While we’re on the topic of sight gags, I’ll admit that the one of Zorn’s humungous sand castle made me chuckle and is yet another decent example of inserting Zorn into basically any everyday situation and getting something absurd as the result. I feel these tend to work better when the gag is falling back on something impressive visually and Zorn’s castle on the beach looks legit. It’s another one-of-a-kind sort of visual that you can only get from this show and the series should strive to continue to have at least one of these per episode, whether it’s a giant bird slaying or whatever.

Meanwhile at Zorn’s job, in spite of him managing to finally be getting the lay of the land over there, he finds himself longing for battle. It’s all good and dandy that Zorn’s collating skills and mastery of the copier have gotten better, but it’s been forever since he’s eviscerated something and the malaise of that is setting in for him. As a reaction to this, Zorn ends up fabricating a villainous agenda for a neighboring Body Shock employee, Derek, and starts engineering his own conflict when it won’t come to him naturally. Fortunately for Zorn’s testosterone, Body Shock Employee is kind of a dick so Zorn gets to feed his need for vengeance and even gets his own Insane Bloodlust Theme to play in his head whenever Zorn’s new nemesis particularly lays into him.

As much as the show enjoys juxtaposing Zorn’s immense strength with his normal surroundings, I think this premise works even better when Zorn’s finding himself in a position of powerlessness or obsessing over some piece of real-world minutiae (ie. hot sauce). This episode offers up both. Plus, I sort of love the idea that Linda thinks that a lot of Zorn’s Zephyrian examples are actually anecdotes about Pokemon.

This workplace stuff was really doing it for me this time around, probably mostly due to the fact that Zorn’s plans are so damn terrible or just downright confusing (“Why did you have to be naked?” “Believe me, there was truly no other way”). After last week, I was hoping that we’d be getting more of Mark Proksch’s character on the show, but Bobby Lee’s Jakton is just as satisfying and works as a great foil and sidekick to Zorn’s office scheming.

The resolution to all of this is also perfectly insane with Zorn trying to force a battle out of Derek by tricking him into drinking blood. It’s a beautiful scene where they’re both so quick to tear each other’s heads off. The climax is made only better by Zorn practically begging Derek not to apologize and forfeit this fight. He needs to settle this on the battlefield. As crazy as all of this is, there’s something also deeply human about it and you can feel the sadness in Zorn as he’s worried that this fundamental part of who he is might be lost from his life now. It’s a very relatable story, especially in the context of starting a job in an office environment where you’re maybe compromising your ideals. Equally humanizing is Zorn’s realization that dominating at your job can be just as gratifying as killing a whole army of crab people.