PLEASE NOTE: This article assumes The Venture Brothers has been cancelled. As of 12/16/10 it was brought to my attention that this isn't the case. My full retraction can be read here: http://www.republibot.com/content/breaking-news-venture-brothers-not-can...

WARNING: THIS IS AN EXTRA-FILTHY REVIEW OF AN EXTRA-FILTHY EPISODE OF A SERIES THAT WAS ALREADY EXTRA-FILTHY TO BEGIN WITH. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL!

Well, this is it: The end of the fourth season, and in the face of declining ratings and evaporating interest, it’s very likely the end of the series as well. It’s a bittersweet farewell to a show that was wildly inconsistent at it’s best, but which unquestionably tried harder than any other - *ANY* other - show on TV. Yeah, sure, they often went too far in service of a questionable gag. Yeah, sure, a bunch of episodes were so over-written as to be nearly impenetrable. Yeah, sure, they often sucked. But you know what? They sucked in new and wonderful ways in which no one has ever sucked before.

For good or for ill, we *need* shows like The Venture Brothers, both to clean the palate, and to make us challenge the way we tell stories, and the limits of the medium. It worked more than it failed, it was funny more often than it fell flat, it was definitely a solid B during its entire run. But even if it had been a dismal failure, it would still be the kind of show that is all to rare in TV, and all too necessary.

And now we don’t have it anymore.

But maybe that’s just as well, because the finale really wasn’t all that funny, and suddenly it all feels played out, and a lot of it really was filthier than funny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I’m really all over the place here. On the one hand, I really like the idea of what the Venture Brothers represents, on the other hand, in terms of execution it’s as club-footed as the Juul Haalmeyer Dancers.

I dunno. I just dunno what to think. Gah. Moving on…

PLAY BY PLAY

Doc Venture is attempting to throw the best home school prom $500 can buy. I think he ends up going a bit over-budget. He enlists all his friends - as usual without paying them - and rents some whores as well. Despite speaking in heartfelt fashion about how traumatized he was by his dad’s inviting prostitutes to his birthday a couple eps back, here he’s doing basically the same thing. He’s incapable of breaking out of the mold that formed him.

Dean takes Triana to the prom, then discovers she’s got a boyfriend. He’s really upset, and sulks. This is a bit odd, since in “The Better Man” Dean finally got a handle on his obsession, and was chatting up girls in the mall, evidently with some success. Here he’s back to loserdom. Hank, meanwhile, tries to get the UPS lady to go with him, but she refuses, so he takes Dermot instead. Eventually Dean infuriates Triana, and she storms off.

Monstrosos, meanwhile, is evidently not dead, and S.P.H.I.N.X. is going to trade him to the O.S.I. in exchange for clemency. This goes badly, and we end up in another of those wheels-within-wheels plots that really weren’t all that funny on Get Smart even when you could understand the dialog. Here, between the Hunter S. Thompson palaver and the Bill Dauterieve-if-he-was-violently-insane patois, it’s largely incomprehensible. There’s some double agents, and some double-back agents (I just made that up, but it sounds better than ‘double-double agents’) and an incredible hulk, and an elaborate right of succession. None of it makes much sense. Really I’ve never liked the Colonel Gathers stories. I get the parody, but you *do* need to have a plot for that kind of thing, and there’s never a plot here, just a lot of unrelated bits. There’s a whole lot of sturm and no drang.

Suffice to say The General fires himself off into space to find some aliens who can maybe cure his “Peepee cancer,” and Hunter is now in charge of the OSI. Yeah, whatever.

Meanwhile, in the funny part of the episode, henchman Gary 21 is attempting to bury 24’s skull so he’ll stop haunting him. Worse yet, he’s bringing along Mr. Wendell from the Arrested Development music video as a kind of spiritual advisor. While discussing this with a very drunk Byron Orpheus and Jefferson Twilight (Best. Name. Ever!), it turns out that Mister Wendell is still alive. Realizing that this means 24 is not a ghost, but rather just a delusion, Gary turns around and finds both of them gone. Basically he spends the episode helping out Shoreleave and S.P.H.I.N.X. run security, then hangs out at the prom.

The Monarch and Mrs. The Monarch turn up at the feet with Princess Tiny Feet in tow. Turns out she left Hatred because she likes really rough sex. He agrees to beat her up repeatedly if that’ll make her happy. Gary 21 confesses his love for Mrs. The Monarch in front of her hubbie, and stars talking about how the two of them made out. The Monarch couldn’t care less. “We’re super villains! We swing!” Disgusted, Gary quits and storms off.

Rusty, meanwhile, is repeatedly getting shot down by the whores that he, himself paid for. He decides to roofie all the prostitutes so he can score, and gets “Spanish fly” from a mutant fly in his lab.

