Twenty Questions

A flour-bomb war game at the Joe base is cut short when the TV host Hector Ramirez arrives with a cameraman and a bearded aide called Arnold to argue that Cobra is a hoax and the Joes a waste of taxpayers' money. Flint hands the visitors to Shipwreck, who loses his temper on the tour, spots a computer report of Cobra scouts in the Rockies and takes a helicopter with all three civilians aboard. A missile forces them down, and Zartan's Dreadnoks take them prisoner.

In a hidden cavern a hooded Cobra Commander plans to seize the explosive gas stored at the Rocky Mountain chemical weapons arsenal, and Arnold turns out to be the Baroness, sent to feed Hector nonsense. Alpine, Spirit, Cover Girl and Gung-Ho track Shipwreck down, and when he crushes a rack of gas cylinders the whole cavern dissolves into laughter. Hector films every minute of it.

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

"Eat hot salt tabs, ya scurvy landlubbers!"

"Cease fire! Everybody, cease firing!" -- Scarlett

"Some people claim the Joes are a needless military extravagance at best, and a blatant rip-off of the American taxpayer at worst." -- Hector Ramirez

"My name is Arnold, not Sam!" -- Arnold

"Not SAM! S-A-M! Surface-to-air missile!" -- Shipwreck

"Cor! I ain't destroyed nothing in two or three days!" -- A Dreadnok

"Tonight's movie is "The Amusement Park of Terror."" -- A Cobra base announcement

"You vain, babbling, moronic peacock!" -- The Baroness

"On second thought... forget it."

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.

Everyone in this episode wants a camera on them, and the Commander's weakness for one is what loses him the day. Buzz Dixon opens with the Joes playing a war game with flour bombs, and then drops Hector Ramirez into the middle of it, with a microphone, a cameraman called Tom and a bearded aide called Arnold. Hector reports for a news magazine called "Twenty Questions," and he announces that some people call the Joes a needless military extravagance and a blatant rip-off of the American taxpayer. A few minutes later he is spelling out that the whole conflict is f-a-k-e-d!

It is a nervy idea for a cartoon about snake-emblem terrorists, and Dixon plays it with care. Tom, who is paid to point the camera, is the one who says the footage on the news looked real, and Arnold sneers about the hired help while Hector tells Tom to cool it. Arnold, meanwhile, is the loudest cynic in the room: someone in the party wonders whether the Joes' computers might better be used on world hunger, and Arnold complains about wasted taxpayers' time and money while Shipwreck flies him over the Rockies [1]. The joke on the audience is that the loudest voice for doubt is a Cobra plant, and when Hector finally tells the Commander to can the charade and turns to Arnold for backup, he picks the one person present who is working for the other side.

Shipwreck is the right man to drive it, because he cannot take an insult. The obstacle course tour goes off the rails when one of the visitors calls the training a playground and the enemy a cardboard fabrication, and Shipwreck decides to prove Cobra is real by taking a helicopter [2]. Then comes the best exchange of the half hour: when a missile warning goes up, the sailor shouts the word S.A.M., and Arnold corrects him that his name is Arnold, not Sam. Shipwreck's reply, that it stands for surface-to-air missile, works because everybody in the cockpit is about to die and nobody has stopped bickering.

The Cobra side is the better half. A Dreadnok complains that he has not destroyed anything in two or three days, a public address system announces tonight's movie, "The Amusement Park of Terror," and the Baroness, still in glasses and stubble, tells Hector he is the stupidest male she ever met. Somebody asks who that bozo is when the hooded Commander appears, and is told that moron is Cobra Commander.

The episode is about vanity, and this is where it shows. With the prisoners about to be pulverised, one of them asks for a last favour, an interview, and the Commander cannot say no. Later a Cobra officer who has just captured the explosive gas asks why Cobra Commander is not there to witness the triumph, and the answer is that he is being interviewed for television; the next thing we hear is the Commander recounting a mutiny at his military academy. The head of a terrorist army and the host of a news show share a weakness, an inability to refuse an audience. The Joes get their opening because Cobra Commander could not resist talking about himself.

The gas finale is the standout, a long silent-comedy set piece of Cobra troopers staggering and Zartan and the Dreadnoks doubling over, while Shipwreck laughs behind a Cobra vehicle and a voice insists that he hates to laugh and run. At the end a voice demands to know what the bloody blue blazes is going on, Hector raves about his scoop, and the questioner gives up with a weary "On second thought... forget it".

The weakness is that the question the cold open asks, whether America needs the Joes, is never answered. Hector leaves delighted, talking about Emmys and Pulitzers, and the episode never has him say that Cobra is real, so the cynic is rewarded with a scoop rather than a correction. The likely reason is that a comedy has little room for a debate.

It is a broad, fast comedy, and the Dreadnok who has not destroyed anything in days is worth the price of admission!

1 ^ Arnold first appears at 2:37 and is named in the closed captions from 7:01; the Baroness is revealed under his glasses and stubble at 12:52, immediately after the line "Tell 'em, Arnold" at 12:51.

2 ^ A TOP SECRET sign dissolves in at 5:28, and at 5:39 Tom raises his camera in front of a console as someone shouts that there is no filming in there; the Joes' own computer flags the Rockies thirteen seconds later.

1. Arnold, the bearded civilian who keeps heckling the Joes, is the Baroness in disguise. When someone says "Tell 'em, Arnold," she drops the act and snaps "You are the stupidest male I ever met!" Earlier, Shipwreck's "S.A.M.!" warning in the cockpit gets the answer "My name is Arnold, not Sam!"
2. Fans read Hector Ramirez as a send-up of TV reporter Geraldo Rivera. Writer Buzz Dixon has said that Ramirez started as a one-off, that Hasbro's lawyers checked the name against real journalists, and that it was nearly changed when a notorious criminal with the same surname made the news, but it stayed because Ramirez is a common surname.
3. Ramirez came back later. [The Traitor, Part 2](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-traitor-part-2/) opens with a recap on his news show, with the same tag, "This is Hector Ramirez reporting for Twenty Questions," and fans on the Transformers wiki list cameos for him in Jem, Inhumanoids and the Transformers episode "Prime Target."
4. Awards are a running gag. In the opening war game someone says "I thought I deserved an Oscar," Ramirez wonders aloud if there is an Emmy in the story for him, and after the laughing gas fight he gushes "Emmy material!" and "A Pulitzer Prize!" before rushing off to get the tape to his network.
5. The "Committee on Basic Reductions of Armies," which is cited as having proof that the whole conflict is faked, spells COBRA by its initials.
6. Cobra's missile site in the Rockies is run by Zartan and the Dreadnoks, and Ripper grumbles "I ain't destroyed nothing in two or three days!" as the Joes' aircraft closes in.
7. The finale turns on the nonlethal gases stored beside the explosive gas. The Joes and Cobra both end up laughing too hard to fight, and when the rescue party arrives someone demands to know "what the bloody blue blazes is going on?!" The only answer comes from Ramirez, who says "It was great! It was wonderful!"
8. Fans caught one slip: cameraman Tom turns up without his blindfold in a shot where he should still have it.
9. A fan guide says cable viewers missed three short scenes, each about 20 to 22 seconds, in the old USA Network print: a cue ball bit, the Sky Hawk cost overruns exchange, and Shipwreck's test flight chat with Ace. On home video the episode appeared on the Kid Rhino volume two tape, paired with [An Eye for an Eye](/cartoons/1985/episodes/an-eye-for-an-eye/).