The misadventures of Dr Thaddeus Venture, former boy sidekick, and his entourage continue in this second anarchic season of The Venture Bros. Venture's aged (grown would be the wrong word) into an embittered middle-aged man, scraping along by cobbling together 'new' inventions using his father's groundbreaking research and whatever else he can pinch when no-one's looking. Irascible and immature, he's prone to making enemies and remains alive mainly due to the fact that his bodyguard is one-man-army Brock Samson and that he's subletting part of his compound to Dr Orpheus, the world's foremost expert in matters occult.
Venture's long-term nemesis The Monarch is back to plague him this year, and he's also going to have to deal with all kinds of kooky other challenges, including but not limited to time travel, a pastiche of the Scooby Gang that have hit middle age themselves, and his long-lost brother Jonas, who may be half his height but is twice the man Thaddeus is in pretty much every other way.
Off-colour, occasionally mean-spirited, and packed with all kinds of nerdy in-jokes, The Venture Bros. largely remains an entertaining blend of blacker-than-black comedy and pop culture absurdity. There's an unfortunately transphobic air to some of the humour this year, which I didn't care for (mock the strong, guys, not the marginalised) but other than that, I had a good time here, though it definitely won't be to all tastes.
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