The Gods Below

Cobra Commander and the Baroness force the archaeologist Dr. Marsh to lead them into the tomb of Osiris, ignoring his warning that a curse protects the treasure. Duke, Lady Jaye, Bazooka, Barbecue and Alpine follow them down and fall through the tomb's traps into a sealed chamber. They escape, overpower a squad of Crimson Guards, and pass themselves off as Cobra in stolen red uniforms until Cobra Commander finds out.

Separated from Cobra, the Joes are brought before the gods of the dead. Maat and her father judge them and find their hearts worthy. Cobra, meanwhile, meets Set and kneels to him, offering to help in his war on his brother Osiris. Set agrees to give them the tomb's treasure, but removing it breaks Osiris's rule over the realm and unleashes Set's wrath. The Joes escape through the storm with Dr. Marsh.

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

"For Cobra, nothing is impossible."

"Cobras don't have toes, Bazook."

"Never met the guy." -- A Joe

"Uh, mine's about 6 pounds. Can I leave now?" -- Alpine

"I am Maat, guardian of the universal law, and this is my father, Amen-Ra, eldest of the gods." -- Maat

"Each of you risked your safety for the sake of your friends." -- Maat

"Uh, I don't know how to break this to you, but we're alive." -- A Joe

"Perhaps Anubis realized it wasn't our time to make the journey."

"Personally, I think he took offense at "dogface.""

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 curse is announced in the first two minutes by a frightened archaeologist, and the reply is a flat "Is that so?" It is all the warning Gordon Kent's script gives, and it is enough, because the rest of the half hour is the delivery of what Dr. Marsh promised: a terrible evil, unleashed when the treasure is disturbed. The structure is old-fashioned and sturdy, and the episode is happy to be a ghost story in a cartoon about commandos.

The tomb crawl is a pleasure on its own terms. Five Joes go down with torches, and the walls begin handing out mythology just before the characters need it. Someone reads the hieroglyphs aloud and explains that Osiris was slain by his brother Set and restored to life by Isis, which means that by the time Set's jackal snout appears on screen the audience already knows which side he is on. Between the traps there is room for jokes: Duke gets an asp in his ear, and someone corrects an "eeny, meeny, miney, mo" about Cobras by pointing out that Cobras do not have toes. The traps themselves, from a dart in the wall to a bat-filled passage to a floor that gives way, are staged with a good sense of rhythm.

The Joes' disguise gets the episode's best comedy. Overhearing Cobra through the tomb's old air conduits, they ambush the Crimson Guards, put on the red uniforms and talk in deep voices. Cobra Commander demands to know where the treasure is, and the answer is an improvised "over there." When he asks whether his treasure is really there, one of them mutters that it has got to be somewhere, don't it? Then the far chamber turns out to hold the Crown of Osiris, and the Joe who guessed is as surprised as anyone.

The episode finds its subject here, and the subject is judgment. Everyone down here is pretending to be something, and the dead are the only party who cannot be fooled. When Maat judges the Joes, the test is not who they claim to be but what they did: each of them risked his safety for the sake of his friends. Cobra's performance for Set is the opposite. Cobra tells the god that they are worshipers of the serpent, which in its way is true, and Set is pleased to have them. The god asks for a demonstration of loyalty and gets a kneel. What Cobra cannot do is leave the treasure alone, and the reveal that one missing jewel brings down Osiris's kingdom and lets Set loose turns its obedience into a catastrophe for everyone, Cobra included.

The standout is the closing exchange. Someone shouts "take her down, dogface" and then hastily explains that it is army talk, a term of endearment, while Anubis laughs. Afterwards Bazooka insists the god did that on purpose, and someone suggests that he realised it was not their time to make the journey. A different voice has a theory of its own, that the god took offense at being called dogface, and it is the best throwaway in the episode.

The weakness is the pantheon's logic, which turns up just when the plot needs it. Osiris's kingdom hangs on a single jewel; Set can be won over with a kneel; the courts of the gods run a trial in which Amun devours the hearts of the unworthy and Alpine can still joke about the weight of his own [1]. None of it holds together, and none of it is meant to, since a half-hour slot cannot also carry a coherent cosmology. But the story's rules are announced just in time to apply, and they would carry more weight if one of them had been planted in the first scene alongside the curse.

There is no recap, just a tomb and a storm, and we like it best for the tomb crawl and for Anubis, who gets the last laugh!

1 ^ The subtitle track spells the eldest of the gods Amen-Ra, and a separate line about the heart-eater uses Amun. The two may be one name with two spellings, or a mishearing by the captioners; we have kept both as they appear.

1. "Can the comedy, soldier" is a stock order in this series. The same order turns up in [Cobra Stops the World](/cartoons/1985/episodes/cobra-stops-the-world/) as "Can the comedy, Torpedo" and again in [Bazooka Saw a Sea Serpent](/cartoons/1985/episodes/bazooka-saw-a-sea-serpent/) as "Can the comedy, Alpine," as the G.I. Joe wiki also points out.
2. The closing gag is a dog joke. As the Joes escape in stolen Crimson Guard uniforms, someone shouts "Take her down, dogface!" and then explains it as "Uh, Army talk, term of endearment." The jackal-headed Anubis is heard laughing as they splash down, and Bazooka decides he "took offense at 'dogface.'"
3. Cobra Commander and the Baroness meet Set, the Egyptian god of evil, who asks if they are worshipers of "the serpent" and gets an eager "Yes!" It is the Commander's own greed that backfires, since the gods warn that if "a single jewel is removed from the tomb" Osiris loses his kingdom and Set's wrath will fall on the world.
4. Lady Jaye reads hieroglyphs on the tomb wall with ease. Fans on the G.I. Joe wiki connect this to [Eau De Cobra](/cartoons/1985/episodes/eau-de-cobra/), which aired five days earlier and also featured a stolen Egyptian tablet.
5. The Joes pass for Crimson Guards by putting on deep voices, and the script even tags those lines as deep-voice speech. It is not their first Cobra-uniform infiltration of the run, as the team wears Cobra uniforms in [Jungle Trap](/cartoons/1985/episodes/jungle-trap/), which aired about six weeks before.
6. Bazooka's rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miney, mo, catch a Cobra by the toe" gets the deadpan reply "Cobras don't have toes, Bazook." JoeGuide reports that the USA Network reruns cut about 39 seconds that included this rhyme.
7. Fans on the wiki list a few goofs: when the Baroness is knocked out she can still be heard whispering Set's name, and during the kneeling scene Scrap-Iron disappears between shots.
8. The fan wiki counts nine Egyptian deities, from Osiris to Anubis. JoeGuide also notes that the closing public service announcement stars Torpedo.