Culture Shock 10.23.14: 'The Great Pumpkin' is a test of faith

"A Charlie Brown Christmas" may be the first and most celebrated "Peanuts" TV special, but "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is the best by almost any standard.

The animation is smoother, the writing and acting are more assured, and the entire production seems more fully formed, which it is, given that CBS wasn't entirely sold on "A Charlie Brown Christmas" until after it aired and the ratings came in. In particular, CBS wasn't sold on using children as voice actors or the jazz score by West Coast pianist Vince Guaraldi and his trio. But the special's ratings triumph led the network to go all in on two "Peanuts" specials the following year: the seldom-aired "Charlie Brown's All-Stars" and "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

"The Great Pumpkin" has more than snazzier production values going for it. It better captures the melancholy spirit of the comic strip. Of all the "Charlie Brown" specials in the world, it's the Charlie Browniest.

"A Charlie Brown Christmas," which first aired in 1965, is "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz at his most hopeful. Linus gives a soliloquy on the true meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown gives a ragged little Christmas tree a chance, and at the end even Lucy gives Charlie Brown a break, admitting he did pick a good tree after all. Everyone sings carols, and the special fades out with a happy ending — a merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. God bless us, every one.

Premiering Oct. 26, 1966, "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" is Schulz at his most cynical. The Christmas special reaffirms his faith, but the Halloween special tears it back down. It isn't just happenstance that Linus, for once, ends up with his hopes dashed.

Charlie Brown is the receptacle of all of Schulz's insecurities, but Linus is his philosophical mouthpiece. "It's the Great Pumpkin" shows Schulz is keenly aware Linus can, at times, be more than a little overbearing.

Linus, who proselytized for Christmas a year earlier, is a prophet for the Great Pumpkin, who according to official doctrine, rises each year from the most sincere pumpkin patch and flies through the air with toys for all the good little children. Linus has little regard for the Great Pumpkin's more high-profile rival, "that fellow with the red suit and white beard who goes, 'Ho, ho, ho!' " He leaves Charlie Brown to sigh about how they are separated by "denominational differences."

Halloween becomes a test of faith for both Linus and Charlie Brown.

Linus, naturally, never sees the Great Pumpkin. But rather than question the object of his faith, he blames a momentary lapse. Even a little slip, he says, can cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by.

The Great Pumpkin is a jealous squash, and he leaves Linus literally out in the cold.

Charlie Brown fares even worse. He first puts his faith in Lucy (and a signed document) when he goes to kick the football she so temptingly holds for him. And once again, Charlie Brown is done in, this time not just by his faith in humanity, but by a legal technicality: the document wasn't notarized.

Yet the worst is to come. Charlie Brown goes trick-or-treating Halloween night and ends up with nothing but a bag of rocks. It's probably the funniest joke in all the "Peanuts" specials, yet it's also the most mean-spirited. We thought it was just his fellow kids who gave Charlie Brown a hard time, but no. Apparently the whole town hates him.

Audiences, however, still love the blockhead, and they love to see him miserable. ABC's Oct. 15 broadcast of "It's the Great Pumpkin" scored 6.3 million viewers and a 2.1 rating among adults 18-49, according to Entertainment Weekly, topping most of the other network shows that aired that night.

In all the gloom and doom of "The Great Pumpkin," one ray of hope cuts the darkness. Schulz eases up just long enough for Lucy to go outside in the early morning and bring her shivering brother to bed.

Sisterly love doesn't conquer all, but if even Lucy has a heart, maybe there is hope for the rest of us.

Subsequent "Peanuts" specials don't go as dark, and by 1973's "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving," Schulz is doing happy endings again. Staring into the abyss once a year is enough.

Culture Shock 10.09.14: It's the end of Saturday morning as we knew it

Print advertisement for NBC's 1983 Saturday morning cartoon lineup. It was the
debut season for "Mr. T" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks," while "Thundarr the
Barbarian" moved to NBC from ABC, where it had aired the previous two seasons.

For as long as I can remember, "children's advocates" have hated children's television.

They always said the same thing: Children's television was too violent, too dumb and too commercial. And because kids watched "too much" of it, it was, by implication, too entertaining.

Not anymore. Mark your calendar, for this is a date that shall live in infamy: Saturday, Oct. 4, 2014, was the first Saturday since the 1960s when there were no Saturday morning cartoons on broadcast network television. For those of us who were kids during the Golden Age of Saturday morning cartoons, in the 1970s and '80s, it's Saturday mourning in America.

