Carol Baxter

Lou Kachivas

Young juggler Drew, jealous of all the attention his brother is getting from his dad, wanders off into the forest and becomes entangled in a plot by the evil King Darkspur to forcefully marry Glimmer. There's only one way to rescue Glimmer and show Drew that his father loves him - the circus! Oh, and Adam and Adora are involved, too.

Prince Adam (He-Man, Mada), Princess Adora (She-Ra), Queen Angella, Glimmer

N/A

King Darkspur, various villagers, Drew, circus workers, Caleb, Marsh, Hinderlands guards, horses, Sprocker the Twigget, circus animals (snakadillo, cheeraffe, pandear), Olga the elephant

circus wagons

What does it take to get Prince Adam to travel from his home world on Eternia to wartorn Etheria? Well, seeing his twin sister, probably; but it always helps when the circus is in town! That's a big reason why we find the Eternian royal heir standing with Adora in Queen Angella's throne room at Castle Bright Moon today: the Etherian circus is setting up just nearby. Queen Angella is happy to host the hunky prince, but her dewy-eyed daughter Glimmer is even happier. (That Adam is so dreamy!) The quartet's chatting is interrupted by the announcement of an unexpected guest: King Darkspur of the Hinderlands. As soon as Glimmer hears the name, she abruptly disappears. It seems the rude and gargantuan Darkspur wants Glimmer's hand in marriage, and is irritated by the girl's repeated refusals. When Angella explains to the royal visitor that her daughter's answer to his proposal remains unchanged, the rebuffed king stalks off in a dudgeon.

This unpleasant duty dispensed with, Glimmer reappears and she and the twins decide to take a stroll over to the circus grounds to watch the setup. Princess Adora is also looking forward to checking in with young Drew, an acquaintance of hers who is a juggler with the circus. We cut to Drew, currently in the midst of showing off his juggling skills for a few Etherian villagers. After wrapping up the demonstration, the boy walks over to one of the larger tents, where his father Caleb is helping Drew's brother Marsh perfect his highwire act. Drew is anxious to tell his dad about how his latest performance went, and demonstrate a new trick; but the highwire practice require's Caleb's full attention - particularly since Marsh is practicing without a net under him, for some reason - and the father has no time for his other son. Dejected, Drew trudges away, and this is the mood Adora finds him in when the two meet. When the kind princess asks the kid why he's looking so down, he explains his jealousy of his brother and his inference that Caleb loves Marsh more than himself. Adora assures him this can't be the case, but Drew remains unconvinced and sad, and wanders away to be alone in the forest.

In the woods, Drew comes across a rickety old rope bridge strung across a deep chasm and decides this is the perfect way to earn his father's love: surely, if he tells old Dad that he braved the dangerous span, it will be just as impressive as Marsh's highwire skills. Setting his foolhardy plan into motion right away, Drew starts across the bridge, each wooden slat cracking under his feet as he goes. Halfway across (the perfect spot), the ropes give way and the whole thing collapses. Drew finds himself hanging by his fingertips from a slat dangling on the far side of the gorge. Now would be a great time to get some help! Luckily for him, Adora has shared her concerns over the boy's emotional state with brother Adam, and these very non-dysfunctional siblings have followed Drew into the woods and are within earshot of his cries for help. Adora's rescue plan involves Adam flinging her across the entire width of the chasm, where she's able to grab Drew's hand and have him hold onto her. Meanwhile, Adam finds a vine on the other side and swings his way across, pausing just long enough to grab Adora and the clinging Drew before swinging back again.

Safe and sound! But for some reason Drew is uninterested in hearing Adam and Adora's lecture on parental love, after he's explained his reasons for getting himself into such a dangerous predicament. Claiming he needs to practice some juggling, Drew again wanders off into the woods. The weirdest thing about Drew's claim is, he's actually telling the truth: the boy does in fact go to a private glade to begin working on his juggling. But he's interrupted by a kidnapping. That's right; Drew overhears and then witnesses the soldiers of King Darkspur grabbing Glimmer for the purposes of a forced elopement. When the boy attempts to intervene, he's kidnapped as well. In the struggle with her captors, Glimmer tears free an emblem on the head guard's shoulder. Sprocker the Twigget - another person who happened to be nearby as this kidnapping was taking place, so Darkspur's guards didn't exactly do a great job of choosing their moment - picks up the dropped emblem and brings it back to Castle Bright Moon.

