Episode Synopsis
(This Episode was originally aired as “Episode 9″, even though it’s actually “Episode 4″ in continuity)
The G.I. Joe universe simply wouldn’t be the G.I. Joe universe without Zartan and the Dreadnoks. Many fans have questioned why a mysterious, almost supernatural character like Zartan hangs out with a biker gang, and many others have lamented the Dreadnoks’ seeming lack of intelligence and questioned their legitimacy within the Cobra hierarchy. Well, it’s far too early in the Renegades timeline to start that discussion, but we at least get off on the ground floor with the ninth episode.
This episode begins in a Kansas town where a new car dealership has opened…and finds out first-hand who really runs this little burgh. Zartan and the Dreadnoks make their first appearance, as a biker gang noticeable by their total lack of British accents. Beyond the speaking differences, though, there are many similarities between the Dreadnoks we know and this current iteration.
While not many of the Dreadnoks are named, its clear who we’re dealing with as Zartan steals the guy’s wallet and torches the dealership.
Not too far away, the renegade Joes cruise to a diner, looking for a bite to eat. They quickly hear about the notorious “Zartan” and witness first hand some of the Dreadnok thugs who are terrorizing the town folks, in this case a gas station employee. The Joes step forward and take down the Dreadnoks, however they unwittingly open a whole can of trouble.
Electing to leave town, Zartan and his gang decide to take revenge on the townsfolk by blasting the gas station to smithereens and kidnapping Wendy, the local diner waitress.
As the Joes drive down the highway out of town, Scarlett surfs the emergency band, making sure they’re in the clear, and they hear reports of the fire back in town. Tunnel Rat turns around and heads back, much to Scarlett’s chagrin. The townsfolk are understandably upset, and the sheriff is unwilling to do anything as long as Wendy is captured. Snake Eyes heads off solo to try and help Wendy while the Joes talk to the sheriff, who would rather place them under arrest than accept their help.
Snake Eyes meets up with the Dreadnoks, but the fight doesn’t go well for him, and even though he’s able to set the waitress free, the Dreadnoks team up on him and take him down.
Back in town, the renegades begin working with the towns people on defending their town from the Dreadnok invasion. Immediately they start getting together a plan for fighting back against the biker bullies. In the hotel room, Zartan is interrogating Snake Eyes…and as he finishes his talk, he rips off part of his mask, and doesn’t like what he sees. They figure out a better way to use their captive instead. The Dreadnoks roar back into town…and they have Snake Eyes chained to the tow truck.
Immediately the town people decide to take action, and using some of the tools, and the help of the Renegades, they gain the upper hand on the Dreadnoks. Meanwhile, Snake Eyes gets free and takes his own measure of revenge on his captors. Notified by the sheriff, Flint and Lady Jaye are also closing in.
With pretty much all of the Dreadnoks dispatched, Zartan makes a last ditch effort and captures Wendy once again, threatening her with bodily harm unless he’s let go. The sheriff, finally sick of being the whipping boy, tackles Zartan and they two men tussle. Using some backhanded methods, the sheriff tosses sand in Zartan’s eyes, sucker punches him and takes him into custody.
With the town back under control, and the belongings returned to their proper owners, Flint and Lady Jaye arrive to take the Joes in…but when they ask to get their fugitives, the sheriff takes them back to where Zartan and the Dreadnoks are being held, as the Renegade Joes drive off into the sunset.
Episode Review
While there have certainly been fans out there who have dismissed G.I. Joe: Renegades as purely being an “A-Team rehash” I can’t say I’ve been on board with that. Yeah, the whole “framed for a crime they did not commit” angle pulls from that story, but it’s not like the A-Team has a monopoly on that concept, and to this point, the stories have differed enough where I couldn’t really draw too many A-Team parallels.
Well, this episode certainly seems much more like a half an hour animated episode of the old familiar 80′s television series. From the “passing through town in the armored vehicle” to the “random thug who owns the town” all the way to the “let’s train the town to defend itself” scenario, this particular episode is purely A-Team material.
All that being said, does that make it a bad episode? No, not at all. But it’s not truly fantastic either. It’s another addition to the stockpile of the Renegades mythos, but there were some flaws with it that I wasn’t enthralled with.
I’ll start with the good. No, Zartan is not Australian or British…but he is an awesome biker thug. I think over the years in the Marvel run, Zartan’s identity kind of shifted. I think he really did start as more of a straight forward thug biker guy who wasn’t especially mysterious, just big and tough, but with a master of disguise twist. In Renegades, he loses pretty much all of his mystery, and appears to be just what he is. A tough biker bully who likes pushing people around. However, he does get some neat twists. His concept of “owning” people by stealing parts of them is a very cool angle, and could lead to some serious identity crisis down the road. He takes things from his victims, impersonates them with subtle vocal changes, and uses this as a form of intimidation and threatening. I really like that.