The boys decide to go get Triana back by having Dean burn a cross on her lawn while dressed up like a clansman (Long, not terribly interesting story), but she’s over at her boyfriend’s place. Her step dad tries to talk some sense into Dean, but Dean ends up cussing him out.

Meanwhile, Molotov C_cktease steals Monstroso’s unconscious body, resulting in a running battle with Brock. She confesses to him that her long-preserved virginity is no longer long-preserved, and that she’s been knocking boots with Monstroso for some time now. Devastated, Brock decides to arrest her, and she explains that all the whores at the party are, in fact her Blackhearts, and if she doesn’t give them the signal by midnight, they’ll kill everyone at the party. Then, rather than be captured, Mol kills herself.

With only a minute to go, Brock rushes back to the Venture compound, expecting to find a bloodbath, but in fact, everyone is getting along fine, thanks to the Roofies. Then all the women mutate into giant humanoid flies. Brock smiles and jumps into the fray.

The End. Probably forever. Probably for the best.

OBSERVATIONS

There is an extended, and vile sequence where it turns out there’s a sex act called a “Rusty Venture,” (Because Rusty’s cartoon was so popular among the gay community) and a lengthy debate ensues where everyone gives conflicting filthy descriptions of what they think it is. Every other word is bleeped, and it still made my toes curl. It’s really horrific. What it really is turns out to be mundane, predictably embarrassing, and surprisingly apt.

Really, this was the most vile episode ever, between the Rusty Venture act, and Princess Tiny Feet, and the whores, and the date rape drugs (Which end up saving the day), it’s just nasty left and right. I’m actually pretty thick skinned, but I cringed more than once. I think they realized they only had this one shot left to offend and pulled out all the stops.

There really is a sense of them saying goodbye here, with 21’s arc resolved, Gathers in charge of the OSI, Brock coming home for one last hurrah, the resolution of the Molotov and Monstroso arcs, the prom itself, yet another end to the Dean/Triana thing, the resolution of Hatred’s arc, and a lot of old faces we haven’t seen in a while. There’s also a sense that we’ve come full circle: the boys do the Team Venture thing, and include their illegitimate half brother Dermot, Brock has a fight that’s straight out of the first season, and the whole situation descends into weird science mayhem while the Monarch rages impotently in the background. Same as it ever was.

If the show comes back - and everything about this tells me it won’t - I can’t see where they’d really go from here. Everything seems played out. Actually, it seemed played out quite a while ago. This episode was almost like gathering up the equipment and putting it back in the locker.

Triana. Ok, I liked her at first in concept, but I never found the character attractive http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/14/Triana.jpg/220px-Tri...

Which I think is intentional. It’s not that she’s Dean’s miss right, I think it’s just that she’s the only girl he knows. (Nice rack, though) Added to which she wasn’t a regular enough character to really get developed, and the actress gave consistently random and poor line readings. When they got rid of her a while ago, I was frankly pretty happy with how they did it, and was glad to see her leave. When she turned up in this one, I just groaned.

For the record, I was always more interested in Kim, Triana’s friend who turned up twice :

http://mimg.ugo.com/201003/38423/cuts/ugo-vb-kim_288x288.jpg

I always found her pretty attractive, and I liked her speaking voice and everything about her just had more style. Apparently I’m not the only one who had the hots for her as you can see from this fan art

http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=350328&GSub=13280

We’re told that after rehab she moved to Florida and became a born-again Christian.

Colonel Gentleman turns up again, surprisingly, and his accent isn’t as good as it normally is. He’s incoherent and filthy as ever.

As of this ep, Pete White is officially not gay.

I guess that’s about it. Part of the problem was that it’s a double-length episode. I generally don’t like those, of any show. Why? Because you’ve got a format, and the format is an important part of storytelling. A haiku needs a certain structure, blues needs a particular timing and progression, cake needs flour, water, sugar and eggs. If you don’t have those things, then you don’t have Haikus, Blues, and Cakes respectively. They develop this show around a very tight 22 minute running time, and it suits it, when they double that, it feels bloated and aimless, and the punch just isn’t there. The timing is off.

Meh. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. When it started, the series felt like it it was specifically aimed at me, like it was telling jokes that only I got. Now it's like it's telling jokes no one gets, and which wouldn't be all that hilarious even if you did. I'm disappointed.

I dunno. That’s all I’ve got. How ‘bout you folks?

WILL CONSERVATIVES LIKE THIS EPISODE

What, are kidding me? There are like a dozen things in this episode that’ll send conservatives running screaming from the room. And like two dozen that’ll make us pick up lit torches and pitchforks.

PLEASE NOTE: This article assumes The Venture Brothers has been cancelled. As of 12/16/10 it was brought to my attention that this isn't the case. My full retraction can be read here: http://www.republibot.com/content/breaking-news-venture-brothers-not-can...