A concerned Queen Angella hears Sprocker's story and recognizes the emblem as belonging to Darkspur. She realizes where her daughter and Drew must have been taken. Adora and Adam, also present to hear this appalling news, volunteer to head to the evil king's castle in the Hinderlands and rescue the captives. Caleb, also attendant in the throne room along with his other son, insists on coming too. After all, just like Adora and Adam were trying to tell Drew, Caleb loves both of his sons exactly the same amount and will do anything to get the missing one back. (Besides, that juggling show sells tickets!) Adora conceives of a wonderful ploy they can all use to wheedle their way past Darkspur's front door: why not bring the circus to the Hinderlands? They'll have the perfect cover to get in the castle and find the prisoners, and Adam will be able to fulfill his lifelong dream (apparently) of putting on an elephant act.

They put this plan into action and before long the train of circus vehicles pulls up to Darkspur's gate and is allowed within. While Adam prepares his act and the other circus employees presumably set up other entertainments, Adora wanders off to try to find Drew. (Really, as us viewers will have guessed, she's going to turn into She-Ra first.) Caleb is meant to stay safe and do his usual circus-related duties, leaving the heroing to the heroes; but he can't be expected to stand by while his son is a prisoner! The father therefore sneaks down to the dungeons ahead of She-Ra and, predictably, gets caught. He wakes up a sleeping guard while trying to steal the key to Drew's cell, and winds up locked in the same room as his son, the pair forced to put on a two-man juggling act.

The prison guards are just loving the show Drew and Caleb are putting on, and considering keeping the prisoners there as full-time unpaid entertainment; but the juggling is interrupted by a rumbling. It's She-Ra, who has taken a shortcut to the basement by drilling through the ground floor. Her entrance bowls the guards over, leaving her free to bend open the cell bars, releasing father and son. Caleb fends off a guard by forcing him to juggle the same bowls Caleb and his son were just tossing around, and the trio make an escape through She-Ra's tunnel. They rush into the open air, with She-Ra using some circus props to fight off more guards, all three hoping that Adam's part of the plan is going well.

It is! The prince, introduced to the watching Darkspur and compelled consort Glimmer as "Mada," puts on a great show with Olga the elephant. The pachyderm can do a handstand, kneel, and she can walk right up to the audience platform and snatch Glimmer in her trunk. As the elephant traipses off with Darkspur's fiance, the king begins to suspect some potential foul play and calls for his guards; but Adam has Olga pull down the tent's center pole, causing the whole thing to collapse. While Darkspur and his men are still struggling under the heavy cloth of the fallen tent, Adam and Glimmer have already slipped out, and the prince sends his pink-haired rescuee off to safety. He can then lift his sword in privacy and say those magic words. Just as He-Man is wrapping up the guards and their king in the tent, She-Ra arrives to lend a hand, so the superpowered twins join forces to tie up all the bad guys in a neat canvas package.

Afterwards, our heroes and circus folk gather again on the circus grounds near Bright Moon. We confirm that Drew is now fully convinced of his father's unwavering love (though we hear no opinions from brother Marsh, who only got one line of dialogue in this episode when he introduced Mada), and is very grateful to Adora and her brother. But where is Adam? The beefy blonde shows up riding on Olga's back, and asks if he can bring his elephant sidekick back with him to Eternia. Ha ha! You know, I almost wish he would so we could see the look on Duncan's face.

• Drew: Some people love you more when you can do something that's dangerous. ... / Princess Adora: Oh Drew. I'm sure your father doesn't want you to do something dangerous.
• Prince Adam: Drew, parents love their children not for what they do, but for what they are.
• Prince Adam: Adam of the elephants - hey, I think I like it!
• She-Ra: Need a little help, Brother? / He-Man: From you? Always, Sis.
• Princess Adora (giving us the episode moral on a silver platter): No matter how many children parents have, they always have more than enough love for all of them.

N/A

One partial (missing Spirit/Swift Wind sequence)
Variation - She-Ra just can't let her transformation end without making the slightest twitch of her sword toward her absent horse. We also get a partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat) He-Man transformation late in the episode.

10:11 - We find Loo-Kee in a common spot, and a very similar pose to the one he used in the recent 67079 - looking down from a tree branch in the top center of the screen, during an establishing shot of the Whispering Woods.
Did I spot him? YES!

Loo-Kee accurately points out that Drew's dad turned out to love the kid more than Drew thought he did. Less accurately - and just as Adora claimed a few seconds earlier - Loo-Kee extends this out to all parents and children, claiming everyone's fathers love them just as much as Caleb did Drew. Loo-Kee, let me tell you the tale of King Denethor and his two sons, Faramir and Boromir...

