This is a pretty late edition despite being a pretty strong episode.
That’s mostly due to the fact that when I was writing up something for the The Walking Dead recap, I thought it’d be more meaningful to talk about the importance of certain scenes for the episode rather than just retelling what happened.
SO HERE IS THE BRAND NEW ALL DIFFERENT FORMAT
Let’s just get the recap quickly done. With the help of the trusty thing called Google, here’s a summary of what happened in Faking Miracles.
Thanks Wiki
In the secret basement below his home, the Monarch discovers proof that his father was a superhero associated with Jonas Sr. known as “The Blue Morpho.” He misses several calls from his wife, who wants him to attend a party of Guild members at Wide Wale’s building, but ultimately gets the invitation. The Monarch attends the party but is swiftly intercepted by Wide Wale, who ejects him due to his wearing his supervillain costume. Another villain, Copycat, intervenes and offers the Monarch a suit, but uses the opportunity to knock the Monarch out and steal his costume. Using his power to duplicate himself, Copycat breaks into the Venture building and tricks Dr. Mrs. the Monarch and Wide Wale into thinking the Monarch blew off the party to illegally arch Dr. Venture. Hank gets called to the building for his new pizza delivery job, where he encounters Wide Wale’s daughter Serena, the same girl he encountered several times previously. Serena ignores her bodyguards’ objections and makes a date with Hank. Meanwhile, Brock tries to help Dean cram for his entrance exams. While showering, Dean is infected by a puddle of nanorobotic liquid accidentally freed from J.J.’s vault by Billy. Billy and Pete experimenting with what they think is a tutorial for the device ends up causing Dean to suffer a heart attack, develop super strength, and exhibit hyper intelligence. Some time later, Dean urinates out most of the nanomachines, but Dr. Venture is revealed to have kept some in his brain and calls Dean passing his exams the new Venture Industries’ first miracle.
All right, so now that we’re on a clear base, let’s go forward with a breakdown of lore and some other gimmicks.
Right off the bat, there’s throwback to the Jonas adventure days with the Action League facing off against Scaramantula that leads into the Blue Morpho saving the day. The big take away from this is that for the longest time, the popular theory being that the character of Vendeta was The Monarch’s father.
This was established from flashbacks told by The Monarch that he was involved in a plane crash but then a curve ball came in with Vendeta’s death throes as he’s being deactivated, he blurts out the following
“Where is my wife? Have you– Honey– Does not compute. Does not com– Who am I? I think the plane is going down…”
This led many to believe that this would refer back to the same plane crash The Monarch was in. Up until the last season, where more details were hinted at with the kid verison of Rusty playing with The Monarch as childhood friends, right behind them is Jonas and what is presumed to be The Monarch’s parents.
With this new info in mind as in the previous episode, the lair was discovered as the childhood home of the Monarch’s was being restored, Gary confirms that the lair and all of it’s equipment/gear belonged to The Blue Morpho therefore solidifying that his father was a crime fighter that worked with Jonas Venture.
While The Monarch is trying to come to terms with this, semi disgusted with the idea that his dad wasn’t a villain like himself, this could lead to more interesting areas to explore as Ms Monarch insists that The Monarch should come to Wide Wale’s party later in order to smooth things over for the arching rights of Venture being given to Wale.
The party in itself ties to the other side adventure with Hank and the girl next door. A lot more details are confirmed with Serena being the daughter of Wide Wale. She has this sassy attitude with a bit of an Brooklyn street wise flair, very much a mobsters daughter as far as tropes go. The party is being held in the pretense of it being her birthday party while Wale’s Guild contacts meet up to discuss terms with Ms Monarch.
We’re starting to see more and more of the long term character projections for Hank and Dean. While Dean spent a great deal of his time being a mopey, sullen teenager that feels the burden of the world (this was mostly due to him finding out the brothers were clones and he kept it to himself until the end of season 5), Hank has always been the optimistic devil may care attitude that gets him in a bit of trouble.
