The Venture family is back! One of the hardest things about being a Venture Bros. fan is the huge wait in between seasons while at the same time the best thing about being a fan is seeing all of the wait be worth it.
The Venture Bros. is one of the best shows on television that has never quite broken into the mainstream in the way that something like Rick and Morty has, but that is unimportant as season seven is here, so it’s time to enjoy it while we have it, and before the two or three year wait begins for season eight.
The Venture Bros. is, at its heart, a show about failure and a show about the past. So many characters’ arcs are defined by their families or their sins of their fathers. Rusty Venture especially is a character who is trapped living the life that was given to him by his father, Jonas. And in turn, he has foisted the life of a boy adventurer onto his two sons whether they want it or not.
The season opener is a very literal reminder of the show’s thesis statement: you can’t escape your past.
The PROBLEM Machine
We begin two years ago with Jonas Venture Junior finding the crashed remains of Gargantua 1 and the PROBLEM machine, a device that has a single red light that lights up when there’s a problem (see the episode, Careers in Science). The PROBLEM is installed in the New York Venture offices and has appeared in the background of a variety of scenes last season as an Easter egg and a background joke. However, the PROBLEM begins to haunt the Venture building, harassing Rusty, freezing Brock, and tormenting Dean in a great riff on The Exorcist.
The wonderful thing about this plotline is that it gives the creators an excuse to bring back The Order of the Triad, the three magic characters who were wholly absent from season six. Doctor Orpheus, Jefferson Twilight, and Al the Alchemist are wonderful characters, and their incongruity with the world of bureaucratic villainy and super-science always makes them great comedic foils for the cynical Rusty Venture.
Doctor O performs an exorcism rite which leads them to the PROBLEM as the source of the hauntings and the constant playing of “Street Life” by The Crusaders. They pry open the machine and find that it is powered by Jonas Venture Senior’s severed head, which is hooked into the computer. PROBLEM is actually an acronym for some kind of life-extending machine. Jonas’s head opens its eye but before it can speak its connection is severed, and it begins to freak out, lighting up the tower and causing everything to shake before we cut to: TO BE CONTINUED.
Across the street in Wide Wale’s tower, Hank, after getting fired from his pizza job for being caught with Sirena, goes to see Wide Wale. He drugs Wale’s guards and introduces himself in his Enrico Matassa (From the episode, Momma’s Boys) guise. He auditions for a job with Wale who offers him a chance to join his organisation if he kills a man who is tied to a chair: The Blue Morpho aka The Monarch. Also: TO BE CONTINUED.
The Venture Bros. Season Premiere: Conclusion
Overall, a great beginning to the season. Hopefully, next week’s episode will give us some insight into how the Monarch got caught by Wide Wale as his absence was felt in this opener, considering how much season six focused on him.
After so many episodes, I’ve become quite protective of the Venture brothers so seeing Hank and Sirena together in wonderful and handled in a cool way, e.g. where we see her patiently trying to seduce him while Hank is very…Hank about the whole thing. Who knows whether this episode is the beginning of a whole season arc for Enrico Matassa, which could create some very odd situations, or how long Hank and Sirena can keep their relationship going, but it’s a fun plot that I’m happy to see more of.
Until next week, Go Team Venture!
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