The Great Race (Care Bears)
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- This article deals with a Care Bears television episode. For the article on the 1965 film of the same name, see The Great Race.
The Great Race is the third episode in the Nelvana-produced Care Bears television series, and was originally shown on September 27, 1986 on the ABC network.
The episode, written by J. D. Smith, is a retelling of the Aesop fable The Tortoise and the Hare.
[edit] Characters
- The Care Bears and the Care Bear Cousins
- The villains, No Heart and Beastly
[edit] Plot
On a sunny day in the Kingdom of Caring, True Heart Bear and Noble Heart Horse are organising the Care Bear Family Obstacle Race, one in which all Bears and Cousins can participate in. Their names are written individually on pieces of paper that have been put inside a basket, and Noble Heart has the honour of choosing the final participants. Meanwhile, No Heart’s assistant, Beastly, disguised as a tree stump, sneaks in amid the Bears’ activities, and takes it off to hide himself under the stage that True and Noble are on.
The winner of the race, True Heart points out, will become King or Queen of Care-a-lot for a whole day.
Randomly choosing the names, Noble Heart starts to call out the participants: Lotsa Heart Elephant, Cheer Bear, Funshine Bear and Friend Bear—before Beastly adds his name to the mix and the horse calls it out, much to the Family’s bewilderment. Beastly plans to move Care-a-lot to No Heart’s castle should he win, and its citizens will obey his every command.
Yet, despite Beastly’s involvement, True Heart announces the final name—Swift Heart Rabbit, the Family’s strongest pick. Before all of them, even Beastly, begin, True Heart encourages the six to warm up for the event.
Back at No Heart’s castle, Beastly tells the arch villain of how well he tricked the Care Bears into letting him enter the Race. In return, No Heart commands him to win over the Bears, or else the plan will not succeed. He returns to the scene, wearing an orange shirt with a backwards black “5” on it.
Making the race really live up to its name, he ruins the setting by adding some more obstacles to it, if only to defeat the other five.
As True and Noble are about to start, they discover that Swift Heart is missing in the line-up: she is sitting on a chair and relaxing, away from the others. Noble comes up to her and tells her to join, lest Beastly win and take over Care-a-lot; but the rabbit refuses to, saying she had promised Beastly a head start.
The race begins without the rabbit; Cheer, Funshine, Friend and Beastly speed off, with Lotsa Heart lagging behind them, the elephant reminding himself of the traditional “slow-and-steady” principle.
The first obstacle they come across is a tar-coated log, which Beastly slides on without fail; the other three Bears have no luck in this. Then, as those Bears climb over a tall piece of wood with a rope, Beastly cuts it and leaves them behind.
While Beastly stops to take a break, he sees the trio running faster behind him. As they enter a hollow log, he thus reverses their direction by turning it the other way around. Meeting Lotsa Heart later along the way, they realise they have gone the wrong way.
Meanwhile, True Heart (along with Noble Heart later on) is still persuading Swift Heart to go ahead, but the rabbit is still warming up.
The Bears’ second obstacle is a rock hanging above their path after they have come across a seesaw. Beastly activates that obstacle with the help of a rope, and hence he catches Friend Bear in a bag up above, leaving her alone and running off to catch his next victim: Funshine Bear.
When Cheer and Funshine cross a river using ropes, Beastly activates a mechanical trapdoor that makes the latter fall down into a deep hole. He also abandons her, speeding off in hopes of winning.
Making things worse for the only one left, Cheer, he mixes some concrete with mud in a lake below a vertical ladder that she is supposed to cross. Falling along with a sawed rung into the mix, she turns into a statue and Beastly carries her near the final obstacle: a speed trap that should work once Swift Heart crosses the line before it.
At long last, meanwhile, Swift Heart herself heeds True and Noble, and the determined rabbit races off, passing Lotsa Heart as she does so. Realising he has reached back at the start, the villain sees his opportunity in Swift Heart to wholly defeat the other competitors. Yet, despite catching the speedster on a lasso, he gets carried along with her, passing all that the others have gone through; he also gets frozen in his own concrete.
Thinking she has successfully beaten Beastly, the rabbit starts heading for the finish line, but crashes into some cacti and gets stuck in the cluster. She then realises her foolishness by admitting she beat herself and let everyone in Care-a-lot down.
Now Beastly is reinstating his plans for the throne, but seeing Lotsa Heart pass him by, he hurries off in at attempt to beat him. As the elephant is touching the finish line, he runs past him, and then declares himself the winner, but True Heart contradicts him: a photo-finish victory by a trunk makes Lotsa Heart the King.
When all is done, Cheer, Funshine, Friend and Swift Heart accuse No Heart’s assistant of cheating in the event, and the rest of the Family become fed up. This makes Beastly run back to No Heart’s palace, where No Heart gives him practice for next year’s race as a punishment for losing.
Back at Care-a-lot, at the Hall of Hearts, Swift Heart apologises to the rest of the Bears and Cousins for her overconfidence in trying the win the Obstacle Race, and thanks Lotsa Heart for saving the Kingdom of Caring from Beastly.
