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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Go Team Venture!, Feb 22 2007
One of the funniest shows on Adult Swim is the "Venture Brothers," a deeply warped look at boys' adventure characters like Jonny Quest and the Hardy Brothers.
The second season is basically much the same as the first, building on previous storylines (example: Jonas Jr.) and having various kooky violent adventures for our friends, and hilarious dialogue ("You've come to steal our great ideas. You've been foiled--we have none!"). That is, after they deal with the shocking cliffhanger that the first season ended with-- the death of Hank and Dean, the title characters.
The second season opens with Dr. Venture escaping to various exotic locales, before being dragged home by Brock. A devastated Dr. Orpheus decides to use necromancy to bring the boys back to life, but can't find their souls -- and a zombielike Hank and Dean appear in the doorway.
Oops, it turns out that the boys have a penchant for getting killed, and so Dr. Venture always keeps handy clones in the compound -- and presto, the Venture Brothers have returned, unaware that they ever died. Meanwhile, Dr. Venture has a nasty encounter with a teleportation device, and the Monarch escapes from prison (courtesy of a gay gorilla with a romantic streak).
In the episodes that follow, the newly cloned Venture Brothers (plus Dr. Venture and Brock) must deal with a variety of new and bizarre adventures: a crazy woman who might be connected to the twins, evil Egyptian cults, aliens, Lincoln's ghost, Japanese demons, "Venturestein," villainous double-dates, bad porn, and Baron Ünderbheit mistaking Dean for a girl... and falling in love with him.
The second season of "Venture Brothers" is, if it's possible, even funnier than the first was -- the storylines just keep getting stranger and more comic, and the characters are just as kooky as ever. The climax of all the weirdness is the finale, with a big battle, and a shocking discovery about the Guild's Sovereign... right before we get another cliffhanger.
On the new front, there's plenty of unethical experiments, blood'n'gore, wacky quests, teenage crushes, and two-part episodes with no "part 1." And since we were left wondering about questions like "where is the twins' mother?", "how did Brock get this way?" or "when will Dr. Orpheus get an arch?", we actually get some answers on that front. Since this is the "Venture Bros," there are no remotely normal ones.
The stories are as well-written as ever, with weird plot details (when Ünderbheit hears that there are no holding cells, he orders "Put zhem in... ZE PANTRY!"), and gloriously wonky dialogue ("I have watched you pull a man's eyes from his head and make him dance like a marionette with his own optic nerves!" " At least I didn't break his heart").
James Urbaniak is excellent as "amphetamines and failure" scientist Rusty Venture, and Patrick Warburton is (as always) hilarious as the bloodthirsty Swede secret agent Brock. Michael Sinterniklaas and Christopher McCulloch are also great as (respectively) Dean, Hank and the whiny-voiced Monarch, and Steven Ratazzi is great as the hyperdramatic necromancer. Too bad a certain real-life person doesn't play himself.
The second season of "Venture Brothers" is every shred as good as the first one, and will leave viewers dangling painfully at the end. When does Season 3 start?
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