G.I. Joe Renegades - "Homecoming Part Two" - Talkback [12/24]

[The Huntsman]

Today @ 5:30 PM ET on The Hub

It's time for another two part episode, but unlike the last one, we get both parts in one day.

Baroness tries to hijack the Joes as they're being transported by Flint and Lady Jaye, so she can gain control of the secrets stored on Cobra's drive.

[The Huntsman]

These two episodes were alright, although I hope they don’t drag out Flint’s reluctance to believe Duke. I was hoping that when Flint said Lady Jaye would be court-martialed if she let them escape, she would have just went renegade and joined the Joes. What we got is basically a return to the status quo, albeit with Storm Shadow now a member of Cobra.

[sparkykandy]

It's probably too early for a change in status quo, but it does sort of bug me that there weren't any major changes when it came Flint and Lady Jaye. Besides that, well, we did get Storm Shadow joining Cobra, and Destro was mentioned which makes me happy. Hopefully, we'll get to see Destro soon. I'm particularly interested in seeing what his relationship with Cobra Commander is.

The guy with the code name Stalker in Lady Jaye's flashback seems to be a shout out to the G.I. Joe Stalker. Kinda neat. I'm pretty new to this franchise, so I'm pretty sure I won't be able to catch all the shout outs and references.

[TheVileOne]

Good two parter story. Flint though still being in denial about Cobra and not recognizing Baroness right in front of him is a little contrived.

An alliance with Cobra and the more sinister Arashikage makes sense. It's a good way of Cobra bringing Storm Shadow into the fold without the brainwashing nonsense.

[Rick Jones]

I could live with Flint being a jerk but gosh is he dense. From the way he's acting, you'd swear that the Easter Bunny's existence would be more likely than the truth of the Cobra Industries conspiracy. Duke has to be some of superhuman to not just jump over that table and strangle him when he's going off on his speech about Duke going from one bad decision to the next and claiming to be his friend, etc. Now that I think of it, he reminds me a lot of Sentinel Prime from Transformers Animated, who I outright hated. I just can't bring myself to ever hate Flint though, so hopefully he wises up and becomes a little more respectful of the team and what they're doing. I'm not the most critical guy of the show's animation but while watching and enjoying the two-parter's action sequences, it just made me wish a little more that the show was getting better stuff than it is. I prefer a fully operational and iconic Cobra organization to one that's only just been up and running, so it was neat to see it shaping up a little more to the one we know and love. All in all, I enjoyed the two-parter, even with the reversion to status quo. It sucks that Cobra got a win but I suppose these things are to be expected every now and then.

[TheVileOne]

Could it have been so hard to take a digital photo of the Cobra Commander video and give it to the press or e-mail it to Abernathy?

[The Huntsman]

Could it have been so hard to take a digital photo of the Cobra Commander video and give it to the press or e-mail it to Abernathy?

And why didn't they just send a copy to Breaker? They bluffed about doing it, but they had ample time to actually do it. I know they can't actually expose Cobra this early because the whole series is built on the premise of them being renegades, but I think the series will get old if they keep blowing opportunities like this.

[Ed Liu]

I've got mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, I think it's a lot better written than the last 2-parter and was decent origin story for Duke that was played well. On the other hand, it's still more origin story stuff that I just don't think the characters or the show really needs to be spending a lot of time on. I did like how they played out Storm Shadown getting into Cobra, and I also thought it was pretty clever how they worked out the details of their "Let's make Cobra think we're dead" plot.

Unfortunately, those well-written bits make the not-so-well-written bits stand out even more. Mostly, it just makes no sense for the physical hard drive to take on so much importance. It's digital data. Once they have it, they can make as many copies as they need, limited only by the time it takes to copy all the data (on the order of seconds, judging by Scarlett's download at the Cobra party). Why not send it to Breaker, or straight to Gen. Abernathy? Why didn't the Army make a copy? For that matter, why did Cobra even need to retrieve the hard drive at all? Send a bunch of those drones and blow the train off the rails over a bridge. THEN send the Baroness in to make it look like an accident. Solve two problems at once that way. That whole chunk of the plot just made no sense.

