The monkey-men from episode three manage to break free of their rocky prison and come after the Joes again. The Joes, wisely, flee the scene while Scoop tries to explain his actions but is cut off.
Cobra Commander and Company try to stop the Joes, but the Dragonfire energy wears off and the monkeys return to being monkeys. Alley Viper and Copperhead and their troops join Cobra Commander and Co. against the Joes.
The Joes are trying to get to their Conquests to get the heck outta Dodge when Gnawgahyde manages to beat them there. He climbs into a Conquest and, staying on the ground, uses it to blow the high holy snot out of the other jets, trapping the Joes on the ground.
Scoop and Low Light, who are chained together since Scoop is still a prisoner, get pinned by a falling tree (it hits the chain holding them together, pinning them on either side of the tree…damnit). Stalker goes over to Scoop’s side of the tree and eventually frees him after Scoop convinces Stalker that he really has reformed. Scoop hightails it out of there to infiltrate Cobra, this time acting as a double agent.
Meanwhile, Gnawgahyde goes a little trigger happy in the Conquest, pinning down not only the Joes but his own side as well. Low Light finds out that Scoop’s escaped and goes after him. He will also be infiltrating Cobra, only he’s hoping to bring the traitor back to justice.
Alley Viper and Scoop meet up and Scoop is once again taken into the fold. Somehow, the Alley Viper has heard about Scoop being caught by the Joes. Only now instead of spying on the Joes for Cobra, he’s going to be spying on Cobra for the Joes! Oooh, sneaky! And oddly enough, he’s still gonna suck at it!
Alley Viper informs Scoop that Cobra Commander has figured out a way to use the Dragonfire energy to bond animals to vehicles. Naturally, the Commander has decided to bond snakes to his vehicles ‘cause of the whole Cobra theme to his organization. Apparently, snakes possess natural anti-radar stealth abilities. That’s something you’re not going to be learning from the Discovery channel, I can tell you that much.
Copperhead just happens to have one of Cobra Commander’s uniforms in his hovercraft (maybe he went as CC to a Halloween party?). It’s the armored suit uniform, of the sort Fred VII wore when he was pretending to be Cobra Commander in the comics, which was pretty spiffy. Too bad it has to be in this episode. Poor armored suit…
So, because Copperhead had CC’s suit, he gets to be the leader of the newly formed Python Patrol (at a TRU near you kids, tell your folks!). The Alley Viper, who was a favorite of Destro (that cad! Cheating on Zarana already!?), gets put on snake-gathering duty, since Python Patrol is going to need more in the way of raw materials.
Meanwhile, Sergeant Slaughter and Stalker wait for some X-19s to come pick them up. Sarge says he hopes Scoop will be successful in infiltrating Cobra while Stalker is of the opinion that Cobra isn’t going to be as much trouble for Scoop as Low Light will.
Low Light steals a uniform from a Cobra Night Viper (who is conveniently out during the day…) and heads off to take out Scoop. Go Low Light GO!
Think of what comes next as the Cobra Civil War: Lite. All the backstabbing with none of the Serpentor death (curse the luck…):
Inside one of the Lost City ruins, the Commander has himself a nice little Pythonizing lab set up. He uses one of the Ubiquitous Communications Viewscreens to talk to Destro. He and Destro make nice-nice about the whole overthrowing the Commander to put Serpentor on the throne thing. Destro agrees to join with the Commander if he gets rid of Serpentor (rather a wise move on Destro’s part, that way if the Commander fails, hey, he can always go back to working for Serpentor). The Baroness tells Destro that if he wants to come back he has to dump Zarana…which he does. Literally. As in down a convenient chute.
All things considered, Destro got off easy considering the last time he pissed off the Baroness she destroyed his ancestral home.
Cobra Commander sends off Copperhead and Scoop to escort Serpentor’s plane down and take him prisoner. Copperhead, by the way, has a better voice in this series than he did in the original Sunbow series. It’s a kind of a smooth Southern bad-boy drawl as opposed to the Goober the Hillbilly voice he had in the Sunbow eps. Rowr! Ahem, now...back to the review…
Cobra Commander and Serpentor taunt one another in the best Evil Villain fashion while Copperhead and Scoop sneak up on Serpentor using their stealthed Python Patrol vehicles.
Serpentor opens a secure frequency between his plane and Copperhead’s and offers Copperhead a deal: side with him and be given a raise in rank. Copperhead agrees ‘cause, y’know, he’s a bad guy and backstabbing is what bad guys do best!
Scoop tells Serpentor to give up otherwise him and Copperhead are going to take Serpentor out. Copperhead reveals the double-cross by coming up behind Scoop and firing on his plane. A dogfight between the two of them begins, with Scoop at first trying to find a way to talk Copperhead into giving up the betrayal. Copperhead assures Scoop that this is nothing personal, just how things are done in Cobra (which you think Scoop would KNOW by now since he is a goddamn Cobra!)
