- [Shannon] "The Venture Brothers" is a cartoon
about a lot of things.
The go-to is it's a show about failure,
but I would say it's about abuse and emotional neglect
and the many failures of masculinity
and the horrible reality of lives we romanticize culturally,
the actuality of these cultural myths,
how awful they would be if made real.
[Rusty] The only people I get to hang out with are grownups.
The only time I get to leave the compound is to go someplace
creepy, like the Bermuda Triangle.
And then I get kidnapped by grownups.
- [Shannon] And what it means to suffer
and to have no control over your life
and to have your dignity taken from you
and to make horrible mistakes and hurt people
and then go on living. To keep living.
I know "BoJack Horseman" is described similarly
and I like BoJack all right.
But I like "The Venture Brothers" more
and it's a very different show.
It's not just a show about failure.
It's about how life is failure, life is suffering.
Life is comprised of let downs and indignities
and the brutality of the show, the sometimes baseness of it.
[Hank] I also heard that he sliced off a kid's hand and ate it.
Yeah, it was that big headed guy
that operated on your balls Dean. [Dean] HANK!
- [Shannon] More often than not
lends it an uncommon honesty.
I can't think of a more sincere TV show which if you've seen
it is kind of a funny thing to say.
Plot wise, it's a show about a pair of twins
and their former Jonny Quest-esque boy adventurer
dad and his body guard.
[Brock] For a minute there I thought you were gonna do
your killer hand thing. - [Phantom Limb] So did I.
- [Shannon] And his arch supervillain rival
and his dead super scientist father whose shadow
he can never get out from under.
- [Killinger] Do not call out to your father to save you.
He is the one who tied you up
and buried your dreams in this tomb.
He commands these creatures of the dark.
Fear, self-loathing, stinkin' thinkin', und dilly-dallying.
- [Shannon] And the world that these people live in.
It's a world of super scientists and supervillains
and mercenaries and government secret agents and so on.
And it's like the truest thing you'll ever see?
Out of fiction, out of TV, movies, books, whatever.
I have never seen the truth
of the frustration and the misery of existing,
especially existing and experiencing trauma
the way it's portrayed on this show.
I have never in my life seen a truer and more enjoyable
expression and fictional entertainment of human misery.
- [Jonas] Remember Rusty in here I'm your doctor, not your father.
Now let's get back to it shall we?
Now you were telling me how you're ungrateful
for all the opportunities your father's given you
and you blame me for all your problems.
- [Shannon] Dr. Venture super scientist
and former boy adventurer is a miserable person.
[Doc] So you can see why I've been reluctant
to go back into therapy.
- [Shannon] He's not the main character per se,
but he is the character
at the center of everything else, kind of the anchor
that ties all the other aspects of the show together.
And he's not a good person, but he's not not a good person
the way Walter White is,
the way all these cable prestige TV
morally ambiguous, middle aged white men are.
You're never in danger of thinking he's cool
or thinking he's doing the right thing.
He's pathetic, and there's a lot of surface level parody
humor derived from how deluded
and how pathetic he is initially.
But every time the show digs into his character
and why he is the way he is and just how awful
celebrity and hero worship are.
- [Hatred] So I can see why he's your best friend, I mean-
- [White] He's not my best friend.
I just work with him.
- [Hatred] And live with him and do everything with him.
That's best friends.
- [White] Maybe.
But I always thought of Rusty as my best friend.
- [Hatred] What?
You know what White?
You are a starf**ker.
You have the greatest friend in the world
and because he's not famous you don't care.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
- [White] Rusty and I went to school together.
We were inseparable.
- [Hatred] Starf**ker
- [Shannon] And the difference between a life lived
and a life perceived on television
and what would drive people to act the way
they do in superhero shows.
Again, the reality of that kind of universe as populated
by real human beings.
- [Doc] Brock and the boys are still trapped,
probably dead by now.
- [Orpheus] We must help them!
- [Doc] No duh.
I have a zero point magnet somewhere around here
that will take these pyramid walls down on a jiff
so thanks for nothing.
- [Orpheus] Pyramid?
- [Doc] Yeah we were trapped in a pyramid.
Some stupid cult made a time machine.
- [Orpheus] What pyramid cult?
- [Shannon] And without getting into spoilers,
how a person's cruelty and selfishness
can have very far reaching consequences,
sometimes Dr. Venture's, but often from other characters.
