Eau De Cobra

A thief in mummy wrappings steals an Egyptian tablet from the British Museum, then forces two researchers to lead him to a rare root, jackal's bane, under the Antarctic ice. Snow Job and Frostbite fail to stop him, but a stray shot hits a canister of radioactive marking dye, and the trace leads Flint and Lady Jaye to a Cobra hideout where Firefly is handing over the root. After the lab is wrecked, Flint and Lady Jaye surface in a cove holding the tablet long enough to read most of it: it is the formula for a love potion. Cobra's plan is then clear. The Baroness will use the perfume on the shipping tycoon Socrates Airtes and Cobra will take his fleet. Flint and Lady Jaye follow her to a party on Airtes's yacht, where Flint is sprayed, Destro's jealousy upsets the mission, and the bottle goes overboard, with Deep Six and a Cobra submarine racing to reach it.

Voice talents, as credited on this episode's closing titles. The Sunbow credit crawl lists the company of voice actors and does not assign roles, so no role attributions are given here.

Liz Aubrey Jackson Beck Michael Bell Gregg Berger Arthur Burghardt Corey Burton Darlene Carr Francois Chau Peter Cullen Christian Czingland Pat Fraley Barbara Goodson Dave Hall Johnny Haymer Zack Hoffman Kene Holliday Michael Horton John Hostetter Buster Jones Stan Jones Jimmy Keegan Christopher Latta Hap Lawrence Pat Lentz Loren Lester Ketty Lester Mary McDonald Lewis Morgan Lofting Mona Marshall Bill Morey Rob Paulsen Bill Ratner Hal Rayle Neil Ross Dan Roth Will Ryan Marilyn Schreffler John Stephenson B.J. Ward Lee Weaver Frank Welker Michael Yama Keone Young

"Do not use my name." -- Firefly

"We have Eau de Cobra, and with it, no man alive will be able to resist the Baroness." -- Cobra Commander

"Turn off the charm, Flint. You're liable to attract a whale."

"For even you are not immune to Eau de Cobra." -- The Baroness

"I want whatever will make you happiest." -- Flint

"Buzz off, tin face." -- Flint

"I have never before left a party in such a disgraceful manner."

"I think not. That woman is nothing but trouble." -- Destro

"Your jealousy jeopardized our mission!" -- Cobra Commander

"A crab?! They lost to a crab!"

Transcribed from the episode's closed-caption subtitle track and converted from capitals to sentence case. Speakers are named only where the track or the picture makes them clear.

The perfume works, and that is the most interesting decision the script makes. [1] A love potion story could so easily hinge on a formula that fizzles, and nothing here goes wrong with the chemistry: Airtes closes his eyes as a wisp of scent curls past his moustache, Flint takes a face full of pink mist from a gloved atomizer and is agreeing to anything within seconds, and Lady Jaye only has to hold the bottle at her neck for Airtes to start gazing at her instead. What fails is the crew meant to deliver it.

Those carriers are Cobra's own people, and the first half of the episode is a long way round to meeting them. A thief in mummy wrappings leaves the British Museum with a tablet worth something only to scholars; Firefly, for it is he, then marches two researchers across the Antarctic ice after a rare root, ordering them to keep their eyes off his face. His secrecy gives him away. The Joes at the polar base work out who he was because none of the other Cobras would take such pains to hide, and when he reaches Cobra's lab and the Commander greets him by name, he snaps "Do not use my name" a few seconds before a Geiger counter shows he has walked in carrying the Joes' marking dye. The Joes' best lead is a canister meant for tracking penguins.

What the episode is really about is a plan that needs everyone to behave. Cobra Commander's scheme (the Baroness, the perfume, the wealthiest bachelor alive, the largest shipping fleet in the world) is sound enough as villainy, and it comes apart because of the jealousy and vanity of his own people. He tells Destro to stay where he is, since he will only hinder the agent; Destro, who has watched Flint cut in on the Baroness from the bridge wing beside the hooded Commander, answers "Do not try to stop me." [2] The wrestling match in a doorway, the guards, the chefs and waiter running past the buffet, all of it is Destro's doing as much as the Joes'.

