Brief Summary: We built this crazy scheme on rock and roll…
Summary: Cobra Air Commandos are flying over New York City, heading for their target. Rock and Roll and Falcon are going after a couple sound technicians, who just happen to be the Cobras’ target.
The Joes try to save the audio engineers, but the Cobras get away with them. Rock and Roll dives out of a window wearing a bungee type cord around his waist and ends up in the lap of a lady in the office a floor below the one he jumped from. Amazingly, he walks off without untying the cord or being yanked back when it reaches it’s limit.
We come back from the theme song with a long shot on a concert in a park, probably Central Park but I’m not really up on my NYC geography so I could be wrong. Billy Blaster is rockin’ out to generic heavy metal and the crowd is there to tell us just how good he is. To me, he doesn’t sound all that impressive. He’s no Jon Bon Jovi, that’s for damn sure. Hell, he’s not even Nelson.
At a distance, the Joes are watching the concert. Hawk hates the music, ‘cause he’s an old fogey, y’know? But, he’s there because the Super Sonic Soldiers think that Billy is going to be the next Cobra target.
The air commandos go in for Billy, swooping down on gliders to try and snatch him up.
Back at the Cobra sound base, CC mentions that he also hates Billy’s music, so apparently he’s an old fogey too.
The Joes go to try and save Billy who’s being carried off by the Air Commandos. Sweet God, Snake-eyes looks dumb. What they were thinking with that blue and black repaint is beyond me…
Sky Creeper is told to bring the cargo (Billy) to the harbor drop point.
Major Bludd expositions about the sonic conduits being put in place.
For reasons that are never adequately explored, Road Pig has a private zoo that takes up one floor of the Cobra Sonic HQ. The closest thing we’re given to an explanation is Road Pig is there because Cobra Commander likes some of Road Pig’s reptilian pets. The zoo is also a plot point later on in the episode, but really it just flies in the face of the character. Road Pig isn’t an animal lover (you know what I mean you sickos!) and while Road Pig is stupid, we never do get to see the Donald personality. Grumble.
The Joes spot Cobra. Psyche-Out radios Rock and Roll to let him know where to head to.
Billy gets dropped into a Cobra raft along with his guitar, Thunderbolt. The Joes try to rescue him and end up following Cobra into a sewer tunnel. Cobra closes off part of the tunnel after taking Billy through.
Metal-Head is very glad to see Billy Blaster. He asks for him to autograph his guitar.
Cobra tests the sonic weapon they’ve been developing on the Joes. This proves that Cobra’s been working on a sonic weapon. The Joes use a cheesy white noise generator to neutralize the sonic weapon. They then pile into a rubber raft and use a rocket launcher to shoot the raft out of the tunnel before their white noise generators fail.
The Interrogator convinces Billy that Cobra’s plot is really a program being funded by the US government. The sonic engineers have also fallen for this line of hoohah. Apparently, they live in a world where governent employees wear a big ugly mask and talk in a really raspy voice.
Then again, Interrogator does have an LED display on his mask that allows him to hypnotize people into doing his bidding. Not that this is mentioned in the show, but hey, let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.
Metal-Head takes Billy aside and shows him how things work for the sonic weapon. As he’s talking to Billy, Cobra Commander shows up and talks about what a good job Interrogator has done fooling Billy and the technicians IN FRONT OF THEM! Granted, Billy seems to be the only one standing near enough to over hear CC and he’s currently being distracted by Metal-Head, but even so it’s not a good idea to reveal the plan in front of the dupes. Even moronic dupes like Billy.
Back at Sonic Soldier HQ, Falcon is telling Hawk about how the Joes are trying to trace unusual audio frequencies, but so far no luck.
Two Joes nearly get nailed by a subway, but eventually three different Joes manage to track down three different sources of the sound. By triangulating them, they manage to track down the source of the sound to the old Extensive Enterprises building. Hawk mentions that he thought they shut that place down.
Interrogator psyches up Billy for his first test. Metal-Head gets jealous of the attention that Billy is getting. Not only is Billy a stuck-up snot, but he’s also taking Metal-Head’s place as an engine of destruction.
Metal-Head steals Billy’s guitar and Billy chases him. They end up on the top of the building, where Metal-Head tries to get Billy stuck on a ladder on the water tower so that he can realize his twin dreams of playing heavy metal music and totally destroying New York City at the very same time!
Billy protests that “Nobody thrashes the light fantastic with Thunderbolt but me!” Which just sounds scary and wrong. Very wrong.
Metal-Head is hovering near the building on a gyro-copter. He fires his rig at the ladder, leaving Billy trapped on it. At least until Billy takes a wild jump and grabs his guitar. Metal-Head lets go of the guitar when the Joes show up. Then realizes a second too late that he did something REALLY dumb.
Rock and Roll tries to save Billy as he falls but Major Bludd shoots him down and saves Billy instead. Bludd and Billy then crash into Road Pig’s zoo and end up standing on the panther’s tail. Which means they end up running like screaming girls away from the irate panther.
Which is actually the worst thing you can do since cats track things by movement. Meaning that running animals are more likely to get hunted down. But hey…
Cobra Commander preempts Gilligan’s Island in order to deliver the following ultimatum: give Cobra ten billion dollars or New York City gets rock and rolled to death.
Hawk hopes that this new sonic weapon doesn’t mean that Cobra Commander is going to sing. Falcon chides Hawk, saying that sonic weapons are a seriously big deal.
In order to prove they can do it, Cobra demonstrates the weapon. And Billy STILL thinks he’s working for the US government.
Interrogator does a whole lot of psyching up, which seems rather unnecessary since Billy seems more than happy to do what’s being asked of him.
Billy rocks out to the accompaniment of a couple Vipers, but the system starts to overload. Billy’s pumping too much suck into the system!
Red science lightening dances on the outside of the Cobra sonic HQ as Cobra prepares to test fire the weapon.
“Falcon, we got a problem,’ Hawk says.
Yeah, the problem is, we’re at the end and there’s another whole episode to go…
Commentary: By and large, this episode isn’t bad. It’s hard to say why it’s exactly worth a two-parter, since it’s a storyline that could easily have been wrapped up in a single episode, if they’d trimmed off some bits like Road Pig’s zoo and all.
Billy Blaster is an annoying git whose talent is more implied than actually demonstrated. Even Cold Slither’s music from the Sunbow series was at least catchy. I mean, it had a good beat and you could dance to it. But Billy’s just a bad example of a hair band boy gone wrong. And what’s with that star over one nipple?!