But the show also celebrates small victories and small joys
all the time and explores how you find meaning in life
in spite of suffering and how through accepting
the horrible circumstances of your weird life.
I mean, what else can you do?
You can get through it.
And it's really funny.
- [Orpheus] WHO IS HECTOR MOLINA
AND WHY DO THEY KEEP SENDING ME HIS JUNK MAIL??
[GGI] Hello.
(baby babbling)
Someone left their baby.
- [Doc] Bill, bill, bill, final notice.
(dramatic music) AAGH!
Oh, June 6th 2003.
I really got to get my s**t together.
- [Shannon] Without "The Venture Brothers"
StrucciMovies and Critical Bits wouldn't exist
in the forms they exist now, or wouldn't exist at all.
And I know I would be a different person
if I had never gotten into "The Venture Brothers"
and been aware of the circumstances of its creation
of first one person, then two people.
- Hello, viewers, I'm Doc Hammer.
- And I'm "Jackson Publick".
- We're from "The Venture Brothers".
- We made it up.
- Would you please join us for a very special
venture brothers episode tackling some of today's hottest
teen issues like teen swearing.
- And teen action.
- And Tina Turner.
- [Shannon] Who maybe second only to like David Lynch
and Mark Frost are at the top of their field
as far as getting their specific vision onto television.
And through that, making something so weird and brutal
and upsetting and uncompromising and hysterically funny
and depressing, then touching then mean and funny again.
And in later seasons gorgeous,
like especially later on the backgrounds,
the production design, the blocking with characters,
it's just, it's a stunning looking show on top of being
written so well and performed so well.
- [Red Death] The obsession starts. The darkness.
A man can do terrible things when he's lost his way,
terrible things.
- [Shannon] A lot of early venture brothers
throws around the words gay and retarded a lot,
and there's some homophobic and transphobic stuff.
And if you're put off by that or other offensive content
in the show, then fair, it's worth giving a warning about,
and I'm not trying to make anyone watch a show
they'd find upsetting, but I never once felt
it was trying to be deliberately offensive.
It's more presenting this world with these people
not ever in an edgy way, but in an honest way,
and they're immature sometimes cruel sometimes bigoted
or ignorant people and a lot of it is cleaned up
as the show goes along though on rewatch,
not as fast as I would have hoped or not as fast
as I remembered it being,
that stuff is in the show for awhile.
And I'm not saying it's perfect representation,
but the show goes some interesting places
with disabled characters and gay male characters
specifically, and has a huge and very intense
queer fan base, which I would include myself in.
I already really liked "The Venture Brothers"
and had for years and years and earlier this year
I finally caught up on season six and seven
and was completely blown away.
"Hannibal" was my favorite TV show and after watching
the Blue Morpho arc of "The Venture Brothers",
I was just like, wow, this is it.
What can compete with this?
Nothing.
This is so fun and terrifying and funny and deeply sad.
It's not like, oh, I'm crying
at this tear-jerker sad, it's like, oh,
this is tragic on a level I feel in my soul,
I feel this as a human being,
while also being weird and gross and pulpy
and referential and pay off after years and years
of buildup venture brothers is what you get
when a medium self actualizes.
I have multiple projects in the works to go into
the show's history and analyze it.
But in very brief here, Jackson Publick was a storyboard
artist and a comic artist and he came up with the show
and pitched it and got his friend Doc Hammer involved
to help him and they've written almost every single episode.
And I think Hammer edits the show and Publick directs it
and they voice most of the cast
and it's been on 16 years with only seven seasons
because of how much work they put in individually
and how meticulous the production of it is.
I'd highly recommend the art book,
which has in depth sections on the conception and history
of every episode through season six
and is like 375 pages long.
I'm going to be more active than I usually am
with this sort of situation
in trying to get the show uncanceled.
I don't know how much online petitions ever do,
but I'll sign them.
I'm going to write letters and mail them.
I'm going to keep tweeting depressing tweets
about how upset I am, whatever.
And I've read HBO Max, maybe picking up the show.
But I also read a bunch about how "Hannibal" was going
to be picked up by a streaming service when it got canceled
and that was five years ago and I'm still waiting.
If right after I put this video up
it is announced that "The Venture Brothers"
is no longer canceled and will be taken care of by HBO
then like stellar, I will be elated.
"The Venture Brothers" is just such a perfect articulation
of what it means to be human.
