"What do we do that no one else has ever done?"
In "The Power of the Crimp", Vince is depressed because a Doppelgänger, Lance Dior, has appeared and is stealing his style. After Lance unsuccessfully tries to recruit Howard to his side, he instead finds a Howard clone, Harold Noom, and forms a musical group called The Flighty Zeus. After stealing their songs and sabotaging their show at the Velvet Onion, The Flighty Zeus seem poised to become a more successful and popular than Howard and Vince ever were.Howard and Vince decide to fight back with something only the two of them know about: Crimping, their style of improvised, Bohemian Rhapsody-inspired a capella duets. They show up at the Velvet Onion prepared to wow the audience with a Crimp, only to find that The Flighty Zeus have stolen that too. It's time for a Crimp-off. After bringing in Bollo and Naboo, Howard and Vince manage to wow the audience and gain their style back.
The Mighty Boosh episode "The Power of the Crimp" contains these tropes:
- Battle of the Bands: The show culminates in an unofficial, improvised one. Vince and Howard face off against Lance and Harold in a Crimp-off, where the audience decides who can do a better job at crimping, the Bohemian Rhapsody-inspired improvised duets that Howard and Vince do. Lance and Harold turn out to be surprisingly proficient at it, but Vince and Howard are able to win by bringing in Naboo and Bollo.
- Brick Joke: Vince and Howard are trying to come up with an idea for something only they do, and mention something involving throwing satsumas at each other. The Tag shows Vince and Howard in their underwear throwing satsumas at each other in the street.
- Call-Back:
- The trumpet-playing rabbit from "The Priest and the Beast" makes a cameo in this episode.
- Vince's obsession and strange friendship with Gary Numan in "Tundra" gets a nod with the real Gary Numan hiding in the shop's closet.
- The Cameo: The real Gary Numan is hiding in a closet in the shop as a surprise present for Vince.
- Effective Knockoff: Lance and Harold copy everything about Vince and Howard, but seem poised to become more successful and popular than they ever were.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In-Universe. The peacock's web show lingered in obscurity on Earth, to the point that Howard and Vince assumed Naboo made it up, but it was actually quite popular on Naboo's home planet.
- Let Me Tell You a Story: When Vince and Howard are bummed out about their style getting stolen, Naboo tells them the tale of the Magpie and the Peacock, a story about animals stealing each others' style which seems like and allegory for Vince and Howard's situation.
- Lost Aesop: Naboo relates a parable about a Magpie stealing a Peacock's feathers as a way of giving Vince and Howard advice about their predicament. The story ends with the peacock (the Vince stand-in) getting an unsuccessful TV show and then killing himself, leading Howard to respond in confusion about what they were supposed to take away from that.
- Pep-Talk Song: When Vince is down in the dumps due to being copied, Howard breaks into a song about how it's what's inside that counts. When Vince's mood spreads to Howard, Naboo and Bollo come in with a reprise.
- Produce Pelting: Once Howard starts telling the pencil case story after a bad set at the Velvet Onion, the audience starts throwing beer cans at them.
- Psycho Rangers: Lance Dior and Harold Noom are copies of Vince and Howard who seek to steal all of their success. They even have copies of Naboo and Bollo!
- Real After All: Naboo tells what seems like an obviously allegorical fable about the Peacock and the Magpie and their careers in media. At the end, it turns out that the story was completely true and that both are real celebrities.
- Retraux: Lance Dior tells Vince and Howard that the future isn't cool anymore, and the past is in. Vince and Howard take this too literally, and do a musical number where they dress and perform like Renaissance-era musicians (complete with codpiece in Vince's case) which the crowd does not enjoy.
- Space "X": Howard and Vince's latest look is future sailors - they're sailors, but from the future. Vince experiments with various other themed mashups as an alternative, but none are quite the same.
