Last time, Emperor Guillotine tried to Operation Valkyrie Unicorn high command with a briefcase bomb. This week, his love letters to WWII-era intelligence operations keep on coming as he sets his sights on capturing Unicorn’s Enigma-ass encryption machine. It’s being kept in one of Unicorn’s countless hidden headquarters, a lighthouse (dir. Robert Eggers). It is promptly destroyed by an aquatic beast called Scalion. He’s an enormous stingray that promises to be a true embarrassment in hand-to-hand combat, given that he does not have hands, but pectoral skin flaps. I’m sure moist slapping will be the key to defeating Giant Robot, it’s fine.
This episode also features the debut of Mari, another Unicorn child soldier and Johnny’s distaff counterpart. She introduces herself to her co-workers by chirping, “Guten tag, buenos tardes, bongiorno!”, indicating that she suffers from the same fear of Duolingo commitment that has dogged me for over a year. Despite being 10, she speaks 39 languages and is also a cryptography expert. Who says you can’t have it all?
Johnny and Jerry get dispatched to investigate the lighthouse attack, where our heroes are shown discovering the corpses of their co-workers. Johnny, as you might guess, is non-plussed: “Oh, they’re all dead. I guess we’ll never get the whole story. No survivors.” Johnny’s going to have a real hard time reintegrating into civilian life, isn’t he?
Through a series of hijinks spanning hidden microphones, kidnappings and uniform switching (and apparently some very competent high-stakes tailoring, as Johnny somehow manages to get a full-grown Gargoyle gangster into his child-size medium jumpsuit and vice-versa), our heroes finally track down the Gargoyle squad who orchestrated the lighthouse attack.
But oh no! Scalion: The Pancake Monster is still at large, looking like Francis Buxton in his swimming pool. He flops around menacingly, trying to prevent Johnny and Jerry from fleeing the scene, which of course leads to the summoning of Giant Robot.
Scalion actually does really well, disorienting Robot with moist slaps before spewing hot acid that dissolves his arm. Johnny flees with a Robot, leaving Jerry to employ his best Adam West fisticuffs until being overwhelmed and captured by Gargoyle. There, they knock him out with one (1) limp-wristed slap before breaking for chess and healthy snacks.
Johnny returns with Robot, who now has both arms again, and our heroes rally. Scalion accidentally sprays Commander Spider with his acid sputum and he turns into bubble bath. RIP, my dude, you were one of the good ones. Robot hits him with a one-two punch of eye lasers and fire breath, and that’s all she wrote for this adventure.
Honestly, I was really enjoying this episode until the moment that Giant Robot just kind of grew an arm back offscreen. I know it’s a show for 5 year olds, but our hero just saying “nuh-uh!” to catastrophic damage is the first time it’s felt like it was written BY 5 year-olds. Robot thought he was hot shit and got humbled by a Chinese takeout delicacy, and the show stepped in to retcon it.