Binge-watching a show like The Venture Bros.—a dense sci-fi/action cartoon hybrid with a vast universe only rivaled by the depth of its references—may feel like trying to speed-read Tolkien in Elvish. But trust us, this is possible.

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On the surface The Venture Bros. is a straight-up Jonny Quest homage, revolving around a family of adventurers that navigate a science- and fantasy-heavy world of bad guys. That means the show can have a somewhat members-only feel because of its unbelievable world-building and mythology, but as complicated as things may seem, everything makes sense. (Trust us here.) Families are odd but stuck with each other. Legacies matter and impact generations well after death. Major organizations are interconnected. And on a basic level, people never forget who they love, heroes need arches (villains, that is) and humans fail more often than pop culture wants us to believe.

All of that is to say, never trust your first impression of a seemingly one-note Venture character: Henchmen become heroes, screaming necromancers are also struggling single dads, and even machismo-oozing death machines can cry. (You can trust the puns and entendres though, they are as delightful as they seem.) Here's how to binge-watch your way into the Venture Bros. family.

The Venture Bros.

Number of Seasons: 5 (67 episodes and counting)

Time Requirements: Most episodes are 22-24 minutes, but the series has an equal number of longer (46 minute) and shorter (12 minute) installments. You can immerse yourself in the deep and complicated Venture canon at a archaeologist's pace (two episodes per day) and unearth the whole series in 27 days, or—if you want to take things at more the speed of a modern Monarchmobile (read: not the Nissan Stanza variety)—you can breeze through things in under two weeks at five episodes per day.

Where to Get Your Fix: Amazon Prime, Netflix DVDs, iTunes, and the Google Play Store. Adult Swim allows you five episodes (from Season 3 at the moment) and Netflix (streaming) offers the first two seasons.

Best Character to Follow: The "world" of Venture Bros. gets casually brought up so often you could mistake the show for an MMORPG. And, to be fair, everything is seemingly limitless. As such, there's a character to like no matter what your general TV preferences are. Enjoy innocent, somewhat oblivious optimist types? Take early Hank and Dean Venture, the brothers themselves, as they try to find a place among the insanity around them. Like stimulant-riddled, action-addicts with ever-evolving gender identities? Colonel Hunter Gathers is Hunter S. Thompson-esque and occasionally goes by the alias Kelly Clarkson.

It's Venture-style rocket science trying to pick just one, but there is a clear pair of top characters: Dr. Girlfriend (the Monarch's sidekick and love interest) and Brock Samson (Dr. Rusty Venture's killing-machine bodyguard).

Girlfriend's distinct baritone—voiced by series co-creator Doc Hammer—comes from years of chain smoking, and she's responsible for any brains and honor within the Monarch's evil collective. Her savvy is evident not only in Nietzsche references, but also the fact she's been approached to serve on the Council of 13 (the governing board of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, which is of course the largest villain labor union). In the end, Girlfriend is loyal to her No. 1s to a fault, and she continuously turns down offers to be her own super-villain. That means sometimes she's stuck teaching stick shift to idiots.

The same uber-loyalty applies to Samson (Patrick Warburton), a man the Office of Secret Intelligence (think CIA mixed with FBI) asks for help against the Guild in his spare time. Samson's a simple guy who loves Zeppelin and Top Chef (though not Top Design), but mess with the Venture family and you'll witness him tear apart bears, sharks, and hordes of world-class assassins with only his bare hands and a paring knife. Yes, in comic-book male fashion, he appears to be a 'roided up classic rock fan with a semi-mullet, but he's also got a softer-side and wider cultural knowledge.

Seasons/Episodes You Can Skip:

Season 5: Special Episode, "A Very Venture Halloween" and Season 1: Special Episode, "A Very Venture Christmas" For a show paying homage to the sci-fi and action cartoons of old, holiday episodes are as necessary as two-part specials. But binging The Venture Bros. is an exercise in rapidly piecing together a complicated backstory puzzle, and the show's standalone holiday specials (in particular the early Christmas one) can be saved for a rainy day. There are laughs—Brock in a Santa suit against some Krampus-like demon is a great gift—but there's only one major plot reveal ... that can be picked up in the context of the early Season 5 episodes.

