Buzz-Off's Pride

Flying to the village of Veridas to buy honey berries for his queen's Jubilee, Buzz-Off is knocked aside by Azdar, one of three giants holding a bridge, and retreats on Orko's advice. Ashamed, he tells nobody, and the giants destroy the bridge. When they attack Veridas, Buzz-Off chases Azdar to settle the score while the other giants steal the Crystal of Prasinus, the source of the village's giant crops. Rebuked by the Masters, Buzz-Off goes after the giants alone, ignores their taunts, recovers the Crystal and finally buys his queen her honey berries.

"Be kind, honest, helpful, and fair. Do that, and you'll be my hero."

Buzz-Off: "Going after fruit."

Buzz-Off: "That's Lord Buzz-Off to you. And I asked you a question."

Orko: "But he's big and scary, and, him is a them!"

Buzz-Off: "I wasn't beat up. I was sucker punched."

Buzz-Off: "My queen, it was no trouble at all."

A bruise heals in a day, but a bruise somebody saw can sting for a lot longer. Buzz-Off sets out on a very small errand, fetching honey berries from the village of Veridas for his queen's Jubilee. When Orko asks whether he is going after Skeletor, the answer is a deadpan "Going after fruit." The trip ends at a bridge, where a purple giant named Azdar is turning travellers away on a thin excuse about repairs. Buzz-Off demands an explanation, gets told to "buzz off," corrects him with "That's Lord Buzz-Off to you," and is promptly swatted into a forest clearing.

Orko, in the best line of the episode, points out that "him is a them!", and Buzz-Off flies home. What he does there is the real story. He tells Adam the berries were not ripe, and when Adam mentions that the Crystal of Prasinus keeps the fruit ripe all year, he snaps "You heard wrong." Then he swears Orko to silence: "I wasn't beat up. I was sucker punched."

The episode is about a soldier who would rather lose in private than be helped in public, and Christy Marx and Randall Littlejohn's script grows every later mistake out of that one. When a messenger reports that the Veridas bridge has collapsed, Buzz-Off nearly gives himself away, vowing to make "those creeps pay" before tacking on "...um, whoever they are," and once the Masters reach the village he brushes off a call for a plan with "This is the only plan their kind will understand." One giant taunting him to "come back to get squished" is all it takes to draw him out of the village. The other giants walk off with the Crystal while He-Man deals with a toppling tower, and the question that follows is blunt: "Buzz-Off could have prevented that. Where is he?"

The script is cleverer than its premise in one respect, because the giants are not dim brutes. One of them scolds another at the bridge that "we can't afford to draw attention to ourselves," and the bait at the village is a plan, which their gloating afterwards spells out: "A perfect theft." "And a perfect strategy." Pride is a weakness only if somebody knows how to pull on it, and these three do.

The standout scene is the last fight in the giants' hut. Buzz-Off flies in alone and says "I'm here for one thing," and the giants go straight back to the insults that worked before, "Insect! Bug!" and then "Coward." This time he does not bite, and the score he had to settle goes unanswered. A hero who changes his mind in a speech is easy to write. Showing it through what he declines to answer is harder, and it works.

The animation keeps the giants enormous and everything around them breakable. A stone bridge comes apart in a spray of debris, a giant pumpkin bursts in a village street, and He-Man hoists a whole green tower over his head. The giants themselves are drawn as a mismatched trio, a purple brute with a topknot, a red-skinned one with a gold earring and a green orc, so a young audience never loses track of who is swinging what.

The lecture is where the episode stumbles. Right after the theft, a Master tells Buzz-Off that "your opponent used your pride against you to draw you away," and we have just watched it happen. A children's show underlines its lessons on purpose, but the hut scene makes the point better without a word of explanation, and the speech blunts it in advance.

The ending lands on the right note. Offered a reward for returning the Crystal, Buzz-Off asks only to buy honeyberries, and back in the golden hive he presents them to his queen with "My queen, it was no trouble at all." It is a small lie, kinder than the one he told Adam. Buzz-Off finishes the episode the way he started it, on an errand for fruit, but he finishes it without anything left to hide.

1. Production: According to the He-Man wiki, the three giants were given names beginning with A, B and C (Azdar, Belzar and Chadaz) to help the artists and writers keep track of them while staging the fight choreography.
2. Homage: The He-Man wiki points out that the Crystal of Prasinus takes its name from the Latin for green, which suits a glowing green crystal that makes crops grow.
3. Voice cast: Buzz-Off is voiced by Brian Dobson, who is also the series' Skeletor.
4. Voice cast: Kathleen Barr doubles as the Andreenid queen and the village child who tells He-Man "You're my hero" in the closing scene, and she is Evil-Lyn elsewhere in the series.
5. Continuity: The giants are not finished. The He-Man wiki records Azdar and his partners joining Skeletor's Council of Evil in The Council of Evil two-parter and The Last Stand.
6. Continuity: Buzz-Off's pride has a history. In Skywar he turns down an alliance with the Masters ("We see no need for alliances"), and in The Siren's Song Ram-Man suspects him, ending with "I-I'm sorry for not trusting you, Buzz."
7. Production: Co-writer Christy Marx is best known for her work on Jem, and Wikipedia's list of her television credits includes this series.
8. Fan observation: The red giant's name is spelled three ways across fan references: Chadaz and Chadez on the He-Man wiki, Chadzar on Frank's He-Man page.