The Great Alaskan Land Rush

Cobra raids a convoy carrying national documents to the new National Archives, and the Seward file changes hands. A car dealer named Gerky Potemkin takes over the governor's office and claims all of Alaska, saying that under the Seward treaty whoever owns the Great Seal of Alaska owns the state. The Joes believe his seal is a fake and that the real one vanished in the Arctic aboard the Romanov in 1867, while the Soviet team Red Oktober sets out to find it for Russia.

After Cobra downs their transport, Duke, Scarlett, Gung-Ho and Roadblock are dumped in the snow by Red Oktober and captured by Cossacks descended from the Romanov's crew. Captain Lukrov will not give up the seal until Cobra attacks his town and steals it. The Joes strike a bargain with him, recover the seal, survive a double-cross by Brekhov, and win the state back, leaving Potemkin with a bill.

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

"Aw, Cobra's not rash, won't fight for old trash." -- Roadblock

"When they sign up for the Cobra travel plan, Duke." -- Scarlett

"Gerky Potemkin don't lie, and he don't waste time." -- Potemkin

"For 30 years I hawk cars in New Jersey. Who'd have thought I'd make my big killing in real estate?" -- Potemkin

"Fire me? You can't fire me! I'm the governor of Alaska!" -- Governor Landsford

"I'll make them wish Karl Marx was Groucho's brother."

"Pardon me for asking, but what are 19th-century Cossacks doing in 20th-century Alaska?"

"Seal is precious object, not to be handed over to smooth-talking Yankee trader, da?" -- Captain Lukrov

"Six tons of caviar! Three ermine stoles! A dozen diamond rings! A platinum bathtub! Pay up, Potemkin!"

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.

A state changes hands in this episode on the strength of an old treaty and a seal, and David Carren is bright enough to treat that as the joke. Whoever owns the Great Seal of Alaska owns Alaska, says the villain, and for the length of a jingle the audience is invited to find that as ridiculous as it sounds.

The villain is Gerky Potemkin, who tells us he spent thirty years hawking cars in New Jersey before making his big killing in real estate. He does this in a Russian accent and refers to himself as Honest Gerky [1]. When he walks into the governor's office and informs Governor Landsford that he is fired, his lawyers explain that the new owner of Alaska has no need for overpaid public officials [2]. He then sings. The song is a used-car commercial for a state, with a chorus telling the old residents of what used to be Alaska to clear out of Gerkyland. It is cheerful enough that the stakes arrive almost as an afterthought: 586,400 square miles for him, and diddly for you.

The Joes' response is calmer. One of the team reasons that Potemkin's seal must be a phony, since the real one was lost in the Arctic with the Romanov a century ago, and that finding it would stop him cold. Then Red Oktober turn up, because a Soviet general who hears that the seal is loose wants Alaska for Mother Russia, with all that oil and all that land. Three parties are chasing one object, and the only person in the story so far who actually lives in Alaska has just been fired.

The episode finds its footing when the Joes meet people who do live there. They are marched in front of Captain Lukrov and a colony of Cossacks, and one of the team asks, politely, what nineteenth-century Cossacks are doing in twentieth-century Alaska. The Joes work out the answer as they go: the Romanov found a safe harbour in 1867, and these must be the crew's descendants. Lukrov refuses to hand over the seal to a smooth-talking Yankee trader. The colony wants nothing with modern ways or problems, and the moment Cobra's tanks open fire on the town, Lukrov sees what refusing to help has cost him. What changes his mind is a promise: retrieve the seal, use it against Cobra's claim, and help rebuild what was lost. Duke gives his word and his hand, and Lukrov takes it.

Brekhov, the Red Oktober officer, is a rival who is not quite an enemy. He sends the Joes off on a long walk with a cheerful goodbye, tells Duke he is very much regretting the interference. In the finale he announces that the ship will be heading west after all, a betrayal that comes and goes inside a minute once Cobra shows up again.

The funniest stroke comes last. Potemkin spent his victory phone call ordering six Rolls-Royces, ermine robes, diamond rings and a platinum bathtub, and when the Joes win, a version of that shopping list is read back to him as a bill. It is a clean payoff for a man who could not wait to spend what he had not got.

The weakness is the law. The Joes call Potemkin's seal a phony before anyone has examined it. When the real one finally arrives, Alaska is declared back where she belongs with nothing said about how a seal beats a seal, or what happened to the one Potemkin held [3]. Cobra's own reason for wanting the state gets a single line about resources and a permanent base. A slot this short does not leave room for procedure, but it leaves enough for a few more minutes of the Cossacks, who are the best idea here.

Still, we enjoyed this as the Joes at their most playful, with a villain who is a fraud rather than a menace. The Great Alaskan Land Rush is farce with a good heart!

1 ^ The subtitle track spells his nickname Gerky for most of the episode and "Gergy" once, at 21:09.

2 ^ The lawyers are captioned "Both" throughout and Potemkin calls them lawyer boys; the dialogue never names Tomax or Xamot, so identifying them as the Crimson Twins rests on how they look.

3 ^ Potemkin holds up his seal at 4:31, and the Joes call it a phony at 6:09; after that the subtitles never say what becomes of it.

1. Joe Guide takes the name of Governor Gerber Landsford, the official whose secretary Potemkin fires, as a tip of the hat to Steve Gerber, who is credited as the series' supervising story editor in the end credits.
2. The Russian team here calls itself "Red Oktober", while in [The Invaders](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-invaders/), which aired four days earlier, the same squad is the Oktober Guard. Fans note that Brekhov and company again start as rivals and become allies of necessity.
3. A Russian-accented speaker quotes Vince Lombardi, "Winning is not everything, is only thing", and fan sources point out the line is traced back to Henry Russell Sanders rather than Lombardi.
4. The Joe wiki says the "7 cents an acre" figure given for Seward's purchase is off, since the real price works out to about two cents an acre, and it found no record of any "Great Seal" in the actual Alaska sale.
5. Potemkin's opening phone call, in which he orders "six Rolls-Royces, three ermine robes" and a platinum bathtub from Neiman Marcus, is paid off in the last scene when the Joes recite a list back to him: "Six tons of caviar! Three ermine stoles!" Joe Guide notes that the name Potemkin matches an 18th century Russian statesman.
6. A wisecrack about making the Red Oktober men "wish Karl Marx was Groucho's brother" combines two Marxes in one line, a pun noted by fans. The wiki adds that Gung-Ho is colored as Roadblock in some dog sled shots, and Joe Guide hears Roadblock speaking in Gung-Ho's voice.
7. The Joes play cards on the way north, much like the opening and closing of [Money to Burn](/cartoons/1985/episodes/money-to-burn/). Duke also says that "wherever Extensive Enterprises is, so is Cobra," naming the same front company that turns up in Money to Burn.
8. The lost Romanov colony, with Cossacks addressing Alexander II and a line about the Romanov finding safe harbor back in 1867, gives the Joes a lost-world setting in the middle of Alaska.