Oct 16, 2009 09:30 AM
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Tue Feb 9
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It's been over a year, but The Venture Bros. finally returns this Sunday. We caught a sneak peek of the second episode — Captain Sunshine and all — and have a spoiler-lite preview of the Ventures' latest dose of madness.
Update: So it seems the episode we previewed was in fact next Sunday's episode — not the premiere. Hopefully, we'll get more details on what's happened since last season' finale in the premiere.
The Venture Bros returns Sunday with an episode featuring that rainbow-wearing superhero Captain Sunshine. Don't remember Captain Sunshine? The Monarch mentioned him a while back when he was in prison:
You've sent the charred remains of Wonder Boy to his beloved Captain Sunshine?
Needless to say, Captain Sunshine is still holding a grudge. But he'll get distracted from any revenge attempts as soon as he gets entangled with the Venture family.
This Sunday's premiere is at once satisfying and exceedingly frustrating. Superman and Batman have been parodied to death, but Captain Sunshine manages to be a surprising combination of the two with a twist of pure Venture Bros. wrongness. Just when you think you've anticipated the brand of jokes coming, the writers run it a tiny bit farther over the line. So why is it frustrating? For those of us chomping at the bit to see the fallout from last season's finale, we're going to be mostly kept waiting. Yes, we do find out who Rusty's new bodyguard is (although I'm not sure it's someone who will last the whole season). Otherwise, we mostly get little nods to the changes from last season. Yes, the clones have been destroyed and Hank's hair is a little longer, Number 21 is taking even worse care of himself than usual, and the Cocoon is still pretty much a wreck, but the main focus is the stand-alone plot. It looks like the creators are going to be slowly dropping breadcrumbs for a while until they lead us to the bigger answers. Of course, gradually evolving mythology is one of the hallmarks of The Venture Bros., but it's been well over a year since we've had any new Venture action, and I've gotten impatient.
But I'll take what I can get, and what I can get is a quintessential episode with a nice blend of new faces and old standbys. Plus, the episode sets up one of the weirder subplots teased in the trailer. And even if there are still a lot of questions left unanswered, at least we can look forward to some regular Venturing for a while.
The fourth season premiere of The Venture Bros. airs Sunday, October 18th at midnight on Adult Swim.
Send an email to Lauren Davis, the author of this post, at lauren@io9.com.
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