In a time where attention spans are vastly diminished by things like TikTok and the 24hr news cycle, it's hard to imagine an entire fandom calmly anticipating the resolution to a series which had left them on a cliffhanger for 5 years but if there's any quality that one learns as a fan of The Venture Bros, which has taken a staggering 20 years to produce 7 seasons and 1 theatrical length finale special, that quality is patience.
The Venture Bros is truly an anomaly of our time. When a throwaway line from the first season turns out to be a long contained allusion to a major reveal that 15 years and 6 seasons later would leave fans in a unilateral state of awe, you know you have something amazing.
Expectations have been frequently subverted throughout the course of the series, from the Scooby Doo-style pirate ghost that went from stranded con artist to homeless to being second in command of a major corporation that conquered an addiction to tranquilizers or his beloved boss who first appeared in the season one finale as an escaped tumor bent on revenge to the Venture enemy turned bodyguard turned unarmed security guard that bounced between good and evil mostly through conflicts with himself until he manages to conquer his demons while finding himself happier with less but better off for it.
In the final installment, Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, this tradition of dynamic characters going through unpredictable development is continued.
Some of the twists are filled with complicated intricacies that require a deep understanding of the dynamics that are developed since season one to really sink in while, just like in the show, some of the most memorable moments in the Radiant is the Blood come from the type of anticlimactic reveal that somehow only The Venture Bros can craft in an exciting manner.
In anticipation of Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, fans have definitely gone through the five stages of Grief.
We all denied the fact that the show's eighth season had been cancelled in 2020 so we all made our anger clear with a #SaveTheVentureBros tag and letters to the producers until we finally got the promise of a finale movie and found ourselves bargaining with ourselves about how high our expectations would be for the various fields about which we love The Venture Bros.
With a runtime of only 83 minutes, less than the length of 4 regular episodes, we knew that we would be limited in our possible content so some element would surely need to be sacrificed.
Being a show designed to appeal to the types of fans that would understand the difference between Quenya and Sindarin and relate to one of the characters who would invest years of his life to decoding a mysterious series of clues subtly hidden in the margins of a children's cartoon that stopped airing in the 70s, The Venture Bros provides the type of meta-analysis that holds a mirror to it's fans and begs to be dissected beyond any scope of reason or sanity, so the demands it would be placing on itself would almost seem unnavigable, not to mention the ever shifting tastes and demands of us, the fans.
Would we accept an inscrutable or rushed story if it answered the immeasurable number of questions we've been left with over the past 20 years of the series existence or would we rather have an epic conclusion that left our greatest questions on "Read"?
Would the jokes have time to land as they always have, at the expense of their being fewer of them or would quantity supersede quality so we could have as many jokes as possible to take away from it, even if they were somewhat forced?
In the true spirit of the series, which features diplomacy between a guild of masked villains and a secret branch of the military that consists entirely of super-soldiers our bargains were met and many of us found a great acceptance in this final adaptation.
In a world where misinformation and propaganda run parallel with equal parts magic and super-science to the point that Stanley Kubrick filmed the moon landing with consultation from a man who already walked on the moon, truth is certainly an abstract concept to really grasp.
No, we didn't get our every question answered but some (not all) of our most crucial questions from day one were answered and we were left with enough that we can still hope the future might still allow for another installment in The Venture Bros saga and enough material to fuel fan discussions about the series for years to come if this truly is the end.
Yes, there were some jokes that felt like they were delivered in an express fashion but those tended to be sandwiched between unforgettable gut busters that left me breathless and even found my wife (who isn't a regular viewer of the show) laughing out loud on quite a few occasions.
In completing a run that has lasted 20 years, spanning the full life of the Adult Swim network, Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart succeeds where countless beloved series have fallen short in recent years by delivering a satisfactory ending to a compelling series without compromising the integrity of the rest of the series.
