Excuse me, Episode 10 - A Hitch in the Works

The episode opens with Link trying to steal away, because he wants to secretly go fishing. Link's affinity for fishing is curiously yet another thing, where the show predates ideas from later Zelda games. And I'm starting to think that Nintendo and DIC Entertainment just both went with the most obvious ideas for the franchise. "What would Link do in his free time? Fishing, of course!"

He gets caught by Zelda, who insists that he should do chores around the castle instead. And I kind of can understand, why Link's complaining here. His job should be protecting the Triforce of Wisdom and the Princess, not replacing candles or scrubbing the floor. I can understand, when Zelda insists that he should stay around for protection, but her ordering him to do some servant's work is just a dick move.

But there's probably no one else around to clean the huge castle. For the first time since the first episode we actually see another person living there: Doof. Which means "dumb" in German, by the way. He's a handyman / newbie magician, who creates some Golem made out of junk. Link tells him to create some fake Moblins instead, so he can save Zelda instead of doing chores, but she overhears the conversation and then gets herself abducted by real Moblins, of course.

This leads to one of the most over the top scenes in the series. Link says "Time to kick Moblin tail", which is easily on par with "Can't wait to bomb some Dodongos" from the CD-i games, puts a bomb down and then uses the shield to get pushed off the explosion in pursue of Zelda. Yeah, right. And here I thought the flame surfing was ridiculous. Can we do this in the games? Please?

(I'm not entirely kidding here. It would be interesting to have some more uses for the shield, similar to the Trine games. It doesn't have to be flame surfing or bomb-propelled flying, but something new.)

Now, Link follows Zelda to the Underworld, where the interesting part of the episode happens, which sadly falls completely short. Ganon has some magic slave collar that lets Zelda do anything he asks of her. I bet, Link would make good use of that, but Ganon settles for marrying the princess, so he can become the ruler of Hyrule. But the wedding gets prevented quickly and Ganon gets defeated in yet another ridiculous way: three Gleeock heads just crash into him.

"I'm a hero, not a handyman..." - Link