The Dreadnoks are also not foreign, but pretty much retain all of the same personality of their comic counterparts. They’re mean, ruthless, and not to be trifled with. I love the fact that at least Buzzer got a name, and even though all the other Dreadnoks go unlabeled, I think we can kind of figure out who is who. Road Pig with the Cinder Block hammer, Ripper with the swords, Torch carries his typical weapons. Burn Out sports the dreadloks and the dynamite, and Buzzer is the guy in blue with the chainsaw. I like how they’re all pretty new and unique, yet all pretty identifiable.
Along with those two, Snake Eyes is another very cool part of this episode. I love the fact that they don’t quite make him superhuman. His first meeting with the Dreadnoks ends up with him chained to a tow truck, though he does end up redeeming himself. I also like that they referenced his facial scarring! This is the first time we’ve seen this mentioned in the Renegades universe yet, hopefully we hear more about it.
But there were parts I didn’t like. The cliche’d nature of the “training the town” scenario has kind of been done to death, and really made this seem very A-Team-esque. Not only that, but at least in my world, Zartan is the ultimate bad ass. This is a guy who can potentially go toe-to-toe with any other Joe or Cobra, has mystical martial arts abilities even above and beyond his more familiar camouflage technology. In this episode, he gets one-upped and ass-whupped by a chubby small town sheriff, and that kind of left a sour taste in my mouth. While Major Bludd pretty much went head-to-head with Snake Eyes himself in The Package, Zartan gets bonked by a chain, and then pinned by a nobody. Didn’t really like that. Granted, this Zartan is not the one we’re familiar with, but part of me was hoping he would hold the same water as the Real American Hero version, just in a different patterned glass.
Other things that are kind of putting bumps in the road…apparent continuity gaffes. It would certainly appear that episodes are airing out of order, which is a bit disappointing considering how tightly woven the continuity is meant to be. It would seem that they perhaps bumped up Homecoming in order to match a Christmas viewing, which does make sense, except that it throws some other stuff out of whack. The clothes the Joes stole in last week’s episode were worn during the Homecoming episode, which aired almost a month ago. Also, the motorcycle they stole in tonight’s episode is the one that Duke rides off on in Homecoming, too. Hopefully somewhere down the line we’ll get these in corrected airdate order.
So yes, I did have some issues with this episode, but by and large, there was still a big entertainment factor. I loved Zartan’s voice mimicry, I loved the bad assness of Snake Eyes. The Dreadnoks were handled quite well, and even though I wasn’t especially happy with Zartan’s end result, I thought the character came across very effectively. I would have loved to have seen him go up against Snake Eyes in a real hand-to-hand battle, but at this point I’ll accept the fact that the character is going to evolve into something more familiar, and simply look forward to seeing what Zartan becomes. There are some pretty creepy and insidious roots there, and some cool stuff to build on, for sure.
Screenshot Gallery (Courtesy of Hisstank.com)
Episode Details
Original Airdate – January 14th, 2011
Writer: Eugene Son
Director: Scooter Tidwell
Easter Eggs
- At one point, Zartan tells the sheriff to buy himself some donuts. In the comic book, the Dreadnoks’ favorite meal was Grape Soda and Donuts.
LIke you, I’m not as impressed with this one as I was with others, but it’s a good standard. Nothing outstanding, but nothing outwardly terrible. Didn’t even notice the out-of-sequence stuff! How strange.
Anyway, I’ve still got hope for Zartan, but it doesn’t seem like they were “building” him as much as people like Major Bludd and Scrapiron (where we see them get hurt and you know they’ll be back later with recognizeable wounds). I hope I’m wrong on that count. I don’t mind when they bring him back, so long as they do.
Well, hopefully there aren’t a ton of episodes like this that just throw a standard plot together predictably. I like what they’re doing so far, and little stuff like this is forgiveable, but too much and it’ll toss the show into just standard, rather than stand-out.
Felt like the weakest episode so far. I guess they can’t all be gems. I like Zartan’s quirks about imitating voices and such, particularly knowing he is going to get the chameleon net. But he still felt off. Maybe it was just the episode itself. Kind of felt bored during it.
It was nice, however, to see that Snake Eyes is not superhuman and can be beaten sometimes.
Kind of curious about the episode order thing too… At the start, Flint mentions going from Springfield to Chicago. Wasn’t the last episode in Chicago? But then the bike didn’t appear until now… And another episode had Snake Eyes using the jeep they stole from Flint. Hmm…
Yeah this one was so far my least favorite we’ve seen. And it FELT like it was out of order. Scarlett still being so cold to the others, the bike etc… it felt like this should have come earlier as u mentioned. Plus the A-Team story that was boring 10 years ago doesnt make this any better.
I liked the way they did Zartans ‘master of disguise’ with a new twist, but I still prefer the badass Cobra spy to the biker. But then i never liked the Dreadnoks, so there’s some bias there.
