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.

Top Ten Episodes of G.I. JOE: A Real American Hero - Number 04

"Hearts and Cannons"
Written by Alfered A. Pegal and Larry Houston

I think one of the strongest elements of the G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero concept is the distillation of cliches and stereotypes into well rounded characters. The characters are pastiches of America. Sometimes it's a little heavy handed, and a few times it's embarrassingly tacky, but most of the time the Joes are representative of the different types of people that make up America. And America has, if nothing else, lots of different types of people in it.

That brings us to Footloose. I was never a big fan of Footloose, I never had his toy, and he wasn't in many episodes. It's not hard to see why, most of the time he came off as a single joke character, and the joke is pretty thin. He was a pretty straightforward pastiche of hippies. He was kind of detached from reality in a zen sort of way and said "like" a lot, heck, even his helmet is covered with "leaves". The problem with Footloose was that he felt like he was being written by people who didn't actually know any hippies, but saw them on TV once. I don't know if the writers didn't know what to do with that type of character or if they just didn't want to go there in the first place, but Footloose didn't see a lot of action in the cartoon series. But when he did, he called everybody "man" and said "far out" a lot.

Hearts and Cannons is one of the better episodes that he stars in. In this episode, he is partnered with Dusty. Footloose is an existential free thinker and Dusty is just a rugged, good ol' country boy. They work really well together. Although they have opposing competitive styles, it never devolves into Odd Couple style arguing and bickering. They come across more as two guys from different lifestyles who have bonded to become friends.

At the beginning of the episode we find out that Cobra is attacking unnamed villages in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. They have kidnapped a scientist, Dr. Winters, and are forcing her to create a prototype plasma cannon tank. The Joes are flying over the area looking for the secret facility. After their plane is struck by lightning, they are forced to jettison the cargo and supplies, including the Mauler tank. But that wasn't enough to lighten the load, so Footloose and Dusty are forced to parachute out as well. After spending the night in the desert, they find Destro's secret weapons testing compound, sneak inside, rescue the scientist, and make their escape.

This is where the fun begins, because Dr. Winters happens to be a very pretty lady. So the entire time they are rescuing her, Footloose and Dusty are competing for her affection. It leads to some genuinely great comedy and action. After escaping the compound, our heroes get caught in a sand storm and are separated.

This episode makes great use of Footloose. There's a particular scene where Destro forces his troops to drive through a mine field in order to catch the Joes. The Cobra troops are naturally reluctant to do so and, after being forced at gun point, proceed with a humorously half hearted battle cry. They are promptly blown up and (presumably) killed off screen. Dusty comments how he feels sorry for them. Footloose replies that he has no sympathy because "they're just livin' out their karma." Interestingly, the scene is played pretty straight, and actually comes off pretty dark. One of the reasons Footloose fairs better in this episode than in others is that the writers actually give him more to say than the usual hippie "buzz" words, but still maintain the cultural feel. His response to the unrelenting sand storm is, "All Things Must Pass. Keep On Keepin' On." It's a nice reference.

Dusty found refuge in a stolen Cobra Hummer, but Footloose and Dr. Winters are trapped in the storm. Fortunately for them, they are found by a mysterious Arab man named Jabal who, at first, thinks they are Cobra soldiers. After realizing that Footloose is G.I. Joe, Jabal lets them go and helps them fight Cobra.

Now, this is where it gets a little embarrassing. Jabal is presented as a kind of Sinbad style, scimitar wielding, fantasy caricature. It wouldn't have been so bad if he didn't say things like "snake warrior" and "sky chariot" and such. But despite being a presented as an ignorant third world nomad, he's also a suave, romantic warrior poet and he totally sweeps Dr. Winters off her feet, much to Footloose and Dusty's chagrin.

In the end, Jabal found the Joe's Mauler so he and Footloose use it to fight Destro's prototype super tank. What follows is a pretty neat desert tank battle. Using teamwork and Dr. Winters' knowledge of the prototype, they are able to defeat Destro. As it turns out, Jabal is the rightful monarch of the land and with Cobra gone, takes control of the country and gives Dusty and Footloose medals. Then he takes Dr. Winters to his palace, leaving the two Joes to argue about whose chick she really was.

Footloose really shines in this episode. He's got a real Jeff Bridges style about him. He and Dusty really gel. The two characters have good chemistry and it's a shame they didn't have more appearances together outside of this episode.