The Venture Bros. Fresh After 20 Years

Yo Ho, WeRCatz here!

It’s been 20 years since the premiere of The Venture Bros from Adult Swim. Since then, everyone has grown to love the antics of the Venture family as well as the antics of their “villains.” A hilarious parody of the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon Johnny Quest, we look into the lives of the titular characters Dean and Hank Venture.

From dangerous missions to dark revelations, The Venture Bros shows that there is one common theme in almost every episode: the theme of failure and how to either win against it or carry it with you to move on somehow. There isn’t a real happy ending in most cases, but the reaction to the disappointment of heroic cliches and honorable tropes is real and funny. People aren’t as honorable as they seem while certain villains hold the moral bar more cautiously than their “virtuous” counterparts.

As the series progresses, failure starts turning into small but wonderful victories as each character starts moving up the world in their own unique way. I suppose that everyone was rooting for the success of Hank since he was the only character in the series to actually pursue a life outside super-science and actually makes real-life decisions that just make sense despite his efforts being considered childish. He held his own and in the series finale film Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart he becomes the “bigger man” by forgiving his brother Dean for having an affair with his girlfriend Sirena; no one in real life would actually perform such a saintly act.

This series has touched the hearts of many of its fans and still resonates to this day. There are still some mysteries despite its subsequent cancellation (e.g. Scare Bear knowing about Hank and helping him discover Sirena’s infidelity with Dean) but there are enough loops undone for The Venture Bros ending in a memorable way.