Uh-oh!

Uh-oh, looks like I ran out of time this week! Tune in next Tuesday for a double review for Season 1, Episodes 4 &5.

Season 1, Episode 3

Oh, my God, you guys. Here come the Robear Berbils.

I'd actually watched this episode a long time ago, when my husband first got this show on DVD. Since then, they've haunted my nightmares and mocked me from the media shelf. But I guess it's time to suck it up and make it through this episode.

Okay, here we go.

I'm going to press play now.

I'm for-real going to press play now.

OH GOD I DID IT WHAT AM I DOING??

Okay, we're starting off with good ol' Mumm-Ra, coming out of his crypt and gazing into that weird pool that's there and shows him stuff. It's a very dramatic opener, because you get outside shots of the pyramid, and there are sparks coming out of the surround obelisks and some kind of storm happening. Mumm-Ra, it seems, has come out of his slumber to spy on the Thundercats and talk out loud about them to no one in particular. Seriously, he's the only one in the room right now, and there he is, just chattering away about what he sees in the pool.

So he's watching the Thundercats, babbling a little about the Eye of Thundera, and notices that Lion-O isn't with the other Thundercats, which maybe makes him a little like the creepy old guy on Family Guy.

Then we get to get away from Mumm-Ra and his crypt that surely smells at least a little funny, and we get to see what the Thundercats, minus Lion-O because he's probably always wandering off or something, hanging around a tank that Panthro built from parts taken from the old spaceship. Then Cheetara, with her super feline senses, notices that there's a storm coming because it starts to thunder and rain.

This is no ordinary storm, kids! It's raining rocks! The Wily twins whine about for a minute, and then after everyone gets tired of being pelted with sky-rocks, they go and hide inside the ship. Instead of joining the others in the ship, Pathro hops into the tank. I can't blame him, because I wouldn't want to be cooped up with those other assholes any longer than I'd have to be, especially when you've got those weird Wily twins running around. I assume that Wily Kat, being a male feline on the verge of puberty, probably does a lot of marking.

The storm gets so bad that it ends up burying the tank and the ship in dirt and rocks. This actually happens so quickly that I'm not really sure if it was the storm or some kind of mudslide. Anyway, the tank manages to claw its way out.

Then Panthro sticks his head out of the tank, says, "Blasted rocks buried the spaceship, too!" and, hile awesome synthesized electric guitars shred the airwaves, makes the tank go underground and PUSH THE BIG HONKING SPACESHIP OUT OF THE GROUND.

Maybe I don't give Panthro enough credit.

 The other Thundercats climb out of the ship and puzzle over the storm. Tygra says "It wasn't anything natural, that's certain." And it's the most wooden line reading I've heard on this show yet. Seriously, the guy voicing Tygra (yeah, I know I spelled his name wrong all over the last post) makes Shatner's performances in the original Star Trek series seem positively Oscar-worthy.

Finally we get to see what Lion-O and Snarf are up to. You know what it is? Snarf whines about being too far in the woods, and Lion-O tells him to suck it up. Then Snarf is startled by his own shadow, mocked, and says "Snarf snarf."

Ugh.

Then Snarf says he keeps hearing things. As much as I'd like to believe that Snarf is experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia and they'll eventually have to send him to some asylum planet, we do in fact get to see that something has taken an interest in Lion-O and Snarf.

Lion-O mocks Snarf some more, and then this thing that looks like a rhinoceros with wooly mammoth tusks comes blundering through the jungle. Snarf attacks it and, instead of goring Snarf, the animal merely looks a little annoyed and trips over Snarf. It falls against a tree, BREAKS THE TREE, and lumbers off.

Lion-O asks Snarf what his fucking problem is, and Snarf whines about not being taken seriously. For some reason, Lion-O feels bad for him and agrees to start heading back to camp after seeing where their current trail leads. And then of course he falls down into a deep hole and can't speak in complete sentences anymore.

Snarf does something surprisingly useful here and runs back into the jungle and cuts down a vine. Then he immediately fucks it up by throwing one end of the vine into the hole and trying to hold it when Lion-O tries to climb up it. Snarf is, of course, dragged forward, because Lion-O probably weighs four of five times what he does.

And then, lassos!

A bunch of lassos pull Lion-O out of his hole, and they are accompanied by weird, creepy robot voices. Lion-O demands that they let him go because he is Lion-O, and this is the first time we get to see the lasso-users.

GARGH! WHAT HORROR THOUGHT OF THESE ABOMINATIONS?

Not only do they stand around being creepy, they keep repeating, "Lion, berbil, berbil, lion," and various combinations of those two words in their monotone robot voices. They they start laughing, and Lion-O gets all pissed because he thinks they're making fun of him.

Now that Lion-O has used the word "Thundercats" in front of the robots, they now have a new word to repeat with "berbil," and that is "thunder." At the end of the new round of repeating words uselessly, one of them draws out a long word that, to me, just sounds like a weird noise. The robots, which are the robear berbils, gesticulate to show that they think Lion-O fell from the sky, and he confirms this. So they leave him tied off and lead him and Snarf away into the woods, because that's not creepy or weird.

We get a few seconds of the adult Thundercats talking about whether or not they should be worried about the fact that Lion-O hasn't returned to camp yet, and decide that they shouldn't have worried because they haven't seen the Cat Signal in the sky. Personally, I think they all just wanted to stay at camp and play with the tank.

Now we are thrust back to Lion-O and Snarf, who are still stuck with the berbils and tied to trees like virgin sacrifices waiting for some monster to come out of its cave and gobble them up. The berbils approach, and what appears to be the Grand Poobah Berbil approaches. Lion-O mocks him by saying, "Erble derbly berbil erbil."