At last, the self-appointed children's advocates have slain their dragon.

In place of the animated cartoons that Generation X and the millennials grew up with are a bunch of live-action "educational and informational" programs. They're designated by the little "E/I" logo on the screen, which means the broadcaster is counting every second of them toward its government-mandated quota of E/I programming. It doesn't matter if anyone watches; it just matters that it's there and that it's "quality," as defined by the children's advocates.

Kids, meanwhile, have responded just as you'd expect. Those who can have flocked to cable TV and the children's section of Netflix, both of which operate blessedly free of the dictates of the Federal Communications Commission, for the most part. For now, anyway.

How did this happen? How did children wake up in a world with no Saturday morning cartoons?

It started 24 years ago when Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990. The act was the culmination of 20 years of agitation by activist groups such as Action for Children's Television, founded by Peggy Charren, who became the go-to talking head whenever the national news media needed someone to pontificate about kiddie TV, because why would you ever ask a kid?

The Children's Television Act limited advertising during both cable and broadcast children's programming and mandated that broadcasters devote a set amount of airtime each week to E/I shows.

The act's first victims were the cartoons that aired after school each weekday. The ad restrictions made them less profitable, which was the kiss of death in the highly competitive broadcast syndication market. Stations quickly dropped cartoons and added more talk shows and TV judges. Indirectly, we have the CTA to blame for Judge Judy and her ilk.

The CTA's full impact didn't hit Saturday mornings until later, as the FCC "clarified" the act and spelled out exactly what "educational and informational" meant, always tightening the screws.

NBC was the first to fall. The proud peacock that once had aired "The Smurfs" and "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends" farmed out its Saturday morning airtime to corporate sibling NatGeo.

Print advertisement for CBS's 1982 Saturday morning cartoon lineup.

CBS and ABC were next, followed by Fox. When the end came, only The CW was still airing cartoons, all of them Japanese imports. It was a painful, lingering death. Saturdays deserved better.

The image of children getting out of bed at the crack of dawn to watch Saturday morning cartoons along with a sugary cereal chaser has become a cliché. But it's no less true. My generation looked ahead to Saturday mornings — filled with Superfriends and Snorks — as if each were a mini Christmas. The networks trumpeted their new Saturday morning lineups each fall with preview specials in prime time. It was a big freaking deal.

Sure, kids still have Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and the Disney channels, but Saturday morning's passing matters. Maybe those old cartoons weren't "educational" in the approved sense, but they were a springboard for our imaginations. More than that sugary cereal, those cartoons fueled us, not just for the rest of the day but for life.

"Scooby-Doo," for one, taught us real-life lessons. We learned not to worry about scary-looking ghosts, because the odds were those ghosts were just con men trying to pull a fast one.

With cartoons teaching lessons like that, it's no wonder Congress was so eager to replace them with FCC-approved boredom.

Culture Shock: 04.12.12: '80s cartoons strike back — again!

Netflix has a section of children's programming it brands "Just for Kids," but pretty soon, I bet, a lot of 30-somethings will be clicking entry to relive part of their bygone youth.

Come to Cobra. We have cookies.

Last week, the video-streaming and DVD-rental service announced a deal with Hasbro to bring new and vintage cartoons based on Hasbro's toy franchises to Netflix's library of "watch instantly" offerings.

At the heart of the deal are Hasbro's latest cartoons, some of which are already available on Netflix instant: "Transformers Prime," "G.I. Joe: Renegades" and new versions of "Pound Puppies" and "My Little Pony." New seasons will appear on Netflix after they air on Hasbro's cable channel, The Hub.

I bet all of those college-age fans of "My Little Pony" — known as "Bronies," or so I've heard — are planning celebratory keggers even now. (Who am I to judge? When I was in college, I watched Nickelodeon's Canadian-import soap opera "Fifteen" every week — despite the shame that comes with watching any Canadian TV show that isn't "Kids in the Hall.")

But for those of us who watched weekday-afternoon cartoons during the 1980s, the big news was that the Netflix/Hasbro pact also included the original "Transformers" (before Michael Bay got his grubby hands on it), "G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero" (before Stephen Sommers did the same) and "Jem and the Holograms" (which no one has yet turned into a terrible live-action movie).

All three '80s classics will join Netflix's lineup later this year.

