Marriage problems! Guild widows! Customer service! Butt stuff! And SO MUCH MORE!

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch stomps around her bedroom as she gets dressed in her Guild best for another day at work. Her noise wakes up her husband, who lovingly tells her good morning. She does not return the greeting. Overwhelmed and exhausted with her new job, Dr. Mrs. rips into the Monarch for sleeping in late and not working. To be fair, she still doesn’t know that her her husband has actually been very busy with his new double life as the Blue Morpho.

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch doesn’t think that supervising the house construction is an adequate job replacement for full-time villainy. She criticizes the Monarch for not making any effort to raise his villain level from his current 4. The Monarch tells her that marriage is “for better or worse, not better than 4.” His wife responds that she married The Monarch, but that she doesn’t even know who he is anymore. She slams the door on her way out. 21 offers his boss a hug.

Brock wakes up in an unfamiliar bedroom, naked and face down in a pink pillow. He starts to move, and winces. “What the fuck?” He gets on his hands and knees, and sees that there is a dildo with a cord sticking out of his ass.

Brock quietly opens the bedroom door, now dressed with his shoes in his hand. He tries to sneak out, but Warriana hears him from her desk where she is working on her laptop and tells him that there is coffee in the kitchen. Brock starts to talk about his sneakiness and about last night, but Warriana interrupts him to ask why he’s still there. She tells him to take his coffee to go.

In the Venture lobby,Dr. Mrs. the Monarch and a Guild team are retrieving Harangutan’s body and analyzing the crime scene. Dr. Venture predictably can’t help himself from hitting on Dr. Mrs., even after years of repeated rejection and even attending her wedding. She is having a very bad day. She tells Venture he is in big trouble with the Guild for Harangutan’s death.

At that moment, Brock enters the Venture lobby with sunglasses on and a coffee in hand. He is clearly still in pain from the rough sex the night before. When he finally notices the crowd of Guild employees in the lobby, he tries to take out his knife but drops it on the floor.

Dr. Mrs. asks Brock if he killed Harangutan, but he collaborates Doc’s story that he had nothing to do with it. She asks for the security tapes, and Brock refuses and tells her, “You touch our tapes and they’ll be pulling you out of that hole next.” Dr. Mrs. turns around angrily and runs directly into Dean, who is carrying a bouquet of flowers. She misinterprets the gesture as being for her, and smacks them out of his hands. “Those were for Uncle Hatred!”, Dean says sadly.

Dr. Venture signs some papers for Watch and Ward, and they insist that he keep the pen, “courtesy of the NEW Guild of Calamitous Intent!” They also give him a business card with a phone number for customer service.

The Pirate Captain meets Dr. Venture and Brock in the lobby with some bad news. A video of Billy eating fast food while under the influence of the God Gas has gone viral, resulting in a PR nightmare for Venture Industries. Of course, the person responsible for the update is Pete, who never considered the implications for his employer when presented with an opportunity to embarrass Billy.

Billy wakes up to find Pete showing the video to his mom, Action Man, and Colonel Gentleman. (It seems that Billy and Pete might be living with that group during their contract with Venture Industries.) The door bell rings, and Rose calls from the front door, “Billy, there’s a Nazi here to see you!” Dr. Mrs. the Monarch enters, and she is pissed.

In the City of Newark Mayor’s office, a maintenance man is vacuuming the carpet when a phone starts to ring somewhere in the room. It seems to be coming from a Haynes statue on the desk. When the maintenance man touches the statue, the head springs up to reveal a red phone that clearly hasn’t been used in a long time. He answers, and on the other line 21 hangs up the same red phone in the Blue Morpho cave. “What the eff!”

The Monarch is playing with all of his dad’s old gadgets as 21 reads off the list of villains currently in line to arch Venture. The “Blue Morpho’s Pyramid of Peril” features Wide Wale as Venture’s primary arch, but Wale has also given sub-arching rights to other level-10 villains, who then in turn gave rights to lower villains.

21 disagrees with the Monarch’s plan to kill all other villains on the Pyramid, insisting that there must be another way to get them away from Venture. The Monarch insists that murder is the only way that the villains won’t talk. After debating different methods of Morpho transportation, the two resign themselves to using their Metrocards.

