Man, did I miss this show. Besides the Halloween special last year, it’s been two and a half years since we’ve had a Venture Bros. episode. The third episode of season five premiered on Sunday (with a small but cheeky performance from Gillian Jacobs) and between that and the hour-long premiere the other weekend, this show continues to surprise me with big changes for the Venture clan.

Show creators Doc Hammer and Jackson Publick have never been shy about making story choices that greatly change the characters. I mean, in the last moments of the season three finale they killed off 24 right after Brock quit — two fan-favorites gone from the series, at least as regulars. But that fearlessness and willing to shake things up is how the show went from a straight-forward Johnny Quest satire to the eclectic, often bizarre and even touching show that it is today. The one aspect of the show that has ultimately changed the least is the boys.

That’s not to say Hank and Dean haven’t grown up at all during the first four seasons. Both boys have been disillusioned about their father’s success as a scientist and have an overall better idea of the world around them. But while the show has had the boys change in previous seasons, their naivety seems to snap them back over and over. In the last couple weeks (on top of the Halloween special), I’ve started to think the brothers are really changing.

Hank’s personality hasn’t changed nearly as much, but he is stretching his wings. Hank Co. is back at the compound  and as much as Rusty has belittled him for not being the ideal future super scientist like Dean, Hank is showing initiative. Then in this past episode, we see Hank with highly focused Dark Knight-esque survival and combat skills that save the day. Granted, he was hyped up on coffee at the time, but the only thing that went wrong in his plan was the iPad didn’t go off. That’s pretty impressive considering how many times he died previously due to his own incompetence (including via rooftop umbrella drop trying to be Batman).

But as Hammer and Publick have said before, the show is really about failure. And while the boys are becoming their own people, I doubt their lives are going to be any less disturbing. I mean, in the premiere Dean gets a girlfriend who slowly mutates thanks to Rusty’s new radioactive project, then beats the mutant’s leader in hand-to-hand combat to please his mutant girlfriend, which he then discovers will doom the world to a mutant apocalypse.

The boys might change, but some things stay the same. And I’m looking forward to watching it all.

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With Gravity Falls, Legend of Korra, Young Justice and Green Lantern: the Animated Series all on hiatus during the fall and winter (luckily all coming back in early to mid 2013), I’ve been jonsing for more cartoons on my TV. Luckily, The Hub is giving kids of the ’90s some much needed nostalgia this Christmas season — they’ve picked up Animaniacs for syndication starting on Christmas Eve. Not a bad Christmas present!

I guess it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that the show has been picked up by The Hub — other Kids WB shows like Batman: The  Animated Series and Superman: The Animated Series have been shown in syndication on the Hub, and Wakko’s Wish (the Animaniacs straight-to-video movie that was essentially the finale of the show) has been a part of the network’s Family Movies segment recently. Considering the Hub has had success with these other shows, it makes sense that they’d bring in arguably Kids WB’s most successful and beloved show.

Animaniacs helped shape my sense of humor more than almost any other show growing up. As a thematic descendant of Looney Toons and Merry Melodies, the show had tons of slapstick, puns galore, pop culture references and just enough adult humor that somehow always went over our heads. And with the insanely talented likes of Rob Paulson, Tress MacNeille, Jess Harnell, Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker among others, the timing is just perfect. It also featured a plethora of original songs, including Broadway star Bernadette Peter’s work as Rita the cat and Paulson’s legendary Countries of the World song … which he’s been known to still sing by heart during conventions. It does my heart good to know that a new generation will be able to watch the show on TV again.

Of course, this makes me wonder what other cartoons from my childhood could show up on The Hub. My first guess is Pinky and the Brain, since it was a direct spinoff of Animaniacs, or maybe Tiny Toons as its predecessor, but I would love for the network to pick up Kids WB dark horse Freakazoid to give it more exposure to a generation that might not know about it. It would be fantastic to see the show Histeria! come back to television and while I have no doubt it aged poorly, a small part of me would want to see Road Rovers again.

A regular schedule for Animaniacs hasn’t been released, but The Hub will introduce the show with a four hour marathon on Christmas Eve starting at 4 PM EST and an airing of Wakko’s Wish at 8 pm EST.

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