Venture Brothers Season 4

Guess I'd better get around to watching this. I'm so behind on so many shows.

Any dates confirmed yet?

Get caught up, Jake. Top priority.

I was just watching the Dragon Con panel on the site and I think they gave a date in mid-October. There's 16 eps this season. But it's gonna be a big gap with them showing 8, then waiting until next summer to show the other 8.

Awesome, can't wait.

I had previously heard mid-November so this is great news. Looking forward to hearing what Hader does with Impossible.

All I know is that MEGA MAN was in the preview, and I'm totally excited.

Also, I shook hands w/ Doc and Jackson on the sidewalk outside the Hyatt here in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago while they were here for DCon. They were cool.

New season starts tonight, so I thought I'd bump the thread.

I'm glad you did because I had no idea that it was starting back up again.

I no longer have cable!!!! Why isn't it on Adult Swim dot com??!! Oh god, this is worse than cancer!!!

Same here-- no cable, no pre-air web streams this season, I guess?

I'll have to watch it through less-than-upright means, I guess.

CONFESSION: I've never watched this before. Is it safe for me to jump right in or should I just watch the previous seasons first?

You absolutely need to watch the previous seasons. This show is continuity heavy. You will not regret the investment, though.

James is correct on both counts. Venture Bros. is greatness. The first couple of episodes of season one are kinda week, but they find their footing about halfway through, and the great just keeps on going pretty much all the way through the rest of the series. I'm really hoping my buddy calls me tonight, so I can go over there and watch the premiere.

Yes, definitely please watch the previous seasons first. They're short. You'll enjoy them... I hope.

Tonight I give thanks, both to BubWilliams and to DVR.

Thanks for the reminder. DVR set

Shit, its tonight? Shit!!! Thanks...

Ditto. Had no idea.

Wow, great premier! Loved the structure...kept me guessing all the way through to the final moment Shore Leave and Brock show up dressed like cold-plated Cobra Commanders. "Hey Hank! Killed Hitler!"

Hunter's been undercover this whole time! That's awesome! "You don't know DICK!"

Did anyone find Helper's head stuck in Brock's chest slightly disturbing (although I did laugh)?

It was grossing me out a wee bit, but was also making me chuckle. I just about bust a guy at Brock's "Well, now I can cross 'Kill Hitler' off my list of cool shit to do before I die." Great premiere that really bodes well for the rest of the season.

Fuck, had no idea.

Great premiere, and next week Captain Sunshine.

What the fuck?!

Did you actually see the whole episode? I saw the first fifteen minutes twice in a row.

Yeah, WTF?! It started over right as Brock was getting Helper removed in the jungle!

EDIT: According to the AS boards, this is a West Coast issue. Hopefully the next showing won't be messed up. This sucks, as I have been waiting for the premiere for months.

Urbaniak's Twitter about this is kind of awesome.

Shit, this happened to me, recording on the west coast feed. Does anyone know when this episode will be rerun?

Re-airs at 5 am. But there's no guarantee it won't do the same thing again.

And there don't seem to be any alternate locations to view it, either. Which means I'm going to be stuck with adultswim.com streaming quality sometime tomorrow to see it.

3 AM was the last chance for me tonight, but it does air on adultswim.com tomorrow? I can live with that.

It can be found on youtube in small chunks. Shit quality. I think I'll wait for the website tomorrow.

This was so worth the wait. Did it take anyone else a few minutes to figure out what the CGC was in the top left corner.

The CGC counter was how much the comic was worth at whatever time. The structure seemed to be that the boys story runs backwards into season 3 and Brock's story runs forward from season 3, while the whole thing seems to take place in the Marvel 1 comic that #21 loses.

Kind of a brilliant structure. Head scratching, but brilliant...

Yeah, I had to watch it twice to better appreciate Dean's Hitler love and little things like the invisible man getting paintballed. Still couldn't understand half of what the surgeon said.

Thank god the repeting thing wasn't just on my end. I thought something fucked up happened with my Tivo...this totally ruined breakfast.

I really liked what I saw though.

Second that. Really meant to be seen twice. Little things, like 21 asking "Wait, what comic was that?" when Hitler dog ran away.

Really loved Brock's whole arc, especially staying with Six Million Dollar Man and Sasquatch. Really out of shape Brock made me sad though.

Hope we see Molotov again.

I like the episode well enough, but honestly wished it had actually been funnier. The laughs have become too few and far between since last season.

watched this at lunch and the timeline was confusing at first but once the comic counter started going backwards, I figured it out. GREAT episode.

Adult Swim has acknowledged the fuck up on the west coast and will reair the episode every day this week mon- thursday.

