6.8/10. A little scattershot, with certain bits that I enjoyed (Baron Underbheit's cold open in particular), but a lot of what felt like wheel-spinning along the way. The misadventures in the panic room didn't really do much for me -- Doc and the boys can be an entertaining dynamic, but this episode didn't really go anywhere with it. By the same token, Brock meeting a thinly-veiled version of the Six Million Dollar Man and his man-bride Sasquatch was weird enough to grab your attention (plus Steve Summers line about paying back six million dollars on a government salary was a winner), but kind of petered out with a fairly weak payoff.
The highlights of the episode were the villains. The Monarch's meeting with Underbheit leaned into one of the best elements of the show so far -- mixing the ludicrous and theatrical with the mundane. Two supervillains waging battle but then hammering out a cooperation agreement over punch and rebooted computers wrings the comedy of the contrast. By the same token, the henchmen from the two camps bonding in front of the Venture Compound and comparing notes worked in the same fashion, with the mild hostility growing into a nice bit of commiseration and culminating in an enjoyable juvenile attempt to trash the place. Then there's Helper! He's quietly my favorite character on the show, and his sadness at being replaced, ineptitude at rescuing the Ventures, and pettiness about letting Doc out of the panic room were all adorable.
Overall, it's a perfectly decent episode, but not the show's finest or most even half hour thus far.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2016-04-20T01:54:46Z
6.8/10. A little scattershot, with certain bits that I enjoyed (Baron Underbheit's cold open in particular), but a lot of what felt like wheel-spinning along the way. The misadventures in the panic room didn't really do much for me -- Doc and the boys can be an entertaining dynamic, but this episode didn't really go anywhere with it. By the same token, Brock meeting a thinly-veiled version of the Six Million Dollar Man and his man-bride Sasquatch was weird enough to grab your attention (plus Steve Summers line about paying back six million dollars on a government salary was a winner), but kind of petered out with a fairly weak payoff.
The highlights of the episode were the villains. The Monarch's meeting with Underbheit leaned into one of the best elements of the show so far -- mixing the ludicrous and theatrical with the mundane. Two supervillains waging battle but then hammering out a cooperation agreement over punch and rebooted computers wrings the comedy of the contrast. By the same token, the henchmen from the two camps bonding in front of the Venture Compound and comparing notes worked in the same fashion, with the mild hostility growing into a nice bit of commiseration and culminating in an enjoyable juvenile attempt to trash the place. Then there's Helper! He's quietly my favorite character on the show, and his sadness at being replaced, ineptitude at rescuing the Ventures, and pettiness about letting Doc out of the panic room were all adorable.
Overall, it's a perfectly decent episode, but not the show's finest or most even half hour thus far.