Sunday, April 29, 2012

Season 1 Episode 8 “Time Corridor”

After the fabulous and ubiquitous intro, we find Skeletor sitting in his chair at Snake Mountain, mugging Tri-Klops and some weird fish guy.  Or is it a lizard thing?  I’m not sure.  I’m probably just mentally insane, but I have a feeling that Skeletor is about a divulge this week's plan to destroy Castle Grayskull.  Man, he treats villainy like he gets a fucking salary with bonuses for this shit.


For no discernable reason a magical portal opens up and a large metal chest floats through it, which contains the “wheel of infinity”.  Skeletor intends to use it to destroy Castle Grayskull.  But what about He-Man, Tri-Klops wants to know. “Well, let me tell you something, friend, he can’t get us back in time, before Castle Grayskull existed”!  So Skeletor is going build a hovel underneath the castle's future site and wait for them to build Castle Grayskull over him?  Brilliant!  It's like the Trojan horse, but with a twist of retardation!


Back in Eternia, Prince Adam and Man-At-Arms are having a nice little picnic together.  Awwww, how sweet.  Oh.  Shit.  Orko is there too, and he uses his magic to turn this cake into a gigantic phallus of chocolatey goodness.  Even Prince Adam remarks that it's too big for him.  Damn, that’s pretty fucking big.

After it all comes crashing down on Man-At-Arms (of course), they see the Sorceress fly by in bird form, so they know they need to go to Castle Grayskull.  Cringer has a panic attack about going to the castle, but nobody gives a shit.  At Castle Grayskull, the Sorceress shows them, using the “window of time”, Skeletor bumping uglies with this Neanderthal-looking warrior guy on top of a castle.


She proceeds to tell them that Skeletor went back in time and is building his own fortress on the spot where Castle Grayskull is in order to protect the wheel of infinity.  Which, he will spin and it will get faster and faster over time until it is fast enough to destroy Castle Grayskull.  Ok, that makes even less fucking sense than before.  How can they build Castle Grayskull if Skeletor's castle exists on the site, built over a time bomb intended to blow up the castle they haven’t built yet.  And somehow, if the simple act of destroying Castle Grayskull is achieved, it will allow Skeletor’s evil to rule Eternia.  As if they didn’t know already, the Sorceress tells them that they have to stop him.


Prince Adam is all like, “lets fucking do this, bro”, and so the stock animation starts.  But this time, the typical footage is literally paused to interject original animation of Cringer totally shitting his pants about having to turn into Battle Cat.  That’s twice in one episode, this is really getting serious.  Write your senators, folks, it’s the only way we can make a difference.  Anyway, so, then they all go back in time.  He-Man is like, “so this is what green forests looked like”.  See, I told you they don’t have vegetation.  The show creators just can’t make up their mind about foliage in the Eternian present, can they?


Immediately, they run into some primitives that don’t speak English, so it’s hard to tell if they are getting uppity with He-Man’s crew or not as they babble and point.   Battle Cat totally tries to tear their limbs off.  Didn’t anyone tell He-Man that tigers, however green, are wild animals and not pets? His actions really aren’t surprising, considering all the abuse heaped upon Cringer.  He was bound to snap some time.



Orko uses his magic, successfully, which is surprising, so that they can all understand each other.  The female accuses them of serving the ghost-face, and since I know Scream hasn’t been released yet, it must be Skeletor they are referring to.  Immediately after this indictment, He-Man, ambiguously, says, “we are friends”.  Now, I for one, thought he was referring to himself and Skeletor, which seemed a rather reckless phrasing to me.  Thankfully, since they are primitives, they aren’t mentally complex enough to understand ambiguous statements, and danger is avoided.


He-Man further wins them over when a “dragosaur” shows up and tries to kill them all, giving him a chance to rescue them.  Apparently, the difference between a dragon and a dragosaur is that a dragosaur breathes smoke and not fire.  Orko, astonishingly, for the second time in a row uses magic to make a wind which blows the smoke away.  I’m hoping He-Man will gut that fucking dragon like a pig, because that would be amazing.


While He-Man is busy carving a Thanksgiving dragosaur, Man-At-Arms uses a rope ladder to extract the primitives from danger.  I can only imagine how mind-boggling the technology of a rope ladder must be to these primitives.  I saw Encino Man, so I have decent idea.  When he’s done getting nice and bloody, he buries the bastard in a shower of boulders, which seems to be his murder weapon of choice.


