G.I. Joe faces a new enemy as an ancient society of snake people known as Cobra-La try to forcefully take back the earth from those who drove them underground eons ago.
So, Duke and Slaughter are sergeants and somehow outrank Lt Falcon who is an officer and not a noncom? I guess they took a page out of Oliver Stone's Platoon.
And Falcon is a screw-up, which was a lot different from the Falcon of the comic books who was an actual Green Beret and acted like one. Heck, he was a lot different from the Falcon of the file cards.
And, Jinx, well, she was a lot different too wasn't she? And so was Beachhead and Tunnel Rat, who was actually Larry Hama, and, well, the list goes on and on.
But who cares, the people that read the comics and the file cards were used to the cartoon being nothing at all like the GI Joe we really loved, but we watched it anyway because it was fun, and it didn't matter because different characters were highlighted anyway.
And, ultimately, it was just... fun. It was an insane story that appealed to the child inside of us and it appeases to that same child today.