-Barabara characters. Thus, Jonny Quest and The Venture Brothers exist in the same universe. Jonny and Rusty were both boy adventurers, possibly rivals. Now, Jonny is a recovering junkie with such extreme trauma from his childhood that he makes Dr. Venture look downright well-balanced. (“Maybe I did kill the dog! Maybe I was the Lizard Man who stole your precious serum! You loved that serum more than you loved me!! FATHER!!!! FATHER!!!!!”)

Rusty’s sons, Hank and Dean are also damaged. While Rusty attempts to live up to his father’s legacy as a super-scientist, the boys are faced with the daunting task of living up to Rusty’s legacy as a boy adventurer. Sadly, through neglect and isolation the boys are odd and poorly socialized. Appearing as a pair of “dim-witted Hardy Boys,” the Venture Brothers are keen to experience excitement and adventure. Unfortunately, they often get more than they bargained for, as Rusty is an even worse parent than he is a scientist.

(Spoiler warning)

You see, the boys are rather death-prone. In the 2nd season premiere “Helpless in the Face of Death” we discover that the boys, who died in the final episode of the first season, are actually the 14th or so generation of clones. This is a source of confusion for some characters (Henchman 24 believes Hank to be a Highlander), but the boys are generally unaware of it.

(End Spoilers)

The other main character in the series is the family’s bodyguard Brock Samson. Samson is a secret agent and an incredibly overblown parody of the “man’s man.” The ultimate bad-ass, Samson has near super-human strength and agility, is irresistible to women and kills henchmen with seemingly psychotic glee. In spite of all that, Samson is the most well adjusted character and is a much better father figure to the boys than Rusty ever has been.

These are the basic characters. Or at least they were. The Venture Brothers is a very organic show. Over three seasons, every character has developed naturally. Doc, finally coming face to face with his own inadequacies and failures in season three is now showing signs of competence.* Hank, always the tougher of the two boys (though not by much), begins to show signs of, if not maturity at least, personal growth. Dean, on the other hand, desperately wants out of any kind of adventure in his life and suffers frequent tearful breakdowns. Even the legendary Dr. Venture Sr. has developed in spite of being dead. Through 3rd season flashbacks, we’ve come to see that while Jonas was one of the most revered scientific minds of all time, he was a lousy father and traumatized his son with a combination of legitimate danger and feelings of inadequacy.

* (SPOILER) Also, after the extra clones are killed in the Season 3 finale, Doc begins to show more concern for the boys’ well-being. “You don’t have a safety net anymore,” he warns Hank. (END SPOILER)

Perhaps the most amazing thing is how multifaceted the show is. It’s hilarious and serious. The character driven humour drips out of every scene, but the storylines and plots are intricate. The show presents all the dramatic twists and turns of a comic book story (or a show inspired by comic-book storytelling like Heroes or Lost), while still being pee-your-pants funny.

Hammer and Publick grasp continuity to their bosom like a lost child who’s finally found his way home. Characters and organizations like Sgt. Hatred, Captain Sunshine or the organization S.P.H.I.N.X. may be mentioned just in passing. Then a dozen episodes later we find out just how important they are, and that they tie in to everything that has happened in between.

It’s a lot like an Alan Moore work. Hammer and Publick cherry pick their favourite references from culture (pop or otherwise), put their own twist on it, and add them to the expansive Venture universe. A short list of references include- Mr. Clean, Kraven the Hunter, Klaus Nomi, Iggy Pop, David Bowie, Dr. Strange, The Fantastic Four, Red Dragon, Tycho Brahe, GI Joe, Led Zeppelin, Walt Disney, Henry Kissinger, Bettie Page, Mark Twain, Aleister Crowley, Eugen Sandow, Oscar Wilde, Hunter S. Thompson, Frankenstein, and, of course, various lines of dialogue from Star Wars (“You always wanted to be a boy adventurer” says Dr. Venture to Billy Quizboy, “not at all like answering trivia, is it, boy?”).

Of course, there are two schools of thought on referential comedy. Family Guy, unfortunately, too often takes the route where the reference is necessary to get the joke. The Venture Brothers takes the same view as the cult-classic sketch comedy Mr. Show: the comedy can be grown from a reference, but it shouldn’t be necessary for the bit to be funny. You don’t need to be familiar with James Lipton’s histrionics to find David Cross’ film professor character Cyrus Tetley funny, though it will certainly add to it. Likewise, you don’t need to be familiar with Marvel Comics’ Dr. Strange to find Dr. Orpheus’s overly dramatic intonations funny, but if you are it will be doubly funny.

The show isn’t above poking direct fun at those references either. “We’re trapped in a cliché,” notes Dr. Venture dryly as spiked walls slowly move closer. In another episode, as the grand opening of a museum dedicated to Rusty’s father descends into a brawl between heroes and villains of yesteryear, Doc has a realization:

“This is gonna be one of those things, isn’t it? I mean, you get a bunch of short-fused, costumed idiots together in one room like this, and what do you think’s gonna happen? Any minute now, stuff’s gonna start blowing up, guys’ll be throwing each other at other guys. You know, when you’re not the one in the middle of it all for once, it’s actually totally, completely obvious.”

Brock, who more often than not is the one to deal with these situations sighs, “Welcome to my world.”

Having spent three seasons establishing their world and its conventions, the general tone of the show and developing their characters, Hammer and Publick have a great deal of momentum currently. Coming off a very well received third season, the fourth season seems very promising. The new episodes have been quite good so far. The premiere jumped around more than a Quentin Tarantino film, using a decaying copy of Marvel Comics #1 as a clock. In the second episode we finally meet Captain Sunshine, voiced by the legendary Kevin Conroy(the star of Batman: The Animated Series). In this week’s episode, we got a twisted tale that references Hamlet, progressive rock and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

The show, like its characters, has developed. It’s striking a balance that provides the laughs and intrigue, while rewarding long-time viewers with scraps of information. That information then sparks fan debate over the untold aspects of the show’s back story (like the origins of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, which I believe is sponsored by the government to keep the limitless imaginations of super-scientists in check). Either way, the future seems very interesting. It may not live up to the space-age promises of fiction, but it will definitely be a worthwhile romp.