These shows are the forbidden fruit of children's programming. All were very popular in their day and built followings that even now still support comic books, T-shirts, DVD collections and retro-'80s-style toys. And all were derided when they originally aired as "half-hour toy commercials" because they were all based on Hasbro's popular toy brands.

Those of us who actually rushed home after school each day to watch "Transformers" or "Jem" didn't care one way or the other about commercialism. We just wanted to watch what were, at the time, the best cartoons around. (This was before "Batman: The Animated Series" upped the ante for action/adventure cartoons.)

Unfortunately, an unholy coalition of professional worriers, seeking to shield children from the twin bogeymen of commercialism and fantasy violence, agitated until Congress passed the Children's Television Act of 1990, which put restrictions on advertising during children's programming and mandated that broadcasters air more "educational" shows. The bottom line is the Children's Television Act made cartoons like "Transformers" and "G.I. Joe" less economically competitive in the brutally competitive world of TV syndication.

And that's partly why afternoon television is now wall-to-wall TV psychologists, TV doctors and TV judges — who just happen to be exactly the sort of professional scolds who demanded the federal government take action against cartoon commercialism in the first place.

If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that was the plan all along.

But revenge, as the Klingons say, is a dish best served cold. Today, Hasbro has its own cable channel, which is exempt from the rules that plague over-the-air broadcasters. So, Hasbro can produce new "My Little Pony" cartoons and sell My Little Pony ponies to the Bronies, and there's not much the killjoys at the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood can do except mutter to themselves as they hand wash their Chairman Mao T-shirts — brand loyalty for commies.

And for those of us who refuse to pay another $50 a month to upgrade to the channel tier that includes The Hub, there's now Netflix, where the childhood Congress stole from us lives again.

Yo, Joe.

Culture Shock: 10.20.11: Whatever happened to the Halloween television special?

Like a lot of things from the days when there were only three TV networks and cable TV was mostly reruns and wrestling, the prime-time Halloween special is largely a thing of the past.

"It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown," a holiday staple since it first aired in 1966, is pretty much the sole survivor from that bygone era.

It aired annually on CBS before switching to ABC a decade ago, a transition that came as a shock to those of us who grew up accustomed to seeing the swirling "CBS Special Presentation" logo — accompanied by a slightly alarming drum-and-brass fanfare — introducing each year's broadcast.

Halloween-themed episodes of regular prime-time shows don't count.

Besides, it's a little difficult to think of the "Treehouse of Horror" episodes of "The Simpsons," which have aired since 1990, as proper Halloween specials ever since Fox got the rights to the World Series and began delaying them until early November.

That's like watching a Christmas special in January. By then, you're over it.

The 1970s and '80s were a fertile period of Halloween programming.

"The Fat Albert Halloween Special" began its run in 1977.

What you need to understand about "Fat Albert," which was based on Bill Cosby's stand-up comedy routine, is that back then, childhood obesity was hilarious. Really, there was nothing better, especially if you tacked on a heartwarming life lesson.

The heartwarming life lesson at the end of "The Fat Albert Halloween Special" is that old people are, indeed, people, too.

More instructive in retrospect is the special's accurate depiction of trick-or-treating, which didn't yet involve parents hovering over you as you and your friends ventured from house to house wearing costumes unmarked by gaudy, reflective safety tape.

It's a wonder I survived the '70s, what with all of the horribly dangerous behavior I engaged in. We called it childhood.

A year later came "Bugs Bunny's Howl-oween Special," a glorified clip show comprised of classic "Looney Tunes" shorts linked by new and distractingly inferior footage. But who cared if the new animation was lousy and Mel Blanc's voice had changed so much in the intervening decades that Bugs didn't always sound quite right? It was Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck in prime time, and that's all any kid needed to know.

But not every Halloween special was animated, and not all were instant classics.

In 1976, ABC gave Paul Lynde, best known as the center square on "The Hollywood Squares" and Uncle Arthur on "Bewitched," his own special.

It's on DVD now, but it aired only once, and with good reason. It was terrible. When I watched it recently, it was against my doctor's orders — he told me to avoid ham.

Yet "The Paul Lynde Halloween Special" does have a secure place in television history because it featured an early TV performance by Kiss and established that the Wicked Witch of the West from "The Wizard of Oz" (Margaret Hamilton) and Witchiepoo from "H.R. Pufnstuf" (Billie Hayes) are sisters.