I loved the stuff between Hank and Sergeant Hatred. Loved the reveal of the comic at the end and the sudden explanation of its changing value, when the figure suddenly plummets as he pulls it out of the sleeve and first pages through it.

Otherwise, though, I wasn't too thrilled with the non-linear narrative. When that's done, I think there needs to be a really good reason for it, other than to just keep the audience in the dark. It should always offer a new and unique perspective. I guess the point here was to play with the comic book as a frame for the story, which works well enough for me, but it does demand a repeat viewing.

The CGC thing would have been a good device if I had any clue what it meant. I only figured it out at the ending.

Nowhere near on par with the other season premieres, especially the first two seasons. But I really enjoyed the reveals at the end and the post credit scene made me laugh out loud.

Just watched it on the site over lunch, and I liked it a lot. I'd had a hint on the crazy structure from JP's journal post last night, but the CGC rating was a pretty brilliant indicator. The plummeting value was indeed one of the best jokes.

I need to watch it again, then I might comment some more, but they're off to a good start, I'd say.

"Ever since de Iron Man, everybody wants de robot heart."

Staying up for the second showing was totally worth it.

Besides serving as a pretty creative episode in its own right, the premiere looked like a sampling of all the cool shit we have to look forward to:

SGT Hatred growing into his role as body guard

The development of SPHINX from one-shot joke to series regulars

Doc finally developing some attachment to the boys under the new, cloneless status quo, and boys finally getting to grow a little older

Doc finally finding a use for that spider-bot chassis

Number 21 and his LARP crew

More Shore Leave - I mean, Holy Diver - and especially more Morpheus. Hell yes!

Uhh--huh, whaaaat?

Totally disagree. I liked this way more then last seasons premier AND the general series premier (although not as much as season 2, which is beyond perfection).

The point of the CGC thing is supposed to confuse you and you're supposed to want to go back and re-watch the episode. And it's not as funny until you do (so all yall saying it didn't seem that funny...watch it again). I mean come on...are you telling me you didn't like the episode enough (or Venture Bros in general) to watch it again?

I can't believe people didn't appreciate this structure. Are you suggesting that Publick and Jackson have gone too far? These are the guys that had a stand alone episode be the conclusion of of a two-part series when we never saw the first part and it featured time-traveling Brock, Caligula, Edgar Allen Poe (and Brock again)! What do you expect/want from this show???

On top of that, we're getting clues about the direction of the show in non-linear fashion. You guys understand that we basically saw the entire fourth season in flash forward, flash back structure, right? That's incredible! Fans of Lost should be flipping their shit!

Fuck the haters/dislikers. This was an incredible season premier.

Results may vary as to the enhancement of your enjoyment of this episode, but Saint Moses The Black, the former owner of the arm Hitler was chewing on, was a real person. Here's his Badass Of The Week entry.

No kidding. That was a work of art in goofy cartoon form! I found the jokes even funnier delivered as punch line then set-up.. "What the hell is that counter?"... "Dean loves Hitler?!?"... "OH!"

We got HELPR as a spider robot, Brock with man-boobs, the Doc bitching out Nazis and Brock killing Hitler! Really, what more could you want?

How about an episode you can enjoy at least as much on a completely different level the second time?

I'm pretty sure we didn't see the entire season in flashback/flashfoward manner. I think the story will start up after the ending of this episode which just tackled a finite timeline, with Brock's story in order and the Venture's story in reverse.

I didn't like the episode but I'm not hating. I really enjoy the new mythology centric approach they started with the last season premiere and the I appreciate the dense story and the callbacks, but it's all at the expense of the humor. It's still funny, but in a different way. Most of the humor comes from their audacious story choices and their ridiculous ambition, which is different. I always prefer complicated serialized storytelling to stand alone episodes, but it's simply not as funny as it used to be.

I could have written that all in two sentences but I don't feel like editing it.

ETA: I love where it leaves the story and I love the mystery involving Brock and Hunter, but this episode just wasn't that great.

Yeah, I really like the show and I certainly didn't hate this episode, but it's just not the laugh out loud show it used to be. I kind of miss the looseness of seasons one and two.

I certainly hope we didn't get the whole season in flashback form. It would be very dissapointing.

That said I did like the premiere. Fat Brock trying to kill Molatov and Hunter was great. The Iron Man joke was pretty good too.

So damn happy to have this show back. Loved the premiere. Felt like the continuity was paying off more than previously. Hatred was great, as was all the stuff with Brock. I love how this show just casually drops the bigger world in and out of the Ventures' lives. The flashy structure wasn't necessary but it made the comic book thing pay off.

Well, we're certainly all getting plenty of chances to re-watch the episode, thanks to the nightly re-plays this week.

"Remember this moment! Remember when old Hatred took a bullet for you! Remember the power, the regret, the confusion!"

I fucking love that.