“You know him!? :D Nice guy, very cultured, great hair!”

Yeah, you totally have a thing for him, Mechanicles. The writers didn’t shy from this in the slightest.

Apparently Daru sold him the iron to build the centipede. …That’s interesting; I never gave much thought to where he was getting parts from for his inventions. I have to wonder what a regular day of shopping is like for him.

…And WOW they were kinda self-aware in the dialogue in places in this scene:

Jasmine: Daru got rich selling out Agrabah?

Iago: Yeah, but think about how many jobs he created!

This was written in 1994, you guys.

So the scheme is all about how Mechanicles hates bumps and wrinkles.

And apparently that’s all the desert is to him. Bumps and wrinkles.

So the plan is to melt the desert into glass, because he sees glass as inherently smooth and flawless.

But me? All I’m thinking is “Glass also gets dirty really fucking easy, boss.”

I know he LIKES cleaning, but something tells me that an all-glass desert would just stress him out more, not less.

Dude, Mechanicles is WAY better prepared for these people than most villains.

Like, damn.

And oh God, the dig about the hair. Just hits all the notes it needs to.

“Nice hair! Very cultured. How do you stop it from getting mussed?”

And I’m going to put a little faith in Aladdin’s ability to learn lessons sometimes and let him realize that this totally isn’t him; it’s for people that DON’T save the world every day.

I want to think this because of course he immediately gets on Iago about it.

“Like it’s MY fault you listened to me.”

Jasmine’s had it with your shit, Aladdin.

Jasmine finally drags Aladdin outside to yell at him. Because his best friend has been gone all day and he hasn’t said a word about it.

When he suggests he’ll send Carpet to look for him, she takes charge and drags him out to do that himself. Everybody’s going. Even your silly hair.

More to gush about with this character when she’s not being used as a tool for conflict: she knows what’s going on, and when something serious is happening she doesn’t get sidetracked.

So Aladdin “delegates” monster hunting duty to Genie. Like he does every other episode.

(Small thing to gush over really quick. For about 5 seconds the animators panned over the desert by actually animating the desert and this is not something they do often. When you get a chance, load up the episode and look at how much work they put into it.)

Okay there’s no way Genie doesn’t know this is Mechanicles. I think so far they’ve met once but the design is still pretty distinctive.

Their exchange from here on amuses me greatly, however!

Of course Mechanicles doesn’t even hesitate to state he intends to get rid of the Genie somehow. Naturally, he would. And they biff at each other a little bit, but he’s totally playing him.

When Genie thinks he’s being serious he pulls this out:

To which Mechanicles is just immediately like “NOPE!”

And distracts him by asking a question Genie needs to realize comes with red flags by now:

“Do you know how to get the ship out of this bottle?”

And that, viewers, is how Genie got stuck in a bottle for the 10 millionth time. (I’m willing to bed that’s how Haroud caught him, too.)

I just like that this was probably Mechanicles’ plan the whole time. He had that fucker set aside just for this kind of situation.

Aladdin can’t go monster hunting because of his hair.

It’ll get messed up. It’s already getting messed up.

I want to pretend Iago is laying all of this on him so he’ll realize it sucks and will stop trying to be what he’s not so he can be happy again.

But despite all that I’ve said about being sure he could see through all of Daru’s crap, I think Iago would rather Aladdin be snooty and clean than off having adventures that put him in danger.