Skeletons in the Closet

Destro and the Baroness slip away from a failed Cobra plan, and Destro pledges to retire with her after one last arms deal. At the sale the Joes try to arrest the buyers, who have diplomatic immunity, and chase Destro into the sewers, where a woman in red whom Destro greets as Culverta Fatale pulls him out. Back at the base, Lady Jaye receives a letter naming her heir to Doyle Manor at Loch Lomond, and Flint says it smells fishy.

She finds a haunted house, a housekeeper who forbids the north chamber, and a cult of animal-headed worshippers led by Destro, who says the house is his ancestral home. She is chained over a pit as a sacrifice until Flint rescues her. Cobra troopers storm the manor and burn it, and the Baroness appears, her disguise dropped, to say it was revenge.

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

"I love long nights." -- Destro

"Hey, timing is perfect. I'm on vacation next week." -- Lady Jaye

"You know, this whole deal smells fishy to me." -- Flint

"Never enter the north chamber. It be cursed." -- The housekeeper

"I heard rats in my basement and came down to put out a few traps." -- Lady Jaye

"Let's just say I stumbled on your prayer meeting." -- Lady Jaye

"I inherited the manor house! But I didn't know a Jacuzzi came with it." -- Lady Jaye

"Maybe we have an ancestor in common." -- Lady Jaye

"It's revenge, you faceless beast." -- The Baroness

"I checked the records, Destro, darling. You are!" -- The Baroness

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.

Haunted-house stories usually ask who is behind the ghost. This one asks who is behind the invitation, and the answer is waiting in the cold open, which looks like an unrelated scrap of Cobra business and is actually where the plot is set.

The Baroness, smudged and grateful, wants to know how much longer she and Destro are going to be the Commander's dupes. Destro says one more arms deal and he will have everything he needs, and then he starts to say he will retire to a remote island, hears himself, and corrects it to "we". Aw, Destro! Minutes later a stranger in red whom he greets as Culverta Fatale hauls him out of a sewer. He describes the Baroness to her as a confused creature with whom he has been erroneously linked. [1] The woman in red says she is known to bring bad luck to men. He says he does not believe in luck, only destiny.

The spine of the episode is a revenge plot in a ghost story's clothes, and every spooky set piece is the Baroness arranging for Destro to lose the thing he values most. Dame Agatha Doyle's lawyer, the letter, the housekeeper with the candle, the village pub that knows of no solicitor, are all scaffolding. Lady Jaye is the lure, and the bait is her real name: the letter is addressed to Alison Hart-Burnett, and at mail call she admits that is hers. Flint says the deal smells fishy and she goes anyway.

The manor sequence is good, patient haunted-house work. It has a cobwebbed hall under a stag's head, a library with a crystal ball, a portrait that looks like her, and a housekeeper who says never to enter the north chamber because it is cursed. A blue ghost drifts past two dark doors before a skeleton in a knight's helmet grabs her from behind. [2] Lady Jaye keeps her nerve through all of it, which is a nicer use of a Joe than a scream, and her diary entry dates the winter solstice four days before Christmas with her feeling anything but merry. [3]

Then she ends up in the cult chamber, and the episode's best material arrives, because she is chained over a pit with animal-headed worshippers around her and she will not stop being funny. Asked how she learned of the secret chamber, she says she heard rats in her basement and came down to put out a few traps. Destro says her attempts at humour do not amuse him. She says she inherited the manor, but did not know a Jacuzzi came with it. When Destro points out that this is his ancestral home, she suggests they may have an ancestor in common, and he finds the thought most distasteful. That exchange matters later, because the Baroness's last speech leans on it.

The rescue is brisk. Flint turns up and remarks that he told her the place was fishy. The pair run through caves chased by cultists and by heat-seeking rockets from Destro's gauntlet, while a giant spider, a lion-headed worshipper and a Joe strike team in the courtyard crowd the last act. Cobra troopers storm the manor, and Destro watches his family home of nearly a thousand years burn. The Baroness drops the disguise. "It's revenge, you faceless beast," she says, and the earlier warning that she was known to bring bad luck to men pays off in Destro's bitter "You truly do bring ill fortune to men."

Where the episode falls short is the family reveal. Lady Jaye suggests the shared ancestor in the chamber, Destro finds it distasteful, and the confirmation arrives only in the Baroness's last speech, as a taunt aimed at Destro while Lady Jaye is nowhere on screen. The show sets up two people with a bloodline and a flair for sarcasm in common and then withholds the scene between them, perhaps because the final minutes belong to the Baroness's revenge.

It is a Destro and Baroness story with a Joe as the bait, and the best Joe business in it is Lady Jaye refusing to take the cult seriously.

1 ^ The insult changes shape between its two appearances: at 4:11 Destro calls the Baroness "a confused creature" and at 21:16 she quotes it back as "a confused woman".

2 ^ The ghost is explained at 19:38, when someone finds "a little old holographic-ghost maker"; the cultists, the spider and the pit creature get no such explanation, so the debunking covers the least of the haunting.

3 ^ The date arithmetic holds up: Lady Jaye's written entry gives December 21st as the winter solstice, four days before Christmas.

1. The Baroness gets the last word, with one swapped noun. While she is posing as Culverta Fatale, Destro dismisses the Baroness as "a confused creature with whom I have been erroneously linked." When she unmasks and throws it back at him in her revenge speech, the line has become "a confused woman." The Joe fan wiki catches the swap too.
2. Culverta Fatale is the Baroness in a blond wig, red hat and sunglasses, and Destro, who tells her he thought she was a legend, never twigs. The Joe fan wiki reads the name as a joke on Bond girl names.
3. The names are puzzles. The letter is about the estate of Dame Agatha Doyle, which fans on the Joe wiki read as Agatha Christie crossed with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the solicitor who signs it is Clayton Oliver Nichols, whose initials spell CON.
4. Lady Jaye's real name is Alison Hart-Burnett, revealed when the perfumed envelope is passed around the command center and she says, "That's mine. That's my real name." Gung-Ho's file also gives his real name, Etienne R. LaFitte, in [Captives of Cobra, Part II](/cartoons/1985/episodes/captives-of-cobra-part-ii/).
5. Lady Jaye writes that the winter solstice falls on "December 21st," four days before Christmas, but the episode first played on December 11, 1985. [Cobra Claws Are Coming to Town](/cartoons/1985/episodes/cobra-claws-are-coming-to-town/), which is set on Christmas Eve, had already aired on November 7.
6. After the failed arrest at Destro's weapon auction, Flint calls it a wash, but another Joe says the team at least got the weapons. A third voice quips, "I wouldn't wish that defective junk on Cobra," and gets "Well, maybe" back. The Joe fan wiki says the auction fits the Joes' low opinion of Cobra gear, and notes that Destro's Rattler seems to fall apart at a touch.
7. The Joe fan wiki and the Joe Guide site both hear Lovecraft in the pink one-eyed creature that rises from the pit, and the wiki calls the second season's "Sins of Our Fathers" a sequel. The wiki adds that the laser blasts in this one use Star Wars lightsaber sound effects.
8. Joe Guide says this started as "The G.I.Joe Gothic Mystery," and that Rhino later put it on VHS as volume four. The site adds one more goof: Snake Eyes jumps from his hang glider, lands in a Trubble Bubble and then on the mansion roof, but later he is flying a hang glider through a castle window.
9. The sewer chase has two small gems. "This is disgusting!" is met with "Yeah, it reminds me of your apartment." Late in the episode someone says "This house is filled with a deep evil" and gets the answer "It just got deeper." The Joe Guide site says USA Network cut both exchanges.