Some of My Favorite G.I. Joe(1983) Episodes
Season 1 Episode 20 “Cobra’s Candidate”
The episode “Cobra’s Candidate” is about Cobra trying to take over a metropolitan area through the use of political corruption. To achieve their goal Cobra has decided to hire a street gang made of mostly rebellious teens to assault their own political candidate(Robert Harper) and his voters so that they can blame the other candidate(Whittier Greenway) for being too soft on crime. This in turns leads the President to send in a small contingent of Joes to keep the peace.
It’s later revealed that Cobra plans to plant explosives in buildings around a political rally to seal the deal, but during the explosions the younger brother of the gang’s leader is caught in one of the buildings. When Cobra troops try to stop the leader from saving her brother the gang turns on them causing Cobra to flee. As they escape Harper exposes himself as a Cobra plant by running with them only to be attacked by Zartan and Firefly and left behind.
I find this episode interesting because for a “ruthless terrorist organization determined to rule the world” Cobra’s plans are a lot more subdued and subtle than they usually are. It shows a cleverness to the group that is otherwise absent from most of the series. And I think it teaches a few valuable lessons; first that you shouldn’t trust any politician especially those preaching law and order, and secondly that the military will have no problems sending in a covert ops group to fight teenagers.
Season 1 Episode 35 “Excalibur”
“Excalibur” is one of the more fantastical episodes. It’s, as it’s name implies, about the mythological sword Excalibur which was found in a nearby lake during a confrontation between the Joes and Cobra. Removing the sword from the lake causes a curse to manifest which creates torrential downpours and flooding. The Joes are warned about this by a random Scottish man but don’t believe him at first. However as the storm gets worse they have no choice but to try retrieving the sword from Cobra’s grasp.
As the storm rages on the Joes discover that Cobra is stationed in an old abandoned castle. This leads to several attempted sackings of it that are not very successful but the repeated attempts allow some of them to get in and then escape with an imprisoned Joe. The climax of the episode features Storm Shadow and Quick Kick fighting each other for control of Excalibur on top of the castle as Freedom the eagle flies around them.
As much as I love this episode it has arguably one of the worst Native American tropes in media. The character Spirit is shown to have magical healing powers that are “ancient [Native American] medicine” techniques. Which is just really gross and dumb. Apart from that though this episode is just a silly fun time and I enjoy it for what it is.
Season 1 Episode 41 “Gods Below”
This episode begins with Cobra kidnapping an archaeologist that has recently unearthed the Tomb of Osiris which is supposedly the final resting place of the Egyptian God and home to a vast treasure trove.
Cobra plans and succeeds at luring the Joes into the tomb first so that they will trigger any traps that were placed inside. They’re is able to listen in on the progress the Joes have made due to tubes that were built into the tomb to provide the workers with fresh air. This allows them to hear when the Joes become trapped in a dead end, so they send in some elite Cobra troops to take them out. This plan backfires allowing the Joes to disguise themselves as Cobra troops. After leading Cobra Commander and the Baroness to the treasure room on accident the Joes are whisked away on a magical elevator that reveals that the Egyptian gods are very real. They must then prove themselves worthy or risk being eaten Ammit, The Eater of Hearts.
After a few challenges the gods see that they are all selfless and worthy so they tell them that they will be allowed to move on to the afterlife without being eaten by Ammit. While this is happening Cobra Commander makes a deal with Set, who for some reason in this turns into a giant snake. The deal is that they will help him finally fully unseat his brother Osiris and worship him as long as they are able to receive the treasure in the tomb. Upon the removal of the treasure though the tomb begins to collapse and the Joes are released by the gods to defeat Cobra and return the treasure as it was the only thing keeping Set imprisoned. The Joes are able to stop Cobra in the end and return the treasure with the gods allowing them to stay in the mortal realm.
I don’t really care all that much about the treasure hunt that happens or the exploration of the tomb, what really sells this episode to me is that they decided to say that the ancient Egyptians got it right and that their religion was real. And while this isn’t inherently special in any way as there are many old adventure serials that have the same premise it is still cool to see and think about.
Season 2 Episode 24 “Nightmare Assault”
Nightmare Assault is by far my favorite episode of the series so my description of it and the things I like about it may run on for a while and get more into the minutia of the episode than the previous ones.
