Skeletor has a brain wave detector and sends Flogg's Mutants against Primus as a diversion so that he can record He-Man's signature. The reading works, and when Adam, Mara, Sebrian and the scientists leave Primus on the Starship Eternia to watch an eclipse, Skeletor tracks the signal and the Mutants force the ship down on Denebria. He is certain that He-Man is aboard and presses the passengers to reveal him, while Adam argues that he cannot become He-Man without exposing the secret. When he finally does, the scientists' growth pills, thrown at the house plants, overrun the villains. Mara asks afterwards where He-Man went, and a lesson about graffiti rounds things off.
Get together with friends to keep your community free of graffiti, because vandalism hurts everyone.
Is a secret still a secret when the villain is certain of it and everyone around the hero swears he is wrong? "Adam's Adventure" is built on that joke. Skeletor unveils a brain wave detector, which he says can pick up and analyse a person's vibrations from miles away, and tells Flogg bluntly that the Mutants will attack Primus as a diversion, only to draw He-Man out so that he can take a reading. The great thing about the setup is how little it takes: a gadget, a decoy attack, and a villain whose hunch turns out to be right.
On Primus the diversion meets a scientific misfire. Two scientists are pitching a growth accelerator pill that will make crops bigger and fruit juicier, a demonstration so earnest that you can feel it being planted for later, and when He-Man's astrocell ends up at the top of an overgrown plant just as the Mutant attack is called in, the two plot lines collide. The attack itself is a rout, with Skeletor turning and running, but he is delighted all the same, because the brain waves are now recorded and he can track those massive muscles anywhere.
What follows is a small master class in a hero who cannot do his job. Everyone aboard the Eternia is going to see an eclipse, and Skeletor, watching a dot on his screen leave the shield, sends the Mutants after it, and the ship is ordered down to Denebria. Adam's dilemma is spoken aloud: he cannot become He-Man now, because everyone knows He-Man was not aboard when they left Primus, and the others agree that the secret must be kept. Skeletor, for his part, trusts the evidence, insisting that brain waves do not lie and that the hero is hiding among them.
Stripped down, the story is about how a hero keeps a secret by letting his friends believe the unbelievable, and how funny it is when they do. The scientists answer Skeletor's accusation with splendid indignation, and in the last scene the scientists conclude that it is scientifically impossible that He-Man is one of them, and add that Gepple should know. Mara's last scene is the sweetest of the lot: she wonders whether He-Man has left already, Adam thanks her for being worried about him, and the secret survives by a whisker.
The payoff is a satisfying use of the early gag. Adam has no way out and decides he must become He-Man to save his friends, and a call to throw the growth pills at the plants sets vines and overgrown house plants against the villains. Someone remarks on Skeletor's green thumb, a villain announces an allergy to flowers, and He-Man tells the scientists, when they ask how he found them, that he knew something was wrong when they did not return from the eclipse.
The weakness is the detector. Skeletor insists that his device proves his case, but when he sends Slush Head to fetch it, it arrives in pieces, and a gadget billed as the destruction of He-Man does not settle anything. The likely reason is the slot, where the episode needs Skeletor to be thwarted by the first idea it planted, the pills, rather than by an investigation.
Verdict: a cheerful, tightly plotted comedy of errors that trusts its audience to enjoy the dramatic irony. It sits well among the lighter episodes of the run, and it ends on its spine: the best protection for a secret is a friend who cannot imagine it.
- Voice cast: Doug Parker voices both Adam of Grayskull and Meldoc, and Garry Chalk voices He-Man, according to the He-Man wiki cast list.
- Voice cast: Campbell Lane voices both Skeletor and Sagitar, and Alvin Sanders voices Flogg and Tuskador, per the wiki.
- Voice cast: Don Brown voices Hydron, Gepple and Optikk, and Scott McNeil voices Flipshot and Krex, according to the wiki cast list.
- Continuity: The He-Man wiki says Master Sebrian covers for Adam's absence by imitating his voice, and helps hide the change back from Mara.
- Behind the scenes: In the closing safety segment Drissi and Adam clean graffiti off a children's miniature castle, with the lesson that vandalism hurts everyone, per the He-Man wiki.
DISCUSSION
Join the conversation.
Comments below are mirrored on the heman.org forum. Sign in once, post anywhere.