The Venture Brothers Is About To Go To Space

This is a for-real DVR Alert in the sense that unless you follow the same 100% manual, absolutely no "Record Series" recording set-up process I do (since I do it by hand, I call it "artisanal"), you may not be aware that The Venture Brothers returns for its fifth season this Sunday night, or technically Monday morning. Adult Swim has done no advance promotion for the premiere that I've seen; even series star James Urbaniak, who voices lead superscientist/terrible dad and person Rusty Venture, has hardly tweeted about it. So it was a nice surprise for me when I saw an episode marked "new" in the digital guide, but...like, tell a girl to get excited. I guess that's what I'm doing!

Since about Season 3, VB has been uneven for me. A lot of people will tell you that a bad episode of The Venture Brothers is better than a good episode of any other show, but that is (a) a cliché, and (b) not accurate, in this case. The best of the first three seasons hits exactly in my fanboy sweet spot: institutionalized pseudoscience, a well-codified heroes vs. villains scenario (the bad guys' Guild of Calamitous Intent is not really that different, on an organizational level, from the IRS), all played out by a bunch of irredeemable weirdos with a couple of lovable goons you can root for, and yes, I mean Patrick Warburton's Brock. But despite my occasional reservations about the show and particularly its least productive flights of self-indulgence, the Season 4 finale was a scorcher, and given that it aired two and one half years ago, I'm hopeful that the scripts had a chance to get polished up real nice.

What's that? You've never heard of The Venture Brothers and have no idea what I'm talking about? Here's what you've missed.

They're very different in terms of plot, but if you like Archer or, uh, Magnolia (trust me), it's probably worth giving The Venture Brothers a shot.