Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Season Four : Boys 2 Men

2026-Oct-17

The Venture Bros. is not the only TV show that is about ‘change’. That term is such a broad topic, yet it’s usually one of the prerequisites for qualifying as ‘literature’. Apparently for a story to elevate above mere amusement and into the glorious category of ‘art’, the story needs an element of lasting change. Childish stories of adventure, crime, or super heroics are simply tawdry tales and not full blown literature because in those pulp novels, B-movies, and comic books, everything is restored to how things were before the story began.

Something has to be different than how it started if the story is to be considered holding literary value. The story’s settings, the whole cast of characters, the themes itself, anything. The protagonist is the likely candidate for this change. I think that’s what separates the ‘novel’ from just any long fictional story recorded on to printed pages bound together at the spine. That a story will end with the protagonist changed, or the setting has changed because of them. Either way, the story concludes in a different place than where it started.

Television productions have become a cinematic home for these novel length or multi-book stories. Dramatic series that spread their narratives out over one hour episodes. Sometimes cut into thirty minute episodes, if the writers are economical. I find novels into TV series to be a fitting transition. Charles Dickens would adapt well to the television production schedule of a dramatic series.

Multi-episode series is a medium with enough room to let an artist express the change that is the wheelhouse of novel writing. A single feature-length film has to do a lot of clever visual storytelling to cram what novels do with a hundred or up to a few hundred pages. The long runtimes of a television series gives a wide berth for the writers to put in the evidence of this change on to the screen. Slower change that could only be noticed (or enjoyed) in serialized story bits. When movies make deviations in adaptations from their source books, I give more leeway. It’s much more of a visual medium compared to the decompressed pacing of TV series.

What separates The Venture Bros. from most TV shows that effectively deal with themes of change in a serialized episodic manner is just how much actual change is permitted to happen on this series. Every single tenet of this television show is up for grabs each new season. Just how far could the framework of the original season bend and still remain the same show? Most TV shows start and finish on the same set. The characters leading the first season usually are the ones that finish out the show.

Occasionally there are changes in a long running series. These changes are more often than not repercussions of offscreen conditions. Actors come in and out because of scheduling or payment conflicts. Sets change when a show has trudged into stale seasons, hoping a new locale could shake new life into the production. Rare is the TV show that moves things around by choice. Rarer still is when the show’s creators pull it off. To be fair, The Venture Bros had a chance of not getting a next season each season. This looming fear of cancellation might have influenced how each season was crafted.

In the previous post about The Venture Bros, (way back in 2024. A little bit of a delay in that blog series) it was eluded that season four was the best of the series. That’s still likely true. Season four is definitely the longest. Sixteen episodes when all the others contain twelve or less. It is the spine of the series. How fitting for a series about growing out of youthful obsessions and into mature adulthood would bulge at the middle.

Season four is the start of the back half of the series. The first three seasons lived in a story status-quo that shattered at the cinematic showdown that closed the third season. That more or less happens at the end of the first two seasons. The changes after season three would scale out geometrically. The settings and focus became nomadic.

The exception was the spotlight staying on the two Venture Bros and their father. The show had the Venture family as the core that moves the show forward. They were a family of adventurers. Most episodes, they’d go on adventures, it would go poorly, and they’d fight the big mysterious bad guy at the end of the season.

At the start of season four, focus still remained tightly on the three members of the Venture family. The new inchoate future for the show was not going to be them going on adventures every episode, or even alluding to that being the normal mode of operations for the Ventures. The boys were getting too old. Brock wasn’t there to protect them. The clone backups were gone. Life for the Venture family was different now in season four, and it was never going back. No matter how much you wanted it to change back.

