Brief Summary: Overkill 2.0 - You’ve got BAT!

Summary: Cobra Commander and Destro show up to attack a peace conference being hosted by the Joes, but the building turns out to be a fake. The Joes have tricked them (insert nelsonlaugh here).

Overkill shoots down Mercer who ditches into some trees. Overkill and the BATS head over to try and catch Mercer while he’s stuck in the tree.

Roadblock (I think) attacks Overkill in return, nailing him and blowing him into scrap. Cobra Commander orders Overkill to report in or be recycled into a vacuum cleaner. Overkill responds in the way that most disgruntled employees would when having to deal with the boss’s histrionics: he shoots the radio.

We come back from commercial to hear Cobra Commander raving about the inability of Cobra’s forces to find the real location of the Joe peace conference. While CC is raving, Metal-Head wheels in Overkill in a wheelbarrow. Cobra Commander tells Metal-head to dump Overkill in the trash. Overkill protests, being justifiably pissed. He tells the Commander he knows the location of the peace conference but that he won’t tell if he’s not reassembled.

In fact, Overkill wants to be brought back bigger and better than he was before. Especially since Destro has the technology to do so in the form of a super chip that he’s been working on. Cobra Commander gives Overkill the chip and Overkill gives Cobra Commander a letter he got off Mercer that has the location of the conference.

In a surprising twist, CC orders Destro to make the repairs on Overkill rather than just ignoring the BAT leader now that he’s got what he wants. Then again, it might not be so surprising since CC wants the new and improved Overkill to use against the peace conference.

Oh yeah, the location of the conference? Conference City in the Swiss Alps. Oi.

Meanwhile, on the Joe side, Mercer is protesting his innocence. He doesn’t know how CC got the information but he swears he didn’t hand it over to Cobra. Duke reluctantly tells Mercer that, while he knows Mercer probably didn’t sell the Joes out, the conference is important and Mercer is going to have to be confined to the stockade until the conference is over.

Okay, Mercer came in as an ex-member of Cobra and he’s getting slapped in the stockade because he might be spying for Cobra. Not to mention, his former association with Cobra is brought up in nearly every episode that he appears in. Now, SCOOP, on the other hand who came into the Joes as a double agent, is never referred to as a former member of Cobra. Is that fair? I think not. If I was Mercer, I’d be throwing Scoop a blanket party sometime real soon.

Back at the Cobra base, Overkill is showing off his new look. And his new name. From now on, he wants to be addressed as The Eliminator.

Metal-head tells Overkill he’s not the Eliminator, he’s just the same old Overkill, only shinier. This makes Overkill mad and he fires on Metal-head with his new chest guns. Cobra Commander likes the fact that Overkill made Metal-head shut up and says that from now on, Metal-head will report to Overkill. This ticks Metal-head off and he starts to retaliate against Overkill but Overkill blows away part of the floor and drops Metal-head into a hole.

Metal-head fumes! Fume Metal-head fume!

Overkill breaks into a small, poorly guarded base and gets a list of the folks who will be attending the peace conference. He then proceeds to go after the guy who will be the main speaker and nitro-freezes him as he did the guys at the small base.

Overkill freezes the main guy, President Gerard, and leaves him on the stage at the conference (walking past the room Duke was using as a command center in the process). The Pres-sicle was left behind as a scare tactic to disrupt the conference and so far seems to be pretty effective.

After strolling out of the conference hall completely unchallenged Overkill snowboards out of town. He’s spotted by Cloudburst who follows him back to the secret Cobra base. Cloudburst calls for backup and is told to watch out for Overkill’s freezer weapon.

Cobra Commander is very pleased with Overkill’s success:

“You’re indestructible, efficient, smart. Not like anything else with the name Cobra on it,” the Commander says, looking pointedly over at Metal-head who is running on a treadmill in an effort at self-improvement.

Metal-head’s efforts at self-improvement come to naught (big surprise) and are in fact so disastrous Cobra Commander fires him on the spot. To which Metal-head, understandably confused, replies: “How can you fire me when you uh, never pay me?”

Which led me, the first time I watched this episode to respond: “They don’t PAY Him?! How the hell did they HIRE him in the first place?! Did he wander into a Cobra base and they gave him the rig because no one else would be stupid enough to wear it!?”

Now, however, if I think about it rationally for a few minutes, it makes sense that CC isn’t paying Metal-head. After all, Metal’s an Iron Grenadier, he works for Destro so Destro would be the one cutting the checks. But really, this only makes sense if you know the characters outside the context of the cartoon and the line is still pretty dumb. Funny, but dumb. Kinda like Metal-head!

The New and Improved Overkill heads out of the Cobra base to KJB! (Y’know, Kick Joe Butt!) Since it’s in the script, he manages to be supremely effective and deep-freezes the Joes. Before he’s taken out, Cloudburst calls back to base for more backup, but by the time the others arrive Cloudburst looks a lot like the roast in the back of my freezer.