Up in the Guild space station, Dr. Mrs. the Monarch is hollogramming in to a meeting to inform the Council of her progress. She tells them Billy’s story about the Blue Morpho saving the day. The Council discusses the possibility that there might be a new Blue Morpho, or that Billy was just hallucinating or lying.

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch complains about not being able to acquire the Venture security tapes. Hologram Wide Wale offers to retrieve them for her from the surveillance he installed during his first arching. “The Ventures can’t hide nothing from Wide Wale!” he boasts, as his waiter, Hank disguised with a mustache, pours him another glass of wine. Hank is still employed at the Italian restaurant that Wide Wale frequents.

Dr. Mrs. has to face her first time informing a Guild member of their spouse’s death. Watch and Ward talk about how bad their previous experiences have been, and she tells them to stay in the limo. She enters a pub where a Scottish redhead is tending the bar. (Also at the bar is Brick Frog, our second sighting this season, as well as the Apache Chief who stood on his tiptoes during his Revenge Society audition, and an antlered villain named Jägermeister who I don’t think we’ve seen before.)

The redhead is Harangutan’s widow, and she tells Dr. Mrs. to call her Battleaxe. Battleaxe starts to complain about her husband, but when Dr. Mrs. informs her of his death, she drops the glass she is cleaning and bursts into tears. However, she recovers quickly when a villain at the bar requests a round on the house in Harangutan’s memory. Battleaxe is not interested in Dr. Mrs.’ condolences, just the keys to her husband’s Harangutank.

Next, we finally have our first scene as Dean as a college student. He sits in his psychology class next to his old friend the Brown Widow. His professor, Dr. Nidaba, has a giant head and uses a floating chair for transportation. In the middle of his lecture, Dr. Nidaba receives a message on his Guild of Calamitous Intent pocket watch that Harangutan has been compromised, and that he is officially cleared to arch Dr. Venture. He dismisses class immediately, and tells them to return to their lives of “gravity bongs, ceaseless Tweets, and date rapery.”

As the students file out and leave their papers on his desk, Dr. Nidaba stops Dean to tell him his paper is terrible. He uses his impressive intelligence to “interpret the data” and analyze Dean’s current life situation. He guesses the hole in the lobby from the soot on Dean’s shoe, and Dean’s earlier visit to Hatred in the hospital from the scent of antiseptic on his clothing and the pollen on his sleeve. Dr. Nidaba tells Dean to avoid extra stress in his life and avoid his home for the evening. He does not want Dean to be present for his arching.

When Dean leaves the room, the blackboard raises, revealing Dr. Nidaba’s secret identity as Think Tank.

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch does not have the keys to the Harangutank. After doing research on her laptop, she finally discovers that the tank was impounded by the NYPD. Dr. Mrs.’ guilt causes her to offer to escort the widow to the impound garage, and Battleaxe accepts her offer with excitement. As the widow gets ready, Dr. Mrs. receives an email from Wide Wale with the security footage from the Venture compound.

At the impound garage, the Monarch and 21 as the Blue Morpho and Kano shoot the security guard with tranquilizer darts when asked for license and registration. They use a Morpho gadget to unlock the doors into the garage.

The Pirate Captain is on a program called WMNews to do damage control after the viral video of Billy. The host of the show, Alexis Warrington, looks very familiar to a certain female member of the Crusaders Action League.

Dr. Venture is yelling at Billy on the phone as he looks over that day’s stock reports with a glass of red wine. He blames Billy and Pete for the 50 point drop in Venture stock that happened after the video. In classic Doc fashion, he rejects any responsibility for the fiasco. He notices Think Tank’s reflection in his wine glass.

The Monarch and 21 run around the impound garage looking for the Morpho Mobile. In the lobby, the security guard wakes up from the tranquilizers only to immediately see Battleaxe breaking his window and knocking him out with her axe. Dr. Mrs. the Monarch exasperatedly yells, “What is wrong with you?! All you had to do was pay the ticket!” Battleaxe simply responds, “I hate fucking coppers.”

Think Tank blasts a cannon through the windows and wheels himself into Dr. Venture’s living room. He apologizes for the dramatic entrance, and challenges Doc to a battle – a battle of wits. Eager to finally have an adversary that matches his intellect, Think Tank place a chess board on the table between them.