This is how the Grand Poobah responds:

I would love to say that here the Grand Poobah tells Lion-O to shut his smart mouth or he'll get his tongue cut out, but instead he uses the knife to cut Lion-O and Snarf free, probably because this is a children's show. The Grand Poobah tells Lion-O that they are Robear Berbils from planet Robear, because no one is actually from Third Earth, apparently.

Then the berbils lead Lion-O and Snarf back to their village, where a whole bunch more berbils come running out to meet them.

 The berbils, it turns out, are gracious hosts and give their guests some food. You can tell the one offering the food is a girl because she had a flower tucked behind one ear and has probably spent the entire damn day in the kitchen.

The food turns out to be some kind of fruit that the berbils grow. It turns out the the Grand Poobah's name is actually Robear Bill, which is kind of heard to pick out over the weird robot voice effect, and he shows Lion-O where they grow and harvest "berbil fruit" that grows in convenient, colorful stripes.

Apparently the fruit comes in bread, veggie, and candy varieties. I don't even know what to say about this, aside from THAT'S NOT HOW FRUIT WORKS. But this is a cartoon, so it doesn't really matter, does it?

But there's no time to explore it, because some creatures called Trollogs attack. At least, it sounded like Robear Bill said "Trollogs." He's kind of hard to understand because he's a creepy robot teddy bear.

Apparently these things come in and bully the berbils around and maybe take their fruit. Robear Bill and Lion-O get into an argument about it, and I can only understand Lion-O's side of it because I can't understand a damn word the robot is saying. I don't understand why they couldn't have made these things easier to understand. If you shove a wad of of paper towel into your mouth and try and talk through a fan, then you can kind of hear what Robear Bill here sounds like. And try not to gag on the paper towel while you're at it, because then everyone else around you will gag in sympathy and next think you know you've got a bunch of people trying not to throw up.

I'm really off topic here. Anyway. Trollogs. Right.

So Lion-O gets all pissed off that the berbils will only fight these things with little stun darts and jumps in to help out. He does a weird circle thing with his sword which forms some kind of shield that the Trollogs bounce off of, and this scares them away. The berbils are impressed.

The berbils also feel sorry for the Trollogs, who apparently raid the village to steal fruit to give to some giants at the top of some mountain where their food grows. The giants apparently won't let the Trollogs eat unless they bring berbil fruit. So it's complicated. They're, I don't know, bringing the conflict in the Middle East down to a kid's level here, only instead of Israelis and Palestinians, you have weird dog-things and giants. And also it's not like the Israelis and Palestinians at all.

Lion-O's sword starts flashing, and he says it's some kind of warning. He peeps through his sword-holes and sees the giants coming. This is where I learned that they're called Giantors. That's some clever naming there. Yeah. He decides he can fight them off himself, and Snarf throws a hissy fit and does this:

He is actually in the air, balancing on the tip of his tail. I don't think Third Earth physics hold true to what modern science actually knows about physics. Anyway, Snarf wants Lion-O to call the other Thundercats and finally falls on his ass. Lion-O actually takes his advice and calls the other Thundercats.

Now, we finally get the big fight of the episode as Lion-O takes on the Giantors before the other Thundercats arrive. But they do arrive before their leader can get pounded into so much tender vittles by the Giantors' clubs.

Know what finally scares them away? That stupid shield trick. Apparently the denizens of Third Earth are scared of things that glow.

Lion-O introduces the Thundercats to the berbils, who all kind of rock back and forth like they're having seizures or something and makes stupid noises.

Now we're back where we started the episode: in Mumm-Ra's crypt, where apparently he's been watching the day's events in his pool. He very quickly sums up the episode, again talking to no one in particular. He's upset that the the Thundercats and the berbils are friends now, and he turns into this:

I don't know if he's a grasshopper or a locust just yet. Gut feeling is saying locust, because of the whole association with pestilence there.

OH, then he multiplies into a ton of them! I'm going with locust now, and I'm pretty sure where this is heading.

And then the best thing happened. As Mumm-Ra descends onto Robear Berbilville, some of the berbils wave torches around, yelling, "Plague! Plague!" in that weird robot voice.

Lion-O deduces that there's something weird about the swarm of locusts, and the bugs all come together and make one giant locust. Then he jumps up on the locust, grabs it by the antennae, stays on it for eight seconds, and wins the rodeo!

Actually, he rides away on the giant locust, which flies him over the mouth of a smoking volcano, turns back into a bunch of regular-sized locusts, and drops him into the volcano. This is one of those times where I actually wished this wasn't a kids' show, because then there would be a glimmer of hope that Lion-O would be incinerated and not magically saved, probably by that stupid sword he's always carrying around.

So the sword slips out of its carrier as Lion-O is plummeting to his death, and Ghost Jaga appears and tells him to call to the sword. LAME. Of course it works, and Lion-O flies out of the volcano by holding on to the sword.

No, I'm NOT making that up. Look!

So, instead of eating up the crops while Lion-O is flying out of the volcano, Mumm-Ra flies back to his crypt and tells himself that he needs to do better next time while possibly laughing evilly at himself and his failed efforts.

I'm not making that up, either. It really happens.

Then the berbils bring some fruit to the Thundercat camp. Robear Bill sees the "blueprints" for the new Thundercat stronghold. They are super detailed. Check this out:

Huh. I thought being an architect was a little more complicated than that, but apparently it's not.

Robear Bill asks some stilted questions. It comes out that building the new place will take a while, and then all the berbils chatter at each other in Robot and say they will help with the building. The episode ends with everyone eating and laughing, because this was the 80’s.

No Snarf wisdom this time, kids. We can only hope to get it once again in the next episode.