When season four premiered on Adult Swim in 2010, I found myself in a similar crucible as Hank and Dean Venture. A time of fading childhood. A time when an aging adolescent starts to accept the fear they knew was inevitable: mediocre adulthood. The year season four premiered was a good marking point of the end of my boyhood and the start of nascent manhood. A boy adventurer that should have been an adventurer by now. No excuses were accepted by this point. If that awesome thing in life hadn’t happened by now, then the smart thing to do is give up that quixotic nonsense and find some piddling wage slave job. Judging from how things go for the Venture Bros. characters of more advanced age than the boys, there are only more sobering lessons to be had beyond the lesson the brothers learn about giving up childish things.

Those sixteen episodes in season four managed to pack in a lot for each character in the Venture universe. Secondary characters were promoted up to lead roles. Some of these supporting characters assumed almost complete new identities. The chubby dorkish Henchman #21 of the Monarch’s minions becoming a near-Brock Sampson level operator being the most sensational example of this character change. Sgt. Hatred becoming the stand-in (or permanent?) bodyguard for the boys is just as large of magnitude of change as Henchman #21 becoming competent after a hero’s quest. Basically every character on The Venture Bros. were finding themselves in a different role in life four seasons after their appearances in season one. They’re adjusting to situations that were likely not what they had expected, let alone hoped.

Some characters getting the spotlight in season four were pulled deep from the back bench of existing characters. Background third-stringers that were made just to get a hero name pun said out loud were promoted up to regular players. Shore Leave managed to make a massive splash with only a few episodes. It is hard to imagine another example of a forgettable one-dimensional character so quickly becoming a fleshed out series regular. Another minor name coming to the forefront was Captain Sunshine. Prior to this season, his presence was felt by being named several times as an offscreen hero many have had run-ins with in the previous seasons. The writers managed to stitch him into the story feeling as if he was always there.

The changes happening to the boys in the fourth season is what gripped me most when they premiered. Not so much now. It has been over sixteen years since I first saw these episodes. Watching them again recently I am much closer to Dr. Venture’s age and station than I am to that of the boys. (That has probably been addressed in the previous three blog posts about The Venture Bros.) At the time this season was new, I was just a bit older than the boys. Despite the small age discrepancy, I was suffering the same weighty dilemmas as those two were. Having to decide now what your future will be.

Dean was suffering this dilemma more than Hank was. Season four has the boys officially graduated from high school. Or as close as a boy adventurer grandson of the famed Dr. Jonas Venture can get. That being a GED diploma coming out of the printer port of the learning bed Jonas Venture built. One that educates the user while they sleep. Up until that point in the series, it had not seemed like Dean knew what he wanted to be when he grew up. Maybe a newspaper journalist? He did beam with excitement when printing the newsletter for the Venture family. Aside from that, he did not show any proclivity toward any normal life job. Dean for sure did not want to continue the family legacy of super-science, despite his father pushing it upon him.

Hank on the other hand did know what he wanted to be: a super-spy with a license to kill. Like his father figure, his lifelong bodyguard Brock “The Swedish Murder Machine” Sampson. Despite the fact that at his age and given his personal experience with the lonely and cruel life of a super-spy/assassin, he should have known he was not a good candidate for that career. Hank just cannot give up on that dream. He’s had it since he was a boy. What boy didn’t?

Hank wanted to be basically any ‘cool’ character he had seen in movies, TV shows, and comic books when he grew up. Being the next Brock Sampson was a top priority, but there were several other lifestyles he could envision himself enjoying. Hank would be happy to grow up to be a hardboiled private detective. A member of a touring rock band. The owner of a successful hoagie franchise. Again, what boy didn’t?

What I supposed I shared with each of the Venture brothers when I first saw season four was uncertainty. Of not knowing what grown up life should be. At that point, that decision was fast approaching me and Dean. Beyond not knowing what that future would, could, or should be, it was dreadful because my chances of becoming something Hank and I thought was a cool adult was more than likely not going to happen.

I do not remember much about season five. Hopefully the boys pull out of this post-adolescent jam. I do remember I was on a different station and path by the time that season premiered. Tune in next time to find out what happened to the progenitor of fredlambuth.com and to the Venture boys!