First of all, I’m pretty sure that’s not how the expression
goes. It's "like father, like son" Second, I’m not really sure
who this episode is going to be about.
Probably Teela, but we don’t know who her father is, only that her mother
is the Sorceress and Man-At-Arms adopted her. But then, I
don’t know who else it would be about. Anyway, we open on Snake Mountain where Skeletor is fingering some kind of ruby
while Trap Jaw sits on his lap.
After they’re done trading palm snakes, Trap Jaw advises Skeletor that
the army is ready.
Over at the Palace, Man-At-Arms has invented a rope-shooting
gun! Oh, special! Seriously, what the fuck use is a gun
that shoots fucking ropes. Well,
they use it to tie Orko up with it for starters, so maybe it’ll win me over
after all. It's enough to impress
King Randor, anyway. He even
thinks He-Man might have a use for it.
What the fuck for? He has a magical sword and the most powerful muscles in the universe. Orko easily escapes from the thing on account of being an amputee elf and all, so they
go back to the drawing board with the thing while I shed a tear over Orko having escaped.
Before Man-At-Arms and Teela get very far in adjusting the rope-shooting gun,
the Sorceress flies overhead in her Falcon form. Prince Adam says he’s late
for his mani-pedi and runs off to go turn into He-Man and meet up with her. He walks into a rare grove
of trees and coaxes Cringer out of hiding using a jar of peanut butter. Then, before Cringer can run away, He-Man whips out his sword, says his magical chant and rapes Cringer’s will with
its mystical powers.
Recycled animation sequence later, He-Man rides off to
Castle Grayskull. Which doesn’t
make any sense because, with the exception of the time that he turned in
mid-air and they cheated and cut the sequence down, he teleports to Castle
Grayskull every time he changes, so why wouldn't he just stay there instead of teleporting back? Anyway, the Sorceress informs He-Man that he needs to go to the old abandoned Stardeeka fortress, where Skeletor and Trap Jaw are assembling an army.
Back at the Palace, Man-At-Arms and Teela are still fucking
around with this stupid rope-shooting gun when He-Man shows up uninvited, then has the
nerve to call Man-At-Arms by his given name, Duncan. How disrespectful! You address an active-duty military man
by his title, prick! He-Man
reveals the newest plot that Skeletor is hatching. When Teela wants to go with, Man-At-Arms tells her that she’s
better served working on the worthless rope-shooting gun. And here she thought she had been making
progress for her gender, but she’s not even close to the glass ceiling of misogyny that is so
rampant in Eternia.
Skeletor watches Man-At-Arms, He-Man and Battle Cat approach
in flying crafts via his handy video staff, and mocks them saying, “Blah, say, blah. You think you and your friends can stop
me”? You know, for someone who
fucking fails at everything that he does, he sure is pretty fucking full of
himself. We discover that the “army”
that Skeletor is assembling is literally being assembled. He has a “serpentoid” processing
operation at the old abandoned Stardeeka fortress and is blasting blocks of steel into
the unimpressive robot serpentoid army.
Yeah, this plan has “winner” written all over it. Even more ludicrous is that Skeletor
actually says that his strategy is to have Beast Man lead them to victory. Really? He’s a drunk!
This is going to be about as successful as the Titanic’s maiden voyage,
I can already tell.
In Man-At-Arms’ workshop, Teela summons Orko to come rub
some ointment on her chapped clam.
While he’s at it, she bitches and moans about how she has to pee sitting
down, doesn’t have the right to vote, isn't allowed to fight against Skeletor, and on and on. She really has a whole laundry
list. Orko doesn’t hear a word because he gets so worked up applying her vagisil while staring at her tits that
his eyes go bonkers and he can't think. Despite how
creepy it is, Teela’s eyes lower to half-mast as she orgasms.
The kinky antics continue as she talks Orko into letting her
tie him up with the rope-shooting gun again. Now it’s supposedly stronger and escape proof. She gets him all tied up and starts
tickling his stumps, which really drives him wild. Indeed, the rope-shooting gun does work better now and Orko
can’t escape. Teela wonders off to go wash her hair, leaving him all tied up.
He-Man and Man-At-Arms show up at the old abandoned Stardeeka
fortress, and are puzzled because they don’t see anything nefarious going
on. Before I can remind him that it is an old, abandoned fortress, one of the orbs atop
the many spires that adorn the fortress blasts at them with electricity. Beast Man commands a pink dragon to
double up the assault from the spire’s orb, really giving the good team
something to chew on. Not
surprisingly, the dragon takes off with Man-At-Arms’ rickety old ass because it's just that easy.
The Dragon drops Man-At-Arms right at Beast Man’s feet,
which, unfortunately, causes Beast Man to make an awful pun, complete with
slurred speech. Man-At-Arms pulls
an Indiana Jones and whips out a gun and tries to simply blast Beast Man. But one of the serpentoids knocks the
gun from his hand before Man-At-Arms can manage to put a few holes in his chest.
Turns out the whole kidnapping Man-At-Arms thing is just a
distraction for He-Man and all part of the plan. While
He-Man his rescuing Man-At-Arms, Skeletor and Trap Jaw will be unleashing their
robot serpentoid army on the palace.
Battle Cat grows a brain and growls about how the empty
fortress doesn’t make any sense.
But, as He-Man is more muscle and less brains, he goes in anyway. When he does, he’s greeted by one of
the serpentoids, and they immediately embrace in an ungodly mashing of man
parts and machine parts.