Now the primitives have boners and female boners, respectively, and tell He-Man that ghost-face has been subjugating them and making them and the ape-men work in sweat shops making Nike shoes.  I had no idea Skeletor was that evil!  Holy shit.  I need a minute.  OK, now I’m good.  Anyway, He-Man looks totally smacked out when they are telling him this.  I’ve seen enough video interviews with Kurt Cobain to know what that looks like.


He-Man assures them that Skeletor doesn’t know they are there in the past, thus gaining the element of surprise.  He says this just as Skeletor is watching He-Man through his staff.  It’s amazing to me how characters in this show, good or bad, can video-spy across space and time when its convenient to the plot.  By the way, the female primative, Zilora, whose name they actually use, has this weird speech-affect in which she sort of hiss-sighs before and after everything she says.  I think Man-At-Arms is misinterpreting it as sexy talk because he starts getting some untimely wood.


Skeletor gives the Neanderthal man orders to gather an army of slope headed baddies to combat He-Man and crew.  He-Man shows up outside the castle where Skeletor is holed up and decides the best plan of action is to make a bunch of noise so everyone knows they are there.  Isn’t this totally fucking contradictory to the element of surprise, which was the strategy de rigueur, like, two seconds ago?  Well, his new plan works and Skeletor shows up on top of a turret and implores He-Man to fucking bring it!


So He-Man and Battle Cat charge at the castle.  As He-Man comes on, Tri-Klops launches a boulder with a catapult which He-Man just knocks back at him with his sword like a baseball.  Man-At-Arms bolos a Neanderthal, whom are apparently the ape-men.  He-Man high jumps the wall and continues fighting ape-men.  Zilora confronts Skeletor and is like, “Leave him alone, that’s my new boyfriend”!  So Skeletor gasses her and tells He-Man he is going to take her to Dragosaur Isle to let his crew gang rape his bitch.  Since he’s gay, He-Man doesn’t care all that much, but since he’s closeted, he has to pretend he does, and vows to save her. So, He-Man makes this face like, “oh, no, you didn’t”.



He-Man and Man-At-Arms head out to the island on a Tom Sawyer raft – it is the past – in order to save her.  Since Man-At-Arms knows all He-Man’s secrets, he knows he’s going to be the one banging this chick when they rescue her, not He-Man, so he agrees to paddle the thing while heavy ass He-Man, and his not-quite-feather-weight fucking tiger do nothing.


Skeletor counts on He-man rescuing Zilora while he activates the wheel of infinity.  Wait, OK, so, Skeletor has retreated to Dragosaur Island and is going to activate the wheel of infinity there in order to destroy the future site of Castle Grayskull, which is elsewhere?  I give up.  Whats the fastest, least messy method of suicide?

On the way there, He-Man and friends are attacked by Audrey II from  Little Shop of Horrors.  As it snares them all in its tentacles, He-Man throws his sword, which apparently can act as a boomerang and comes back to him.  When he catches it, it makes this cheesy little gleam.  He manages to cut Audrey II's stalk, which causes it to explode for some reason.  Plant or not, I'm counting that as a murder!


After some other hardships, including bad puns from Orko, He-Man and pals intercept Skeletor on his way to activate the wheel of infinity.  The fish-lizard guy from earlier, who apparently is called Fang Man (that’s original) uses the dragosaurs to attack them.  Skeletor uses some magic on Zilora that will trap her between time and space where nobody, not even a geezer like Man-At-Arms, will be able to tap that ass.  So Man-At-Arms hurries up and beats off to her visage before Alzheimer’s swallows her image.  He yells, “I’m coming” at the cage she’s in and covers it, her, and He-Man in his goo.


He-Man gets so excited that he strokes the bars so fast that the friction causes an explosion and frees Zilora.  As if there hasn’t been enough of it already, she gushes all over He-Man for saving her.  Man-At-Arms steps up and is like, “I’ll take it form here”.  He must be on Viagra.  He-Man reminds him they still have an evil plot to stop, so he agrees to postpone his continued sexual gratification.