Snake Eyes decking that guy from inside a Santa bag and then nearly taking down the Baroness without even breaking a sweat were also pretty cool scenes, proving that Snake Eyes is totally badass. As he should be.

The guy with the code name Stalker in Lady Jaye's flashback seems to be a shout out to the G.I. Joe Stalker.

Yup -- the Stalker on this show looked like the original Stalker other than the headgear (classic Stalker wore a beret, even if it was the wrong color for a Ranger). I was mightily jazzed to see him show up, since he was always one of my favorite Joes. Duke's younger brother was also a reference to Lt. Falcon (not so fond of that one, since I thought Lt. Falcon was a total loser in the G.I. Joe movie). Last callback I caught in this episode was that Duke's father's voice actor was Michael Bell, who was the voice of Duke (and a mess of other Joes) in the original series. That made me smile. I didn't catch who played Duke's mom, but it wouldn't surprise me if she was one of the original Joe voice actors as well. We'll see once the episode shows up on the Hub website.

Could it have been so hard to take a digital photo of the Cobra Commander video and give it to the press or e-mail it to Abernathy?

They did need to get around that plot point better (see above about digital data), but I don't think it would have been as simple as that, though. It'd just be a photo of a weird guy who looks nothing like the public image of Adam DeCobray, in a non-descript room. Wouldn't prove anything except that they can stage photos.

[Monte]

And why didn't they just send a copy to Breaker? They bluffed about doing it, but they had ample time to actually do it. I know they can't actually expose Cobra this early because the whole series is built on the premise of them being renegades, but I think the series will get old if they keep blowing opportunities like this.

Ya... I mean for a second i was thinking they might have run into the same problem they did with the scanner with the hardrive being to hard to crack to make a copy, but then i recall in the first part that they STARTED to download the data before they chose to just steal the whole thing... when it comes down to it, they had plenty of time to make a back up and send it to breaker.

Though that is one issue i have been having is that sometimes things feel a bit contrived... Like above we have the issue of not copying the drive. And then there is the scanner, namely asking why they don't just steal another one and do the same damn thing. And then we have Flint who's really pushing it with his denial of cobra... i mean he's willing to believe that Duke has a rich backer who can hire enforcers to take out a military train, BUT he's not willing to believe that cobra would do the same? it's almost like he's denying one conspiracy theory for another. also you'd think he would have questioned the farmers, but obviously he didn't because if he did then the idea of a bio weapon would not sound that strange... then there's also questioning duke's parents who might recall it was cobra who knocked on their door before they got knocked out and woke up in a cobra truck... another thing he never addresses was the heavily armed jeep that tried to blast them in an earlier episode; you'd think he'd have questions about that... and in that case his own theory doesn't quite add up since if he were to assume that Jeep was Duke's backer trying to kill him then it would make no sense for Duke to protect them (when their family is in safe custody) and not talk since he had obviously been doublecrossed.... hell Flint's idea of a rich backer is almost as just about as crazy as cobra being involved in illegal activities... on the plus side though, atleast it works as a good enough reason for flint to provide the joe's families with protection, so we don't have a plot hole as to why cobra doesn't continue to go after them

I would expect the show to break away from the renegades shtick eventually its just a matter of when... granted I could see them making the whole first season being renegades; not sure how many times they will be able to repeat the "we got evidence but cobra managed to destroyed it" thing before it just gets old.

Good two parter story. Flint though still being in denial about Cobra and not recognizing Baroness right in front of him is a little contrived.

Unless i'm forgetting something, the baroness entered and exited under the cover of a smoke screen... Storm Shadow is the only one Flint got a good look at

[TheVileOne]

Also is it at all possible to upload a live broadcast to a hard drive like Cobra did? That was weird.

But I mean if a photo or video isn't going to convince people, Cobra easily could've denied the physical hard drive as well. Let's also remember that they have fingers in many levels of America's infrastructure. Since they have people in the military and service industries they probably have people in the politics and government as well.

