When we last left off, there was a prom for Dean and Hank, that may or may not have ended up worse than my prom. The truth comes out about Dean and Triana, and the episode ended with one of the most awkward three-ways ever.

That’s enough of me giving backstory, let’s get onto the reason you’re reading.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The episode starts off with the clean up from the season 4 finale. The aftermath of the prom still left some questions to be answered. The day after the Prom, Brock is looking for Molotov Cocktease, Dean gets back to the Venture Compound, Hank gets woken up by Nikki, Brock sees Mol is at large, Henchman 21 gets ransacked by O.S.I. and Hunter Gathers, and Rusty wakes up a woman-fly.

SPHINX gets absorbed by OSI, leaving Henchman 21 as the sole operative (and I guess de facto leader?). Team Venture, is starting to get rolling on a ray shield project for Gargantua 2, while Dean officially hits emo. He burns his bed, and all of the kid things he owns. Rusty comes out to check up on him, and offers the attic to Dean in exchange for helping him. Hank, is still a blithering idiot. After a montage of cleaning up the old Gargantua production facility, the Palaemon facility is born!

Rusty is looking for more funding, so he gets his best customer, Augustus St. Cloud, to come by (much to the chagrin of Billy). In what could be the most deliberately teenage drama scene ever, Dean is getting emo over Triana. FInally, Sgt. Hatred tells Dean that there are more fish in the pond, right as a girl who is interested in Palaemon walks up. Dean gets hit with a frisbee, and has the funniest concussion delusion I’ve seen in a while.

And poor Henchman 21. He is still riding solo, getting harassed by Hatred, all the while Monarch had the funniest miscommunication with Dr. Mrs. The Monarch. Man, this was just roleplaying at its worst. Why, you ask? This was a Game of Thrones miscue, with a twist of Rocky thrown in. Tim-Tom was Mickey, and Kevin was Clubber Lang. This scene made the whole episode.

Dean, seriously needs to get a razor at this point. He’s got this hot broad sitting next to him named Talia, and all he’s doing is pining about not finding himself or some shit. Talia then shows Rusty and Dean her new set of baby arms that just grew. As usual, Rusty is dismissive.

To the house of St. Cloud, where Watch and Ward are talking to St. Cloud about his entry into the Guild of Calamitous Intent.  After Watch and Ward “dropped” a briefcase of money, St. Cloud begins his plan to make Billy suffer for stealing something from him.

Speaking of Billy, he is going over the mutations that the interns have because of the radiation stewing in the lab. Second set of arms, telekinesis, a carapace, and in the case of Hatred, a rocking set of tits are on the menu here. Again, Rusty is very dismissive.

So, Hank Co. has the market cornered on the clean suits and tailoring for Palaemon. After Hatred leaves Hank Co., he walks into an Orange suit eating a green suit. I think someone finally realized something is definitely wrong here…and that would be the Orange suits, who carry off Hatred into their bunk house. After getting a call from JJ about the ray shield, Rusty tries to get a hold of Hatred, who just happens to be tied up in the lair of Martin. While this is going on, Talia (who is now a full blown alien looking type thing) is telling Dean about Martin’s plan. She is encouraging him to fight Martin, but it isn’t working. Her attempt to get Dean to use telepathy fails just as hard.

Rusty walks up to the Palaemon facility, to it chained up, and their 94 theses written on a clean suit. After idiotic banter from most of them, 21 finally takes charge, and gets the people on the mission to reclaim the ray shield. Over in the Lord of the Flies, Hatred is getting whipped by Martin and an orange suit. Talia then brings Dean in, who challenges Martin to a fight. Martin picks Matt, an orange suit, to fight on his behalf, while Dean picks Hatred. Who, I may add, has a first name of Courtney.

21 is looking to for an update to the mission, Hank and Dermott are hiding near the Martinplex, and Rusty is in the shitter. Hatred chimes in, telling them what is going on inside. Billy and Pete are in St. Cloud’s trying to get back the engine they need to decontaminate the Palaemon building. All Billy needs to do is eat 100 pennies. Billy gets St. Cloud to agree to a winner take all, one question quiz.

Over at Martinplex, Dean and Martin started their contest, and it isn’t as expected. We have Indian Burn, a Indian cracker eating contest, Indian leg wrestling, and surprisingly, Dean won them all. Speaking of surprises, it was a bit of a letdown to see how the quiz went down. I’ll let you guys watch and chime in. I wasn’t very impressed.

The Monarch is flying the Cocoon to the Venture compound, and the Monarch gives us a new way of saying, “taking a crap.”  As that’s going on, 21 (or SPHINX Commander) is trying to get Billy and Pete back to get the decontamination started so Rusty can deliver on the ray shield. Monarch then shows up to get his super soldiers into what was the mutant bunks. After Monarch releases the soldiers, which turns out to be mosquito butterflies, and they stick all of the mutants. Just as that is happening, Rusty pumps the building full of a roofie cocktail, so everyone forgot what happened. The end was legit, and cleaned up the episode rather cleanly.

First off…WELCOME BACK, TEAM VENTURE!  After what seemed like forever, Team Venture came back with a vengeance. They left off right where season 4 ended, which was awesome, but there were a couple things that kind of upset me. I understand that this may be a coming of age for Dean, but there was nothing showing how he would have been able to overcome any of the mutants at any of the different challenges as he is usually weak and timid. With all of the changes that they had Dean go through, it seems like they just reverted him back to how he was before the end of last season.By the end of the episode, it seems that most of Dean’s aggressive side was retconned out. There was a lot of fluff going on as well, like with St. Cloud, and most of the early bits with the Monarch. I understand they needed to get a lot of the characters in, but this was rather extreme. And one last thing. Where the fuck was Brock?

Overall, this gets an

8/10

from me. The episode was a great welcome back to Team Venture, and will undoubtedly get a lot of fans back into the show.