The Wrong Stuff

Cobra has seized the airwaves. Every channel now carries Cobra programming, a mohawked tough guy called Mr. C tells viewers he pities the fool who does not join Cobra, and the Joes gather around a television in disbelief. Duke and the team ask Senator Flim, head of the aeronautics and space committee, for rocket boosters for their SkyStrikers, and he agrees. Ace, Alpine and Lady Jaye fly up to destroy what they think is a satellite, find a manned space station crewed by Zartan, Destro and the Dreadnoks, and have to bail out of orbit.

Ace then trains a team in push-ups, weightlessness and a centrifuge, and a second flight launches. The Joes trick the station with an empty jet and attack from above, Destro's destabilizer wrecks their planes, and the Joes slip aboard unseen. A fire and a zero-gravity fight end with the station destroyed, Ace rescued, and Cobra off the air. In the last scene Mr. C walks into Joe headquarters looking for work.

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

"People trust television. It's their friend." -- Cobra Commander

"We control the creation of truth!" -- Cobra Commander

"That's not the worst of it, Lady Jaye. Some people will believe anything." -- Duke

"Oh, now I remember why I called you." -- Senator Flim

"Can you get me tickets to the Army-Navy football game?" -- Senator Flim

"Help keep Cobra on the air by sending a generous contribution to this address." -- Cobra Commander

"We respond like technological warriors, not swamp animals." -- Destro

"I pity the fool that doesn't join Cobra." -- Mr. C

"I'm mean. I'm bad. And I'm out of work. You got any openings in G.I. Joe?" -- Mr. C

"Better or worse, TV's back to normal, Ace."

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 cartoon about a villain who takes over television is a cartoon about its own medium, and The Wrong Stuff knows it before the first Joe appears. A newsreader signs off and bills the mystery movie as starring Doris Day, Danny Kaye, Fay Wray and Doran Bay, and a daughter in a drama praises a satellite phone service. A moment later Cobra has replaced every channel with its own: a werewolf serial called Father's No Beast, a show called The C Team starring a mohawked tough guy named Mr. C, and a cartoon about green elves who learn that world peace needs everyone to look alike, act alike, think alike and never get angry. [1] The satire is cheerful and fairly sharp, and the bad television is very good at being bad.

Cobra Commander puts the thesis to Destro in the fourth minute: people trust television, it is their friend, and they believe what it tells them about the news, the weather or G.I. Joe, so Cobra controls the creation of truth. The episode argues for the claim by letting him exercise it. After the Joes' first sortie goes badly, the Commander goes on air to announce that his network's right to inform and entertain was assaulted by the forces of G.I. Joe, and that the orbiting broadcast facility repelled the attack. The price of vigilance is high, he says, so please send a generous contribution to the address on screen, while footage of a jet burning in a fireball plays. [2] The Joes' failed raid has become a fundraiser, and Cobra's real victory is the footage.

The hinge between the satire and the space story is a senator who cannot remember why he called the meeting. Flim hears the Joes' request for rocket boosters and grants it with a line about making the world safe for democracy, then recalls the reason he sent for them, which is a pair of tickets to the Army-Navy game. Elsewhere the Crimson twins explain, in unison, that Cobra owns the only network on which anyone can advertise and has raised thirty seconds of commercial time to five million dollars. The villains have a business model.

Once the Joes train for space the episode becomes a more conventional show, though a lively one. Ace puts them through push-ups, weightlessness and a centrifuge in search of a crew with the right stuff. The reply to a complaint that there is no resistance in space, that stronger is stronger no matter where you are, is the best line of the sequence. The first sortie ended with the three pilots using their oxygen to push out of orbit and someone doing sums on the way down [3]. The second has good turns of its own: a fake kamikaze run that leaves an empty jet for the cannons to chew, Destro explaining the molecular destabilizer as something that ruptures atoms the way heat pops corn, and Zartan and Destro sniping at each other like partners at a bad meeting.

The weakness is that the second half forgets the first. The one return to the premise is a live broadcast of the fight, pitched as a game of life and death, and it is the funniest idea in the half and is dropped after a single scene. From then on the station is a gun platform that could belong to any Cobra scheme, and the Commander, who owned the opening, watches from a console with little left to do. The question the story raises, what do you do about a lie everyone has already seen, is answered with a fire and an explosion. The only nod to it afterwards is a remark that television is back to normal, better or worse.

Then, in the last half-minute, Mr. C himself wanders into Joe headquarters, mean and bad and out of work, and asks if there are any openings. Duke tells him maybe, if he can pass the physical. It is the one place the two halves meet, and it is the best joke in the episode!

1 ^ The title card reads "Story By Flint Dille and Stanley Ralph Ross, Script By Stanley Ralph Ross".

2 ^ The address on screen at 12:55 reads "Cobra TV, c/o Extensive Enterprise, Box 22-22, Viper Beach, California."

3 ^ The figures spoken at 9:19 mix miles per hour and miles per minute in a single sentence, and the three orange parachutes open on schedule at 9:42 anyway.

1. Cobra's TV star Mr. C is a send-up of Mr. T and The A-Team: "The C Team" is the show, and the catchphrase comes out as "I pity the fool that doesn't join Cobra." JoeGuide documents the parody. At the end, a visitor at Duke's door announces: "I'm mean. I'm bad. And I'm out of work."
2. The title is a nod to The Right Stuff (1983), according to JoeGuide, and someone even says the next mission needs "an astronaut team with the right stuff."
3. Cobra's other shows are spoofs too, including "Father's No Beast", a werewolf take on Father Knows Best according to fans, and the pro-social "The Likeables". Cobra Commander also rewrites film endings with computers, and the line "You changed the ending?" gets a deadpan "To promote Cobra's social philosophy."
4. The Joes treat spaceflight as a fresh challenge, though the Pyramid of Darkness story, which opens with [The Further Adventures of G.I. Joe](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-further-adventures-of-g-i-joe/) and its shuttle launch, already put them in space. The Joe wiki lists it as a continuity error.
5. Senator Flim, chairman of the aeronautics and space committee, appears in no other episode of the season, and what he wants from Duke is tickets to the Army-Navy game.
6. Cobra is charging advertisers "$5 million" for 30 seconds of airtime. JoeGuide says Cobra Commander's dance with the big globe is modeled on Charlie Chaplin in The Great Dictator.
7. The Dreadnoks crew the station, and in one shot the Joe wiki spots Ripper wearing Destro's gloves when he takes over the control panel.
8. A fan episode guide describes Roadblock warning two kids about downed power lines at the end of the original broadcast, but the copy used for this guide ends without a safety tag.