As with the first episode, Hank is all about taking risks and most of it stems from his relationship with Brock. He’s always been his role model and he takes what he says to heart, donning the Steve McQueen inspired jacket and when he spots Serena jogging in the park – He’s willing to take a hit just to talk to the girl next door without a second thought as lucky for him, Brock jumps into the fray as Hank gets pounced by Serena’s body guards.
Moving forward to the party in itself, the narration gets split between The Monarchs and Hank/Serena.
While the Monarch has no clue about the fashion sense, in steps a character named Copycat that is more than willing to help him out of his jam. It’s a bit implied that he has connection with Wide Wale as it leads to the Monarch getting knocked out and Copycat using his doppleganger ability (a parody of being Jamie Mardox) to take his outfit, breaking into the Venture’s home to make a mess – Right in the view of Wide Wale as the Guild can see over from the balcony.
It seems like a perfect setup as mere minutes earlier, Copycat was acting heavily flirtious with Ms Monarch as she brushed him off, insisting that she was waiting for The Monarch to show up. There’s been tension since the arching rights were given to Wide Wale to rebuild the trust of the Guild but now the Monarch is feeling the heat as it ends with Ms Monarch leaving the party in a fit, refusing to talk to the Monarch.
On the upside, Hank has started a new job at the restaurant that Wide Wale was at in the last episode. He’s using the hover vehicle that Rusty/Billy/Pete were goofing around with as on a side note, the sub plot deals with them trying to find an invention of JJ’s to kickstart the company back into the green after Rusty nearly made it go bankrupt with his business ideas of firing the entire staff.
Back to Hank as he makes a deliver order to Wide Wale’s place and runs into Serena once more. This time, Brock isn’t around to save him as he has to play hide and seek until he manages to catch a break even at the cost of coming off as clumsy with getting his foot stuck in a lawn chair. There’s a brief exchange of hellos as one of the guards from earlier (showing plenty of damage from tussling with Brock) breaks in, catching Serena off guard.
In a total SMOOTH PLAYER move, Hank steps off the ledge, dropping out of sight as he lands in his hover vehicle, giving a proper farewell and instantly scoring a place in Serena’s heart for sure.
Lastly, the subplot deals with the trio of Rusty/Billy/Pete and ties into Dean’s attempts to get ready for attending university from first episode. While Billy takes the hover vehicle out for a spin, Pete is using a robo suit that is pretty much a straight up parody of the lifter from Aliens.
Rusty isn’t satisifed with what he calls the inventions as junk as he rifles through a stack of papers in cabinet which leads to Billy breaking a test tube serum as the liquid squirms away into a drain pipe.
We get this really awkward follow with the living serum thing going into Dean as the exact location of entry is pretty painful, brought up in the closing stinger after the credits roll. For now, the trio have no idea what it was and after looking it up, they discover it’s a nano machines mixed with symbiotic kind of deal.
While Pete treats it like a video game (I was reminded more of the whole exploring the inside of human being b-movie plot), Dean starts experiencing the effects as it ranges from super strength to talking in ancient Babylonian.
Brock is freaking out a bit, thinking that Dean has become possessed but after Rusty finds a fail safe, he deactivates the nano machines for now as he tries to work out an idea of how to profit from it.
With the party wrapping up, the future is a bit brighter for some as Dean is being accepted to University, Hank managed to impress the girl and Rusty left some of the serum still active in Dean’s mind, calling the machines a fake miracle hence the title of the episode.
There’s some interesting details established in this episode as the idea of the Blue Morpho has some ties into a promo picture from last year. Given that Gary is pretty excited to find the secret lair along with it’s gear, the Monarch has been known to go off on the deep end in terms of arching. In fact, given that the origin of Wide Wale ties back to an experiment with cuddle fish and a brother of his altering him into who he is now, it brings up a familiar callback – Dr Dugong from Tears Of Sea Cow
The same one that got murdered brutally by The Monarch.
It wouldn’t be much of a stretch if the Monarch started to use The Blue Morpho gear to get his revenge for having his arching rights taken away and that ties right into the promo picture that bears a striking resemblance to the Monarch. Truth be told, more often that hints are usually stretched out to become ideas of canon in similar fashion of Vendeta’s origin but in this case, the concept of revenge seems very likely given the course of the episode.
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