Top Ten Episodes of G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero - Number 10

"In the Presence of Mine Enemy"
Written by Chris Weber and Karen Willson

The premise of G.I. Joe makes for a difficult set up. On the one hand, you have a colorful cast of characters and an easy storytelling engine of Good Vs. Evil. On the other hand, you have an unmanagably large cast of characters and a neutered portrayal of war in which fake weapons have to be used, nobody can die, and vary play sets must appear in each episode. Often times, episodes would degrade into a one large group of random characters shooting lasers at a large group of faceless Cobra soldiers and/or a ridiculous cartoon monster.

The best episodes, the truly great ones, were able to sidestep all of that and focus on only a few characters. Such is the case with the season two episode, "In the Presence of Mine Enemy."

This episode only features two main characters, and one of them wasn't even a toy! It features, Sky Shark pilot Slipstream, and an unnamed Cobra Night Raven pilot nicknamed...Raven. This episodes keeps the high concept of G.I. Joe pretty simple, giving us a little story about two opposing pilots being forced to cooperate. There are shades of Top Gun and Hell in the Pacific all over this episode.

Slipstream intercepts a secret Cobra code and is chased down by a squadron of Night Ravens. After a brief dog fight, Slipstream gets shot down and is stranded on a tiny island off the coast of Africa. The Night Raven, also damaged from the battle, crashes on the same island. Slipstream is waiting for reinforcements, but he doesn't have much time. Cobra launches a bunch of Battle Android Troopers onto the island, whose sole programming seems to be to kill anything that moves and destroy the tape with the secret code on it. The B.A.T.'s don't bother to differentiate between Cobra or Joe and fire on the two pilots indiscriminately. Forced to retreat into a secret underground Cobra bunker, the two pilots have to learn to trust each other and work together if they plan on surviving the B.A.T. assault.

The strength of this episode lies in the portrayal of the Cobra pilot, Raven. In so many episodes, you see armies of faceless soldiers ready to die in the name of Cobra, so it's incredibly refreshing to get some character work on one of the faceless soldiers. Throughout the episode, Raven is portrayed as greedy, untrusting, and has some anger issues. Cobra is presented as almost cult like in the way they brainwash her into thinking they are like a family to her. There's also a casual line about having enhanced reflexes through bio enhancement. I really liked getting into the world of the rank and file, it helps to make the whole concept of Cobra more believable.

There's another strength to the portrayal of the Cobra pilot that I'd like to mention. Since they had the opportunity to feature a faceless character for a whole episode, they give her a face! Specifically, the face of a Native American or possibly Indian woman. It's never mentioned in the dialog, so I suspect it may not even have been mentioned in the script, but somebody at some point in the character design process, decided that this character would not be white. It was very refreshing to see the show embrace multiculturalism without feeling the need to highlight or focus on it. Instead, it's just treated as a natural, normal thing, and trust me, coming from a cartoon in the 80's, this is a monumental feat.

Slipstream was never one of my favorite Joes, mostly because I never had him or his accompanying jet, but he's very likable in this episode. He plays a cocky, witty, charismatic, and chivalrous fighter pilot who is doing his best to be the good guy despite being tricked and deceived by Raven every chance she gets. He constantly goes out of his way to save Raven from her own stubborn arrogance.

As the episode charges along, Slipstream learns that the bunker was abandoned after one of Dr. Mindbender's experiments went "horribly" wrong and, you guessed it, they have to face off against a ridiculous cartoon monster. Raven is shocked when she learns that Dr. Mindbender intends to let her die and that her attempts to survive have been pure entertainment for him and the rest of Cobra.

In the end, Slipstream and Raven destroy the island and everything on it just as a Joe rescue chopper shows up to haul them out of there. The action climax is truly dwarfed by the emotional climax of Raven learning that Cobra never cared about her, they just care about the power they seek. She abandons Cobra and decides to enlist in G.I. Joe!

I don't remember seeing this episode as a child, and in truth it's not as flashy or immediately memorable as many other episodes. The genius of this episode was that it featured a good number of play sets and characters as per the requirements, specifically the jets and the robot soldiers, but was actually a really strong character piece about a character that never even had a toy to push.

And we got to hear Slipstream utter one of my favorite expletives, "Aw, nertz!"