Off of the Wish List and Into My Library: The Venture Brothers Season Six and Seven

A few months ago, in September, Adult Swim announced that they were cancelling “The Venture Bros.” after seven seasons spread over seventeen years. Although saddening, it was hardly surprising, considering nothing had been heard from the show for two years, as the creators (Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer) had been working on its increasingly complex and well-crafted storyline. Although there are hopeful rumors of a continuation by other means and by different networks, the First Age from Adult Swim is over.

     I had been meaning to get these two final seasons for years now but didn’t have the means until my sister’s Christmas bounty last month. The announced cancellation added urgency to my desire and so now I have had these DVDs since early January.

For those unfamiliar with the show, it is both an homage to and a deconstruction of the progressive Space Age pop culture of the Sixties and Seventies, with a special emphasis on the young adventurer trope so well embodied in shows like “Jonny Quest” (“The Venture Bros.” seminal inspiration).  “The series chronicles the lives and adventures of the Venture family: well-meaning but incompetent teenagers Hank and Dean Venture; their loving but emotionally insecure, unethical and underachieving super-scientist father Dr. Thaddeus "Rusty" Venture; the family's bodyguard, secret agent Brock Samson, … and the family's self-proclaimed archnemesis, The Monarch, a butterfly-themed supervillain.” ^- Wikipedia.

Seasons Six and Seven see the family move from the largely destroyed Venture Compound to the Ven Tech Tower in New York following the death of Dr. Venture’s more successful brother. The Monarch also moves to his run-down family mansion in nearby Newark, where his wife Dr. Mrs. The Monarch (newly appointed council member of the Guild of Calamitous Intent) tries to balance her career with helping her low-ranking husband fulfill his dreams of vengeance. Much of the two seasons is involved with untangling Dr. Venture and the Monarch’s families histories; the rest is following Hank in his new life in college and Dean as he pursues his love interest, the daughter of his father’s Guild-appointed arch-nemesis. The series ends on a cliffhanger, of course, with a major reveal and the future uncertain.

    While I hope for some sort of continuation of the series, I sometimes wonder if just letting it stand as it is might not be a viable alternative. It is, after all, episodic in nature, like life itself, and wherever and however it ends one can always imagine the story going on. While there have been ongoing story-arcs that resolve themselves, they always generate new ones, and one cannot imagine a satisfying series finale, unless it is one that acknowledges that the story really goes on forever, even after some characters have their inevitable exits. And that can be imagined at the end of almost any season.