Mercifully quickly, they come upon a huge Mayan-looking
city. Orko remarks about how
electric the air feels as he stretches.
I think he’s just having phantom leg pains. Anyway, they are there to rediscover a special power and use
it for the good of all. After an
avalanche of bricks nearly crushes
them all, Price Adam bothers to mention that the Sorceress said that the
spirits of the elders might be haunting the place.
Little do they know, Skeletor has a mechanical bird
surveilling them so he can steal this ancient power out from under them. He summons Beast Man and Evil-Lyn, but
instead, this dude Aran and this chick Oona appear, looking like stereotypical spaghetti-western
Indians. Skeletor is about to have
them both murdered, but he notices the guy isn’t wearing a shirt and decides to
hear them out.
Aran tells Skeletor that he wants to use his gymnast like
body to honor and serve him. You
could almost hear Skeletor’s boner rising (like a squeaky hinge) when he says
it. Skeletor decides to test them
by popping a trap door open underneath them. They fall through it and Aran uses his staff, which looks like he stole it from a brass bed frame, to catch up on some rocks and prevent he and Oona from
becoming shish kabob.
Skeletor, looking down at them in the pit, is impressed that they managed not to get impaled
and asks what else they can do. So
they disappear from their precarious position and reappear back in Skeletor’s
throne room. Now Skeletor really
does have a boner! That is until
he tells them to kneel and Oona opens her yap and emasculates her man, Aran, by
questioning his desire to canoodle with Skeletor. Of course, he whacks her with that bed post staffof his and
insists that working for Skeletor will bring them power and glory. Right, because Skeletor has so many
wins on his stats board. So they
kneel. Well, Aran knelt anyway, Oona may have just been woozy.
At the city of the ancient ones, Orko is hamming it up while
they look for the relics.
Man-At-Arms is like, “Fuck that noise, I’m hungry”. So he busts out his camping stove and
makes some baked beans. I kinda
feel sorry for the rest of them, because I just know those beans are going to
give him old man farts.
As Orko is brining Man-At-Arms some more water, the
apparition of a Shiner appears in front of him. He is so startled that he drops the pot of unfortunately
not-boiling water on Man-At-Arms’ head.
Of course, nobody else saw the apparition and think Orko’s just taking
the piss. See what happens when
you’re such a fuck up? Nobody will
take you seriously.
Meanwhile, Aran and Oona have arrived at the ruins, and
despite earlier claiming to have only believed them a legend, somehow know exactly where the secret chamber that Prince Adam is looking for is - right beneath
them. They use their powers to lift
a stone floor tile, revealing stairs leading down to the hidden chamber. Conveniently, Prince Adam gets the
funny feeling they should look outside and they discover the newly revealed
chamber. Even though there was a
staircase there a moment ago, it’s now gone. So, Prince Adam and crew slide down into the chamber on a
rope.
At the end of the chamber tunnel, Aran and Oona come upon
the masks of power. They are
really quite creepy and have eyes that look around. They kind of remind me of those statues from The Never
Ending Story that try to blast Atreyu as he runs past them. Prince Adam comes upon them just as
they are about to put the masks on and warns that they better not. But Jim Carry hasn’t even made Ace
Ventura yet, much less The Mask, so they don’t know any better.
They put the masks on anyway, because it was all part of
Aran’s ploy to seize Skeletor’s power for his own. As soon as they do so, they become possessed by the spirits
of the Shriner, Demos, and his witch queen, Tyrella. Thanks to the Sorceress, Prince Adam already knew this would
happen if the masks were to be worn, but, again, didn’t feel it necessary to share this information beforehand.
Demos immediately attempts to crush them all beneath a pile
of debris – which is usually He-Man’s M.O. – but they all dodge out of the
way. Since it's damn close to
halfway through the episode, Prince Adam runs off to turn in to He-Man. I guess he does it right in front of
Demos, because his eyes get all big and bulgy. Maybe he saw a flash of wiener when Prince Adam was changing
into his He-Man clothes.
The witch queen blasts He-Man, trapping him in a glass
cube, which he easily smashes with his power sword. Demos says, “Fuck this shit, lets go get the Sword of the
Ancients”, and they float up and away out of the cavern. He-Man just stands there like a
dip-shit while they escape. He’s
pretty good at letting villains get away, isn’t he?
Not only do Demos and the Witch Queen trap them in the
cavern on their way out, they summon a giant ogre to finish them off. I mean like really giant.
He-Man tosses Orko up through the top of the cavern to get the
rope. He-Man continues to battle
the ogre, and I’m hoping he jumps down his throat and slices his way out of the
beast’s belly. Instead, He-Man
kind of just jumps and dances around the thing, and then boosts himself up to
the rope, snagging Man-At-Arms, and they easily escape.
Back at Castle Grayskull, the Sorceress is explaining to
them that Demos and Tyrella seek the Sword of the Ancients. Man-At-Arms is stupid enough to say that
he thought the Sword of the Ancients was just a legend while he’s standing next
to the scantily clad, magical alter ego of a gay, pageboy haircut-wearing
prince while in the presence of a woman that turns into a falcon.
As it turns out, according to the Sorceress, the Sword of
the Ancients was
just a legend, and so were Demos and Tyrella, before today. I’m not sure what she’s saying. So legends are just coming to life all
of the sudden? Like Midnight at
the Museum or something?