All in all, my least favorite so far, but not unwatchable.
This episode felt the most “A-team” for me, and it’s all good for me.
Zartan “buying” the Sheriff some donuts, forcing local business owners to pay him off,… but mostly just being big thugs. That’s very “A-team bad-guy” material right there… only Zartan has no other “business” that I can see.
If it were an “A-team” plot, the Dreadnoks would have had some kind of illegal operation going on that they wanted to hide, or they themselves would be trying to muscle in their own business. OR, someone else was paying the Dreadnoks to keep the locals down and under control as another “bigger player” (COBRA?) has a whole other angle going on. And this would be a part in the episode where one of the Joes would have followed the Dreadnoks back to some location and discovered that bigger-fish-character. But this didn’t happen. I bet there is more in the background yet to come…
The Joes setting up various booby-traps and tricks to put the bad guys on their butts at the end of the episode with the help of the (seemingly) entire small town is very classic “A-team.” The set-up time for this was short, but in show effective.
Even when Tunnel Rat whips the van around to go back and help in the shows beginning…, I can’t help but think of B.A. at the wheel taking charge, with Face sitting up front saying no way, no way, this is a bad idea…
The Sheriff already called in Flint, and it seemed like it took awhile for the Sheriff to come around to the Joes being “good,” even not disclosing the Joes whereabouts at the end. Another very “A-team” character. But now, yet another ally in the Renegades world.
Zartan even had a bit of that typical “A-team” bad guy sense to him, more in his lectures to the Dreadnoks while sitting in their den. LIke, how he says something along the lines of, if you let one thing slip, you lose control. (or however it was said.) It’s almost like Zartan has some experience in this area, and the Dreadnoks were already effective but just needed a leader. (This is sort of how I already viewed my own personal universes Zartan; like questioned in the review above: why is Zartan tied with the Dreadnoks?)
I think Snake eyes let himself get captured, and knew that the Sheriff was capable of taking down one thug on his own. Snake eyes just wanted to let the Sheriff get his true confidence back. Helps that Snake eyes did a little hurt on Zartan first, I’d bet, though.
Consider that the “A-team” had more time to do a show like this, and I think Renegades did it very well. Even if the overall plot is very similar, maybe that’s why I like it. We get to deal with the characters better on the small-scale scene anyway, so, I feel “closer” to Renegades Joes actually. Like how I feel with the original “A-team” characters. They all had some great personalities, I wanted to jump in the van with them, and the action was always unconventional.
How many cartoons cut women’s hair off nowadays like this? Or blow up gas stations?
Definitely could have been better. Have to wonder though if we will see Zartan’s past develop a little more. Sure he SEEMS to be just another thug and bully, but a master of disguise could seem to be whatever he wanted. Maybe he’s hiding out…?
Just a thought. Not thrilling, but I will still be back next week.
Not too surprised with the continuity errors here. If I’m not mistaken, wasn’t Renegades originally slated for a 10/10/10 release? If so, the creators probably wrote it with that in mind; meaning (assuming there was one episode every week with no double bills), it would be about 9 to 11 episodes until the Christmas episodes. It would also explain why the show started with so many two-parters, so as to introduce the various continuity arcs (specifically the Snake Eyes/Storm Shadow storyline) in time for when they resurface in the Christmas episodes.
As for Zartan getting beaten by the town sheriff, I didn’t have much problem with it since it made sense. Zartan here was shown as more of a bully using psychological tactics to terrorize and subdue the town. Moreover, it was necessary for the story. They needed to show the sheriff finally stepping up to plate and it also symbolizes the town’s change from helpless victim to a group of people willing and able to defend themselves. This actually gives the Joes a greater sense of accomplishment from simply stopping the Dreadnoks on their own; which would have done little for the next time trouble comes passing through. The Joes can’t always be around to save them; they have to save themselves.
So, as a standalone/one-off character, it worked. Even if Zartan returns by joining Cobra, his lack of combat prowess would introduce a bit of variety to Cobra’s agents. Having him be a master of direct combat would cause him to be too similar to Bludd and Storm Shadow; leaving them all feeling rather interchangeable. Given the original concept behind the character (a biker thug who can mimic others), it makes sense if they decide to go a sneakier route with the character; having him be some sort of infiltrator/spy.
i wouldn’t say this episode is purely A-Team material. first the a-team didn’t come up with the whole “training the town” scenario.
second i saw this episode as more of a homage to akira kurosawa’s “seven samurai”.
Dynamite/locks ‘nok is Monkeywrench. He’s named in the credits.
And I agree with the out of order theory. I thought it was strange that the Joes had gathered such a fan following already in the Christmas episodes.
Good point, about them potentially being out of order. I was curious about why you were going to ask them that in the Q & A, but now I see why.