Zeek's Fumble

Poker-Face has a microfilm of all the SilverHawks' secrets, stolen by one of the Mob on Earth, and Mon*Star wants it. To deliver it, Poker-Face hires Seymour's cab, doubling and then tripling the meter until Zeek the Beak, who has only just started in the cab business as Seymour's partner, takes the deal. Quicksilver and Tally-Hawk spot the cab, and when Poker-Face opens fire, Quicksilver gives chase in the Sprinthawk. Poker-Face hides the microfilm in the cab and bails out. Quicksilver lets Seymour go with orders to have the Steel twins tune up his smoky cab at Hawk Haven, and a warning: no more rides for the Mob.

On Brim*Star, Mon*Star threatens Poker-Face, who sends Hardware and the Mob after the cab. Zeek is dreaming aloud about a limo when the Mob attack, and the pair escape to Hawk Haven, where Steelheart fixes the cab and Seymour wonders how he will pay for it. After a day without a single fare, Zeek finds the microfilm Poker-Face left behind. Seymour wants to take it to the SilverHawks; Zeek wants to sell it back to the Mob and start a limo service, and when Seymour will not help, he goes off to Fence to sell it himself.

The Mob catch the cab with only Seymour in it and cut it to pieces, and Seymour tells Stargazer and Quicksilver where Zeek has gone. At the Sini-Star Diner the Mob corner Zeek and think they have the film, but Quicksilver walks in, has Zeek hand it over, and warns Poker-Face, Hardware and Melodia that if they want to save their hides with Mon*Star, they will forget they ever saw him, the microfilm or Zeek. Stargazer praises the team. Seymour wants to know how he is supposed to make a living without a cab, Zeek offers him a vacation on a rental asteroid, and Seymour tells him he is going to pay.

Poker-Face acquires sensitive information about the Silverhawks' defenses and prepares to sell it to Mon*star.

Seymour: "Yeah? With friends like you, Zeek, who needs enemies?"

Quicksilver: "And one other thing. No more cab rides for the Mob."

Zeek the Beak: "Yes, Seymour. I guess I do know what you mean."

"You know what I mean?" is Seymour's verbal tic, the question a cabbie tacks onto every complaint without waiting for the answer, and Peter Lawrence builds his script so that the one character who never hears it is the one sitting next to him. Zeek the Beak has barely started in the cab business and is already calling Seymour his partner;[1] within a minute he has closed a deal with Poker-Face at triple the meter, and before the episode is out the cab has been shot at, repaired and cut to pieces.[2]

The plot hangs on a microfilm of the SilverHawks' secrets, stolen on Earth and passed up to Poker-Face for Mon*Star. Poker-Face stashes it in the back of the cab when Quicksilver's Sprinthawk closes in, and everybody spends the next two acts looking for it. Zeek's schemes always cost somebody, and the somebody is usually Seymour. Seymour is an honest man who drives whoever pays, and when Zeek finds the film and wants to sell it back to the Mob, he says no as plainly as he can: "I don't want nothing to do with it". Zeek goes anyway. When the Mob come looking, they find Seymour alone in the cab, and he takes their revenge for a deal he refused.

Lawrence writes the pair as a double act, the complainer and the chiseller. The best scene in the episode has no plot in it at all. Driving through Limbo, Zeek lays out his dream of a limo, "Leather seats, cocktail cabin, TV in back, fish tank", and when he protests that he only meant it as friendly advice from a partner, Seymour answers "Yeah? With friends like you, Zeek, who needs enemies?" Seymour's round, heavy-lidded face barely moves whatever happens to him, which makes it funnier, not less, when a Mob blade comes through the roof of the cab just above his cap.

The SilverHawks are guests in their own show this week, and the climax is the weaker for it. Quicksilver walks into the Sini-Star Diner, takes the film off Zeek, and settles the standoff with a threat instead of a fight: if the Mob want to save their hides with Mon*Star, they had better forget they ever saw him. It is a smart move, turning the Mob's fear of their own boss against them, but it arrives with no build, and the only other SilverHawk business, Steelheart tuning up the cab, is over in two lines.[3] The likely reason is the slot: a comic double act and a chase across Limbo leave little room in a half-hour cartoon for a proper fight as well, and Lawrence spends what he has on Seymour and Zeek. We think it is the right trade, even if the ending feels thin.

With the cab gone and Zeek offering a quiet rental asteroid by way of apology, Seymour tells him he is going to pay, and asks, as ever, whether he knows what he means. For once somebody answers the question: "Yes, Seymour. I guess I do know what you mean." Nobody in Limbo has listened to Seymour all day, and the first person to hear him is the partner who owes him a cab. It is a small episode, but a warm one!

1 ^ Zeek arrives with his own catchphrase, "You want to buy a fish?", carried over from Hotwing Hits Limbo, where he first turns up hanging around with Seymour.

2 ^ The episode's own teaser credits the damage to Buzz-Saw and Shredator; the published frame at 15:28 shows only the blade coming through the roof.

3 ^ Quicksilver sends the cab to Hawk Haven to be tuned up, and Steelheart does the work, apparently without noticing the film in the back. Zeek finds it later, after a day without a fare, and guesses, rightly, that Poker-Face left it there.

1. Zeek the Beak first turned up in Hotwing Hits Limbo, where he was already offering to sell people a fish; here he holds one up to Poker-Face at the cab window.
2. Zeek has only just joined Seymour in the cab business, and Seymour is surprised to hear himself called a partner so soon.
3. The microfilm holds the SilverHawks' defence mechanisms and control systems, and was stolen by a Mob member on Earth before being sent up to Poker-Face.
4. Quicksilver chases the cab in the Sprinthawk and later sends it to Hawk Haven for the Steel twins to tune up, with the warning that any more Mob fares will leave Seymour pedalling a rickshaw.
5. The Sini-Star Diner has a No Alcohol sign behind the bar, and Zeek orders a Limbo cooler.
6. Seymour's catchphrase "You know what I mean?" runs through the episode and supplies its last line.
7. The closing quiz is on the Moon: with the Sun and Moon on opposite sides of Earth, the Kidd names the full moon, then the time from one full moon to the next.

One name enters the series in this episode.

• Shredator

Appearance lists compiled from the episode articles on the ThunderCats wiki, checked against this site's encyclopedia. Names we have no entry for are shown without a link rather than left out.