Weird. Well, centuries ago, the once fabled Sword of the Ancients was stuck in a rock of solid
crystal in some cave somewhere, and apparently its power is second only to He-Man’s sword.
Over yonder, at Snake Mountain, Demos is barging in the
front door with Tyrella as she busts his balls about who this Skeletor guy
is. She says he looks familiar,
but Demos finally shuts her hen pecking down.
Now that’s interesting, Skeletor looking familiar. This suggests that Skeletor might be
ancient. We don’t really know
anything about him, and I’ve long given up hope of even the slightest thread of
continuity or story arc that lasts beyond an episode with this show. But, here we have a little hint of
background on Skeletor, and I want more!
Anyway, this time Demos demands that Skeletor bow to him!
Predictably, they get into a fight. Seems like he should
have waited until he had the Sword of the Ancients to attack Skeletor, but even so, he manages to overcome him and
trap him in some stalactites, but only after causing him to dive out of the way
of some boulders and end up in a submissive position in front of him. With Skeletor subdued, Demos and
Tyrella take off.
For some reason, when they should be searching for the Sword
of the Ancients, He-Man and Man-At-Arms show up at Snake Mountain to discover
the trapped Skeletor. They agree
to let Skeletor out if he tells them where Demos and Tyrella went, which
happens to have been through a solid rock wall. Because he’s a schmuck, He-Man actually lets Skeletor
out in exchange for this nearly useless information. That’s two villains he’s let
go today. Skeletor laughs that
He-Man will never get through the 14 foot thick rock wall, but He-Man just uses
the power of a recycled animation sequence to punch through it, revealing a tunnel.
After He-Man and Man-At-Arms take off to follow Demos and
Tyrella, Skeletor is sitting in his skull throne, jerking off and thinking
about the Sword of the Ancients and how powerful it must be. He resolves that he must have it for
himself. I just remembered that,
in the toy line, Skeletor comes packaged with a sword just like He-Man’s (but purple), and
that they could join together to form one sword. They also made kid-sized replicas of these that also joined
together, which I had and loved. I
wonder if that’s what this Sword of the Ancients is? Now my interest is really piqued – will there actually be
some mythology built into this episode?
Because the episode is running out of time, what with the
minute and 21 second intro they show every episode, He-Man and Man-At-Arms
reach the Sword of the Ancients at the same time as Demos and Tyrella, and a
not-so-epic battle ensues. He-Man
shows off his gymnastic skills and drops his sword while he’s doing it. Against Man-At-Arms’ advise, he lets it
lie, while Demos struggles to remove the Sword of the Ancients from the crystal
rock. I don’t know why Demos
doesn’t just go for He-Man’s sword, since the Sword of the Ancients is second to it.
When I get another look at the sword in the crystal stone, I
realize it can’t be the Skeletor doppelganger sword from the toys that I
remember, because it obviously doesn’t look like He-Man’s sword. Damn, now I want to know what that
bizarro He-Man sword is all about.
He-Man traverses a few other tribulations as he approaches Demos, then
arrives, and shoves him out of the way and easily removes the sword from the
crystal boulder.
He holds it aloft just like he does his own sword, and it
starts speaking, “I am the Sword of the Ancients, and I have awakened to battle
for freedom and justice, once more”!
Skeletor shows up, and oh, snap, he has He-Man’s sword! He-Man has got to be fucked now!
Suddenly the Sword of the Ancients flies up in the air of
its own accord and says, “it was foretold that I would join with another mighty
sword, and that one has now appeared”.
I spoke to soon, it is the doppelganger sword! Now I’m the one with the boner. He-Man’s power sword flies out of Skeletor’s hand to
copulate with the Sword of the Ancients, and the two become one.
Joined in coitus, the now singular sword falls back into
He-Man’s grasp, instantly causing the masks of power to lose power, thus
returning Demos and Tyrella to their non-possessed state of being: Aran and Oona. Some sad music comes on as the two lament
that they flirted with the forces of evil, and they vow to be good from now on.
He-Man moves to subdue Skeletor,
but he opens a portal and high tails it out of there. Once Skeletor is gone, not only does He-Man not punish Aran and Oona, he offers them a ride
home. That actually makes sense,
because I guess Aran must look pretty tasty to He-Man, and Man-At-Arms appears
to be having dirty thoughts about Oona.
Time for this week’s moral! I think it’s going to be about how you shouldn’t call an
episode "Masks of Power" when its really about the Sword of the Ancients which
assimilates with He-Man’s sword, but then only to abandon any further plot development on the matter. Is
He-Man’s sword more powerful now?
Can it be split back in two?
Seriously, there is no closure about what happened with the sword at
all. He-Man didn’t even use the sword after it merged with its other. I guess it actually didn’t turn
out to be the doppelganger sword after all. Or maybe it was, I don't fucking know. What a
fucking let down.
Instead, Teela comes on to tell us that all of us make
mistakes, like doing meth or crack, or becoming an anal porn queen. But as long as you admit that you made
a mistake later, its OK to do some evil shit once in a while and then repent
later on. She looks pretty damn sexy when she says it too. I’m
convinced.
He-Man murder count: 5 and 1 attempted murder
IMDB Cast List:
John Erwin: He-Man, Prince Adam, Demos
Alan Oppenheimer: Skeletor, Man-At-Arms
Linda Gary: Teela, The Sorceress, Oona, Tyrella
Lou Scheimer: Orko, Aran Sword of the Ancients
I nearly shit myself laughing at your humor. THANK YOU!
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