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WARNINGS:
NAVIGATION
Welcome back to my Venture Bros. retrospective! Between the last part and this one, we found out A FUCKING VENTURE BROS MOVIE IS COMING. So it's never been a better time for me to continue this series. Today we’re taking a look at Season 3. It took me a little longer to get through the season, partly because I’m in the midst of finals and partly because there’s a lot more to digest. This is the point of the show where it gets really good. The show adds more depth to the characters so they can respond organically to bigger plot events. It also experiments more with episode format, meaning that episodes can vary massively in scale and scope. We have some ‘traditional’ (ad)Venture capers, but we also have two whole flashback episodes to fill us in on character backstory. It works so well in fleshing out the world and making us care about the cast, who felt a little bit threadbare in places. This season is the moment I understood why Pete and Billy were, like, there.
It’s difficult to figure out how to rank the season’s episodes, or to choose a ‘star of the season’. I think it's because we have an actual plot now. The episodes never stop being silly or funny, but the plots have actual substance to them. At this point we know the basics of all the characters and them being their usual selves risks being boring. So to expand our understanding of them, Doc and Jackson put them in situations that test their comfort zones. They parade Rusty around a supervillain house party. They (seemingly!) send the force of the OSI after Brock. The Monarch is forced to arch other people than Dr. Venture, and consequently JJ is forced to deal with an arching relationship. Plot is mostly prioritised over cramming in as many jokes as possible, but I don’t think this is a bad thing for the show. However, it does mean that characters who normally steal scenes, like the Monarch, now have more meat to contend with.
( Read more... )
- Venture Bros. spoilers, of course.
NAVIGATION
Welcome back to my Venture Bros. retrospective! Between the last part and this one, we found out A FUCKING VENTURE BROS MOVIE IS COMING. So it's never been a better time for me to continue this series. Today we’re taking a look at Season 3. It took me a little longer to get through the season, partly because I’m in the midst of finals and partly because there’s a lot more to digest. This is the point of the show where it gets really good. The show adds more depth to the characters so they can respond organically to bigger plot events. It also experiments more with episode format, meaning that episodes can vary massively in scale and scope. We have some ‘traditional’ (ad)Venture capers, but we also have two whole flashback episodes to fill us in on character backstory. It works so well in fleshing out the world and making us care about the cast, who felt a little bit threadbare in places. This season is the moment I understood why Pete and Billy were, like, there.
It’s difficult to figure out how to rank the season’s episodes, or to choose a ‘star of the season’. I think it's because we have an actual plot now. The episodes never stop being silly or funny, but the plots have actual substance to them. At this point we know the basics of all the characters and them being their usual selves risks being boring. So to expand our understanding of them, Doc and Jackson put them in situations that test their comfort zones. They parade Rusty around a supervillain house party. They (seemingly!) send the force of the OSI after Brock. The Monarch is forced to arch other people than Dr. Venture, and consequently JJ is forced to deal with an arching relationship. Plot is mostly prioritised over cramming in as many jokes as possible, but I don’t think this is a bad thing for the show. However, it does mean that characters who normally steal scenes, like the Monarch, now have more meat to contend with.
( Read more... )
