It's tough to be a Venture Bros. fan sometimes. The show has always been one of the crown jewels of the Adult Swim lineup, but new seasons arrive so rarely and vanish so quickly that it's almost impossible for fans to ever satisfy their fix. Season 6 was, in many ways, a high water mark for the show. It featured a fresh starting point and a consistently great and unusually focused string of episodes. But in the end, it wrapped up too quickly and without providing much in the way of resolution for the various new plot threads Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick put into play.

Team Venture has arrived at last.

Clancy Brown's Red Death was one of many great new villains this year.

Last year's special "All This and Gargantua-2" effectively closed the book on one era of the show. By the end of that special, several core villains were dead and the makeup of the Guild of Calamitous Intent was fundamentally altered. Meanwhile, the Venture family were positioned for a new status quo as the Monarch managed to destroy the Venture Compound at long last and Dr. Venture inherited his late brother's massive fortune and scientific empire. All of that fed into the premiere, "Hostile Makeover," as the Venture clan packed up and moved to New York City. Cue the funky dance celebration.For a show that prides itself on its intricate web of continuity (continuity that's easy to lose track of during those multi-year absences), it was a welcome change of pace to see The Venture Bros. offer up a clean slate for both its characters and viewers. Once the initial novelty of being insanely rich wore off, the main characters quickly settled into story arcs that would remain in play for the rest of the season. Dr. Venture consistently found ways to screw up his new company. Dean finally got to experience the thrill and pressure of being a college student. Hank fell in love with a girl and ran afoul of her crime lord father. Brock dealt with being back in his old role as the Venture family bodyguard and an increasingly troubling crisis of masculinity. And poor Hatred had to come to terms with being the unwanted, oft-ignored fifth wheel of the group.In many ways, Team Venture played second fiddle to the show's supporting cast and supervillains this season. Dr. Venture himself has become a fairly stagnant and one-note character by now. Hank only sporadically enjoyed the spotlight this season, though when he did take center stage he was his usual wacky, entertaining self. His over-the-top first date with Sirena in "It Happening One Night" being a perfect example. Dean and Hatred were both treated like afterthoughts, leaving only Brock and his midlife crisis as a consistent point of focus. Luckily, as annoying as it was to see Hank and Dean given the short shrift, this season more than made up for that omission when it came to characters like the Monarch, Henchman 21, Billy Quizboy and Pete White.Billy and Pete were especially great in the second episode, "Maybe No Go," which wound up being the only installment to veer away from the beaten path. There we saw Billy rekindle his rivalry with Augustus St. Cloud and make a big sacrifice in order to preserve an important piece of Duran Duran memorabilia. While silly on the surface, that episode and its resolution spoke volumes about the show and its reverence towards the pop culture it lampoons. These goofy old movies and comic books and cartoons and music videos mean something to the characters, as they clearly mean something to Publick and Hammer.But above all, this was the Monarch and Henchman 21's chance to shine. Both characters found themselves at a low ebb after losing the Cocoon and being reduced to jobless layabouts hanging around the Monarch's childhood home while Dr. Mrs. The Monarch busied herself with rebuilding the Guild. The show's ever-present theme of failure was very much in effect this season, and nowhere more so than with the duo's unlikely and unplanned rise as costumed superheroes. It was consistently hilarious to watch the Monarch don his Blue Morpho costume and bumble his way into becoming enemy number one for the Guild. It was all the more fitting because Monarch's only goal in his entire costumed crusade was to eliminate his competition and regain his Dr. Venture arching rights. True to form, the Monarch only ever succeeds in spite of himself.The Blue Morpho storyline dominated the course of the season in a way we've never really seen from this show. Publick and Hammer's writing usually isn't nearly so focused in that regard. And while it's easy to picture the constant New York setting and the repeating formula of Blue Morpho and Kano accidentally eliminating their competition growing stale after eight episodes, it never lost its appeal. It was frustrating that some characters were so completely ignored this time. Most annoyingly, neither Triana nor the Order of the Triad put in even a token appearance. But given the problems this season faced from its meager eight episode structure, it's just as well Publick and Hammer didn't stray from the course too often.And if it was disappointing not to reconnect with the likes of Triana and Dr. Orpheus, this season did add a few memorable new faces to the lineup. The shift to New York allowed the show to spend more time poking fun at the Marvel Universe, including a pitiful faux-Avengers team and Wide Wale, a mash-up of Kingpin and Don Corleone with gills. The real fun, however, came with the revolving door of minor villains who all had the misfortune of crossing paths with Blue Morpho. From Harangutan to Think Tank, these villains served both as clever spoofs and as compelling, tragically doomed figures in their own right. This season was especially impressive when it came to its pool of guest voice actors. Jeffrey Wright's Think Tank and Clancy Brown's Red Death were both the highlights of their respective episodes. And the latter at least has the opportunity to become a recurring player on the show, something I very much hope will come to pass in Season 7.In many ways, Season 6 represented Venture Bros. at its finest. It built up and fleshed out a great new status quo for the characters. It has ample laughs to offer, but also the deep characterization that makes the Venture Bros. universe so memorable in the first place. More than ever, Publick and Hammer emphasized how thin the line is between hero and villain in this goofy world where both sides play out their elaborate games and the rest of society barely notices or cares.Sadly, this season wasn't able to stick the landing, and the culprit was a familiar one. The finale episode, "Red Means Stop," had very little closure to offer viewers. No character's arc truly felt complete. Everything from the Blue Morpho situation to Hank's relationship with Sirena to the teases made about the shared history between Monarch and Dr. Venture's fathers was simply left dangling. Publick and Hammer at least admitted to that problem , basically blaming "All This and Gargantua-2" for eating into their episode allotment for Season 6 and limiting what they could accomplish. There's no reason to doubt that the duo will be able to give Season 6 the proper finish it deserves, either in the form of another standalone special or when Season 7 finally arrives (in what I'm guessing will be late 2018 at this point). But that's then. Right now, this season feels incomplete, and as such becomes a bit less than the sum of its parts.