Needs moar Monarch
So The Venture Brothers s4 premiered on Adult Swim tonight. Now, new Venture Bros. is always a good thing (always), but it felt like something was missing. First of all, was the episode supposed to only be fifteen minutes instead of a half-hour, or did [as] fuck up by repeating the first half of an episode during the second fifteen minutes? Never heard anything about them changing the length of the show, and the only time I remember them doing a shorter episode like it before is that one holiday episode where Hank & Dean accidentally summoned a demon during their dad's Christmas party. *sigh* Fuck it, I'll find out when I download a copy of it later...
Anyway, it felt like an unfinished episode even if it actually was complete. It was like if you were watching one of the old 4-or-however-many-part Doctor Who episodes and missed maybe the first half of ep. 1 and caught all of 2, but had to stop before you got a chance to see 3 and 4. Although, that would probably still have been better, because (at least in my experience), when they jump around the timeline on Doctor Who, they tend to give you a sign of some sort that that's happening. VB tonight was more like:
- start where s3 left off
- skip ahead to some-time-that-isn't-exactly-clear later, Brock's replacement is on the job (not saying who today), Doc Venture's pissed some new people off, Dr. Orpheus' outfit has become infinitely less elegant (fun fact: I tend to imagine characters' voices when I read things. Guess who Dr. Strange sounds like, no matter how hard I try to imagine something else so as not to burst into giggles every fucking time?), Helper seems to have gotten a new level of batshit programmed into him, Dean has to kill "Hitler" but doesn't want to (quotations for a reason you can find out yourself), etc.
- go back to same/next day as far as I can tell from s3 finale, find out where Brock's gotten to
- drift back and forth between the present and the time between it and s3-finale-day til the end
I realize that this doesn't sound too bad written out like that, but keep in mind that while all this was happening, there were no indications that the time-jumping was happening at all. No mentions of flashbacks starting, no fuzzy dream-sequence effects, no fade-ins/outs, nothing. The boys wore different outfits in the very last bit where it kept drifting back and forth, but other than that, you'd have no clue. The first scenes with Brock could have happened the same day as the s3 finale, or they could have been after the time-skip, and later on after he talks to a certain character he goes to see someone else, but we again don't know how much time has passed in between. Monarch kidnaps them again next week according to the preview, so things should be better then.
Also, I need to be slapped because I can't help thinking time-skipped-Hank (the boys are only, like, 15, and, well, them, and said time-skip is no more than a few months, mind you) looks rather sexy with his longer hair.