The best scene is the quiet one. Thrown off the yacht together, Flint and Destro bob in the dark sea with only their heads above the water, and the spell has gone out of one of them and the rage out of the other. "I have never before left a party in such a disgraceful manner," says one; "Neither have I," says the other. Flint admits he feels a little foolish about the Baroness and offers her to Destro, who declines: "That woman is nothing but trouble." It is the one moment when two enemies agree about something, and the sanest conversation anyone has all night. We would take it over the party that put them there! The Commander is less charitable. Destro, scowling in an orange life raft, asks for a rope and is told that his jealousy jeopardized the mission.

The one real problem is that the episode never decides how the potion works. The tablet says one whiff makes a man love the woman who wears it, which covers Flint and the Baroness, but when Lady Jaye holds the gold bottle Airtes turns to her, and when the guests start crowding him nobody says whether the scent, the bottle or the fortune is doing the pulling. Flint's recovery goes unexplained as well. This is a comedy and the rules may bend, but a script so fond of traceable causes (the dye, the Geiger counter, the tablet read in the water) leaves its central device as the one thing that cannot be traced.

The underwater chase for the fallen bottle ends on a line nobody could improve, "A crab?! They lost to a crab!", and as a caper the episode borrows the hardware of the serious ones (a submarine, a tablet, a Geiger counter) and spends it on a dance floor. The last line is a vow to remain a bachelor, and the Baroness has already told Flint it could have been wonderful. [3] The perfume wears off; the vanity does not.

1 ^ Flint Dille is credited with the script on screen, and his name appears again in the closing credits among the story editors.

2 ^ The Commander is hooded whenever he appears aboard the yacht (11:50, 12:37, 13:03, 15:53, 17:18) and wears the mirrored helmet on the lab monitors (6:58, 7:11).

3 ^ Airtes greets his arriving guest as "Duchess" at 10:28, and at 20:58 a woman answers the Joes' "Baroness" with "I'm a Duchess, not a Baroness."

1. A reader on JoeGuide translates the title as "water of Cobra," a play on "eau de toilette" and "eau de cologne," and the Joe wiki adds that the wealthy bachelor on the yacht is a reference to the shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis. In the dialogue he is Socrates Airtes, so the joke at least stays in Greece.
2. When Cobra's golden desert temple rises out of the sand here, it is the same base Destro has Storm Shadow raise in [In the Cobra's Pit](/cartoons/1985/episodes/in-the-cobras-pit/). JoeGuide counts it as the Weather Dominator temple making a return in the first season.
3. Destro's jealousy wrecks the plan. Over the Commander's objection he insists on coming to "monitor this mission firsthand," and when the scheme collapses one voice splutters, "A crab?! They lost to a crab!" while another calls it "a fitting end to this absurd scheme."
4. The wiki notes this is one of the few times Destro is seen using the toy-accurate wrist rockets on his right bracer. JoeGuide meanwhile counts the animation stumbles: the Baroness's dress changes while she dances with Flint, and a waiter's jacket changes colors twice in about fifteen seconds.
5. Firefly shows up in mummy wrappings with a hush-hush attitude and a request for money: "Do not use my name," and "I expect payment in my Swiss account immediately." The Joes still work out who it is, because "none of the others would have taken such great pains to conceal his identity."
6. The wiki says Lady Jaye reads the hieroglyphs on the stolen tablet with amazing ease and links it to [The Gods Below](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-gods-below/), where a Joe looking at a hieroglyph wall says, "No time to translate, but it's nothing good, I'm sure."
7. The next night's episode, [Cobra Claws Are Coming to Town](/cartoons/1985/episodes/cobra-claws-are-coming-to-town/), is a Christmas Eve story, and it aired on November 7. Firefly also appears in that one.
8. The Joes find out who the target is when Flint asks Short-Fuze for the world's wealthiest bachelor ("The shipping tycoon, Socrates Airtes"), and the call goes dead mid-answer, with a "Hello?" into a dial tone.