Scoop manages to beat Copperhead in the dogfight by causing the other guy to fly into a felled tree (don’t worry, Copperhead isn’t dead even though we don’t see him parachute out at the last minute). Scoop then manages to out-bluff Serpentor and gets him to eject and parachute to the ground where he’s picked up by Cobra forces and brought to Cobra Commander.
The Alley Viper, not being the brightest bulb on the tree, sucks up to Serpentor which just makes Cobra Commander go into a snit and cry:
“Is there no one here who will help rid me of this self-satisfied vermin!?”
Low Light, still disguised as a Night Viper, steps up to give Cobra Commander an assist. He uses a snake to throw Serpentor off his guard and the other Vipers are able to capture Serpentor. Cobra Commander orders that he be taken to the Pythonizing Table and strapped down.
The Commander merges Serpentor with one of Gnawgahyde’s pet iguanas. He assures Serpentor that although the change will only be temporary, Serpentor will never quite lose his taste for flies even after he reverts to..err..normal. The switch is thrown, Serpentor gets turned into an iguana-critter and thus exits the series never to haunt us again. YAY!!!!
Low Light gets praised by Cobra Commander while the Alley Viper is denigrated once more. The Alley Viper swears vengeance against Low Light for this humiliation (though me, I’d just be glad they didn’t decide to merge me with a poison arrow frog or something).
Destro has been watching the whole thing and since the Commander won, he’s now back on Cobra’s side in this whole mess. He tells the Commander that they will have to prepare for their assault on Sorcerer’s Mesa, the final repository for the Dragonfire energy. It is also the most powerful. Vehicles are Pythonized, Destro and the Baroness make up, and Scoop is questioned by Cobra about Joe defenses at Sorcerer’s Mesa (the last Dragonfire energy spot).
Low Light runs off to warn the Joes, rather than sticking around to hear what Scoop has to say (which would mean he might have found out that Scoop is working for the Joes now). He jumps into a Cobra vehicle and uses it’s radio system to try and call the Joes. The freakiest thing about this scene is we get to see Low Light’s eyes. They’re not gross or anything, but it’s weird to see him without the goggles. Weird and wrong!
The Alley Viper shows up before Low Light can send off his message and throws Low Light out of the Cobra jet/platform thingy. Luckily for Low Light, the jet/platform thingy wasn’t’ completely off the ground so he doesn’t fall very far. But, the Joes have no idea what’s in store for them!
Thus ends, Day Four of Operation Dragonfire.
Commentary: God I hate Scoop. Have I mentioned that? Because I don’t think I did and I really, really hate Scoop. (Okay, so I did mention it but it bears repeating! Scoop is a dumbass!)
From what I’ve heard about the DiC episodes, they were supposedly aimed at a younger age group because the company figured that the Joe’s fanbase was around six or seven years old. For this reason, they supposedly dumbed down a lot of the plots, making them simpler and easier for a younger age group to follow. Never minding that those self-same six-year-olds were having no trouble following the Sunbow cartoons (which, in all honesty, weren’t exactly Shakespeare in the Round). Which is probably the reason why the Joes and the Cobras in this mini-series seem to be so trusting of Scoop despite the fact he’s betrayed both sides. You’d at least think that Cobra would be suspicious of any double agent, especially one from their side and most especially since every Cobra except for Scoop makes a point of mentioning what a bunch of backstabbing bastards Cobra employs.
Scoop more or less gets on my nerves because he’s the same sort of Designated Hero that Falcon was in the movie only without Falcon’s actual visible change of heart. Instead of coming to grips with his personal failings, like Falcon did, Scoop basically finds out he was lied to and made to look the dumbass by Cobra then switches sides easy-peasy.
And what’s truly obnoxious is that the Joes LET HIM. The only Joe who even questions Scoop’s sincerity is Low Light and he’s more or less ignored by the others until Scoop actually admits to being a Cobra spy. And even then, the others take his change of heart at face value. I realize this is probably part of some effort to polarize the Joes as Good Guys and Cobra as Bad Guys but…c’mon, a spy is a spy! You don’t let someone into your organization simply because they say “I’m a Joe now, 100 percent! Really! Never mind the fact I worked for your enemies as a spy for them before and told you that I was a Joe then, this time I’m not lying. Honest!”
Other than that, the bits with Cobra in this episode were great. It was nice to see them backstabbing each other repeatedly, since it’s behavior that actually makes sense. It’s an internal politics scene right up there with the bit in the beginning of GI Joe: The Movie where the Cobra officers are trash-talking Cobra Commander to Serpentor.
And speaking of Serpentor, it’s nice to see him gone. Would have been nicer to see him get an arrow in the neck but hey, beggars can’t be choosers…