All the while, Skeletor has gotten away, and the Sorceress appears to tell them as much.  She agrees to teleport them back to the castle Skeletor had built, because, after all the rowing and jerking off that Man-At-Arms has done, he’s too tired to row the Tom Sawyer raft back again.  They come under assault by ape-men upon appearing inside the castle, but Man-At-Arms distracts them while He-Man runs inside to stop Skeletor from spinning the magic dradle, er, wheel of infinity.

When He-Man enters the chamber, Skeletor blasts at him with his staff, which He-Man easily dodges.  He tries again, and He-Man deflects the blast with his sword, causing the ricochet to hit the wheel of infinity and start it spinning, which is what Skeletor wanted anyway.  He-Man tries to hold it still, but even being the (alleged) strongest man in the universe, he is unable to stop it.  He says as much out loud, to which Skeletor exposites that no one can stop it, it will keep spinning faster and growing larger throughout time until it destroys Castle Grayskull.


Since he can’t stop it, he decides to try and spin it faster so it blows up real soon.  OK, now I’m really fucking confused.  I thought that this thing was like the ultimate explosion, like a nuke that would just lay waste to all of Eternia, such that, even in the future, the forces of good won’t be able to take hold.  But now He-Man’s strategy is to blow the damn thing up?  Did I say I give up already, because now I really fucking give up.  When He-Man spins it really fast, it makes a sound similar to Curly when he lays on the ground and spins in circles – whoop-whoop-whoop-whoop.  Seriously.


As the castle (not Castle Grayskull, mind you) starts to fall to pieces, Skeletor makes a time portal and escapes, leaving He-Man in the past to be destroyed along with it.  All Hell is breaking loose, and He-Man, in a surprising display of defeatism, lays down on the ground, allegedly to think things out.


He-Man, after very little thought, remarks that he doesn’t have time to use his meathead pea-brain to solve the problem, so he decides to just punch it – queue stock animation punch here.  This sends the wheel of infinity, which seems to be awfully finite to me, flying out of the castle where it explodes in a Fourth of July worthy fireworks display, which is notably not the mushroom cloud I would have expected.  I still fail to understand how this thing was supposed to fuck things up in the future, and I don’t think this is my shortcoming.


Then they get zapped back to the here and now.  Back in the present, the Sorceress congratulates them on their success, and Orko laments the loss of Zilora, because he wants to bang her with his amputee elf cock.  He and Man-At-Arms get into a tizzy because Man-At-Arms had already called dibs.  Their quarrel is so annoying that the Sorceress commits to ensuring that Skeletor’s time portals are closed so none of them can ever bang her sweet, primitive honey pot, ever.

Time for this week’s moral!  I think its going to be about how its fun to cut loose and kill and not use our brains to think first, especially when the pressure is on.  Kill ‘em all, just kill ‘em all.  Instead He-Man tells us that it’s about how we can’t go back to the past to make evil things happen, and its today that counts.  Cool, so, I’ll just go make evil deeds happen today then, shall I?  And that’s episode 8.  You better love it, because there will never be an episode 8 again, until they re-launch the series in 1990, and again in 2002.

He-Man murder count: 3 kills, 1 attempted murder.



IMDB Cast List:

John Erwin:  He-Man, Prince Adam, Darkspy
Alan Oppenheimer:  Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Cringer, Battle Cat
Linda Gary:  Zilora, The Sorceress
Lou Scheimer:  Orko, Tri-Klops, Fang Man, Ollo

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Season 1 Episode 7 “The Curse of the Spellstone”

I hope that in this episode, He-Man foils Skeletor’s plot by befuddling him with a sort of spell and speak.  We will find out right after Prince Adam discovers his… you guessed it, FABULOUS SECRET POWERS!

-the actual moment he says fabulous-
This episode opens with a creepy, twisted, slowed down version of the He-Man music playing as we pan over to this weird gold palace we’ve never seen before.  I wonder who lives there…  Apparently it's the spellstone.  Skeletor is outside with Evil-Lyn and uses his staff to magically break the doors open, and its just right there on a pedestal.  What a let down!  Then, Skeletor, I shit you not, says, “The spellstone!  It better be worth all this trouble, Evil-Lyn"!  Seriously?!  What trouble?  I’ve had more trouble opening a beer!  OK, it was my 5th or 8th beer, but still!


