POGS – Tales Of Eternia – EP 42 – Mistaken Identity

1. A very solid and enjoyable selection of episodes this week, guys. You guys know that I call them as I see them. I don’t always side with Mike or Kevin. When there is a good episode and I enjoyed it (Beauty and the Beast), I say so, even when I disagree with one or both of you. And this week, for Mistaken Identity, I agree with Kevin. This was a very enjoyable episode. The plot is great. It is amazing that we haven’t yet seen this plot in the series. Overall, I feel that season 2 has been very strong, with writers getting a feel for the series and doing some interesting things. That said, this episode almost writes itself. We have gotten used to this type of plot, so I can’t give it a super high rating, but I think it was done well, with the boy wanting to impress a girl and feeling inferior to someone as powerful and strong and good as He-Man. Then we have Modulok taking advantage of capturing the boy, whom he believes to be He-Man, which is typical for plots such as this. By the way, I really like Modulok. I like the evil scientist origin and that we see him locked up in jail. I also think he has one of the better evil voices in the series. A solid episode, but I can’t give it a real high ranking because I think this plot is sort of a paint-by-numbers effort. 3.5 Orkos

   The Toy Maker was done well. There were several things I liked. The Toy Maker himself. I liked that he bargains with Skeletor, and I like this plan to infiltrate the castle via Orko and his evil toys. There are some weird animation issues, like King Randor’s head being turned way too far when he is talking to Orko about The Toy Maker returning to Eternia, which I thought it was good to have us learn that he has been around before. The other thing I didn’t like was the ear muffs. So Teela can’t hear the echos with them on but she can hear Orko? And then they put them over Ram-Man’s iron helmet? I get it, but that’s just lazy…yes, I know, it’s Filmation and that’s their thing. It was an average effort, so 3 Orkos.

   The there is Bargain with Evil, written by Larry DiTillio. I knew within the first few minutes that I would be ranking this one very high. In fact, I’ll just say right now that it gets 5 Orkos, and is one of the series best episodes. It has everything. We get the return of a characters, The Star Child. We get a new character as her bodyguard, Bowena, who is awesome. I also like the modified Wind Raider that they ride into Eternia in. The deal the sorceress makes with the evil guy to free her father by giving him the Star Child was a great plot for this series. Larry seems to have a handle on what sort of stories work well in this fantasy world. The evil dwellers, from the leader to the minions, are all well-designed characters, very fitting of the series. And the animation is done well here, too. You know, while watching this episode I wondered how much cooler this series could have been had Bowena taken the place of Teela, or had Teela been more like Bowena. He-Man and Bowena made a great team, and it’s too bad we didn’t get more pairings of these two. I also liked how He-Man grabs the evil guy’s bird’s legs, sending him flying, then Orko turning the bird into a butterfly. He-Man’s line, “That was neat.” was delivered very well, and was very humorous. And let’s not forget about the humor, which was bountiful here, making for an even more enjoyable episode. As you can tell, I found a lot to like and very little to dislike, with the main irritation being the voice of The Star Child. I can’t stand it, but I’ll forgive it because this was a truly great episode.

   Loading...

   Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.