Modulok and Horde troopers use a vacuum machine to strip a village of the grain it grows for the Rebels. A farm girl named Leena, told by her mother that they are too weak to fight, decides to find She-Ra, and the woman she asks for directions is Adora, whom she dismisses as just a regular woman. Modulok's troopers take Leena's parents as suspected spies while she searches, and Leena herself ends up on a failing rope bridge until She-Ra rescues her. Leena follows She-Ra and Bow, Modulok's converter turns She-Ra's power against her, and Leena runs at him before Adora steps in as a plain woman who says she can turn his power back on him. Leena's mother wrestles Modulok down, the prisoners go free, and She-Ra tells Leena she already has the powers of love and faith and good.
Loo-Kee: "Hello, everybody. I'm Loo-Kee. Did you try to find me in today's show? If not, try now. Find me yet? I'm right here. I don't know about you, but I'm always amazed at She-Ra's physical strength. But she also has other powers, like love and kindness and fairness. Did you ever think of those as being powers? Well, they are. They work for She-Ra, and they can work for you."
Leena: "You're just a regular woman."
Leena: "You leave my friend alone, you big bully."
She-Ra: "The powers of love and faith and good."
She-Ra: "Or better still, just like you."
Who counts as a hero? Just Like Me poses it in its first three minutes, at a farm where Modulok and a crew of Horde troopers are sucking the grain out of the barns with a vacuum arm. Leena, a farm girl, asks why they do not fight the way She-Ra would, and her mother says they are not strong enough and that growing food for the Rebels is how they fight. Leena tells her she is just afraid. The rest of the episode is built to show her that she is wrong about the people she writes off, her mother and Adora, and then to show her what she has right about herself.
The script gives Leena a mirror in Bow. When Adora says even She-Ra would use caution against Modulok, Bow answers that She-Ra would not be afraid of him and neither is he, and the two of them ride on into the village. Adora, who is the one actually doing the sensible thing, gets lumped in with the timid. Soon after, Leena asks the way to Whispering Wood, says she needs She-Ra because She-Ra is "strong and brave and not afraid of the Horde," and tells the woman offering to help that she is just a regular woman. Adora is standing in front of her in the grass, and the audience has known since the opening narration who she is.
The rope bridge is where the episode turns the idea into a stunt. Leena crosses it repeating "She-Ra wouldn't be scared" until it begins to break and she is hanging from the planks, and Bow shoots a line across with his diamond arrow and She-Ra walks the rope to reach her. Leena says she is afraid to let go, and She-Ra gives her the line the whole episode leans on: "Now you must trust me." Wanting a hero and being willing to be carried by one are different things, and the scene says so without a speech.
The best scene is the one where Leena does the brave thing while afraid. Modulok has just turned his force converter on She-Ra, who lies on the ground by her sword, and Leena runs at his legs and tells him to leave her friend alone. When Modulok turns on her she says she is not afraid, twice, takes a breath, and says "I'm afraid." It answers the first scene at the farm, where she wrote her mother off for the same fear. Nothing else in the episode is as brave. Her mother is the other payoff, since the farm woman who would not fight in the opening is the one who wrestles Modulok to the ground at the end.
The weakness is the converter. Modulok says he has disposed of She-Ra, and Adora, a plain woman with a girl at her side, tells him that she can turn his power against him as he turned She-Ra's against her. A few lines later the metal breaks, someone is groaning, and a line announces it is time to turn back to She-Ra. The reversal gets one sentence of explanation and a few seconds of sound effects, and nobody shows how the mother's tackle and Adora's trick fit together. After twenty minutes of building to a test of nerve, the machinery of the climax is the least clear part.
Verdict: a gentle lesson episode with a sharp first scene, a good stunt and an honest answer to its title, wrapped around a grain-theft plot that is mostly there to give everyone something to be brave about. Leena never learns, so far as the episode shows, that Adora is She-Ra, and the episode is better for not needing her to.
- Continuity: She-Ra says Whispering Woods will not let anyone evil get by, and its trees are heard closing in; the same woods is the setting of The Peril of Whispering Woods.
- Continuity: Bow's horse is named Arrow; the animal Leena rides, Pinky, is a stag in the frames.
- Continuity: Horde Mek Bats fly in after She-Ra rescues Leena, and Modulok's force converter is the weapon he turns on She-Ra.
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