Think Tank is predictably disappointed when Dr. Venture says that he doesn’t play chess. “More of a Parcheesi man.” Doc is annoyed with how many arches he has faced in a single week, and calls the number on the Guild business card to complain to customer service (which is just Watch and Ward waiting in the limo for Dr. Mrs.) Brock faces off with Think Tank as Doc goes onto the porch to complain.

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch and Battleaxe find the Harangutank in the garage – which is not a tank at all, but a pimped-out camper. Battleaxe opens the door to reveal a terrible smell and a floor completely covered in a variety of alcohol bottles. Battleaxe admits that the tank is actually her and her late husband’s home.

Outside the tank, the Monarch causes a ruckus when he trips over a beer bottle, and when he stands back up is spotted by his wife. “YOU!”, Dr. Mrs. yells, pointing at him. He runs away from her immediately.

Brock has that classic season 1 bloodlust in his eyes as he fights Think Tank. He has one arm inside Think Tank’s force field trying to cut the villain’s face with his knife. Think Tank is offended when Brock deems the situation a stalemate, and points out that he has a cannon pointed at Brock’s chest. Brock smiles wildly and cockily declares that he can dodge it. He does not dodge it.

Brock opens his eyes after the high-velocity cannon blast to his chest to a moving aerial view of the city, and he realizes he is laying over Warriana’s shoulder. “What, are you stalking me now?” she teases. Brock starts to protest, and she tells him that she is just messing with him. Warriana apologizes for being weird that morning, and blames it on her busy life. Brock is understanding, and says that he also has a lot happening in his life, including Think Tank, who is still at the Venture building.

“Whoa, whoa, Think Tank?!”, Warriana interrupts. “Oh, do not even tell me that pompous son of a Gorgon is messing with MY MAN!” (It is at this moment that I squealed so loudly that I woke up my cat.)

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch is trying to find the Blue Morpho in the lines of cars in the garage. “I know who you are!”, she yells. “You coward!” In the Harangutank, Battleaxe starts snooping through Dr. Mrs.’ laptop, and discovers the Venture security footage of her husband’s death.

Dr. Mrs. finds the Monarch easily, as he and 21 are hiding in the car that literally has the Morpho logo on the hood. They start the car, but there is still a boot on the wheel. Dr. Mrs. holds a gun to the windshield and gives them three seconds to come out. As this is happening, Battleaxe sees Dr. Venture’s face on the security footage and thinks that he is the Blue Morpho, and therefore responsible for her husband’s death.

Dr. Mrs fires a warning shot, causing the Monarch to duck his head and accidentally hit a red button on the car’s dashboard. The car turns into a hoverplane and the two escape, with Battleaxe in the Harangutank hot on their tail. Dr. Mrs. gets picked up by Watch and Ward in the limo, and she tells them to follow the Morpho Mobile.

Doc finally gives up on his customer service call, and walks back inside his living room to find Brock and Warriana teamed up against Think Tank. The villain angrily calls their teamwork an “unsanctioned team up” and threatens to report them to the Guild.

Warriana proposes that she and Brock take their “unsanctioned team up” back to her place and make it official. Brock timidly requests “No butt stuff this time, okay?”, but Warriana lassos him, forcing him to admit the truth that “I liked it!”

In the flying Morpho Mobile, Monarch celebrates their amazing getaway, and tells 21 to fly over the Venture building. 21 is understandably freaked by their encounter with Dr. Mrs. the Monarch, and wants to go straight home. The Monarch insists that they do a fly-by of the Venture home so he can take an evil, mighty push right into their pool, just like old times.

The change in direction turns out to be a great idea, as the Guild limo was hot on their trail when the Mobile was making a straight path back home. She is shocked to see the car turn around and head for the top of the Venture building. Dr. Venture looks out his now broken windows to see the Morpho Mobile fly low to the roof in a quick swoop and drop a poop in the pool.

Battleaxe speeds towards the Venture building in the Harangutank, swearing to avenge Dr. Venture for her husband’s death. She drives into the traffic circle outside the Venture building at the same time as do Hank and Dean in the Go Pod and Dr. Mrs. the Monarch in the Guild limo.

