Where the Reptiles Roam

Breaker is put to work on Cobra's main computer, which shows that Cobra has bought a dude ranch in Texas beside a solar-energy farm that receives microwave beams from an orbiting satellite. Lady Jaye, Bazooka, Alpine and Wild Bill go undercover as the Austin family, only to be hazed by a bull and a burr-saddled horse while Ma and Pa Joad and their daughter Mary Belle, who has an eye on Wild Bill, keep watch.

A stampede covers Zartan's theft of the control chip, and Destro and Cobra Commander use it to hold a city to a billion-dollar ransom. Lady Jaye is found out in a Cobra uniform, Mary Belle turns out to be the Baroness, and when Cobra's laser screen holds off the Joes' big weapons, Wild Bill drives a herd of cattle through the ranch and wrecks the Cobra plan.

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

"Not oil wells, Bazooka, microwave antennas." -- Lady Jaye

"That Texas tease. "Call me Mary Belle.""

"You know, I think those bums set us up."

"Call it a wild guess, but I'd say we weren't wanted here." -- Lady Jaye

"You see, I am the new fire department. If they don't pay, I start fires." -- Destro

"This is Cobra Commander. You have 12 hours to pay Cobra an insurance premium of $1 billion in gold bullion, or a city will be burned." -- Cobra Commander

"We have the weapon of the century. And NASA developed it for us at their cost!" -- Cobra Commander

"What a crude form of weaponry!"

"I should have known she weren't no real Texas peach. She was just too sweet." -- Wild Bill

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.

Nearly everyone at the Loco Toro dude ranch is in disguise. Wild Bill, Lady Jaye, Bazooka and Alpine have come as the Austin family; the ranch hands play their parts with relish; Ma and Pa Joad are Cobra in matching western clothes; and Mary Belle, who has taken a shine to the Joe in the bolo tie, is not what she seems. Gerry and Carla Conway's script is a pile-up of disguises, and the last scene pays it off.

The opening is breezy. The Joes creep through a moonlit cornfield into a Cobra information centre with an "open sesame," and Bazooka promptly gets his feet tangled and thumps to the floor. Breaker is put to work on the protection scheme on Cobra's main computer, which turns out to hold a real-estate transaction: Cobra has bought a dude ranch in Texas. Lady Jaye explains on the way in that the oil wells Bazooka thinks he sees are microwave antennas, part of a solar-energy farm that receives beams from an orbiting satellite. If the beams are not controlled by the monitoring station they could fry a city. Exposition is easier to take when somebody has asked for it.

Then the ranch, where hospitality is all hazard [1]. A bull is released at Bazooka and Alpine; a horse called Mudpatch, introduced as an educated horse who knows what a pretty lady is, tips Lady Jaye into a trough because someone left a burr under the saddle. "I think those bums set us up," says one of the men, and Lady Jaye, drenched, calls it a wild guess and says they were not wanted here. The Joes know, and they stay, because the satellite is the reason they came. A square dance gives Wild Bill the floor for a call he sings with total confidence, while two Joes would do anything to get away from the warbling [2].

A stampede lets Zartan walk off with the control chip while nobody is looking. Destro stands over a model city in the control room and a beam from the satellite lights it up, and he declares that he is the new fire department: if people do not pay, he starts fires. Cobra Commander's ultimatum demands a billion dollars in gold bullion in twelve hours, backed by a demonstration on the Golden Gate Bridge. Lady Jaye, in a blue Cobra uniform and green goggles, carries a clipboard through the control room to within a few feet of the Commander before she is spotted.

The stampede is the spine. Cobra uses cattle as a smokescreen. The Joes, whose big weapons cannot get past a laser screen that is excellent against large targets and useless against small ones, send men in on foot, and then Wild Bill arrives at the head of a herd of his own. A Cobra voice calls it a crude form of weaponry, and the episode's argument is that the crude form beats the sophisticated one because it is already part of the landscape. When a Cobra voice wails that it was foiled by a cattle stampede, the joke is that Cobra started the habit.

Wild Bill gets the last scene, and it is generous to him. He has learned Mary Belle was the Baroness, and says that he should have known she was no real Texas peach because she was just too sweet, and somebody answers that Texans grow their peaches sassy [3]. He is allowed to be fooled without being made a fool.

The weakness is the stakes. Nothing in the last stretch shows anyone recovering the chip or taking the satellite out of Cobra's hands, so a threat that hangs a city on a twelve-hour clock is dropped when the Cobras retreat. A short slot explains the haste.

Where the Reptiles Roam is a silly western, and we are fine with that!

1 ^ The ranch is called Loco Toro in the dialogue at 4:46, and the subtitle track labels the lodge at 20:03 as El Loco Toro.

2 ^ The square-dance call runs from 11:09 to 11:18 without a speaker label in the subtitle track; Wild Bill is labelled from 11:30.

3 ^ The Baroness is unmasked in pink with her black hair loose at 14:04, and the dialogue does not name her until a cry of "Baroness!" at 14:31. The line about Texas peaches at 21:24 carries no speaker label in the subtitle track.

1. Lady Jaye and Wild Bill go undercover as "Jane" and "Bill Austin," and fans on the Joe wiki and the Joe Guide wonder if the surname nods to Austin, the Texas capital, or if "Jane" nods to Jane Austen. The ranch family is the Joads, a name the wiki ties to Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Their daughter Mary Belle is the Baroness, who drops the act with "At your service...y'all."
2. The Joe Guide says the title comes from the first line of "Home on the Range." Cobra's plot is a protection racket, too: the Commander demands an insurance premium of "$1 billion in gold bullion, or a city will be burned," and in the control room a Cobra voice says, "I am the new fire department. If they don't pay, I start fires."
3. The Joe Guide spots an air-order wrinkle. Lady Jaye reports that the ranch looks like a Cobra R&R center for the troops, and the guide says the Antarctic R&R base had already been destroyed two episodes earlier in production order. That is [The Viper is Coming](/cartoons/1985/episodes/the-viper-is-coming/), which did not air until October 24, six days after this episode.
4. Fans on the Joe wiki list several slips: Flint's shirt is green in the M.O.B.A.T. scene and black afterward; Bazooka and Alpine swap positions between shots while tailing Zartan; and when the Dreadnoks burst from the barn, Destro and the Baroness follow in an A.W.E. Striker that has become a Stinger a moment later.
5. Lady Jaye explains the antennas as part of a solar-energy farm that receives microwave energy beamed from an orbiting satellite, and warns that if the beams are not controlled by the monitoring station they "could fry a city."
6. Fans count the insults. The Joe wiki credits Alpine with calling Bazooka "shell brain," Bazooka with calling the bull "mean meat," and Lady Jaye with labeling Mary Belle a "Texas tease" and saying "Jezebel's more like it." The Joe Guide adds that the Jezebel line is a Biblical reference.
7. The finale ends on a run of cattle puns. A Cobra voice wails, "Foiled by a cattle stampede!" and when someone asks "What kept you?" the answer is "Oh, just a little cattle stampede. And that's no bull!" The last gag is a line about Texas peaches: "Anyone from Texas knows we grow our peaches sassy!"