Evil-Lyn assures him it's worth it, then babbles some gobbledegook at it, while we cut scenes to the royal palace, but by way of a long, never-before-seen pan over a lush green valley, above which the palace and village are perched on a giant plateau of bare stone, overlooking it.  Whaaaa?  Now they are just being revisionist.  I mean, why would they build the villiage on top of a giant stone plateau if there was this fertile valley there the whole time?  I suppose that maybe it’s a flood plane, what with that river and all.


Anyway, inside the palace, King Randor stands motionless, gazing out at said valley with his arm around Man-At-Arms.  Awwww.  Cringer sleeps peacefully under a table.  Awwww.  Orko is playing some dumb guess-the-hand trick while Prince Adam (with the most shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen), Queen Mariena, and Teela watch.  Oh, fuck.  Thankfully, Prince Adam totally punks Orko and makes him look like an asshole, which causes Teela to do this sexy laugh as she tosses her head back.


Panning back, complete with peaceful music, King Randor is still fondling Mat-At-Arms, gazing out the window.  Suddenly they are talking about a weather controlling satellite that Man-At-Arms invented, and is now demonstrating.  How reckless, fucking with an ecosystem like that for your own selfish comfort!  Of course, the thing messes up and causes a thunderstorm.  A bad one.  Man-At-Arms, the arrogant bastard, denies that there is any way his machine could fuck up like that.

He immediately suggests that it has to have been the spellstone, being manipulated by somebody evil.  Not that anything should surprise me any more, but really?  That’s the first conclusion they jump to?  There isn't one red herring?  Anyway, blah, blah, blah, Cringer is terrified of becoming Battle Cat, blah, blah, blah, Prince Adam turns into He-Man.


Elsewhere, Skeletor and Evil-Lyn are watching the spellstone as it pulsates and “works its evil” which will destroy Eternia with (un)natural disasters.  Skeletor is already day dreaming about how he will rule the land, and Evil-Lyn is all like, “you mean we”, and he’s all like in your dreams, wench.  So she turns into an old lady.


He-Man, Stratos, Ram-Man and Battle Cat are cruising in Attak Trak to go find the temple of the fire-people where the legendary spellstone supposedly resides.  The fire-people are a fierce tribe known for anal raping outsiders with flaming logs.  And they have tentacled lava snakes that pop up from lava pool.  I know because one just did.  The lava snake just picks up the entirety of Attak Trak in its mouth and everyone is like, “What the shit are we gonna do, He-Man”?  I hope he gives that pink fucker a cleft palate with his magic sword!  Instead, he just presses a button and electrocutes it and it drops them and disappears under the lava, disappointingly still alive. 


Meanwhile, the storm is totally fucking up Eternia and causing fires everywhere.  Man-At-Arms and Teela are using this remedial looking portable water tank to try and put out the fires while the old hag Evil-Lyn and a bearded old man look on.  She continues to mentally command the spellstone, via voice over, to continue to fuck up Eternia.  If only the old man could hear her inner-monologue, then he'd know who's behind this!


The storm continues to rage, with homes catching on fire and women and children burning alive in their huts.  Mmmm, I can almost smell the barbecue!  A lightning bolt strikes the remedial fire-fighting water tank, causing Man-At-Arms and Teela get thrown to the ground.  The old hag Evil-Lyn stands over Teela, licking her lips, about to squat on her face.  


Instead, the old man and his children start bitching about the loss of their home, and the old hag is all like, “It’s the King’s fault.  And Man-At-Arms.  Didn’t you see them torching your shit"?  Hey, that actually makes sense!  Man-at-Arms did make that weather machine.  It probably is his fault.


Teela is all like, “oh, I’m so dainty and I got the wind knocked out of me”.  And Man-At-Arms is all like, "Oh, yeah, that looks bad, we better go, we’ll be back"!  He then runs off with her like she's some gory infirmed.  What a pussy.  I’ve had the wind knocked out of me when a mob of angry villagers is after me before.  No big deal.  I guess it’s not her fault since she’s spent her whole life being subjugated, even if she is a tom boy.


Anyway, old hag Evil-Lyn has convinced the whole village that King Randor and Man-At-Arms caused the anger of the gods, due to their voyeurism, embracing, and mutual masturbation earlier.  Evil-Lyn convinces everyone that the best punishment of the royal court would be to use the Creeping Whore-Ak on them (what ever that is), which coincidentally the old man knows how to find.  Since he's a widower and old people dig other old people, she promises him some cooze if he takes her to it.