Hank and Dean are distracted by the sight of Dean’s professor trying to hail a taxi outside of their building, and Hank accidentally steers the Pod into the path of the Guild limo, which swerves into the Harangutank’s lane. Battleaxe swerves the tank to avoid hitting the limo and drives straight into the Venture lobby, running directly into Think Tank and driving them both into the hole in the lobby. There is an explosion from the pit. The Death Pit claims two more victims.

On the roof, Doc is scooping the shit out of the pool with a net. The explosion from the lobby causes the entire building to shake and Doc to sigh, “Now what?” He looks over the side of the rooftop to see the damage down below, and at the same time Dr. Mrs. the Monarch sees him in her binoculars from the traffic circle below. She never saw the Morpho Mobile fly away from the building. She frowns. It seems that she too has mistaken Doc to be the Blue Morpho.

In the post-credits scene, Dr. Mrs. the Monarch finally returns home early the next morning after a long and awful day at work. She opens the front door to see that the foyer is finally finished in beautiful purples and reds reminiscent of the interior of their old Cocoon.

Dr. Mrs. goes upstairs and tells her husband “Someone had a very busy day!” The Monarch is lying in bed, terrified that his wife has figured out his secret identity. “The vestibule looks great, honey,” she says, spooning his back. She apologizes for her behavior that morning, and admits that he is not the enemy. He kisses her.

Dr. Mrs the Monarch rolls over in bed. “I know who my enemy is,” she growls. The Monarch is terrified.

We heard some new voices in this episode. Think Tank was voiced by Jeffrey Wright, an actor who’s recent work includes Valentin Narcisse in Boardwalk Empire and Beetee in The Hunger Games. Battleaxe was voiced by Barbara Rosenblat, who you might recognize as Miss Rosa in Orange is the New Black, and who voiced the Titmouse bird at the end of the episode: “Chirp, you slut.”

As always, I am completely delighted with every single moment of Brock and Warriana. Holy shit. This plotline is basically tailor-made to my interests. Brock has always been my favorite character, and strong ladies are my favorite thing in the world. I haven’t gotten that intense heart squeezing feeling over a fictional couple since LOST was still on the air (Sawyer and Juliet forever, y’all). As Doc explained to Jackson in the season 6 commentary, I “ship” it. I ship it SO HARD. AHHH.

There is a lot of speculation online as to the pit in the lobby doing the Monarch’s work for him at killing off the Pyramid of Peril. So far, three out of three villains have died in a hole ironically made by the prime arch. Will we see more Guild members meet the same fate? I really hope Brock’s comment about putting Dr. Mrs. the Monarch in the hole wasn’t foreshadowing for her, but possibly foreshadowing for many of the villains she represents.

This episode may be slightly overwhelming to new viewers as it had a faster pace than its predecessors, but its clear that these episodes are an immediate continuation of the previous week. They’re telling one season-long story. As I’ve said in previous recaps, its just very different from the pacing of previous seasons, so it takes some adjusting. I don’t feel that the classic Venture jokes and tropes have been sacrificed in the change of pace. Its still the same show we all love.

Dr. Mrs. the Monarch is another favorite of mine, and I’m really happy to see her in a position of power that honors her skills and intelligence. She was always too good to just be a number 2, even if she did it for love. It will be interesting to see if her hatred of Dr. Venture will actually bring her and the Monarch closer together – that is, until she inevitably discovers that the real enemy is actually her husband.

I’ve also been loving all of the details that come with the Venture family finally joining the 21st century, like Dr Mrs. the Monarch on her laptop and Brock using an V-Pad. There was some really fun stuff in the incredibly detailed electronic screens that we saw in this episode. I screenshotted some of them below for your viewing pleasure. Check out Dr. Mrs.’s inbox and all of the listed nicknames for Brock!

As always, here is your plug for this week’s Shirt of the Week Club. I personally do not know if I will be buying this week’s shirt as I have a huge Dr. Mrs. the Monarch pinup tattoo on my thigh, and wearing this shirt might be Dr. Mrs. overload (if there even is such a thing?) But Dr. Mrs. shirts are pretty rare, as we haven’t had one since the first Shirt Club back in 2011, so if you love her like I do make sure to grab it sometime before 11:59 next Sunday!

Also, if you missed the Patrick Leger posters on AsSeenOnAdultSwim.com last week, keep your eyes peeled on Venture-related social media, as I have a suspicion that they will release the other two sometime as well.

See you next week, Venturoos!