MOTU crossover
Wayward child learns a valuable lesson
Hordak-less episodes in Season 2: Not only Hordak-less, but Horde-less!
You might also consider this a "Love is in the air" episode, but on consideration I decided it didn't count. I've tried to limit that category's use only to stories that address romantic love, and this one is more about the love of a father for his child. I don't think anyone could reasonably argue that King Darkspur "loves" Glimmer, so that's also a non-starter.

• This will be Carol Baxter's fourth and final POP script. I've noted before in her episodes the repeated theme of troubled teacher/pupil or parent/child relations, and three of her four episodes have fallen into the "Wayward child" plot trope; so she definitely has a favorite subject!
• I found myself forced almost against my will to tag the previous episode (67080) as a MOTU crossover, since it featured a one-second shot of a few He-Man characters back on Eternia; but today's I can tag without qualms, since we find that Prince Adam has come visiting.
• The royal lug is here to visit the circus, which (according to Adora) is one of his favorite things. I guess even the events of the embarrassing MU100's "The Greatest Show on Eternia" didn't sour his love of the big top.
• Glimmer shows her great fickleness today when she starts right in mooning over the Eternian heir. We caught her appreciating Adam when he first appeared in Etheria, back in 67001; but she's since had several other romantic flings (see 67041 and the much more recent and seemingly more meaningful 67079), one of which you'd thought would have stuck.
• We'll also recall that Adam himself has had a few blushing moments before this with various other female characters, such as (of course) Teela and even Castaspella (see 67027). And never forget that romantic moment when He-Man rode on Stratos's back (MU065)! Or that tender ride on Arrow's back that he shared with Bow (67001)!
• Another rival for Glimmer's affections appears in the considerable form of King Darkspur of the Hinderlands (yes, that's Hinderlands, not Hinterlands), who looks like the much cooler villain Kothos (MU059, MU102), except that he's been stuffed into the most stereotypical medieval king outfit imaginable, and given a Salvador Dali-level mustache.
• Today's episode will be exploring an interesting aspect of familial interrelations that neither MOTU nor POP has ever plumbed before: sibling rivalry and jealousy. Juggler Drew is very jealous of all the time and attention his father is giving Marsh, his brother who's training as a highwire walker.
• Etheria should probably consider putting some more money into their transportation infrastructure - specifically bridges. The fragile rope bridge Drew cleverly tries to walk across is just as treacherous as the one Lena tried to cross in 67050's "Just Like Me." In fact, some of the background paintings of this one show it's exactly the same bridge.
• It seemed, based on the events of the recent 67078, that our POP writers had entirely forgotten the existence of the Twiggets, the Whispering Woods' purplish forest folk; but Carol Baxter hasn't! Today's story features Sprocker the Twigget, back again for the first time since 67065.
• Weird note about Sprocker: this episode marks the moment, after watching both Sprag and Sprocker off and on for over 80 episodes, where I finally realized both of those Twigget characters are supposed to be male. I was absolutely unquestioningly certain they were both female, until Wiki Grayskull and Wikipedia informed me otherwise. Go fig. Somehow Sprocker also seems more male than usual today, with his voice sounding very much like Orko's.
• Today marks another step in the inconsistent evolution of the elephant in the shared MOTU/POP universe. In the previous circus episode, MU100, Eternia's circus featured Myrtle the myrtlephant, a three-trunked species of pachyderm. In MU129, which featured a wildlife sanctuary, there were elodons - a single-trunked, mammoth-like creature with very curly tusks. But admittedly all of that was on Eternia. The existence of the hero Snout Spout could suggest the existence of some more standard elephant creature on Etheria - which we have to conclude to be the case given the evidence in today's story.
• Ironically, the very next scene after Adora brings up elephants shows the Etherian circus train pulling up to the Hinderlands, carrying a bunch of circus animals that are clearly not quite from Earth. I've named them in the character list based on the Terran animal combinations that I think went into their designs. This brief glimpse will be the only time we see them, since the only part of the circus performance we actually witness is the elephant act.
• After nine consecutive appearances, Hordak takes today's episode off. In fact, this is an entirely Horde-less episode - quite a rarity in the series. 67064, 67065, and 67068 are the only other episodes in which this has happened. Also absent today (in order of importance) are Adora's horse and Bow.
• Darkspur's cool-looking guards are identical in character design to those employed by the evil Mortella in 67019's "The Enchanted Castle." It's very likely that the interior paintings of Darkspur's castle share a lot of details with Mortella's dwelling (which, we'll recall, eventually turned into the much cleaner Mystacor).
• To make a shortcut to the dungeons, She-Ra drills her way through the ground - a method we've seen her use several times, notably in 67036's "The Unicorn King" and 67039's "Into the Dark Dimension."
• Ending credits variation: The streak of the alternate background painting continues.