It is also the only known instance of Tim Conway not being funny.

By the end of the show, most of Kiss look like they're going to have a long, serious discussion with their agent. They wouldn't do anything this embarrassing again until their sans makeup period.

The last gasp for Halloween specials was "Garfield's Halloween Adventure" in 1985, which had the advantage of being entertaining and airing before most people started to hate Garfield the way Garfield hates Mondays.

At least I assume Garfield still hates Mondays, because it's not as if that joke ever gets old.

You know, come to think of it, maybe there's a reason they don't make Halloween specials anymore.

Culture Shock 09.15.11: Don't be too quick to blame 'SpongeBob'

Someone needs to study whether or not stupid studies are detrimental to the nation's mental health.

They're driving me crazy.

The latest example, published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, says fast-paced TV programs could be harmful to preschool-age children.

Maybe they are, and maybe they aren't. None of the studies claiming that TV is detrimental to children are all that persuasive. That applies especially to studies claiming to link television viewing and violence, even as violent crime rates have declined for most of the past 30 years. But one thing about this new study is clear: It offers no valuable evidence one way or the other.

Here's how the study worked. One group of 4-year-olds watched nine minutes of "SpongeBob SquarePants." That was the fast-paced show. Another group of preschoolers watched nine minutes of a slower-paced PBS cartoon called "Caillou." Immediately afterward, all of the kids were given mental function tests, and the ones who watched "SpongeBob" scored lower and displayed less impulse control.

That led the study's authors to speculate that fast-paced cartoons are bad. Mmkay? (Tell that to everyone who grew up with Bugs Bunny and Tom & Jerry.)

I drew a different conclusion.

I suspect that when kids watch nine minutes of "SpongeBob SquarePants" and then are yanked away to take some boring old test, all those kids can think about is how much they'd rather still be watching "SpongeBob." What else would you expect? "SpongeBob" is one of the most popular kiddie-TV programs ever and, for the past decade, one of the most popular shows on cable.

Meanwhile, the kids forced to watch nine minutes of "Caillou" may have been somewhat less traumatized by no longer watching "Caillou," even if that meant taking a test.

After watching a seven-minute clip of "Caillou" I found on YouTube, I wanted to do something that was not watching "Caillou." I also realized why some parents online complain that the show's title character is an annoying brat.

Also, I never want to have children.

Even if the study's findings are valid, they apply only to the short term. Why not test the kids an hour or two after they watch "SpongeBob" and see how they perform then? Obviously that's too much like a real-world situation and makes too much sense. Besides, if the study's authors did that first, they might not have any need to include the usual disclaimer about how more study is needed.

It's a lot easier to get grant money for your next study if the first study's main finding is something may be a problem and its secondary finding is more study is necessary. Finding that something isn't a problem or that more study isn't needed is bad for business.

Despite my cynicism about this particular study, I actually do think our generally faster-paced culture — including movies and TV — may be rewiring our brains, adapting us to life's quickening pace and all of the information coming at us from every direction. I also suspect this is not necessarily a bad thing, and it may help us with things like multitasking. But if that's the case, then the way we test children's mental abilities must adapt, too.

Kids aren't getting dumber, and steady increases in IQ — the Flynn effect — back that up. But children  may be thinking differently, and our tests aren't accounting for that, which might partially explain why test scores have remained flat despite rising IQs and greater per-pupil spending than ever.

Or I could be wrong. Maybe more study is needed.

Saturday nostalgia

This video may be from one independent UHF station in Chicago, but it reflects pretty much the universal TV-watching experience for anyone who grew up in the U.S. is the 1980s. (Note also the recycled 1960s cartoons on Sunday mornings.)

Culture Shock 10.07.10: 'Thundarr the Barbarian' survives apocalypse

If you grew up watching Saturday-morning cartoons during the 1980s, chances are you're familiar with Ruby-Spears Productions, even if you don't recall the name.

Ruby-Spears produced some of that decade's most memorable cartoons, and one of them has finally made its long-overdue debut on home video.

Warner Bros., which owns most of the Ruby-Spears library, has just released "Thundarr the Barbarian" on DVD-R through its Warner Archive label, online at www.wbshop.com. The Warner Archive is a burn-on-demand service, so the DVDs aren't manufactured until you order them, and they're not available in stores.