Fortunately for him, the Joes have a cryogenic clinic. Whew! Wasn’t that convenient…err…lucky?

Back at the conference, Bad Accent Lady wants to call the conference off. Y’know, on account of all the freezing and stuff. Duke talks her in to giving the Joes two hours to try and stop Cobra.

Duke realizes that Mercer, because he used to work for Cobra, is the only one who might have any chance of figuring out how to stop Cobra now. They head to the stockade and put the question to Mercer who comes up with the great idea that if they use liquid nitrogen. It’s a good thing Mercer was around to come up with that plan, huh?

The Joes let Mercer out of the stockade. Which isn’t as dramatic sounding as you’d think, since Mercer wasn’t actually sentenced there and nobody really seems to care (outside of Mercer) that he’s being let out. It’s not like we’re being treated to a dramatic “You can’t let that traitor out!” scene. Though Mercer does get told that the Joes trust him. Which wouldn’t cut much with me since they trusted Scoop for most of Operation: Dragonfire.

Cut back to the Cobra Base where Metal-Head is jumping rope (and yeah, he’s still wearing the rig but he’s not chanting “S my name is Stuart, my mother’s name is Sarah..”). Overkill hears the Joes coming and goes to investigate.

Overkill manages to out-think the Joes and gets the drop on Roadblock. He’s about to freeze all three Joes when CC decides he’d rather talk to them first.

Mercer does something that’s actually kinda clever here. He steps up and starts talking to Cobra Commander as if he really is a traitor. The other Joes stare at him, horrified at the thought of a traitor in their midst (again, you’d think they’d have learned their lesson after Scoop…). Mercer tells the Commander that he’s got maps showing the layout of the new Joe base. Cobra Commander proves he’s smarter than the average Viper and says he doesn’t believe Mercer’s story but hey, if Mercer’s lying he’s dead meat anyway so might as well go along with it for now. He takes Mercer with him so they can look over the layouts Mercer has with him.

Cobra Commander leads Mercer and Destro into a room where Overkill and Metal-head are playing cards. Deep Blue vs. Gerry Kasparov this ain’t. Overkill wins and Metal-Head accuses him of cheating. This insults Overkill who then proceeds to flip the card table, ala Brian in Knights of the Dinner Table and tries to go after Metal-head. Mercer takes this opportunity to spray Overkill with liquid nitrogen, freezing him in place. Cobra Commander and Destro sputter at Mercer’s betrayal (again, no one learned ANYTHING from Scoop…) Mercer reveals that the reason the plans for the Joe base seemed so familiar to the Cobras is the fact that those plans were for old COBRA bases.

Metal-head laughs at Overkill’s predicament and tosses some poker chips at him, causing him to shatter.

Meanwhile, the Joes escape and are chased out of the base by Cobra Commander, Metal-Head and a few gumby Cobras. Metal-Head starts to fire on the escaping Joes but slips in the snow and accidentally causes an avalanche. He does almost kill the Joes, so I guess we can give him an E for Effort in this one.

Oddly enough, despite Metal-head’s constant screw ups and general idiotic behavior (not to mention the fact he was fired), Cobra Commander pulls him back into the base and out of the path of the avalanche. Awww!

Back at Conference City, the Joes stand by and watch as the conference votes on the proposal for an anti-Cobra Coalition. Cloudburst comes in, looking none the worse for wear after having been deep frozen. President Gerard is also doing fine!

And finally, the dénouement: Cobra has escaped from the avalanche to yet another Secret Base where Overkill is once again being hauled around in a wheelbarrow by Metal-Head. Overkill asks the Commander to rebuild him again as the Eliminator but is told that the super chip was destroyed and it’ll take Destro years to make another one. Overkill then says that if he can’t be the Eliminator, he’d rather be a vacuum cleaner.

Commentary: Overall, this isn’t a bad episode. BATs in general and Overkill in particular are more or less throwaway disposable characters in the Joeniverse and it’s nice to see Overkill get a moment to shine. It can’t be easy to be an artificial intelligence trapped in a group known for its natural stupidity. Sure, human operatives can always be killed off but Overkill has to run around with the knowledge that he can easily be shut off one day and never turned back on again.

I had to find this episode for my roommate Amy because she actually plays the character of Overkill on Transformers Universe and I play Metal-head. There, the two characters have become friends, having put the incidents in this episode behind them. It was kind of funny to us that Metal-head was put under Overkill’s control, especially since her Overkill thinks of Metal-head as one of the BATs.

Note for anyone planning on freezing themselves: It won’t work. The water in your cells will turn to ice and the ice crystals will destroy your tissues. Also, you don’t come back from being sprayed with liquid nitrogen, even if you are a BAT. Overkill should have ended up as useless scrap metal. But we can forgive these lapses in science since this is a cartoon and it’s allowed to play fast and loose with the laws of physics.

Other things worth noting: Mercer’s voice actor has changed since the movie. As has his character design. He seems shorter now and has a beard and slightly longer hair. He’s also apparently become an American, while the Mercer in the movie seemed a lot more European.