Liz OhanesianWe were Venture Bros. fans long before last weekend (and have the toys to prove it), but if there was anything that reaffirmed our belief that The Venture Bros. is the animated series that everyone should be watching, it was last Sunday's finale for season four. For fans of the show, this was a highly anticipated event, particularly considering that the sixteen-episode fourth season was split into two parts aired a year apart from each other.
We weren't immune to the excitement, nor were we disappointed by the results. “Operation P.R.O.M.” combined everything we loved about the show, complex relationships, gross-out jokes that are more significant than what you might think and, more importantly, characters that we have grown to love. We've compiled some of our favorite bits from the episode below.
In order to write this post, we had to mention some spoilers. Consider this your warning.
9. Prom, It Isn't That Much Fun
Are adults more obsessed with prom than teenagers are? That seems to be the idea here. Rusty is using his kids to try to create a prom much better than his own. (Says Shannon Cottrell, who has shot many of the Team Venture-related photos for this blog, “Never trust a man who requests fajitas at his sons' homeschool prom.”) The teens are so pre-occupied with other stuff that the event is simply something in the background. If you've ever been to a prom, you might recall that this is how the supposed biggest night of high school really is.
8. Pete White's DJ Skills
Did you see the way Pete White swiveled his hips and then pointed at the crowd? That has to be the best DJ move ever, straight-up arena rave. The best part of Pete's DJ set is when the action at prom is reaching a peak and then, all of a sudden, there's a moment when you think you hear “Blue Monday,” but it is not, in fact, the New Order mega-hit. If there's one thing I learned while hitting up (and DJing at) nightclubs, it's that you will only hear “Blue Monday” smack in the middle of the night. It doesn't matter what genre the DJ is spinning, or even if the song is older than the club crowd, it never clears the floor.
What, no Kim doll?; Credit: Shannon Cottrell
5. Dean and Triana, It Gets Ugly
Maybe at one point, we were hoping for Dean and Triana to get together, but that just wouldn't have been realistic. Theirs is pretty common situation, one friend develops a crush on the other. Things get awkward, very awkward. Maybe some day, they'll go back to being friends, but, at some point, there has to be a moment where they might actually despise each other. This is where Dean and Triana leave things at the end of season four.
4. What exactly is the Rusty Venture?
“What? My name is a sex act? When did that happen?” Rusty Venture asked at the prom.
There were a lot of different definitions of The Rusty Venture offered by a slew of both major and minor characters in the show (even Watch and Ward chimed in on the debate). We're not really sure what they were, though, because so much was censored. The running joke throughout a portion of the episode ends with Brock stating that it's a masturbation reference. Doc Hammer explained the reasoning behind this on Facebook that later made the rounds on Tumblr.
Never take a dirty joke at face value with The Venture Bros.
Watch and Ward made it into the finale too; Credit: Shannon Cottrell
3. Brock and Molotov
If there was one non-couple we loved on The Venture Bros., it was Brock and Molotov. They've been going back-and-forth with each other for years, but their enemies-or-lovers relationship comes to a nasty end when Mol reveals that she has taken off her chastity belt for someone else.
We'll admit it, that scene where Mol says, “I would rather die,” before meeting her (possible) demise was pretty emotional.
2. Pulp
There are times when music is so well used in a movie or TV show that the two become forever linked. We can never hear the end of “Layla” without thinking of Frankie Carbone frozen, nor can we hear “Stuck in the Middle with You” without envisioning Mr. Blonde and a knife. Now, the sound of Pulp's late-'90s track “Like a Friend” will always conjure up images of Brock running to save his friends.
This was more than just an example of good music placement. It felt like the end of the season finale was written around the song, both in the way the actions were synchronized with the music and with the lyrics that play right when Brock and Molotov have their final standoff (“I've done this before/And I will do it again/Come on and kill me, baby/While you smile like a friend/Oh, and I'll come running/Just to do it again”).
I'm actually a pretty big Pulp fan too and was geeking out a little two weeks ago, after reading that the band was reuniting. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm kind of hoping that this song will gain some newfound popularity thanks to The Venture Bros.
1. The Venture Bros. Aren't Done Yet
With no word yet on whether or not there will be a fifth season, we were a little anxious that we might be watching the final episode of the show. There were just too many signs pointing to this fate: the thank you messages from the creators, the fact that pretty much all of the loose ends were tied by the end of the episode. Then the credits rolled with a short message at the end stating that The Venture Bros. will be back.
Of course, the message is a bit vague. It didn't explicitly state that there will be a fifth season. Could the guys have something else in store? We have no idea.
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