• I was a little surprised at Glimmer's mom's reaction to Glimmer's very obvious attraction to Prince Adam. Angella merely giggles, and passes off the moment by saying that they are "all fans" of Adam. Shouldn't she be concerned about where a potential relationship like this could lead? Sure, Adam is the prince of a big, potentially planet-wide kingdom back on Eternia, and would make for a power match; but just like Angella's own kingdom, Adam's is torn with strife and constantly having to fight back coup attempts by the rebel Skeletor. Also, the two kingdoms are not exactly neighbors: in which dimension will Glimmer choose to live if she weds the prince? Will Etheria lose a former rebel leader to matrimony? Plus there's the very important question of just which way the pink-vested beefcake swings; can Angella expect any grandkids from this match, or will Adam always be too busy hanging out with prettily dressed male courtiers?
• To continue the theme of questioning parents' judgments: I take issue with a couple of choices of today's main father figure, Caleb. Not only does he have a seriously questionable haircut, in his first scene we find him making his very young son Marsh practice a highwire act with no net underneath him. Shouldn't you first make sure somebody's able to do the act before you take the net away!?!
• The "Hinderlands" - a comically named realm that predicts the hindrances its ruler will be imposing on our characters today - is actually really cool looking. The background paintings show a macabre wood and a very impressive castle. Maybe Glimmer should rethink her stance on this union!
• Darkspur's head guard immediately starts shivering with fear as soon as the king orders him to capture Glimmer. This seemed like an odd reaction to me, which I have to think is caused by the potential response to said capture from Glimmer's mother or the Great Rebellion, and not any threat directly posed by the pink-haired and petite young princess. (Indeed, in the event, Glimmer proves a very easy subject for a kidnapping.)
• Adora and Adam choose a very strange and seemingly problematic solution for saving the dangling Drew. "Remember the gymnastics we used to do?" Adora asks Adam. Adam claims that he does; but it's hard to imagine how. When have the twins had time to take gymnastics lessons together? They just met at the beginning of the last season! And - I'm usually the last person to suggest that our superpowered siblings resort unnecessarily to their crutch-like alter egos - but - isn't now a good time for that?
• The other thing weird about the Drew rescue scene is that it requires our belief that the non-superpowered Adam has the ability to fling his sister bodily all the way across the gorge. Have you been working out, bro?
• The physical details of Glimmer's kidnapping are mostly hidden in a commercial break - which perhaps was the writers hoping that we wouldn't notice how the Bright Moon princess fails to use her light powers to try to stop the soldiers. She just looks helpless and gets grabbed. Boo.
• Animation error: It's another case today of the freshly transformed She-Ra just beginning to move her sword toward her horse, who's not there.
• Continuity error: Or an amusing oversight in Darkspur's dungeon. When Drew's dad accidentally wakes up the snoozing dungeon guard and the guard decides to throw Caleb in the same cell as his son, the guard just... opens the cell door. Even though he's holding the cell keys, he doesn't have to use one to unlock the door, indicating that it was unlocked this whole time, and Drew could have just walked out. Now you've got a whole other reason for your dad to be disappointed in you, kid...
• Today's story features two different plots: the abduction of Glimmer by the corpulent and rude King Darkspur, and Drew's problem with jealousy and his father's attention. The Glimmer plotline seems largely a device to get Drew captured, giving Caleb a chance to prove his love for the boy; but it has the unfortunate additional effect of taking screen time away from what could have been a more developed family relationship between Drew and his brother. Marsh ends up as a sort of non-character: he has barely any lines and zero interactions with his sibling. It might have been interesting to see the two kids bouncing off one another, with Drew perhaps showing his jealousy.
• Another completely missed opportunity is the failure to develop a parallel plot with our other pair of siblings: Adora and Adam. Wouldn't it have been interesting to go in-depth on the relationship between this brother and sister, and perhaps address some jealousies they might have for each other? This would have helped Adam and Adora empathize better with Drew, it would have given us a storyline neatly dovetailing with the main one, and it would have given some more depth to our main characters' familial relationship.
• Continuity error: Adam tells Glimmer to run off and hide while he takes care of the problem of Darkspur and his men. Even if we ignore the infuriating sidelining of the former leader of the Great Rebellion, there's another problem with this scene: in the wide shot showing Adam just before he raises his sword to transform, we see Glimmer still standing right next to him - which is an issue for both continuity and the safety of Adam's secret identity!
• Though as noted earlier I felt this episode could have mined some more mature and emotional familial issues, it was still a rollicking story which managed to overcome its heavy focus on morals to give us an enjoyable adventure.