Meanwhile, at the temple of the fire-people, He-Man et. al. discover the empty pedestal that the spellstone used to sit on.  Just as they wonder what happened to it (really?) Skeletor pops out with Trap Jaw at his side and sics a bunch of his robots on them.  He-Man smashes a few of them and remarks about how easy it is to defeat them when a bunch more of them take him out.  Battle Cat, speaking for, I believe, the first time, remarks about how much he loves robots.  He tries to pet them and love them, but ends up slashing them apart.


Back in Eternia, the old hag Evil-Lyn and the villagers are indicting King Randor while he stands on his royal-fucking-patio.  The old man is holding a rectangular box, which I’m guessing is the creeping Whore-Ak.  I'm guessing that the creeping Whore-Ak is some kind of pocket-pussy-come-chinese-finger-trap device.  Actually, considering the King's philandering, it would be pretty clever to use that on him.

Somehow, Teela figures out that the old hag is Evil-Lyn.  She must be able to smell that old lady clam even from the balcony, and recognized it from the female tea bag she received earlier.  As Teela runs off to grab a bolo, of all things, old hag Evil-Lyn demands that the old man hand over the creeping Whore-Ak.  The old man begs her not to use it, because he’s used it before, and well… lets just say, you don’t want to get your dick stuck in this sex toy.


Teela snares old hag Evil-Lyn with the bolo and so she just turns into normal Evil-Lyn and the bolo just falls off.  She hurls the creeping Whore-Ak at Teela and hits the wall instead.  It appears to be infected with some kind of freaky STD which starts spreading up the outside of the palace wall causing the royal court to run away while expositionally discussing how the creeping Whore-Ak used to be used to punish criminals by growing over their homes until all the air was sucked out.  Harsh.  Suffocated by a giant STD that emerges from an ancient sex toy.  That's both cruel and unusual!


Meanwhile, He-Man, Ram Man, Stratos, and Battle Cat are kicking the shit out of Skeletor’s robots.  Once they’ve all been taken out, He-Man makes a move for Skeletor.  Before He-Man can lay his sweaty palms on him, Skeletor uses his staff to show him the creeping Whore-Ak trying to suffocate everyone he cares about.  He-Man, all too familiar with STDs, yields to Skeletor.  Then he pulls a trap door on their asses.

They land in a cave, and, perhaps in his most directly homicidal move yet, Skeletor cranks a valve that begins to fill the cave with water. Gee, he sure does seem to have the fire-people’s secret temple figured out pretty well, seeing as how he knows where all the defense traps are...  And, by the way, we have not yet seen any of these so-called “fire-people”.  Anyway, however will they escape?!  Skeletor makes the premature determination that He-man will definitely be killed by this trap and solicits Trap Jaw to come to his palace and celebrate his victory with him.  


He-Man discovers that the floor is hollow and uses a boulder to smash a hole in it.  The water then just flows harmlessly down into it.  Just as they wonder aloud how they will actually escape the cave, the walls magically part revealing a staircase.  Really?  It was that easy!?  When they emerge at the top, we finally meet the much-mentioned-not-yet-seen fire-people.  Ram Man pussies out and ducks back into the staircase.


Back at the palace, the creeping Whore-Ak is seeping through the metal doors like a tip-drip from a clap-infected cock.  Teela decides it’s best to try and burn those warts off, and attacks the Whore-Ak with a torch.  Like the honey badger, it doesn't give a shit, and takes hold of her.  You know, I have to admit, Teela is pretty hot, and has a nice ass.  I’m rather saddened that she is now tainted by an STD.  Hopefully, it’s a curable one.


Elsewhere, the fire people are addressing He-Man.  Their leader accuses He-Man of having stolen the spellstone.  Really?  These guys are the least observant creatures on the planet.  Did they not notice that Skeletor has been hanging out in the temple for who knows how long?  And that he’s been setting off all the booby-traps?  Sheesh.  He-Man tries to plead his case, but the chief is having none of it and orders them all drawn and quartered.


