Play It Again, Bow

Adora is playing hide and seek with the Twiggets when the bottle collector Frit cries for help, and She-Ra rescues him on the road; troopers have taken his animal, True Blue. At the rebel camp Bow sings the song Frit asks for, "Just We Two", and Madame Razz storms in to stop it, because she and Frit were once in love. Frit takes the Twiggets up a mountain to show them his life's work, a tall monument built of colored bottles, where Catra arrives to destroy it and takes Razz, Frit and the Twiggets prisoner. She-Ra, with Kowl, has freed True Blue and returns on Swift Wind, and Catra offers to spare the monument if she surrenders. She-Ra gives up her sword, Catra goes back on her word, and She-Ra stops Catra's troopers and saves the monument. Razz then casts a spell that finally works, turning the bottles to biridium crystal that the Horde cannot harm, and she and Frit start fresh while Bow plays their song again.

Loo-Kee: "Hi, it's Loo-Kee. Did you find me today? Well, take another look. I bet you see me now. That sure was some tower Frit built. The colored bottles represent people of many colors. They also represent the hope that we can become stronger and even more beautiful people if we live and work together with love for one another. I guess there is nothing more important than that."

Frit: "It's my life's work. My monument to freedom."

Broom: "Just listen to your heart."

She-Ra: "My friends always come first."

Madame Razz: "I finally got a spell to work right!"

What do you do with a love affair that ended years ago and a monument nobody has climbed up to in years? Play It Again, Bow sets the two side by side and lets one rescue the other. The first scene is a game of hide and seek in the woods. Adora finds Sprocker behind a bush and Spritina by her giggle and bright eyes, and Sprocker says, "Let's play it again." It is a throwaway line that names the episode's subject, a second try, and Frit's cry for help ends the game.

Frit collects bottles from the villages and tells the children stories about the time before the Horde conquered Etheria; Adora and Glimmer both speak well of him at the camp. At his request Bow sings "Just We Two", a song that brings back someone he knew long ago, and Madame Razz comes crashing in to order it stopped. The scene is built well, because Frit has already said the song was his and a lost love's before Razz crashes in. Razz and Frit recognise each other, trade a little sweet talk, and then argue over who walked out. She says, "The song ended when you went away." He says it was she who went.

The comic centre is Razz and her Broom trailing Frit at a distance. Broom is the sensible one, and tells her to stop listening to her knees and her head and "Just listen to your heart." When they reach the monument, a tower of colored bottles that Frit built on a mountain nobody else visits, Razz studies it and says, "To think he chose that over me." Broom says she is jealous of a monument, and Razz agrees. It is the most useful joke in the episode, because it gives the tower a rival and makes saving it a matter of her own feelings.

The spell scene is the standout. Tied up beside Frit while Catra's laser chips at the tower, Razz decides she will turn Catra into a rabbit and cannot remember the words, trying "rabbit jabbit" and a second version before giving up. She then improvises a rhyme about bottles and troopers, and this time the spell works. Catra's next move is a choice for She-Ra, her friends or the monument, and She-Ra answers that her friends always come first. She surrenders her sword, Catra says she never meant to keep her word, and She-Ra says she did not believe her.

The weak part is how little the quarrel costs. Razz spends a scene insisting it is over, and by the time she is tied up next to Frit she is saying she should have taken him with her when she joined the rebels while he explains that he stayed away because he did not feel worthy. Both reasons are good ones. They arrive as exposition in the middle of a hostage scene with nothing earlier to prepare them, so the reunion depends on the audience wanting it more than the script has earned it.

Razz's last spell makes the monument biridium crystal, the hardest and strongest material on Etheria, and she says she finally got a spell to work right. The title is spent in the last scene, when Bow is asked to play the song once more. Loo-Kee's closing gives the bottles their meaning for the second time, after Frit has already explained it on the mountain. The episode gives Madame Razz a history and a payoff on her own ground, and Broom's jealousy joke is the best of it.

1. Continuity: Bow again plays music for the Twiggets, as in Bow's Farewell two days earlier; here Sprocker, Spritina and Spragg are named among them.
2. Continuity: She-Ra's sword becomes a lariat on this occasion ("Sword to lariat!"), after the shield and staff of The Price of Freedom the day before.
3. Continuity: Madame Razz fumbles the words of a rabbit spell ("rabbit jabbit") before a rhyme works, and later says she "finally got a spell to work right".
4. Continuity: Spirit becomes Swift Wind in the middle of the rescue, when She-Ra says "As for you, Spirit..." and calls on the honor of Grayskull.