Next, He-Man literally asks the machine if it would like to
dance. But, it’s a trick and he
takes hold of its arm, hurling it into a rock wall to its demise. Sadly, these serpentoids don’t possess
any semblance of A.I., so I can’t add this to He-Man’s murder count. If they were androids, I would be all over it. Bummer. That would have been quite a number of additional kills. Another one attacks, but Battle Cat easily
takes it out. See, I knew this was
an idiotic plan. A robot army is
far to easy for He-Man to smash. Even Battle Cat is having an easy time of it. What Skeletor needs is an army of innocent, brainwashed villagers. Then I bet He-Man
would be reluctant to beat them into bloody pulps.
Trap Jaw releases a dozen more serpentoids on He-Man and
Battle Cat, and then a dozen more, and all of them fall to He-Man's mighty
fist. It’s so easy that He-Man
starts playing games and bowls (a game his Earthling mother told him about, apparently) over another
dozen of them with a giant boulder.
But they just keep coming.
That makes a lot of sense because the goal is to distract He-Man. So that the serpentoid army he's smashing at the site of their production can take over the palace, which is elsewhere. Right.
Beast Man observes from on high atop his pretty pink dragon
as Teela arrives on one of the little flying jet-skis. She tosses the “laser-lasso” down to
He-Man shouting, “He-Man, the laser-lasso works now”. Except that HE-MAN wouldn’t know what the fuck it is because
it was PRINCE ADAM that was hanging out while they tested it earlier, and Teela
does not know that He-Man and Prince Adam are the same person. Well, it doesn’t matter much because,
1) It’s the stupidest fucking invention ever, and 2) Beast Man swoops by on his
pretty pink dragon and scoops it up before He-Man has a chance to catch it.
Disappointingly, but not exactly unexpectedly, Beast Man,
the drunken ass, bungles the deal and accidentally lassos his owns hands
together, promptly dropping the device into He-Man’s sweaty palms. Also disappointingly, He-Man uses it to
lasso together a little squadron of the serpentoids, then quickly lassos up all
the rest of them, proving the laser lasso to actually have been useful.
Because he’s fucking brilliant, He-Man surmises that
Skeletor must be mass producing these serpentoids, and suggests that Teela find the source and stop
the production by freezing it with her freeze ray, which is built into her gauntlet. Jesus. It
seems like a freeze ray would be a hell of a lot more useful than a lasso ray,
but I guess the writers feel like they need to continue to come up with idiotic
inventions to impress the kiddies.
Trap Jaw, who had been trying to cut the ropes that bind Beast Man, gets all pissed off and screws on his blaster attachment so he can pop a cap. But it takes too long and Teela just
freezes them too.
Skeletor appears on a screen and chastises his two lackeys for failing, implying that if he were there, somehow things would have gone
according to plan. Skeletor causes
Trap Jaw and Beast Man to be teleported to Snake Mountain and, trying to drag
out the whole “distracting He-Man" part of the plan, mocks He-Man and Teela and
challenges them to try and find Man-At-Arms. He-Man conveniently whips out a life-force scanning device
from under the breast plate of his harness and starts scanning the room.
He-Man picks up a signal and smashes through a wall which,
according to Skeletor, caused the self destruct mode on their serpentoid
operation to be turned on. OK, but
Skeletor’s plan was to use his serpentoid army to take over Eternia. But now, it is frozen to a halt, AND
the self destruct mode has been set.
Even if He-Man is distracted, how does Skeletor plan to take over the
land? He is such a fucking
asshat. But it doesn’t really matter,
because He-Man finds Man-At-Arms chained up just inside the opening.
Conveniently, the self destruct mechanism is located right next
to where Man-At-Arms is restrained, and He-Man just picks it up and lofts it
out of the superfluously located opening at the top of the mountain chamber they
are in. It explodes harmlessly in
the air without any of the thrilling dismemberment and destruction I was hoping
for.
With only a minute and thirty seven seconds left to go in
the episode, which includes the closing credits, the victory music plays (just
an quieter, instrumental version of the He-Man theme), but He-Man interrupts to
announce there is one more thing to take care of before this week’s moral
lesson. And that is to dismantle
the serpentoid production operation.
But we don’t get to see that at all because the episode is running out of
time.
So instead, we cut to the palace where Teela is explaining
to Man-At-Arms about how she got the lasso ray working and delivered it to He-Man all by her big girl,
day-saving self, which is I guess where the episode gets its title. I would like to argue that it at least
should have been called, “Like Adoptive Father Like Adoptive Daughter”,
because, lets face it, he’s not her real dad. Good thing too, with the way he ogles her sometimes. Anyway, maybe they could name an episode relevant to
what the actual episode is about for once, because this wasn't really about Teela all that much.
Time for this week’s moral, again presented by Teela! That’s
three in a row! She’s going to
start getting a little full of herself if they keep this up. I think this week's moral is going to be about how
tying or chaining people up is great, kinky fun! Instead it’s some ridiculously convoluted message about how
you should do what you parents tell you to do, even though Teela didn’t and she
saved the day, and even though your parents aren’t always right, you should do whatever they say anyway. She even gives this sassy little wink
at the end. Yeah, that’s not
confusing to kids at all. Maybe if
this show had better writers, there wouldn’t be a generation of insubordinate,
self-important pricks like me running around!
He-Man murder count: 6 and 1 attempted murder
IMDB Cast List:
John Erwin: He-Man, Prince Adam, Beast man
Alan Oppenheimer: Skeletor, Man-At-Arms, Cringer, Battle Cat
Linda Gary: Teela, The Sorceress
Lou Sheimer: Ordo, Trap Jaw, King Randor
Tons of funny stuff here, but the last line: "Maybe if this show had better writers, there wouldn’t be a generation of insubordinate, self-important pricks like me running around!"
ReplyDeletemade me laugh out loud.