The End of Season 4, Except "Operation P.R.O.M." Of the 12 lowest-rated Venture Bros. episodes on IMDB, five are at the end of the show's up-and-down fourth season. Part of this may be due to the season being an early pioneer in splitting things up—the two multi-episode runs appeared a year apart—but the season's overarching plot lines tend to get away from the show's core characters. Add in some occasional Earth-shattering abrupt introductions (a trio of potentially important all powerful beings called The Investors shows up without much explanation in the hurried 15th episode), and it's easy to see why some cheatsheets (including Adult Swim's own "The Entire Batshit History of The Venture Bros. in Eight Minutes") showed up after this stretch.

Season 1: Episode 0, "The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay" and Episode 2, "Careers in Science"

The longstanding rule of thumb for comedies is that Season 1 is about seeing aspects of something you'd watch consistently. If a show can stay on the air those attributes will be groomed into a more compelling overall story. (See also: Season 1-cutting advice for Bob's Burgers, Parks and Recreation, Community, etc.) The Venture Bros. is no different, though Episode 1 "Dia de los Dangerous" is a nice taste of how crazy the show's standalone half-hours can get. While the pilot and second episode don't beat viewers over the head with exposition or backstory—the show continues to leak out new details to date, in fact—the latter parts of the opening season are a better indicator of whether or not the show's humor and nuance is for you. They also update the animation style for the better.

Seasons/Episodes You Can't Skip:

Season 1: Episode 10, "Tag Sale—You're It!" and Episode 11, "Past Tense" It'd be easy to simply recommend all of Season 1 following "The Incredible Mr. Brisby," but this final leg really stands out. Episodes 11 and 12 plant seeds of devotion for Venture fandom. In "Tag Sale," the team holds a yard sale to empty out old gear, and it attracts seemingly every villain in the Guild. "Past Tense" features an old college classmate capturing Dr. Venture, Pete White, and villain Baron Ünderbheit, forcing the boys to reunite the remaining parts of the original Team Venture for a rescue. The combination of modern-day action and backstory adds a ton of depth to the show's developing world. As the A.V. Club put it, it's the first sign of the show's "nerdgasm levels of continuity," and there's a Brock Samson lightsaber duel to boot.

Season 1: Episode 13, "Return to Spider Skull Island" In the first of the show's many major-setpiece-finales-ending-with-a-cliffhanger, Dr. Venture's tumor needs to be removed but it's not as straightforward as it seems. Beyond its positioning as a classic season-capper, this episode is a good example of two eventual Venture Bros. staples. First, a willingness to unexpectedly make the Venture family more complicated. And second, the show's ability to deliver true emotional lows. Be warned, the last scene is as much of a sad blow as watching any beloved character suffer on far more serious dramas. Actually, because The Venture Bros. has established itself as a group of somewhat sadly flawed loser heroes and villains, this might hit even harder.

Season 2: Episode 8, "Fallen Arches" Dr. Venture's tenant, necromancer Dr. Orpheus, is finally recognized by the Guild as arch-worthy. So he must assemble his old squad, the Order of the Triad, made up of Jefferson Twilight (Blaxploitation-inspired Blackula hunter) and The Alchemist, a 19th century expert and one of the show's many elder gay male characters. They spend the episode interviewing potential villains, which of course drives a jealous Dr. Venture insane (the Monarch looks pretty tame compared to options like Torrid, a flame-on brute with the ability to transport his victims to an island in the tropics). It's an early indication that Venture Bros. is a rare series where the world can take precedence over central characters, and variations on this only become more viable in later seasons.

Season 2: Episode 11, "Viva los Muertos!" Only the appearance of some bizzaro Jonny Quest crew would be a more over-the-top Venture homage; this is a full-on Scooby Doo half-hour. In "Viva los Muertos!," Dr. Venture finally one-ups the man upstairs and brings a deceased henchman back from the dead. Naturally, it's not quite perfect, and the revived man is more Venturestein monster than anything else. Nearby, a group of Scooby-like adventurers run out of gas just outside the compound, and when they go seeking help they instead come across a major mystery to explore. (After all, there's both a vampire—Dr. Orpheus—and a Frankenstein running around, but they find something even freakier while sleuthing. It may or may not be related to that Season 1 cliffhanger.)