[Monte]

But I mean if a photo or video isn't going to convince people, Cobra easily could've denied the physical hard drive as well. Let's also remember that they have fingers in many levels of America's infrastructure. Since they have people in the military and service industries they probably have people in the politics and government as well.

what would politicians and so forth do?
they could be a number of ways to link the harddrive to cobra; there is plenty of unknown data on the drive could link it back to cobra...

[Manhunter]

I didn't catch who played Duke's mom, but it wouldn't surprise me if she was one of the original Joe voice actors as well.

It was B.J. Ward a.k.a. the original Scarlett.

[TheVileOne]

what would politicians and so forth do?
they could be a number of ways to link the harddrive to cobra; there is plenty of unknown data on the drive could link it back to cobra...

What they always do.

Lie. Lie. Lie. Lie some more. Deny. Deny. Deny. Plausible deniability, et al. Smear campaigns. Assassination campaigns. Misinformation campaigns. Diversionary campaigns.

Sometimes people refuse to believe what is in front of their own eyes and won't call a spade a spade. It has been known to happen. Its an imperfect world.

[Ed Liu]

But I mean if a photo or video isn't going to convince people, Cobra easily could've denied the physical hard drive as well. Let's also remember that they have fingers in many levels of America's infrastructure. Since they have people in the military and service industries they probably have people in the politics and government as well.

Oh, I agree completely. The more you actually look at what's going on, the less plausible the whole thing starts looking. If Cobra was actually good at this conspiracy thing, they'd have had any number of opportunities to switch out the hard drive with one with just a video file with Adam DeCobray giving a dull, holiday party speech. That would completely nuke the Renegades' credibility and significantly ding any other nosy, impertinent types looking into Cobra's less above-board dealings. Making the Renegades look unreliable would have done far, far more damage to them than eliminating them. However, even if they aren't very good at the conspiracy thing, they were all set to destroy the hard drive and the Renegades just an episode ago. So I'm supposed to believe that this big, world-spanning terrorist organization that has grown to massive proportions in secret got that way without knowing how to arrange a convenient accident? I don't buy it.

It's the usual problem whenever you're going to do a conspiracy theory story: people running these massive, long-running conspiracies start making really stupid mistakes the second we (the audience) and the characters in the TV show or movie start looking at them. If they'd been making those kinds of mistakes in the past, their conspiracy would have been blown sky high well before then. It fundamentally undermines the threat they're supposed to present. I actually like a lot of the things this show is doing, but it makes me nuts that it can be so sloppy about some things sometimes.

It was B.J. Ward a.k.a. the original Scarlett.

Heh. That was going to be my guess, since I could tell it wasn't Mary McDonald Lewis (Lady Jaye), and Cover Girl never did much on the original show. Nice to see another callback, though.

[suss2it]

Good episode, pretty good follow up to the first part. It's becoming slightly annoying to have the Joes constantly gather evidence, and then just lose it all, but you've all covered that so I won't bother elaborating.

The Baroness is awesome, awful design, but awesome nonetheless. I liked her power suit, and I like that she's the type to do behind the scenes stuff as well step into the field when needed. Storm Shadow is also awesome, and also lacking in the design department. I wasn't expecting him to show up again so soon, so it was a pleasant surprise to see him back, and joining with Cobra which means we'll probably be seeing a lot more of him.

I was thinking that Flint would finally sway to the side of the Joes, are that that Lady Jaye would end up joining them, but I'm fine with the status quo remaining unchanged. Although now that Flint is going to look into Cobra hopefully he'll be more useful. Speaking of looking into Cobra, they're terrible at this whole conspiricy thing, the Joes have managed to gather so much info on them while being on the run, so logically Flint should be able to do more since he has the backing of the American military. I doubt that he'll be all that useful though. At least he's go their families under protection so Cobra can't try to pull some stunt with them again.

[supergirl's pal]

Last callback I caught in this episode was that Duke's father's voice actor was Michael Bell, who was the voice of Duke (and a mess of other Joes) in the original series.

Duke always got captured by Cobra at the beginning of every week long GI Joe miniseries back in the 80s. So I find it funny that nearly 25 years later Michael Bell lends his voice to a character that finds himself captured by Cobra! Poor guy must be suffering from a severe case of deja vu...