But don't let the hassle of ordering direct from Warner Bros. deter you. "Thundarr" holds up surprisingly well for a 30-year-old cartoon constrained by the draconian standards-and-practices rules of early-'80s Saturday-morning broadcast television. If you now have children of your own, "Thundarr" is something you can enjoy together. It goes best with a bowl of Sugar Pops, or Corn Pops, or whatever Kellogg's is calling them now.

"Thundarr" is Conan the Barbarian meets He-Man, even though the show actually pre-dates "He-Man and the Masters of the Universe" by a couple of years.

Two thousand years in the future, the Earth is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, littered with the ruins of the 20th century civilization. (The apocalypse in question is said to have occurred in 1994, when a "runaway planet" passed between the Earth and the moon with catastrophic results. So we really dodged a bullet.) But a new civilization has emerged, populated with human survivors, mutants, aliens and the occasional power-mad wizard who mixes science with sorcery.

The wizards are the ones who menace Thundarr and his friends during most of their weekly adventures.

"Thundarr" clearly owes a debt to the original "Star Wars" saga, which was in full swing when the show debuted in 1980. Thundarr's weapon of choice is his "sun sword," which works a lot like a lightsaber, except, this being a children's show, he never cuts anyone's arm off. Thundarr's best friend is Ookla the Mok, who is a bit like a Wookie, except with a lion's head. Like Chewbacca, Ookla speaks only in grunts and snarls.

Joining Thundarr and Ookla in their adventures is Princess Ariel, the one magic-user who uses her powers for good rather than evil.

The main reason "Thundarr the Barbarian" still entertains while most other cartoons of its era don't is the team of writers and animators behind it.

"Thundarr" was created by Steve Gerber, creator of Marvel Comics' Howard the Duck, which is not to be confused with the turkey of a movie that came later. One of the staff writers was Mark Evanier, writer of the comic "Groo the Wanderer" and a veteran of well-regarded cartoons like "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Garfield and Friends." The production design was the work of comics legend Jack Kirby, who co-created the Fantastic Four, the Hulk and other Marvel characters. And the character design came from Alex Toth, who also designed the characters for "Space Ghost" and "Superfriends."

Although it ran for only 21 episodes over two seasons, "Thundarr" has cemented its place among Saturday morning's most enduring TV shows and developed an enthusiastic cult following.

Most other Ruby-Spears shows, however, are products of their time.

The studio almost cornered the market for cartoons based on arcade games ("Dragon's Lair," "Space Ace" and "Donkey Kong"), produced animated versions of "Punky Brewster" and "Mork and Mindy," and even made cartoons based on the "Rambo" and "Police Academy" movies, as well as an animated Chuck Norris miniseries.

None of these shows hold up as well as "Thundarr." OK, most of them just don't hold up. But they're a window to the '80s.

Maybe, like "Thundarr," they'll resurface, too.

Culture Shock 02.11.10: Aqua Net fog can't hide awful '80s cartoons

So many fools. So much pity.

When it comes to nostalgia, I consider myself a child of the 1970s, but the '80s are finally making a play for my affections.

So, I was initially excited to learn Warner Bros. is producing a two-DVD set of "classic" '80s cartoons.

The studio will release "Saturday Morning Cartoons: The 1980s Vol. 1" on May 1, and while Warner Bros. hasn't announced the set's contents, the package art holds a few clues — which is why my excitement quickly turned into disappointment.

Apart from "Thundarr the Barbarian," which holds up surprisingly well, the DVDs will include "Monchichis," "The Flintstone Kids," "Dragon's Lair" and "Mr. T."

Ah, yes. Despite the Aqua Net haze of time, I remember it clearly: Saturday-morning cartoons during the '80s were, for the most part, awful. How did I forget?

The soft-focus lens of nostalgia obscures many of blemishes. By any reasonable standard, the cartoons I love from the '70s weren't particularly good, either. Still, they had something that most of the subsequent decade's Saturday-morning programs lacked. But whether that something was creativity or kitsch is probably a matter of taste.

Many of the most fondly remembered cartoons of the '80s — "Transformers," "Robotech," "Thundercats," "She-Ra," etc. — aired in weekday syndication. Saturday mornings, burdened by more stringent broadcast standards, were tame and lame in comparison.

There were three main types of Saturday-morning cartoons during the decade: cartoons based on real people or live-action TV characters, cartoons based on video games, and cartoons based on tiny, mythological creatures created by Belgians.

