Harvey Brenner

Ed Friedman

The friendly Widgets take charge of the recuperation of curmudgeonly hermit Jacob, after the old man's fishing boat is destroyed by Mer-Man's robotic fish. But Mer-Man follows the Widgets back to their fort, to try to steal some of their precious coridite!

Teela, Man-at-Arms, Prince Adam (He-Man), The Widgets (Kando, Squinch, Biro, Lara), Cringer (Battle Cat)

Mer-Man, Trap Jaw

Jacob, mechanical sea monsters

Wind Raider, Mer-Man's manta-ray submarine, fishing boat

Ground control to Captain Teela! The guard captain is acting as test pilot for an experimental new Wind Raider, while her father and Prince Adam watch from the ground. The new rocket booster added to the ship was built with the ore coridite, which comes from the mine of the Widgets, so our heroes have invited Widgets Kando and Squinch to watch the test flight. It goes really well, apart from the fact that a stubborn Teela, riding the high of being propelled through the air by the incredibly powerful booster, takes a lot of scolding from her dad before she'll consent to turn the thrusters off and come down. That Wind Raider really wants to go! (We'll want to remember this moment, not because it's a lesson on obeying your elders and flight safety, but because of the new thrusters - they'll be important later!)

Afterwards, Duncan invites Adam back to the workshop for further tinkering, but the prince explains that he and Teela have promised to take the Widgets to the beach. Sure enough, in a few moments our heroes are busy enjoying building sand castles and tossing around beach balls, and making saccharine pronouncements about how great it is to care for each other, while out at sea a more sinister plot is afoot. It's Mer-Man! And with his buddy Trap Jaw, they are in a submarine preparing to test out the fishy villain's latest mechanical sea monsters. The pair find a likely target for the monsters in a seemingly abandoned fishing boat, and direct the robots to attack. Turns out there's an old fisherman on board, and most unfortunately for the Evil Warriors, Prince Adam is also nearby. Upon spying the commotion out at sea, the prince finds a well-positioned sand dune from which to say his magic words. He-Man then arrives to swim out, punch the sea monsters into their component parts, and rescue the old man, whose ship has been sunk.

Back on shore, the heroes question the elderly survivor, who grudgingly admits his name is Jacob. He's a crabby old hermit who's annoyed at having lost his fishing pole, doesn't appreciate all the personal queries from his rescuers, and has trouble accepting help from the friendly Widgets. However, since the boat was his only home, and he needs time to recover from his ordeal, he has no choice but to accede to the Widgets' offer to care for him back at their fort.

Meanwhile, a furious and impotent Mer-Man takes a lot of ribbing from Trap Jaw at the complete failure of his latest pets. Mer-Man protests that the springs he used weren't strong enough, so Trap Jaw mentions that the Widgets happen to mine the most powerful metal on Eternia: coridite. The piscine miscreant decides he needs to get a hold of some coridite, so sneaks on shore to spy on the little heroes. When the Widgets split up to collect wood and vines to make a chair for Jacob, Mer-Man grabs Biro the Widget and forces him to admit that there is coridite for the stealing hidden in their fort somewhere. Mer-Man then releases Biro, threatening some nasty repercussions should the Widget blab about his interrogation.

Afterwards, the big Eternians go their separate way, and the Widgets carry their charge back home, where they set Jacob up in a grown-up-sized bed and try to feed him soup. Biro, who knows something the other Widgets don't know, is very concerned about the safety of their coridite and leads Kando into the mine to check on it. Everything seems fine - except for the water that's flooding into the back chamber! This, we know, is caused by Mer-Man, who has approached the fort in his submarine (this time without Trap Jaw, whose verbal abuse and negative attitude he could clearly do without) and fired a remote-control drill which found its way up into the mine. Kando runs back into the main fort to gather his friends and spread the bad news. At just about the same time, Mer-Man emerges from the mine doorway to demand coridite. He threatens the Widgets and then Jacob, causing Jacob's little friends to form ranks in front of their hermit and tell him to run for it.

Heading for the exit, Jacob runs into Teela, who's showed up to check on him. Yikes! It's Mer-Man! Teela, with the help of a revived Jacob wielding a new fishing pole that Squinch has gifted him, manages to tie up Mer-Man. The villain successfully stymied, Teela demands an explanation from the Widgets; as Kando starts in on the tale, he remembers that Biro is still down in the mine. The Eternian captain must then run down into the flooding chamber and rescue Biro, who can't swim but is loyally perched on a rock amid the rising waters, keeping guard on the coridite.

The restrained Mer-Man, learning from the chatter of the Widgets that the coridite is down in the mine (you'd think he'd have checked in there while he was infiltrating the fort), tears free of his bonds and runs to steal his prize. Feeling that additional help - and an expert swimmer - is needed, the Widgets fire off their signal flare to summon He-Man. Fortunately, Adam was on a parapet at the palace enjoying a lovely sunset with Cringer, so he spots the He-Signal right away, does his transforming bit, and rushes to the fort. He-Man arrives in time to swim down into the flooded chamber, save the coridite, and give his enemy a good kick in the rear, sending him out into the deep ocean.

