Brief Summary: They’re generals, identical generals and you’ll find…

Summary: We open on the desert at night and a cool shot of the GI Joe logo, transparent, up against a night shot of the desert. This is easily one of the best examples of this logo placement in the entire run of the series and a damn fine looking piece of animation.

We pan off the logo shot to a group of Cobra soldiers preparing for a night strike only to be surprised by camoflagued Joes. Ambush and a couple others are dressed as cactus. There’s a somewhat creepy bit as they explode out of their cactus suits. Exactly how well this would work in real life, I don’t know, but I do know that the US Army has used some pretty clever camouflaging techniques in their time.

Cobra Commander bitches at Destro about the lack of success their troops had. They were routed pretty quickly and pretty easily. Then again, Cobra generally runs like a pair of defective pantyhose.

Destro, in an effort to appease the Commander, reveals a surprise he had been saving for CC’s birthday: an android duplicate of General Hawk.

We come back from the intro theme song to find that Cobra Commander is very pleased with his new toy. The android is a perfect replica of the General and will obey CC’s every command. There are a few bugs, however. The android has a very wonky sense of humor.

Meanwhile, the REAL General Hawk is out riding with some kid named Adam who has apparently run away from home in hopes of becoming a Joe. I’d put him at about ten years old, but he could be early or even mid-teens, just drawn in such a way that he looks younger than he is. OR the DiC series was taking a cue from anime where you can be 13 and head of your own mecha battle force.

Hawk tells Adam that most Joes are high school graduates (another reason to think Adam’s older than ten) and that he should finish school himself before he starts thinking about becoming a Joe. He then tells Adam to watch out for the fire button on the vehicle’s panel. That’s when he figures out that Adam can’t read.

Hawk tells Adam that he can learn to read and gives him a Swiss Army harmonica. It’s a device that the Joes use that has all sorts of little gadgets and tricks to it. While it might seem silly to put something like that in a harmonica, it’s not quite as far-fetched as it might sound. During World War Two, various organizations created all sorts of little tricks and such for soldiers serving in POW camps. Maps and escape information were sent in to POW camps in CARE packages disguised among playing cards, cigarette packets and shoestrings.

Another storytelling note: Hawk’s pep talk to Adam is amazingly short. It boils down to about one sentence: “You can learn to read.” In fact, Adam’s illiteracy, while it plays a part in this episode, isn’t driven down our throats. Another interesting note is that Adam is a little white kid, probably from the suburbs instead of the stereotypical little minority inner city kid.

Shortly after Hawk hands over the harmonica, Cobra attacks Hawk and Adam. Hawk tells the kid to go back and get help, giving him a jet pack and sending him flying back to base (which seems like a dangerous idea since Adam’s an untrained civilian).

Hawk surrenders to Cobra and they ignore Adam’s presence. Cobra then exchanges the real Hawk for the android duplicate. The android then heads back to base in Hawk’s vehicle.

Back at the base, Adam alerts the Joes who start heading out as the android arrives.

The first clue that something’s different comes when the android doesn’t recognize Adam. The second should be when he starts giving screwed up orders. And the third should come when he tells a joke that’s really dumb.

He orders the Joes to do 500 pushups for failure to answer the riddle, then complains about the lax security on the base before breaking into another joke:

“What slows a vampire down?” “Tired blood!”

He then orders that the Joes dismantle their security system and check it over.

“Where do Zombies live?” “On dead-end streets!”

Adam is the first to catch on that something’s wrong.

The android radios Cobra Commander to let him know that the security system will have been dismantled by morning and the Joes are going to be defenseless.

The Joes work on dismantling the security system. Adam tries to warn Bullhorn and Psyche-Out, but the Joes are of the opinion that the android is really General Hawk suffering from some sort of battle fatigue.

Before Adam can explain his theory, Cobra attacks the Joe base. The android orders the Joes to fight, without benefit of their vehicles.

Adam goes looking for Hawk while the Joes try to fight Cobra off.

Adam follows Cobra tire tracks to Cobra’s base where he tells Cobra Commander that he wants to voluntarily join Cobra. Cobra Commander tells one of the other vipers, a guy who looks like he should have a figure and probably does but that I can’t identify, to send Adam to the recruitment center.

The Cobra in question sends Adam on his way, but Adam can’t read the signs so he ends up nearly incinerating himself. He can’t find Hawk and so he ends up getting caught by one of the Cobras, who recognizes him from earlier in the episode.

Adam gets tossed into Hawk’s cell where they use the harmonica to escape. They shine a light through the stone on Hawk’s ring and create a diamond laser that allows them to cut through the bars and escape.

Hawk and Adam steal a Cobra jet and fly back to the Joe base.

Meanwhile, back at the Joe base the Joes are still trying to fight Cobra off.

Hawk and Adam arrive on base and their jet is shot down by the Joes, who mistakenly think that it’s just more Cobras coming in. Hawk crashes the jet and manages to skid it to a stop in a conveniently placed pile of hay.

The android says that the real Hawk is the android. In order to try and figure out which one’s the real General, Psyche-Out tells Adam to report to Bullhorn. The real Hawk is the one who stops Adam from going into the battle. This is actually a pretty clever bit. Granted the test to see which one’s the real one is an old idea, but I like the test that was used.

The real Hawk goes after his android duplicate who’s wiring the base to blow. Hawk gets the drop on him and the two struggle. Adam again has to try and figure out which one is the real Hawk. The real Hawk tells Adam to find “Fire” on the control panel, proving who he is. He and Adam use the fire button to defeat Cobra.

The android is defeated as well and basically broken into his torso and limbs. As he lies on the floor, he tells his final joke: “If two mummies ring your bell, what do you have?” “Dead Ringers!” The android then goes out on a laugh.

Cut to a presentation ceremony where Hawk is making Adam, whose last name is Hayes, an honorary Joe. Adam steps up to make a speech and says that he’s going back to school and that he’ll be back to join the Joes after he graduates. He also tells his father that he’s not going to be skipping school anymore, which surprises his father probably because this is the first he’s heard of Adam skipping in the first place.

Commentary: The issue of literacy is touched on in this episode, but as a nice change of pace for an ‘issue episode’, it’s not harped on. The fact that Adam can’t read is brought up as a plot reason, remains a plot reason and the importance of learning to read isn’t jammed down our throats until we want to scream that WE GET IT ALREADY!!

The quirk for Hawk’s replacement seems an odd one, but again they don’t drive it into the ground. And some of the jokes are kind of cute, in a goofy way.

As far as changing a Joe for a Cobra duplicate, the episode doesn’t quite compare to the Synthoid Conspiracy from the Sunbow series, but it’s not half bad.