The episode starts with the character Lifeline, a medic who refuses to even touch a weapon, performing a polar rescue for the character Iceberg who is clearly suffering from hypothermia. The rescue goes awry when a giant king cobra attacks, breaking the sheet of ice they’re on. As the ice begins to crumble Iceberg, now on the verge of death urges Lifeline to use his gun to kill the snake. Lifeline refuses until Iceberg falls into the water and drowns leaving only his gun behind. The gun then morphs into a snake and Lifeline suddenly wakes up from this nightmare he’s having.
After waking he heads into the commons area where he meets the character Lowlight. Lowlight is depicted as a Staff Sergeant that is specialized in night time missions and constantly has a set of night vision goggles on to reflect this, this is important. They have a conversation where it is revealed that Lowlight doesn’t sleep at night because he suffers from constant nightmares. When asked how he can stand living that way his response,“You make do. You have no choice.” We learn at this point that the nightmares that Lifeline is suffering from are being caused by a devious Cobra scheme to slowly drive the Joes insane through sleep deprivation and psychological trauma caused by the nightmares. We are then treated to the nightmares of General Hawk, current leader of the GI Joes. In his nightmare we see him leading a squad of jets as they are attacked by Cobra and one by one picked off save for Hawk himself. He then tries to crash his own jet into a giant cobra that has appeared as a way to make up for leading his own men to their deaths but this goes wrong and he is instead eaten by the snake.
Shortly after this Cobra attacks an oil rig and uses a giant cobra to try causing the Joes to turn away. This doesn’t stop the Joes but in the end it doesn’t matter as Cobra had also planted bombs on the rig to ensure it’s destruction. We then cut to Iceberg at the movies with his S/O. He’s passed out and in his dream we see him skiing down a mountain when a wall suddenly appears and then disappears in front of him. The same giant cobra shows up and melts the ice that he’s now standing on causing him to fall in and drown. Back at base we see the toll these constant nightmares have had on the Joes as two of them begin to fight over something petty. Lowlight appears and stops the fight before heading outside. Once outside he sits down below a tree and we finally see the nightmares he’s been having since long before Cobra’s assault began.
Lowlight wakes up holding a rifle in what appears to be a twisted junkyard where all the cars form monstrous faces. From here a voice calls out to him telling him to step forward as a bunch of headlights turn on putting him into the spotlight. Lowlight responds by calling out “Dad?”. The voice then begins to berate him calling him weak, a coward, telling him that he was ashamed to be his father because he was so afraid of the dark. When Lowlight begs his father to stop the voice tells him that he must prove himself by by killing 20 rats. When Lowlight agrees the voice calls out that it has to be done in the dark. The dream continues on with Cobra watching in trying to break him with their nightmare machine by turning the cars into giant snakes. This has the reverse effect of helping Lowlight conquer his fears and childhood trauma as he’s able to take out the snakes with ease.
The next morning in the mess hall we see the Joes finally putting the pieces together and figuring out that this has to be a Cobra plot and since Lowlight has been the only one to fight off his nightmares successfully he is selected to become a dream warrior of sorts to help the others deal with their own nightmares. The idea is to link all of the Joes up together so that Lowlight can travel between their dreams, instead what happens is that all of the nightmares and dreams merge into one large shared nightmare. In it we see several other Joes fears manifested such as the character Dialtone and Mainframe. dialtone loses his ability to speak while mainframe is slowly replaced piece by piece with machinery until he’s nothing but a robot. Before long though Lowlight does turn up and this time he has backup. he and his backup are able to save the day and Cobra’s machine is destroyed.
Now for what I love about this episode. First thing is the development of the characters, especially Lowlight. Most of the characters have one or two traits that are used to distinguish them from the others but with this episode and exploring their fears and traumas we see that not are do they have more depth but that they’re not the perfect supermen the rest of the series tends to make them out to be. It was also really nice to see a character confront their abuse and the trauma they suffered from it head-on and make progress into dealing with it and the phobias that sprang from it, which is something I very heavily relate to. It was also very interesting to me that they took what seemed like one trait from Lowlight, the fact that he specialized in night-time missions and him always wearing his night vision goggles, and gave it a justification within the canon that made sense and added depth to the character. As for issues I had with the episode, the only thing that stands out is that the character lady Jaye talks about her nightmare and it’s that she had to sing the national anthem at the Super Bowl while nude. This would be something I’d overlook if it was a one time thing but out of all the female characters in GI Joe cartoon Lady Jaye is the one most often sexualized so it’s just another instance of it.
