addict who deeply resents his father. As of season 4, Jonny is somewhat stable, and in a support group for former boy adventurers, along with Dr. Venture, the second Wonder Boy, RoBoy, and the Hale Brothers—the final three being parodies of Robin, Astro Boy, and the Hardy Boys, respectively. Failure as a recurring theme Publick and Hammer have stated that one of the primary themes of The Venture Bros. is failure. Hammer in 2006 said, "Yeah, failure, that's what Venture Bros. is all about. Beautiful sublime failure." In the commentary for the episode "Home Insecurity", Hammer and Publick elaborated on the theme. Publick: "This show... If you'll permit me to get a 'big picture', this show is actually all about failure. Even in the design, everything is supposed to be kinda the death of the space-age dream world. The death of the jet-age promises." Hammer: "It's about the beauty of failure. It's about that failure happens to all of us...Every character is not only flawed, but sucks at what they do, and is beautiful at it and Jackson and I suck at what we do, and we try to be beautiful at it, and failure is how you get by...It shows that failure's funny, and it's beautiful and it's life, and it's okay, and it's all we can write because we are big...failures. (laughter)" In 2013, Publick and Hammer discussed moving away from the theme and embracing the "successes" of the characters as well. Publick: I think you and I are both sick of every interview mentioning the “It’s a show about failure” from five years ago. I don’t think we made a conscious effort to fight that or anything, but every year, we push what we do as writers a little more. An area we hadn’t gone into very much was positivity. I mean, all our victories are still satiric, but there are definitely places where we said, “I want to see these guys do something. I don’t want to just have everything fall on its face all the time. Reception The show has received critical acclaim over its run. The Venture Bros. ranked at #56 on the IGN "Best 100 Animated Series" list. In 2013, Slates Chris Wade called The Venture Bros. "one of the best shows on television" and praised the detailed serial nature of the humor with a favorable comparison to Arrested Development. Also in 2013,