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Season 3: Episode 3, "The Invisible Hand of Fate" Personal preference: The best deep cut from The Venture Bros.'s vast cast is Billy Quizboy, whose backstory makes up the bulk of "The Invisible Hand of Fate." Quizboy now is a wanna-be hero pal of Dr. Venture, but back in the day he was a child trivia prodigy who got caught up in a Quiz Show-style scandal (that wasn't his doing). The fallout sends Quizboy down a path that includes a depressed bender, alterations including an eye-patch and bionic hand, OSI recruitment, and a mission to infiltrate the Guild through Professor Fantamos (better known later as Phantom Limb). The Venture Bros. leaves much of its world to viewer imagination, but seeing Quizboy's bizarre journey (not to mention how Brock Samson landed his gig with Dr. Venture) only makes the show's current day escapades more enjoyable. For a Quizboy fandom hour, pair this with Season 5's "Where’s Your Cleansuit?" to watch a winner-take all trivia showdown between the boy wonder and his new arch, former-trivia-competitor-turned-wealthy-pop-culture-collector Augustus St. Cloud.

Season 4: Episode 16, "Operation P.R.O.M." Again, every end-of-season special could be on this list (with many fans considering Seasons 2 and 3 to have the best). But "Operation P.R.O.M." reigns supreme. Even if you're the rare Venture fan who feels Season 4 is a slog, push on through. The premise is simple—the Venture brothers are homeschooled, Dr. Venture decides to give them a true prom—but everything else is intricate. All of the time spent depicting these characters as a bit hopeless comes to a head as everyone from the indestructible Brock Samson to the Monarch fails in the most hilarious yet heartbreaking of ways (yes, the tired "hire a bunch of call girls as dates" thing happens... but they're actually planted by the Guild as killing machines). While the episode has the best moment out of the show's long tradition of crude humor—Rusty Venture: "You think he even knows how many double entendres that was?"—it's the emotional moments that elevate "P.R.O.M." to the show's upper echelon. When viewers met the seemingly throwaway Henchman 21 back in Season 1, no one would predict a showcase like this.

Season 5: Episode 4, "Spanakopita" If for no other reason, "Spanakopita" is worth watching because Dr. Venture finally gets a full episode of happiness. Of course, it's all an elaborate ruse he's hopelessly unaware of: Doc has been traveling to the Greek isle of Spanikos since his alpha-male hero dad essentially left him there as a kid. Not wanting to see a child disappointed again, the entire island of Spanikos got together to plan a massive celebration, culminating with a series of competitions to crown the Spanakopita champion. Dr. Venture is "undefeated." So while St. Cloud tries to buy and cheat his way to a rare victory, in the end Spanakopita spirit wins out. There's also a delightful Ray Harryhausen-style homage (the episode aired after the filmmaker’s death), a Bubo sighting from Clash of the Titans, and the clear acknowledgement that Spanakopita—Greek spinach pie—is delicious.

Why You Should Binge:

See above.

Best Scene—Ground Control to Major Tom

While many of the Venture pop culture references remain in-genre, there's a clear soft spot for classic rock. Samson loves Zep, Pulp is used as a soundtrack choice, and David Bowie may or may not be The Sovereign (the mysterious leader of the Guild who is also possibly a shapeshifter). Bowie in particular is deeply integrated into the show—James Urbaniak (Dr. Venture) believes every Venture character has a loose resemblance—and no scene showcases this obsession better than the backstory of Major Tom. He's one of the original Team Venture members who died when Rusty was merely a kid, depicted in Season 1's "Ghosts of Sargasso."

The Takeaway:

Cloning, good and evil, family, success, world building, finding yourself, science, referential humor, relationships—all that stuff is so complicated. Gravity too.

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If You Liked The Venture Bros. You'll Love:

Community can rival this show's wide-range of pop culture influences and callouts, but obviously the two premises are vastly different. If you want another science-heavy, seemingly endless world, Futurama may be a good place to start (and the never-quite-killing-it Fry would be right at home in the Venture universe). But for the same seemingly simple cast involved with surprisingly deep emotions, only classic Simpsons will satisfy.