The A-Team's Mr. T., for example, told youngsters to stay in school and off drugs. Gary Coleman of "Diff'rent Strokes" fame lent his voice to a guardian angel who helped children in trouble. And Punky Brewster (aka Soleil Moon Frye) did pretty much the same stuff she did on her nighttime sitcom.

Nowadays, video games are incredibly sophisticated and inspire Hollywood movies. Back then, they were incredibly simple and inspired cartoons with plots that had nothing to do with the games because the games didn't have plots. Pac-Man, Q*bert, Frogger, Donkey Kong and Pitfall all inspired Saturday-morning adaptations, each more suspect than the last.

And then there were the Smurfs. Dreamed up by Belgian cartoonist Peyo, the Smurfs were a race of small blue men, each three apples tall. And by men, I mean they were all males, at least until Smurfette showed up, which begs lots of questions about Smurf procreation.

NBC had so much success with "The Smurfs" that it commissioned "The Snorks," created by yet another Belgian cartoonist. The Snorks were just like the Smurfs except they lived underwater and were less communist.

In retrospect, that's a pretty bleak television landscape, and one that never recovered, as the best cartoons moved to cable TV and Saturday mornings became, due in part to the Children's Television Act of 1990, a dumping ground for soulless "educational and informational" programming.

I might pick up "Saturday Morning Cartoons: The 1980s Vol. 1" just for "Thundarr," but if Warner Bros. releases a Vol. 2, I hate to think what it will contain. Saturday mornings only go downhill from here.

Culture Shock 12.17.09: 'The Venture Bros.' finds hope in failure

It isn't on in prime time, it doesn't feature any big-name stars and it probably isn't going to rack up Emmys, but "The Venture Bros." may be the best show on television.

The Adult Swim series wrapped up the first half of its fourth season Sunday with the long-awaited showdown between former Venture family bodyguard Brock Samson and newly competent supervillain henchman Henchman 21.

If you don't know who Brock and Henchman 21 are, or why their showdown is important, you should rent the first three seasons of "The Venture Bros." immediately. I'll wait.

On the surface simply a parody of the 1960s adventure cartoon "Jonny Quest," "The Venture Bros." has evolved into one of the smartest shows on television. I know this because there are at least three Web sites devoted to dissecting each week's episode. One thing is certain: "The Venture Bros." looks increasingly out of place alongside Adult Swim's other animated programs, which range from the endearingly sophomoric ("Aqua Teen Hunger Force" and "Metalocalypse") to the irritatingly juvenile ("Squidbillies" and the latest seasons of "Family Guy").

Every episode is layered with cultural references that hide deeper meaning, and at the center of it all is the hapless, dysfunctional Venture family.

Dr. Thaddeus S. "Rusty" Venture was once a boy adventurer, jetting around the world with his scientist/adventurer dad, Dr. Jonas Venture. Now, thanks to the childhood traumas his father inflicted on him, Rusty suffers from both an inferiority complex and delusions of grandeur. He spends most of his time hatching schemes just to pay the Venture Compound's utility bills.

Rusty will never live up to his father's heroic example — although it's strongly implied his father wasn't quite the hero of legend — and he'll never stop blaming his father for all of his personal and professional failings.

Then there are Rusty's two sons, Hank and Dean. Hank is full of false bravado, while Dean is a hodgepodge of insecurities, and both are generally clueless. They haven't grasped, despite loads of evidence, that they're both clones. The original Hank and Dean managed to get themselves killed long ago.

As Rusty explains, "They are Hank and Dean. They have all the same memories. Same annoying tendencies. Same everything. Look, if you have a clumsy child, you make them wear a helmet. If you have death-prone children, you keep a few clones of them in your lab."

But with the illegal clone farm destroyed at the end of season 3, Hank and Dean now get to grow up — if they can keep from dying. And that can be difficult when your father is the target of various insane supervillains and your bodyguard has resigned, only to be replaced by a reformed supervillain who also happens to be a "cured" pedophile.

"Venture Bros." creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have said their show is ultimately about failure. But maybe that's not all it's about.

By trying to avenge the death of his best friend, Henchman 24, Henchman 21 has gone from being an ineffectual nerd to being the most feared henchman in the supervillain community. He's become the show's most unlikely success story. And it's telling that his role on the show is often to voice what the audience is thinking.

Maybe, despite all of the failure in which "The Venture Bros." wallows, the show is really about giving hope to us all. And that's pretty deep for a cartoon.