Knotting Cobra's Coils

With Alpine slumped over the controls, the plane carrying Quick Kick, Alpine and Bazooka plunges toward the ground, while at Joe headquarters the Pyramid of Darkness has cut the power and the Crimson Twins broadcast an ultimatum. Shipwreck and Snake Eyes arrive riding cows with a laserdisc, and Mutt sends Junkyard to fetch the whistle that controls the Fatal Fluffies from Torch, which frees the Joes. The disc reveals a self-destruct mechanism in Cobra Temple, and Quick Kick, asked if he knows where the temple is, says everybody does.

The Joes assault the temple, are stopped by heat and the Cobra Dragon, and break through by yodelling. Polly pulls the self-destruct, and the control cubes self-destruct. Cobra turns the Enterprise Towers into a battle rocket; Satin, Shipwreck and Snake Eyes pin the Commander in its control room, Duke's proton beam is fired at it, and Zartan dumps the Dreadnoks in a garbage module.

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

"You can't run a 20th-century H.Q. on 1st-century technology!" -- Gung-Ho

"Ah, stick your head in a bucket and rust your face off!"

"It's the cow cavalry!"

"This temple is in no danger, because nobody knows where it is." -- Cobra Commander

"Sure. Doesn't everybody?" -- Quick Kick

"Wait until the Cobra Dragon is finished with them. Then clean up the mess. I'll be inside writing my victory speech." -- Cobra Commander

"Why am I always the last one to know?!" -- Cobra Commander

"Polly, your allowance just went up 10 crackers a week!"

"I had everything under control until you imbeciles got pretentious!" -- Cobra Commander

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 Cobra Commander's plan for defending his headquarters amounts to a single sentence: the temple is in no danger, because nobody knows where it is. A few scenes later Quick Kick, the Joes' resident stuntman, is asked whether he knows where Cobra Temple is, and answers, "Sure. Doesn't everybody?"

The exchange gives away Cobra's problem. It is beaten here by the people on the margins of its own plan, a stuntman, a parrot, a dog and a yodel, because the Commander has arranged his organisation so that nobody on his own side is told anything. Someone mentions a final surprise, and he demands to know why he is always the last one to know! The Joes, who talk to one another constantly, collect the information he has failed to keep.

The first half is a siege by blackout. With the Pyramid of Darkness overhead, Gung-Ho complains that you cannot run a twentieth-century headquarters on first-century technology, and the Joes watch the Crimson Twins appear on a screen with just enough power to deliver an ultimatum. Somebody tells the screen to stick its head in a bucket and rust its face off. Relief arrives as a herd: Shipwreck and Snake Eyes ride cows into the hangar, the Joes cheer that it is the cow cavalry, and when asked why not horses the riders answer that under the Pyramid you improvise. The answer to the Commander's masterpiece, it seems, is livestock.

The Fatal Fluffies are dealt with by a dog [1]. Torch wears the whistle that controls the creatures around his neck, Mutt, we assume, points it out to Junkyard and tells him to fetch it, and when the whistle blows the Fluffies turn on the Dreadnoks, who beg for mercy and insist it was all Zartan's fault.

Cobra spends the same stretch fighting itself. Back in command once the Joes have undone the Pyramid, the Commander cries calamity, calls the Twins twerps, and catches Destro mooning at the Baroness, with the excuse that she had something in her eye; the Commander's reply is that she did not. [2] His best moment comes at the temple, where he leaves his troops to face the Cobra Dragon and explains that he will be inside writing his victory speech. The pattern is plain: the Commander celebrates in advance and the Joes arrange for the party to be cancelled.

The assault itself stalls under heat and the Cobra Dragon, and the way out is a yodel. Alpine asks for suggestions, someone says yodel, someone says this is ridiculous, and the three of them do it anyway. It works well enough that the next thing we hear is the Commander shouting at his troops to stand and fight. The self-destruct the laserdisc told them to look for is found by the parrot, who pulls it. The cubes are lost along with the Pyramid, and the show is plainly delighted that the Commander's centrepiece falls to a parrot.

The weakness is structural. The cubes are gone, and the Pyramid with them, well before the end. The episode then has to start a second climax: a weapon is announced in a single line, the Enterprise Towers turn into a gantry and battle rocket, and a proton beam has to be readied in the time that Satin, the Dreadnoks and a garbage module can fill. Each beat is fun, particularly the Twins and the Commander trading blame, but the victory the Joes earned at the temple has to be won a second time.

Still, the ending has the right instinct: a villain defeated because nobody on his own side was told anything. The episode ends on the Commander and the Twins each insisting the other is responsible, and on Flint and Lady Jaye joking about dinner at the Joe commissary, which suits the tone better than a parade would.

1 ^ The subtitle track does not say who sends Junkyard after the whistle (5:04 to 5:15); Mutt is the Joe shown beside a Fluffy at 4:59.

2 ^ Cobra Commander wears the hooded helmet in the opening recap and his mirrored dome in the temple scenes. At 21:05 and 21:07, during the Cobra recriminations, Destro appears in a white hard hat and brown jacket and the Baroness in a white nurse's uniform and cap; nothing in the dialogue explains either costume.

1. Cobra Commander insists that Cobra Temple "is in no danger, because nobody knows where it is." A few minutes later Quick Kick, who has just hitched a ride there with Major Bludd, is asked if he knows where it is and answers, "Sure. Doesn't everybody?" The Joes ask him to rewind that part.
2. This is the fifth and last chapter of the week-long serial the recap itself names "G.I. Joe: The Pyramid of Darkness." It began with [The Further Adventures of G.I. Joe](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-further-adventures-of-g-i-joe/) and ran on consecutive weekdays, September 16 to 20, 1985.
3. Satin gets her payoff here. When she parted from Shipwreck in [Chaos in the Sea of Lost Souls](/cartoons/1985/episodes/chaos-in-the-sea-of-lost-souls/) she explained that Cobra had framed her father for crimes he did not commit. In this episode she leaps on Cobra Commander shouting, "This is for messing with my father!"
4. Alpine's yodel, first used in [Three Cubes to Darkness](/cartoons/1985/episodes/three-cubes-to-darkness/), comes back as a weapon. Alpine, Bazooka and Quick Kick yodel together at the Cobra Dragon, and someone then cheers, "Alpine and his yodeling yokels did it!"
5. Someone aboard the falling plane identifies the crate's cargo as "Trubble Bubbles." Fans on the G.I. Joe wiki point out the oddity that Quick Kick, a Hollywood stuntman, would know what a Cobra Trubble Bubble is. The gadget turns up again in [Satellite Down](/cartoons/1985/episodes/satellite-down/), where Spirit names it.
6. Zartan's Dreadnoks end up in a module marked GARBAGE, and Torch yells, "Zartan, you put us in the garbage module!" The Joe fan wiki notes a small slip in that scene: Ripper's beard is flesh-colored in one shot.
7. The Joe fan wiki notes that Barbecue shows up among the Joes on Space Station Delta as the Fatal Fluffies return to harmless form, even though he is supposed to be on Earth.
8. The wiki also remarks on how quickly Joe Headquarters has been rebuilt after the damage it took in the season opener, and that Extensive Enterprises' headquarters is a pair of towers here, while later episodes show it as a single tower. The episode closes on Flint and Lady Jaye debating dinner at the Joe commissary: "What's so dangerous about that?" "The food!"