Plot: Jim's love for vending machine sandwiches nets him a talking sword, the Sword of Righteousness, which declares it will train Jim to be a true hero. This involves teaching him the Voice of Dread (Jim keeps summoning moose), the Eye of Truth (Jim loses a staring contest to Peter), and the ability to cleave the fabric of the universe and time travel (Jim inadvertently helps the South win the Civil War).
On the Planet of Easily Frightened Beings, Psycrow helps himself to the Orb of Quite Remarkable Power, which is basically a Cosmic Cube. Except it's round. He teleports himself to the world Jim's training on, where the Sword has Conan'ed Jim up quite nicely. Or as Peter puts it, made him look like a complete goombah. Jim initially has the edge by quickly whipping the Orb from Psycrow's hands. But the Sword claims that's not proper heroing. So Jim gives it back and gets trounced. Psycrow chooses to leave our heroes to be eaten by ants while he goes to destroy Terlawk, but Peter helps them escape after Jim says mean things about Peter's singing voice and odor.
In the rematch on Earth, Jim doesn't fare much better until the Sword lets slip its terrible secret, and Jim renounces it. After that, he gets back to fighting like himself, which is brute force, basically. Which works better than you'd expect under the circumstances.
Quote of the Episode: Sword - 'Why didn't you move?' Jim - 'I was waiting for your instructions!'
Times Peter turns into a monster: 2 (7 overall).
Cow? Yes, depriving us of universal peace or universal destruction.
Other: During the opening sequence, we learned Jim's suit has a remote control to activate various weapons if someone hijacks the suit. More importantly, when Peter tries the wrong remote, we learn one of the two of them owns a car. Hard to picture either of them cruising around in a sedan, though. I expected Jim's garage to be jammed full of stupid tchotchkes and other crap.
When Jim barges in with the sandwiches, Peter is preparing Coquille St. Jacques Nouvelle. Which the internet tells me is some sort of dish involving scallops. It looked more like Peter was preparing stew, but would Jim know the difference?
Psycrow, having taken the Orb, vows to destroy his arch-enemy, then asks us if he's evil, or what. I don't know. Destroying your arch-enemy isn't very evil, as far as evil goes. All villains try to do that. And leaving them to be eaten by ants. Not even giant ants, just regular ants. Sure, points for laying them out on a picnic blanket with all sorts of goodies, it certainly creates the desired atmosphere, but kind of wasting the Orb's capabilities. I thought crows were supposed to be smart.
This is one of the episodes I remember best, probably for Jim in barbarian gear, and the Planet of Easily Frightened Beings. I was excited to watch it, yet this episode felt extremely thin, even compared to EWJ's normal levels. Probably because the Orb was so powerful, they had to keep Psycrow from actually using it against Jim as much as possible. So once the Sword is renounced, Jim gets it away from Psycrow relatively quickly, leading to an extended sequence of the two of them chasing the endlessly bouncing Orb through various settings, until the conclusion.
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