Top Ten Episodes of G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero - Number 03

"The Traitor"

Written by Buzz Dixon

Buzz Dixon wrote a slew of great G.I. Joe episodes, including the movie, but The Traitor is easily the best story he delivered. Split into two parts, The Traitor tells the story of Dusty betraying the Joes and joining Cobra. It's a compelling episode full of intrigue, action, and comas!

The story begins in a ship docking harbor, where Cobra attempts to steal a chemical that can be used in a "mind control" formula. Unfortunately for Cobra, G.I. Joe has some kind of new chemical that, when sprayed onto their vehicles, makes them completely invulnerable. Cobra is successfully repelled and are seemingly helpless against the Joe's new technology.

Dusty takes this opportunity to make use of his leave time and goes to visit his sick, invalid mother. Sadly, Dusty's mother can't afford the special treatment she needs and already owes money to the bank. Cobra takes advantage of Dusty's situation and offers to pay his mother's medical bills in exchange for the armor chemical formula.

Two of my favorite Cobra villains, Xamot and Tomax meet Dusty at a cowboy bar and try to make the deal. Xamot and Tomax were some goofy, but visually interesting characters. They are weird, European, arrogant, acrobatic twins. Specifically, they are mirrored identical twins who share an empathic connection. They always finish each others sentences and feel each others pain. This actually makes them pretty lousy soldiers because this connection is constantly shown in every fight they get into. You punch one of them and they both fall over. Still, they are fun characters.

Desperate to take care of his mother, Dusty starts giving Cobra top secret information. Suspicious that Dusty is a traitor, Duke sets a trap to flush him out; but an unexpected explosion puts Duke into a coma. Dusty gets captured by the Joes and court marshaled. Having no where else to go, Dusty joins Cobra. Now a member of Cobra, Dusty gives them the armor formula and leads a number of missions to get the rest of the chemicals for their "mind control" formula. Eventually, Cobra gets all the ingredients and captures a bunch of Joes in the process. But just before Dusty is forced to gas the Joe prisoners with the "mind control" formula, he gases the Cobra soldiers and frees the Joes.

The Joes get out and storm the base, then to their surprise, all of Cobra's equipment starts deteriorating. As it turns out, Dusty was a triple agent, working for Duke. Duke knew that their armor formula was unstable and, although at first making an object invincible, eventually caused it to deteriorate at a molecular level. Duke wanted Cobra to destroy all their equipment. Dusty's name is cleared and all's well that ends well.

Like all the two part episodes, there's a lot going on. The extra space allows the action to breathe and lets various other characters have a moment without feeling cramped or rushed. Although the action and intrigue is very straightforward, it's handled very well and focuses on broad concepts such as morality and loyalty. Despite being an alleged traitor and having all his friends turn on him, Dusty sticks to the mission and tries not to hurt anyone. When Shipwreck attacks him in an angry rage, Dusty spars with him then saves him from a burning building. When Cobra Commander forces Dusty to fight for dominance in a pool of piranhas with "rocket nunchukus", he saves his opponent from being eaten alive. Dusty's a good guy.

The animation is pretty top notch in this episode, too, with one glaring exception. The nature of animation means that all characters are drawn from model, including background characters. In the case of the Cobra Troopers, they all look the same because they're all based off the same model. In this episode, there's a new Cobra Trooper that is given a face, Lieutenant Claymore. The animators took this opportunity to give the show some diversity and made him a black man. Unfortunately, there were numerous animation gaffes where the character was constantly switching skin color. G.I. Joe had consistent animation errors and coloring was the most common one, it's just unfortunately obvious in this case.