Robby London

Ernie Schmidt

Adam does a terrible job watching his jerky cousin Jeremy, who is inveigled by Evil-Lyn into stealing a tool that can help her and Tri-Klops break into Grayskull! Hopefully He-Man can stop the plot and Jeremy can learn an important lesson about not being a jerk.

Man-at-Arms, Prince Adam (He-Man), Teela, King Randor, Orko, Ram Man, Sorceress

Skeletor, Tri-Klops, Evil-Lyn (and her old woman disguise)

Jeremy, various Eternians at the market, critters on a branch (outside the royal stables), Skeletor's robot minions

robot horses, Attak Trak, sky sled, Basher, Battle Ram, boxy air ship (in which Jeremy leaves)

Skeletor is angry that his minions, Evil-Lyn and Tri-Klops, have once again managed to fail in carrying out one of his evil schemes. They were supposed to be planting a globe under the royal palace, but He-Man caught them. Skeletor sends them back out to try again.

Meanwhile, at the palace, Teela gloatingly tells Adam that his father wants to see him; turns out Adam's young cousin Jeremy is visiting, and Randor needs the prince to watch him. Jeremy immediately proves himself to be a spoiled and annoying brat, insulting everyone he meets, messing with Duncan's new rock softener device, and wrecking stuff in the lab. Jeremy has successfully proven that he needs careful watching; so naturally Adam ditches him and leaves him in the (in)capable hands of Ram Man. While Adam and Duncan are testing the rock softener out in the field, Jeremy blackmails Ram Man into potential brain damage, then hops on a sky sled (something Adam expressly told him not to do) and ends up with Ram Man hanging off the back. Evil-Lyn and Tri-Klops return in the Basher in time to watch all of this play out (though they miss Adam turning into He-Man to save the boy). Lyn decides she will have it made in the shade if she can forget about the whole globe plan and grab the rock softener, which will give her and Tri-Klops easy access to Grayskull (and cut Bonehead out of the picture!).

Back at the palace, Adam tries to talk some sense into Jeremy and warn him that his heedless actions could get other people hurt. Ignoring this prophetic warning, Jeremy escapes from his room and goes to the market, where he nags a shopkeeper into letting him try a magneto-boomerang. A mysterious and friendly old lady lends him a coin to buy the boomerang, then asks a favor of Jeremy: could he play a prank on her old friend Man-at-Arms? She just wants his rock softener gadget . . . to no one's surprise except Jeremy's, this is Evil-Lyn.

When the heroes find the rock softener is missing, they jump to the correct conclusion, and Jeremy 'fesses up to his misdeed. He-Man and Duncan race off to Grayskull, unaware that a guilty, chastened Jeremy is following them on a robot horse. At the castle, the bad guys learn from a robot minion that the globe from the beginning of the episode is being kept inside, so they remotely activate it. While it grows and grows, messing with the Sorceress's feng shui, Lyn uses the rock softener to break down the Jawbridge. The heroes arrive, but through a mishap He-Man ends up falling in the beam of the rock softener! Duncan, trapped by a vine spell of Lyn's, is equally incapacitated. Most conveniently Jeremy shows up and has just the thing to snatch the device back from the bad guys: his magneto-boomerang. Duncan uses his gadget to reverse the effects of the beam on He-Man, who easily just picks up the bad guys and carries them off so that Duncan can stick them in his porta-prison.

But wait! The Sorceress's floaty head lets He-Man know there is one more teensy problem to take care of: the ginormous globe. "No magic can stop it," says Sorceress, "only your strength can." So He-Man pushes like a lady in labor, and somehow manages to shrink the ball. With a little anti-gravity lift from the Sorceress, he gets to the window and punts the thing off into space, where we can only hope it won't start growing again, because what would stop it?

End with a Joke: Orko throws the magneto-boomerang to a departing Jeremy; rather than getting to its intended target, it flies back into a window of the palace, producing sounds of great distress from inside. Then somehow it comes back out again and chases Orko, which amuses everyone but Orko.

• Adam: Jeremy, this is Man-at-Arms. / Jeremy: Don't you have a real name?
• Adam (to Jeremy): I know He-Man a lot better than you think.
• Randor (to Jeremy): Have you enjoyed your stay? / Jeremy (unenthused): Eh, it's been all right.
• He-Man (having recovered from the rock softener): No more Mister Soft Guy.
• Jeremy (contrite): Before I left, I wanted you all to know how sorry I am for what I did.

• Evil-Lyn, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: At her own evil plot
• Adam smiles close-up, looking at the viewer: A couple of times, when delivering dialogue

Two partial (missing Battle Cat transformation)

Brought to you by Orko and He-Man
What good does it do to be noticed if people don't like what they see? Orko and He-Man explain why you shouldn't try attention-getting stunts like Jeremy. Be helpful instead: like Orko, who helpfully leaves.