As they come under attack, He-Man orders the crew not to hurt them, explaining that they are not really enemies.  Goddammit, is this guy fickle.  Murderous one moment, life-cherishing the next.  I think he’s bipolar.  Though, that’s not surprising from a guy with a dual identity, no matter how flimsy the veil between the two.  Back at the palace, the royal court is almost out of rooms in which to avoid the continued pursuit of the creeping Whore-Ak.  Man-At-Arms tries one of their vaporizing rays on it, but it doesn’t work.  


Quickly, we cut back to some fire people chiding He-Man for the location of the spellstone.  He’s playing hippie-dippy and still trying to love on the fire-people by putting daisies in their proverbial gun barrels.  Having none of it, they continue their assault and He-Man continues to take the high road.  God, this guy pisses me off.  Just kill them already!

Suddenly, that tentacled lava-snake shows up and grabs one of the fire-people.  You wouldn’t think this creature would be in a hurry to assist He-Man after being tazed, but what do I know.  Topically, it turns to He-Man and says “don’t taze me bro”!  He-Man obliges, since he’s feeling preservationist today, and instead throws a giant bolder into its mouth, jamming it, and thus causing it to drop the fire-person.  Since He-Man saved him from the pink lava snake, the chief decides he’s alright and lets them all go.  And now, instead of being pissed that the spellstone is missing, he hopes He-Man finds it.  Fire-people must be bi-polar, too.  Or democrats.

We cut to Man-At-Arms et. al. gathered in the last room in the palace.  Man, that creeping Whore-Ak spreads faster than herpes at at a gang-bang!  They are hoping that yet another door will protect them from its burning itchyness.  Outside, Skeletor is kickin' it with Evil-Lyn and some villagers.  However, the villagers are pretty pissed at him.  Skeletor's all like, “what are you gonna do about it, huh”?  Then He-Man shows up.  Evil-Lyn tells Skeletor what a fuck up he is, since He-Man is supposed to be dead and all.  He-Man just keeps walking toward the camera until his chest fills up the whole screen. Twice.



Skeleor pulls out a sword that looks identical to He-Man’s and swings it at him, but He-Man easily knocks out of his hand and into orbit.  Evil-Lyn goes all "Wizard of Oz" and creates a tornado that picks all the heroes up into a spin cycle.  He-Man’s hair is really wafting, it's a thing of beauty, really.  It must be inspiring because the villagers too, because they get all uppity and run over and just take the spellstone away from Evil-Lyn.


As soon as they do this the He-Man song comes on, so you know the battle is over.  Oh, psych!  Skeletor verbally commands the spellstone, apparently it being the only thing that can stop the creeping Whore-Ak (that’s convenient), to return to its realm.  So, it takes off like that silver ball in those spooky-ass Phantasm movies.  Of course, He-Man runs after it.  He-Man runs so fast that he can lean into the wind and not fall.  Man, that’s fast!


Simultaneously, the creeping Whore-Ak is, well, creeping under the door of the last room in the palace.  Ever the while, He-Man is chasing the spellstone.  The He-Man song comes on again, so you know he’s about to catch it.  He hurls the spellstone at the palace, smashing it into the creeping Whore-Ak.  Skeletor is all like, “I think I hear my mom calling” and takes off.  Magically, the creeping Whore-Ak disappears, and because, why not, the spellstone disappears back to the fire-people.  As if the royal court haven’t had a bad enough day already, a little later, Orko fucks up a trick for them by creating a lighting cloud to appear instead of a rainbow.  Too soon!  A number of villagers lost their hovels and women and children due to lighting, just this afternoon, you fucking dick!

Time for this week’s moral.  I think its going to be about how STDs are bad and you should never stick your dick in a used pocket pussy.  Man-At-Arms comes on to tell us all about it.  Instead, he explains that Orko’s tricks suck and he fucks them up all the time, and you shouldn’t play practical jokes because, “someone could wind up losing a finger or an arm, or maybe even an eye”.  Yeah, he actually said that.


And that’s episode 7!


He-Man murder count: 3 kills, 1 attempted murder.

IMDB Cast List:

John Erwin: He-Man, Prince Adam, Ram Man, King Helios
Alan Oppenheimer: Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Cringer, Battle Cat
Linda Gary: Teela, Evil-Lyn, Queen Mariena
Lou Sheimer: Orko, Stratos, Trap Jaw, King Randor, Jaymar