Like I think of "Ikiru" and I think of "The 400 Blows"
as these sweet moving works on, you know,
these works on humanity
or like "Bicycle Thieves" or something.
And I think through it's darkness
and its cruelty and its crassness
along with the earned genuine sweet moments
Venture Brothers makes me feel the same way.
And it's like these two New York
art weirdos doing cartoon voices together.
- We have two voices that we do that are almost the same voice
there's the guy from the The Council of 13.
The one who speaks like this.
And then he does Ghost Robot
and they're really long, horrible voices.
I want to do a whole episode that is just those two guys
talking and just excruciating everybody around them
not having a good time.
- [Shannon] Making references to bands
I've never heard of that I especially never heard of
when I was 13, when the show started.
- We've been trying to get into an episode since day one
and it's not even funny.
- It's really not gonna be funny with all this build up.
- You guys won't even, you won't like it
but we want Hank to go, "Stop wasting all my time-time!"
which is like the world's w-
- [Jackson in Hank Voice] "Wasting all my time-time!"
(audience laughing) - [Jackson] Little miss little miss can't be wr- I was gonna say that-
It's kind of based on, uh, little miss little miss cant be wrong
- But it's from a Cars song and I just think it'd be
so funny if Hank for some reason knows a Cars song.
'Cause he has this like weird recollection
of crap that never happened to him.
- [Hank] And they kill clean.
Don't let dames get in the way.
- [Brock] Honestly, Hank, where do you pick that stuff up?
I never see you read.
- [Dean] It's weird, right?
- [Brock] It's like he channels dead crazy people.
- [Hank] You think it's a cry for help?
- [Shannon] I'm around 30 now and it's been a part
of my brain for that long, part of how I draw
and how I look at visual art.
And even more than that, an inspiration to me
creatively overall, their work showed me that something
so unique and so special and so, so dense and sprawling
and so unconcerned with popular appeal.
Some of the show is just cruel and revolting,
one of the main cast is a pedophile,
could exist and it inspired me a lot.
I never get a lot of views on my YouTube channel,
but I do make what I want to make
with little regard to views and I'm really proud of that.
And Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick and their whole attitude
towards the art they make is a big reason for that.
Even if I make dumb video essays and not an adult
swim cartoon, I mean, coincidentally,
I just quoted Hammer in a video I put out last month,
the comedy one, the show has been a creative influence
on me and an influence on me as a person
since before I became an adult a long time.
It's two art weirdos who loved comics and loved movies
and loved music and had this story they wanted to tell
and they told it until because capitalism
has a stranglehold on any art being made
in the country I live in,
I guess it was no longer profitable enough,
just like "Hannibal" wasn't.
I don't know.
I don't know the circumstances of it's cancellation.
I hope something happens and they can continue.
If you can do something to help make that happen.
Please do.
If you have Hulu, the whole show is on Hulu.
First season is a little rough, but by two or three
it picks up a lot and by four and five it's really, really
good and by six and seven it's transcendent.
Specifically like I said, the Blue Morpho arc,
it's like a three episode arc.
And I think after that, The Monarch
who was like Dr. Venture's rival,
I had always liked that character
but after that I think he became my favorite character
and everything that happens in it is just incredible.
Also some of what I said in the intro to this video
about the characters changes as the show goes on,
I know that please don't be a pedant in the comments.
I said what I said to avoid spoiling people.
Speaking of spoilers, here's part of a clip
I thought was really nice that Ken Plume
tweeted to close out.
It's a song Publick and Hammer wanted to use
for the ending of a season three episode,
but weren't able to get the rights to
and Plume edited music over the clip.
I think I saw it before when he had initially
tweeted it out a while ago,
but he tweeted it again after the cancellation
and I've just been like sitting here,
watching it over and over and getting emotional.
The song is "Not The First Time" by Neil Innes.
The episode is The Invisible Hand of Fate
and here it is.
- [Hatred] Dismissed, Samson!
- [Brock] What about the kid?
- [Hatred] What, do you want to adopt him?
I said take it on the arches.
Psi-Ops needs guinea pigs for the memory wipe project, okay?
So, unlike you, he still works here.
(somber music)
♪ No, this is not the first time ♪
♪ Or the last time we shall meet ♪
♪ It's hard to understand the circumstances ♪
♪ And so easy to be indiscreet ♪
♪ Of all the chances we are given ♪
♪ Which one can we take? ♪
♪ And after all the indecision ♪
♪ Do we have a choice to make? ♪