Brief Summary: The way to the Joes’ plans is through their stomach!

Summary: At the Joe base, a group of Joes are complaining to Sergeant Slaughter about a recent mission gone sour. Apparently, the Cobras knew every move the Joes were going to make, even before they made them. Pathfinder, Ambush and Topside suspect that there’s a traitor in the Joes’ midst. Which is problematic, since the only two people who knew any details about the mission were General Hawk and Sarge and they didn’t even tell the folks involved the plans until right before the mission was supposed to go off.

The three Joes come up with a plan to try and infiltrate Cobra to find out how they know what’s going on and see if they can ferret out who the traitor is. Sarge tells them to be careful and hurry back since the General is bringing back a new secret weapon called the Battle Axe in three days.

The Joes go to a seedy part of town and find a Cobra recruiting poster. Then they find a nearby Cobra recruiting office. Inside, they get recruited and sent off with a bunch of other reprobates to the Cobra Viper Training Center. Before they leave, however, one last recruit jumps on the truck. HE’s a naïve young Southern-sounding man with the first name Hubert who says he’s going to be the best Cobra Viper ever!

At the training center, we get to see Destro in a Smokey The Bear hat, of the sort popular with DI instructors. He welcomes the recruits to the center and gives them the obligatory insult the men speech before sending them off to be trained.

Another Cobra takes over, also wearing a DI hat. He tells the recruits that they’ll have to make it to the top of the waterfall and that the first person to make it to the top gets a bonus of the salaries of everyone who falls in! The recruits then proceed to try and climb the side of the waterfall with several, including a couple Joes, falling in. Ambush makes it to the top, where the DI tells him godo job but that next time he should make it easier to climb to the top by pushing the others in. Ambush then proceeds to push the DI in. The DI is pleased by this, ‘cause y’know, that’s how Cobra’s are.

Switch to another training exercise, this one in the middle of a lake. The recruits are in the water and Undertow says for someone to release the electric eels. This time, instead of fighting his fellow recruits as instructed, Top Side flips Undertow’s boat and sits on top of it. Bwah! Once again, this behavior is encouraged since Cobras are supposed to be sneaky underhanded bastards!

The third test involves a group of recruits running alongside Destro as he drives along in some improbable looking Cobra vehicle. Pathfinder and Hubert are out in front of the pack and doing quite well. Destro (still wearing the DI hat) stops the run and says that clearly the reason Pathfinder and Hubert are doing so well is because they’re cheating! He commends them for their efforts and says they’re exactly the sort that Cobra’s looking for.

Note: The Joes are working under aliases here, but I’m not sure which alias applies to which Joe so I’m sticking with their code names for now.

Next up: Graduation! The recruits are gathered and Hubert is eagerly awaiting the speech that Cobra Commander is going to give. HE talks about what a great hero the Commander is. HE knows the Commadner is a hero because he read about his exploits in his book where he outlines his heroism in chapters one two and three.

Pathfinder and Hubert have a brief discussion on heroism. Pathfinder puts forth the idea that a real hero wouldn’t write a book and TELL you he’s a hero. Hubert, for now, remains unconvinced.

Cobra Commander speaks to the graduates and singles out three for special recognition for their exemplifying of the three Rs of Cobra: Routing, (w)Recking and Ruination! The three Cobras so recognized are Lieutenants Green, Brown and Black who are none other than our own Pathfinder, Ambush and Top Side (in no particular order, since I still am not sure which alias goes with which Joe).

The three Jobras are recognized by being sent to steal the Battle Axe. They still haven’t learned who is the leak though we, the audience, learn that the Joe base is currently in Tokyo Bay. Which makes me wonder why all the recruits are gaijin rather than Japanese. Maybe they’re ex-pats who got sick of teaching English and watching anime.

The Joes proceed to plan the attack on their own base and the plan goes off pretty dang well. Probably because for once the good guys are leading the fight. They manage to help Destro and CC steal the Battle Axe as well as capture Sarge and General Hawk.

