The Venture Bros. Season 3 – CliqueClack Review

Boom! Yummy. Yet another great DVD from The Venture Bros. On a scale from “1” to “Awesome,” I can confidently rate this collection “Swinging Cartoon Penis,” because that’s pretty much all you’re going to remember after watching this.

All right, let me just talk about this and get it out of the way. There were a few times while watching the uncensored DVDs that I actually threw my hands towards the screen and half-laughed, half-screamed, “Why!?,” startling everyone around me. Have you ever wondered what super-old Colonel Gentleman or terribly calloused Ned look like without pants? Well, you’re going to find out, whether you like it or not. The language is also uncensored, but you’re probably going to be too distracted by the unnecessary views of balls from behind to notice. Those Korean animators love detail.

The HD widescreen format is really incredible, allowing one to fully enjoy the painted backgrounds. My God, this season’s backgrounds sent my art-nerd heart all aflutter. Sometimes you get lost in the animation and  you forget this is something from [adult swim]. I mean, let’s be honest here, [as] has a pretty awesome aesthetic, but most if it is ugly-good.

Previous DVDs from the series have treated us to some extra-bizarre extras featuring the creators themselves, Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer. After that S1 DVD extra of the guys and James Urbaniak dressing up as their respective characters and the S2 tour of the Astrobase with Jackson and Doc in their specially designed speedsuits, I guess I was expecting something equally strange for this set. However, the only extras are deleted scenes and commentary. I’m not knocking the commentary, of course. The commentary features just Jackson and Doc (and, unlike in the S2 commentary, Jackson is fully audible here) and is hilarious as always. Those that are unfamiliar with their style of DVD commentary should be warned that the guys barely ever talk about the actual episode but instead veer off onto wild tangents. Here are some highlights:

• A hotness battle between 90s Jewel and 90s Fiona Apple. No contest! I must side with Doc on this one: Fiona Apple is indisputably hotter, even during that stringy, heroin chic phase of hers.
• Doc is bent on spoiling the season’s major character death in each and every episode’s commentary. So if you were planning on listening to the commentary before seeing the entire season, well, first of all, why would you do that? Secondly, don’t.
• Take a shot every time you hear one of the guys light up a cigarette or talk about smoking. Punish that liver!
• One of my favorite characters from the season is the sassy (but totally hetero) Holy Diver, and it sounds like Jackson and Doc had a lot of fun with him. Doc mentions that the voice comes from a puppet show he did called SOX. Let’s break that down and pick up on some VB background. A few years back, Lisa Hammer (Triana Orpheus) did this weird cable access show about a super-gay alien called POX for a little while. SOX, voiced and oh-so-expertly handled by Doc, was a sock puppet version of the super-gay alien brought in to host the show after POX got kidnapped. Sassiness and catty remarks ensued. There are twelve episodes of this nonsense on YouTube, and it’s fun stuff to have on in the background while you’re working on other things (POX, like VB commentary, has gotten me through the inking stages of many an illustration). It’s all ridiculous and weird, and you get to hear the beginnings of the Holy Diver voice. “Boom! Yummy” needs to be popularized, by the way. Get on that.
• Convention experiences as VB superstars seems to have had a big influence on a lot of the guys’ scripts. So if you’ve ever talked to them at a Con, you can pretend you had a hand in the creative process of the show.
• Todd Alcott, a screenwriter who is probably best known in the Venture universe as the guy with elaborate analyses of each episode, was originally supposed to play tiny Dr. Entmann, but due to some complications, Stephen DeStefano, an artist on the show, stepped in instead.
• According to Jackson and Doc, VB doesn’t have the star power to get celebrity guest stars (let’s not mention the absence of Stephen Colbert, please). They briefly mention Patton Oswalt being a fanboy too, which is interesting because sometime between the commentary recording and now, Oswalt recorded a voice for the upcoming season. Mr. John Hodgman has recorded a voice, too. Here comes the geek love; bring a change of underwear.

Side note: AdultSwim.com also did these video commentaries for “The Buddy System” and “ORB”, which are worth checking out. I’m kind of bummed they didn’t find a way to include these on the DVD, as well, though I can imagine the interactive aspect could have been difficult to replicate.

As for the deleted scenes, they are … deleted scenes. Yup. Some are hits, some are misses. Pretty straight-forward. It’s interesting to see the different artistic styles present in the storyboard stage before it gets filtered for that Venture “look.”

The menus are hilarious annoying, on the other hand. To match the super-sweet Atari 2600 packaging, the animated menus are all 8-bit-y versions of various characters. The packaging also features a photo of four live actors dressed up as Dr. Venture, Brock and the boys playing the made-up VB Atari game. It is absolutely beautiful.

Those that buy the Blu-Ray set also get JG Thirlwell’s score for the show, which is fucking epic. For serious. I turn it up when I go to the supermarket and pretend I’m having a really intense time picking out produce. The Mantis Eye Experiment even posted these two extra tracks that didn’t make it on the soundtrack, so there’s a little bonus. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for an eventual release of the full version of the OSI theme. If you don’t do the whole Blu-Ray thing, Williams Street sell vinyl and CD and, as always, Amazon and iTunes have your back with MP3s.

All in all, the DVD is a must-have for all VB fans, naturally. Anyone looking for super-special bonus features will probably be disappointed, but the visual quality of the episodes themselves is incredibly impressive and the commentaries are a lot of fun. Also, swinging cartoon penis. That is all.

Clacked by Annie Wu
on Apr 30, 2009 @ 11:00 EST5EDT