The fourth season premiere of The Venture Bros kicks off with a slightly confusing episode involving some Memento-esque storytelling. One timeline follows Brock right from the end of last season’s finale where the explosion of the Monarch mobile left him with HELPER’s head embedded in his chest, while the other picks up months down the road with the Venture family fighting Nazis with their new bodyguard Sgt. Hatred, and then moving backwards from there. Each thread intersects a couple times with each other, and all told you can piece together everything but it’s purposefully confusing and complicated for the first 15-20 minutes.
As season three ended with a few major events, this season picks up with the repercussions of those. Brock quit the OSI and his job as Dr. Venture’s bodyguard to seek out the truth about the assassins sent after him. The aforementioned injury sidetracks him for a while, but after some surgery by the plastic surgeon who did Hunter Gathers’ sex change and an amusing period of rest in the company of Steve Summers (the Six Million Dollar Man) and his Sasquatch lover, he’s back on the case, albeit far from in peak physical condition. Scoping out the headquarters of Molotov Cocktease’s Black Hearts headquarters, Brock runs into an agent of Sphinx. (Sphinx is the Cobra to the OSI’s G.I. Joe.) If you’ll recall Hunter was last seen coordinating the Black Hearts’ efforts to have Brock take out the world’s other top assassins, and he’s back here talking to Molotov when Brock and the Sphinx agent fall into the room. Molotov shoots Brock out the window where he falls into the street as is picked up by a van of even more Sphinx agents.
As the confusion over everyone’s allegiances continues to grow during Sphinx’s interrogation of Brock, we learn that Sphinx had captured Hunter too. Or rather, as it turns out, Hunter is some sort of double-triple agent and has been working for Sphinx all along. He remarks that while undercover with Molotov’s organization he used the opportunity to make Brock leave the OSI and his bodyguard position in order to free him up for more important work with Sphinx. Along with Hunter, we see that Sphinx employs the plastic surgeon, Holy Diver and Shore Leave. If it’s not painfully obvious, the show’s mythology is growing only more and more complex, even after the pretty damned complex developments of season 3. It’ll be interesting to finally learn a little bit about Sphinx and what its agenda is, especially if they are in fact the ‘good guys’.
The Venture family storyline is comparatively straightforward even if it’s told more or less backwards. Dr. Venture’s cloning technology is out in the open after Hank and Dean released their “presents” in the finale and all of their clones were decimated on the battlefield. Henchman 24 died in the Monarch Mobile explosion, leaving 21 lost and confused, and asking Venture to clone him, although this doesn’t appear to happen. Nazis also arrive with a dog they claim has the blood of Hitler in him and they want Venture to create a human baby from it. Dean gets himself attached to the dog even though the evil creature must eventually be killed. Sergeant Hatred has been wiped of his pedophilia by OSI doctors and goes from Venture family nemesis to bodyguard. Hank struggles to cope without Brock around, but tries to follow in his former bodyguard’s footsteps by manning up. When it’s his chance to kill Hitler (the dog), he fails but is saved by an appearance by Brock, which must be kept a secret but emboldens Hank and gives him a boost. Oh, and Brock mails HELPER’s head back and it’s installed on a walking eye robot instead of a more humanoid form.
There was a lot of setup in this one which should prove fun to explore in future episodes. It’s a really neat change to bring Sergeant Hatred into the Venture family and shake up the dynamic between Hank and Dean and their guardian. I suppose that means Dr. Venture is once again in need of a new archenemy… maybe the Monarch can get his wish and be matched with him again? It’s a little unclear what 21 is up to outside of mourning 24 in his own weird ways. He’s hanging around the Venture compound a lot, so is he still working for the Monarch? And what the hell is really going on with Hunter Gathers? Who’s side is he on and how many different agendas does he have? Most of all though, the big change is that Brock Sampson is no longer on babysitting duty and we’ll likely get to see him go commando while working with Sphinx. For this episode at least, it was a nice treat to see so many returning faces, between Steve Summers, the Sasquatch, Hunter, Molotov, the plastic surgeon, the Lepidopterists, etc. Going into this fourth season, it’s clear that The Venture Bros universe is a complicated and crowded one. I’m not complaining either. While this show began as a more simplistic comedy parodying the likes of Jonny Quest, it’s turned into a massively complex action adventure series that happens to be funny. With those qualities, it stands pretty much alone on modern television.
