[WARNING – This review contains some minor spoilers.]

Orphaned at a young age, The Monarch has few memories of his father. And most of what he does remember isn’t good. Yet nothing could have prepared him for the shocking, disgraceful secret his father had been concealing in the basement of their ancestral home.

His father… was a superhero!

Sadly, The Monarch has little time to deal with this stunning news or to start exploring the underground lair. For his presence is required at a high-society gala hosted by Wide Whale – the super-villain now arching Dr. Venture.

Things are equally busy in the House of Venture. Hank has just started his first real job as a pizza delivery boy. At the same time, Brock Samson prepares himself for a tense new job – tutoring Dean Venture on how to pass the SAT! And Dr. Venture has fallen back into his old habits of exploiting his friends for cheap labor and pillaging his family’s legacy to make a quick buck.

Things go south quickly when a lab accident releases some magic goop that takes possession of Dean’s body. And Hank’s first delivery gets him closer to his crush across the street… but also gets him closer to the strangling hands of her overprotective bodyguards. For it seems that Hank’s chosen lady friend is the daughter of Wide Whale!

Thus far, season 6 of The Venture Bros. has been far more sequential than previous seasons. Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer clearly have a long-arc planned for the characters this season and the stories so far reflect that. “Faking Miracles” builds upon the plot points introduced in the previous two episodes and develops them all, with Hank’s romantic misadventures and The Monarch’s increasingly dysfunctional professional and romantic lives taking up most of the running time.

Jackson Publick’s script is tightly plotted but that’s just the icing on the cake. The draw of The Venture Bros. has always been the interaction between unique and interesting characters and that trend continues here. This episode introduces a new baddie called Copycat (think Dean Martin meets Multiplex) who quickly becomes a double-threat to The Monarch. And the sequence in which Brock deals with Dean’s apparent demonic possession is a hoot.