Well, that's that! No more problems to solve, right? Oh, wait: the flooding is still going on in the Widgets' mine, and if it isn't stopped their whole home will be waterlogged! What to do? He-Man decides there's only one solution: he has to go fetch the experimental Wind Raider (yep, it's time to tie in the episode's opening scene! Are you satisfied at this removal of loose ends, viewer?), use it to fly up to the Eternian moon, and push the entire satellite out of orbit so the tides will lower enough to allow him to plug the hole in the mine. Then it's just a quick trip back up to the moon to shove it back into its normal position. Easy!

With all the episode's dangers really and truly over, Jacob announces his intention to leave. He's learned to be less crabby, and he thanks He-Man and the Widgets gratefully for all their help and friendship; but he's still a hermit and wants to go live somewhere by himself. The Widgets won't have that, however, and hold an impromptu election in which they anoint Jacob their new mayor. Jacob is touched that he's found people who actually want and need him, and agrees to the proposition, prompting celebrations from his new constituents.

End with a Joke: If you consider it humorous, then the ending joke is the Widgets' rather goofy decision to vote Jacob in as their mayor.

• Adam (tackily propounding the theme of today's episode): Everybody should have someone to care about. / Teela: You're right Adam; caring is one of the things life is all about.
• Mer-Man: Oh, He-Man is always ruining my action. Some day, somehow I'll show him! / Trap Jaw: Sure, Mer-Man; it'll be the same day the ocean turns into peanut butter.
• Jacob: Oh, so many questions! I lived on my fishing boat, alone! / Lara: How awful! / Jacob: It was a good boat. / Lara: I mean the alone part. / Jacob: I liked it; and besides, no one bothered me with lots of questions.
• Kando: Mer-Man! / Mer-Man: Yes; it is I, Mer-Man!
• He-Man (to Jacob): Why are you a hermit? / Jacob: Well, people kept disappointing me with their foolishness.
• Jacob: My goodness; for the, for the first time in a very long time, I have someone who needs me.

• Teela, hands on hips, laughs with her head thrown back: At the fact that she totally crushed Squinch with a beach ball; and later, the beginning pose of the loop is used for some close-up dialogue
• He-Man jumps on the back of Battle Cat: About to head to the Widgets' fort

One partial (missing Cringer/Battle Cat sequence), one full

Brought to you by Teela
Citing the example of Jacob's realization that the Widgets needed him, Teela reminds us how important it is to let people know that we love and need them - those people being your parents, kids (nudge, nudge).

Appearance of the Widgets
Mer-Man's in charge!
Skeletor-less episodes in Season 2

• The bird's-eye view of Eternia we get in the episode's opening is a scene that has been used previously, in MU025's "Evilseed" (to show a huge block of ice sailing through the sky) and MU073's "Origin of the Sorceress" (to show a gigantic Morgoth stalking into a portal).
• It's those Widgets again, appearing in their fourth episode of the series. Also included is the fact that the little fellows mine coridite, an ore we heard about in their debut episode, MU012's "Evil-Lyn's Plot." This episode introduces a new Widget character, Biro, who basically just looks like Squinch with a haircut and a different hat.
• He-Man dives into the water (performing a very painful-looking belly flop) and does the crawl, reusing animations we've seen in other episodes.
• Our blonde hero helpfully declares of the sea monster, "It's a robot!" thus making it perfectly okay for him to punch its head off. It's convenient that He-Man meets so many robots, so that he doesn't have to pull his punches or pound any living things into bloody gristle. (I find it amusing that John Erwin's He-Man consistently uses the old-fashioned pronunciation of "ROW-butt.")
• Coridite is rechristened by Trap Jaw as the "strongest metal on Eternia," taking over the superlative spot inconsistently taken by eternium in MU069's "The Gamesman." When it first appeared, coridite was never billed as being the strongest metal, but rather as an ore having special powers that Skeletor wanted to co-opt for some chest armor. Anyway, it seems like Mer-Man should know about coridite already and not have to pump Trap Jaw for information about it as he does here, since he was part of the raiding party attempting to steal it in the beginning of MU012. We'll find coridite also forming a main part of the plot in the Widgets' final MOTU episode, MU107.
• Man-at-Arms and Adam hold a short conversation in backgrounds that seem to match the palace's radio room, first seen back in MU047. These have been used many times since then, though they seem to have been mushed into a generic collection of backgrounds meant to evoke Duncan's workshop.
• For only the second time, we see the Widgets' signal flare, which I like to call the He-Signal. It was first seen in MU012; the Widgets tried to fire it off again in MU043, but Man-E-Faces smashed it.
• He-Man uses a glowing wrist bracer to communicate to Man-at-Arms, something he did before in MU072 (which happens to be the other episode written by this episode's writer, Harvey Brenner).
• Just when you think you've witnessed He-Man performing the most absurd and unlikely feat of strength imaginable, he manages to top himself. To stop the flood in the Widgets' mine, rather than just swim down and block up the hole in the rock (which it seems he should be perfectly capable of doing without any tidal adjustments), he chooses to FLY TO THE MOON and PUSH THE ENTIRE MOON AWAY FROM ETERNIA. Without the moon nearby to tug at the tides, the water then goes down far enough that he's able to plug the hole without holding his breath (which, after all, is such a nuisance); then he can fly back up into space, in his open-cockpit Wind Raider, and PUSH THE MOON BACK INTO PLACE. Did everyone read and understand that? Okay. Ahem. Please see some editorial comments I have for this in the commentary section. But it's worth noting that He-Man screwed with the moon before, and perhaps with better reason (though not with any additional logic or sense), in MU046's "Eternal Darkness." The other absurd He-Man action that comes to mind is when he pushed a storm into a hole in the ground, in MU047. While we're on the general subject, though, remember when he spun a whole city (MU051)?
• This is one of those rare He-Man episodes that does not feature Orko. Coming just after MU090's "One for All," in which the Trollan was shunted out of the main action, it seems to suggest a trend of Orko avoidance.