For giving us this masterpiece I'd like to express my sincerest appreciation and gratitude to Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick(Christopher McCulloch), along with the rest of the team that put their blood sweat and tears into what is arguably the most under appreciated and easily most well written series that has ever graced my television.
Thank you and #GoTeamVenture.
The Venture Bros is truly an anomaly of our time. When a throwaway line from the first season turns out to be a long contained allusion to a major reveal that 15 years and 6 seasons later would leave fans in a unilateral state of awe, you know you have something amazing.
Expectations have been frequently subverted throughout the course of the series, from the Scooby Doo-style pirate ghost that went from stranded con artist to homeless to being second in command of a major corporation that conquered an addiction to tranquilizers or his beloved boss who first appeared in the season one finale as an escaped tumor bent on revenge to the Venture enemy turned bodyguard turned unarmed security guard that bounced between good and evil mostly through conflicts with himself until he manages to conquer his demons while finding himself happier with less but better off for it.
In the final installment, Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, this tradition of dynamic characters going through unpredictable development is continued.
Some of the twists are filled with complicated intricacies that require a deep understanding of the dynamics that are developed since season one to really sink in while, just like in the show, some of the most memorable moments in the Radiant is the Blood come from the type of anticlimactic reveal that somehow only The Venture Bros can craft in an exciting manner.
In anticipation of Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, fans have definitely gone through the five stages of Grief.
We all denied the fact that the show's eighth season had been cancelled in 2020 so we all made our anger clear with a #SaveTheVentureBros tag and letters to the producers until we finally got the promise of a finale movie and found ourselves bargaining with ourselves about how high our expectations would be for the various fields about which we love The Venture Bros.
With a runtime of only 83 minutes, less than the length of 4 regular episodes, we knew that we would be limited in our possible content so some element would surely need to be sacrificed.
Being a show designed to appeal to the types of fans that would understand the difference between Quenya and Sindarin and relate to one of the characters who would invest years of his life to decoding a mysterious series of clues subtly hidden in the margins of a children's cartoon that stopped airing in the 70s, The Venture Bros provides the type of meta-analysis that holds a mirror to it's fans and begs to be dissected beyond any scope of reason or sanity, so the demands it would be placing on itself would almost seem unnavigable, not to mention the ever shifting tastes and demands of us, the fans.
Would we accept an inscrutable or rushed story if it answered the immeasurable number of questions we've been left with over the past 20 years of the series existence or would we rather have an epic conclusion that left our greatest questions on "Read"?
Would the jokes have time to land as they always have, at the expense of their being fewer of them or would quantity supersede quality so we could have as many jokes as possible to take away from it, even if they were somewhat forced?
In the true spirit of the series, which features diplomacy between a guild of masked villains and a secret branch of the military that consists entirely of super-soldiers our bargains were met and many of us found a great acceptance in this final adaptation.
In a world where misinformation and propaganda run parallel with equal parts magic and super-science to the point that Stanley Kubrick filmed the moon landing with consultation from a man who already walked on the moon, truth is certainly an abstract concept to really grasp.
No, we didn't get our every question answered but some (not all) of our most crucial questions from day one were answered and we were left with enough that we can still hope the future might still allow for another installment in The Venture Bros saga and enough material to fuel fan discussions about the series for years to come if this truly is the end.
Yes, there were some jokes that felt like they were delivered in an express fashion but those tended to be sandwiched between unforgettable gut busters that left me breathless and even found my wife (who isn't a regular viewer of the show) laughing out loud on quite a few occasions.
In completing a run that has lasted 20 years, spanning the full life of the Adult Swim network, Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart succeeds where countless beloved series have fallen short in recent years by delivering a satisfactory ending to a compelling series without compromising the integrity of the rest of the series.
For giving us this masterpiece I'd like to express my sincerest appreciation and gratitude to Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick(Christopher McCulloch), along with the rest of the team that put their blood sweat and tears into what is arguably the most under appreciated and easily most well written series that has ever graced my television.
Thank you and #GoTeamVenture.