Back at the Cobra base the Jobras receive the Award of the Distinguished Two-Headed Serpent and we learn that once again Cobra is strapped for cash as Cobra Commander rather sheepishly admits he can’t pay them the bonuses he promised them. Ambush says something to the effect that serving Cobra is reward enough. CC buys this and heads off leaving the Jobras alone for the moment. Top Side mocks Ambush’s answer and briefly mutters about maybe Ambush is the spy. But the accusations are derailed when Hubert runs up to them and congratulates them on their award. Ambush tells Huber that medals don’t make the man.

Which, you’d think since Hubert has more or less bought into the Cobra line for the moment, that he’d find such answers to be highly suspicious and would bust the Jobras to his superiors. But he doesn’t. Probably because he’s a moron.

Also, the Jobras have been assigned to various Cobra specialties. Pathfinder’s a Range Viper, Top Side is a Pirahna (?) and Ambush is a damnifIknow.

Cobra Commander decides to take his three star pupils and show them Cobra’s advantage.

Now, here is where the episode goes from pretty good to downright stupid:

The advantage turns out to be a collection of electronic cockroaches (‘bugs’) that are set to home in on Mrs. Meadows Chocolate Chip Cookies and transmit anything said within 100 yards of them. They can even track the crumbs.

Mrs. Meadows Chocolate Chip Cookies are Hawk’s favorite kind of cookie. Hawk, it seems, isn’t the traitor, but his sweet tooth is.

One of the Jobras nearly blows their cover by saying, out loud, “So General Hawk wasn’t the traitor!” Cobra Commander snorts at this and takes the Jobras to Hawk’s interrogation where they get to see, first hand, Sarge and Hawk refuse to answer any of CC’s questions.

Cobra Commander leaves the room with Destro to try and get the Battle Axe working. While they’re gone, the Joes plot how to bust Cobra’s chops this time around. The Jobras also reveal the secret of the bugs. Hakw has the decency to look sheepish and says he should probably go on that diet now…

The Battle Axe, luckily, was booby-trapped and the General has a plan….

We come back from commercial break to find out that the Jobras were supposedly ‘jumped’ by Sarge and Hawk. Cobra Commander demotes them on the spot and bitches out Destro since these three were his recruits so it’s his fault (this becomes a recurring theme in the latter half of this episode).

We learn that Cobra has fifteen other Joes prisoner when Hawk and Sarge loudly and blatantly discuss plans to move in a new super weapon in front of the bugs. The plans are fake, meant only to draw CC and Cobra into a trap and give the Joes time to escape.

Back at the Cobra base, the three Jobras are put in charge of the stockade. Once the Commander and Destro are gone, they manage to free their fellow Joes and start shooting up the place. The Joes escape and take Hubert, whose since had a change of heart, with them.

What’s weird? Pathfinder says he had a talk with Hubert that helped the guy to change his mind about Cobra. But we never SEE the talk. More in a minute on this.

CC and Destro arrive where the new super weapon is supposed to be being transported through. At first no one is there. “HE stood me up!” Cobra Commander whines. Destro gives a long suffering sigh and says something along the lines of don’t’ tell me, I know, it’s all my fault.

Then, the Joes do show up in force and quickly route Cobra (maybe that’s why it’s one of the Rs of Cobra, they’re always being routed…). Cobra Commander looks up to see Pathfinder, Ambush and Top Side looking down from him from above. He realizes then that his three best recruits were really Joes.

“Kinda destroys your faith in humanity, eh snakeface?” says Ambush. Yes, yes it does. What sort of world is it where the good guys pretending to be bad guys are better at it than the actual bad guys!?

Destro takes the blame again and the Joes are all happy.

Back in Hawk’s office, Hubert asks Hawk “Why would Cobra Commander write all those things in his book if they weren’t true?”

To which Hawk replies: “Because son, he needs trusting people like you to believe in him or Cobra wouldn’t exist.”

Hubert gets irritatingly huffy about how this isn’t fair and how if Hawk’ll let him he’d like to join the Joes. Pathfinder says something about how he bets Hubert’ll be the best recruit the Joes ever had. And then someone brings in the electronic bugs they found and everybody starts stomping on them.

Which is somehow Destro’s fault in Cobra Commander’s eyes. Poor Destro.