• Just because they're short, the Widgets are presented in this episode as fairly child-like, enjoying pastimes like sand-castle-building and playing catch. But they also are supposed to be mature people who live in their own fort and defend themselves from attack: the weird mix of child and adult qualities that we've found clashing similarly in the depiction of Orko.
• "There could be somebody on the boat," an anxious Trap Jaw comments about the fishing boat Mer-Man spots floating in the sea, on which the fishy villain wants to test his robot sea monsters. Yeah...so what if there is, Trap Jaw? You're a bad guy, for god's sake! You shouldn't have any qualms at the prospect of drowning a random innocent fisherman!
• Mer-Man's manta-ray-shaped submarine is a pretty awesome-looking ship! You have to wonder whether he's funded by Skeletor or has managed to save up for this purchase on the side. Note that the submarine has a sort of detached "periscope" which is actually a free-flying camera drone, through which the villains can spy on the surface.
• I love the animation of He-Man's fist charging out of the water with a big spiky explosion to decapitate the sea monster robots.
• Animation error: As we've seen happen several times before (seemingly in most episodes that feature Trap Jaw), Trap Jaw's customizable metal arm appears on the wrong side of his body in some close-up shots.
• You have to wonder how the Widgets ended up with a bed that a full-sized human can fit into. Do they regularly nurse shipwrecked hermits back to health?
• It's very hard to understand why Mer-Man continues to question the Widgets about the location of the coridite, even after he's climbed into their fort through the mine where the coridite should have been clearly sitting. As we see just a few minutes before his appearance, he couldn't possibly have failed to notice it, since it was sitting all by itself on a little pedestal in an otherwise empty room (just like it was in MU012). It also hardly seems necessary for him to interrogate Biro about the location of the coridite, which naturally would be hidden in the one place the Widgets live: their fort. Mer-Man's brief kidnapping actually assists the Widgets more than it does him, since it alerts Biro of the danger to their precious ore.
• After all his supervillain machinations, Mer-Man ends up being defeated by one solid kick in the rear from He-Man - sending him through the mine, through his drilled tunnel, up to the surface, and over the horizon. Shameful! It's a good thing Trap Jaw wasn't around to see it, or he would have made even more jokes at the fishy warrior's expense (though, on the other hand, another villain on the scene might have helped!).
• You really have to wonder just what was going through Harvey Brenner's head when he decided to have He-Man decide, in the closing minutes of the episode and on the flimsiest of pretexts, that his only option to stop a tiny underground flood was to (temporarily!) move the entire moon of Eternia. Apart from the question of whether even He-Man should be capable of such a thing (remember, it took the Sorceress giving him all the combined powers, secrets, and knowledge of Grayskull for him to be able to throw just Castle Grayskull through space in MU030), we still have to wonder whether He-Man would survive in the cold vacuum of space, whether the Wind Raider should be able to survive re-entry into Eternia's atmosphere, and - here's the kicker - why He-Man should have to move only ONE moon. Because, my friends, remember from MU080's "The Shadow of Skeletor" that Eternia has TWO moons - the Bright one and the Dark one - which presumably both affect its tides. .... And yes, I realize this is a kids' show, and I should just relax. But questioning these kinds of things is my idea of fun. Regardless, I do enjoy the pure, unadulterated ridiculousness of this scene.
• On the subject of He-Man surviving in the vacuum of space, we'll see him hanging out there again for short periods of MU119 and the Christmas Special movie.
• When the Widgets have a meeting at the end of the episode, I assumed (having forgotten how this episode turns out) that they would vote Jacob an honorary Widget, or make him a citizen or something; I did NOT expect that they'd make him their mayor! I find this result troubling, another instance of the writers depicting the miniature Widgets as being more helpless and childish than full-sized humans - needing a "grup" to take charge of them. What exactly makes a hermit fisherman qualified to rule over any quantity of people greater than one? (Also interesting is that the Widgets believe themselves to be a voting democracy, even though one assumes their fort falls within King Randor's demesne.)
• Sure, Jacob's being adopted by the Widgets is sappy, trite, and predictable; but I still managed to find it heartwarming. The idea of a poor lonely old man finding people who need him is ... well, it's just nice.