Appearance of cousins of Adam
Wayward child learns a valuable lesson: This episode is the first in this He-Man trope. You could include MU010 in this list, though the lesson there was learned by Ileena, who wasn't really a child.
Evil-Lyn power punches the glass ceiling: The wicked plan to use the rock softener on Grayskull's Jawbridge is 100% pure Evil-Lyn!

• When Duncan and Adam are discussing He-Man's off-screen heroics, Duncan tells him, "Good lad!" "Don't tell me," Adam replies, "tell He-Man!" So again we're getting a suggestion that He-Man and Adam are different people - though perhaps Adam is just trying to be cool and not reveal his secret identity even in private.
• Cringer must have been taking one of his extra-long naps during Jeremy's visit, as he does not appear.
• Things that go into/come out of Orko: to shake hands with Jeremy, Orko pops a third arm out of the top of his head. He does the same thing at the end of the episode to throw the boomerang.
• Duncan's new rock softener device looks a lot like the transmutator from MU010, except that its all-purpose button or dial is on the side instead of on top.
• A second appearance of the robotic horses first seen in MU010.
• Evil-Lyn is again shown to be plotting against Skeletor: "I'm tired of taking orders from him," she gripes to Tri-Klops. She wants to use the rock softener for her own advantage.
• Tri-Klops uses his "Dista-Vision" to make out Jeremy and his unwilling passenger, and later uses his "Gammavision" (his triangle eye) to see through some rocks. Cool names!
• He-Man runs full tilt in this episode to save Jeremy and Ram Man, an animation which always reminds me of his dramatic race against the Spellstone in MU007.
• "Just a few more quantums," says Duncan as he's adjusting the rock softener... seems to be some kind of Eternian unit of measure.
• Evil-Lyn disguises herself as exactly the same old lady she disguised herself as in MU007, and which we also saw employed by Jarvan the Sorcerer in MU010.
• In this episode the robot minions show that they can talk! It's thanks to one of them that Lyn and Tri-Klops realize the globe is in Grayskull.
• This episode sees the return of Duncan's "porta-prison," last seen back in MU003 when it enclosed Beast Man.

• Adam tries to get out of watching Jeremy by claiming that his "royal duties" are going to keep him busy - a completely laughable excuse. I defy anyone to mention one time that Adam has performed a royal duty, unless it was on the royal chamber pot.
• So far Adam is 0 for 2 on cousins; Edwina in MU018 revealed herself to be so self-centered that she earned a banishment from the palace, and Jeremy is frankly a little asshole (though I am willing to grudgingly admit that he seems to have learned his lesson by the end of the episode). We will have to wait all the way until MU089's "Just a Little Lie" to meet a cousin of Adam who is halfway decent.
• Ram Man: surely the worst possible choice as a babysitter. Like, literally anyone else would have been better.
• Duncan is totally done with Jeremy five seconds after meeting him. Who wouldn't be?
• It's very handy that there's only one bunch of bad guys on Eternia: as soon as Jeremy mentions "a woman" doing something bad, you know it's Evil-Lyn!
• At one point Duncan and He-Man are both riding on the Battle Ram, with He-Man seated directly behind Duncan. Looks very.... cozy. (See MU024, where the animators wisely decided not to stick Teela right behind Ram Man on the vehicle.)
• Given that Man-at-Arms's device is specifically named a "rock softener," it seems a bit off to point it at the (ostensibly) wooden Jawbridge. Its beam is directed at several non-rock materials throughout the episode, which makes me think Duncan should really tweak it a bit so it's more rock-specific and is maybe less attractive to the military-industrial complex.
• In the scene where the boomerang snatches away the rock softener, Tri-Klops's head is drawn very strangely - like he's wearing a bucket.
• It's lucky that nothing more catastrophic - or gross - happened to He-Man when he got zapped with the rock softener! I'd hate to see him turn into a pile of flesh goop, or man-soil!
• Interesting that not only does Lyn want to grab power over Skeletor's head in this episode, but she also comes close to carrying out her scheme. It would be very interesting to see what Skeletor's eventual reaction to her attempt would have been; unfortunately we never see Skeletor after his opening scene, and since Lyn gets locked in a porta-prison at the end, we don't get to see her tail-between-the-legs return to Snake Mountain, either.
• He-Man's ability to somehow forcefully shrink the giant globe provoked unpleasant memories of his doing the opposite thing when he counteracted the shrinking of the palace at the end of MU010.
• In the ending joke scene, there is clearly the sound of a woman laughing, implying that Teela is present; but she does not appear in the animation.
• I wonder if Pearl Jam was thinking of this Jeremy when they wrote their hit song, "Jeremy"? ...Mmmm, probably not.