Commentary: Propadeutic, of The Complete Guide to GI Joe, mentions this episode in his summary of the 1990 cartoon series:

“Some concepts, such as a Joe vs. Cobra football game, an amorous gorilla, and a plot centering around General Hawk’s favorite cookies, were in the eyes of more traditional fans simply indefensible.”

The sad thing is, An Officer and a Viperman isn’t a bad episode up until the point where Cobra’s secret information source is revealed. And if it wasn’t for the cookies being the way the bugs are tracking Hawk, it’d probably be one of the better episodes of the DiC run of the cartoon series.

The idea that the bugs are tracking cookies is absurd. IT’s even more absurd when you consider that chocolate chip cookie recipes are basically the same. Flour, egs, sugar, vanilla, baking powder, chocolate chips, etc. The idea would have worked a lot better if perhaps the bugs had been put into a bag of Hawk’s favorite cookies or even if there was something particularly special about said cookies, like an unusual brand of flour or vanilla or something particularly distinctive that could be tracked easily.

I’ve bitched about the idiocy of the insistence of Cobra eat Cobra behavior within the organization before so I’m not going to rehash that here. Instead, I’d like to take a couple to talk about redemption in the DiC episodes.

This is something I’ve touched on before but it bears repeating since it seems to be a fairly common theme in several DiC episodes. A character is introduced who has connections to Cobra and, generally, connections to the Joes. In most cases, these characters are never redeemed. In some cases, this makes sense for external reasons. It’d royally screw up the toyline (or at least make things more difficult for the guys who print the cards) if, say, Metal-Head decided to leave Cobra and join the Joes. For some characters, like Evy in “I Found You…Evy” it seems strange that a relatively unknown character isn’t redeemed and brought out of the evils of Cobra. Especially since this seemed to be fairly standard operating procedure in several Sunbow episodes. It seems odd that Evy is allowed to stay in Cobra instead of either defecting to the Joes or at least leaving Cobra for civilian life.

In “Officer and a Viperman” this changes. The character of Hubert is introduced as a naïve and idealistic young man who has taken Cobra Commander’s lies to heart and decided to join up. Despite a first hand look at just how backstabbing and rotten the Cobras are to each other, he remains convinced that he’s made the right choice up until the end of the episode. Then, shortly before the big ending fight, Pathfinder reveals that he and Hubert have had a talk and Hubert’s decided to leave the Joes. Which leaves me asking one question:

Why didn’t we get to see this conversation? Why don’t we get to see what sort of arguments Pathfinder used to convince Hubert that he’s made a mistake? Why bother introducing this naïve character and having him convert if you’re going to spend the majority of the episode focusing on cookie-sniffing electronic bugs?!

It’s a pretty common problem with some of the DiC scripts. The story introduces two ideas, one of which would make a good plot while the other is generally somewhat goofy. The episode then proceeds to focus on the goofy aspect and leaves the second in the background.

It would have been nice in this episode if we could have gotten more of Hubert’s eventual conversion. It wouldn’t have taken much to add something like that to the script, even something as simple as Hubert slowly noticing the difference between what Cobra Commander says and what Cobra Commander does would have been enough to appease me.

But, we don’t. Instead we get the same old tired line about how generally nasty Cobras are to each other and a side plot about those stupid cookie-sniffing bugs and oh, yeah, Hubert’s gonna be a Joe now ‘cause he somehow realized that Cobra was a big lie and the Joes are better. Trust us on this one kids, we’d have given you more but the bosses don’t think you can handle that kinda stuff.

Which is, when you get down to it, my biggest complaint with DiC. I don’t blame the writers for the stories. Granted, they’re goofy but they were doing what they could with what they were given. DiC wasn’t trying to spend the kind of money, time and talent needed to make a good series. They were trying to “Do It Cheap” and it shows. Time and time again, it shows in stories that are half-assed because hey, it’s a kids’ show! And kids’ shows don’t have to be good, just cheap and quick.

Oh yeah, and I’m sick and tired of dumb and naïve equating to Southern accent. Why must Hubert sound like a hick?