Sonic Underground, Episode 1.33: Healer

Sonic Underground, Episode 1.33: Healer

Original Air Date: October 13, 1999

As we headed into the final stretch of "Underground" episodes, I glanced at each of their plot synopses. If the last three episodes – involving such uninspired ideas as weddings, hillbillies, and hairdressers – represented the "we're out of ideas" phase, a handful of episodes near the end are providing me with some dim hope. Before we're done, we have a couple of Ben Hurst/Pat Allee episodes with premises that aren't completely terrible. This is no guarantee they'll be good, as Hurst and Allee have out their names on some real stinkers over the course of this show, but I guess I'm trying to be positive. 

First up is another bluntly entitled episode, "Healer." Bartleby receives an invitation to a private event hosted by a man named Titus. He claims to have invented a machine that can reverse the Roboticization process or even inoculate someone against Roboticization. After seeing the mechanical Lady Windermere on a mission, Sonia is eager to believe Titus. Sonic remains skeptical. After the demonstration, which was being spied in by Dingo, Robotnik attacks. The captured Titus immediately reveals that the whole thing is a sham. In exchange for his freedom, he agrees to turn his "Roboticization inoculator" into a regular Roboticizer. And his first client is Sonia. 

"Healer" is an episode that really feels of its time. Scammers that take advantage of people's religious faith, desire for a cure, or need to belong are as old as time itself. Yet the nineties was a moment when these topics were really in the spotlight. The early part of the decade was awash in scandals involving television evangelists, several of which were revealed as greedy con artists or sexual predators. The decade also brought a renewed awareness of cults, where manipulators like David Koresh or Marshall Applewhite eventually led people in need of answers to their deaths. These ideas were in the air circa 1999 and I suspect they might've influenced Ben Hurst when writing this episode. Titus' gaunt appearance and robed attire resembles Applewhite slightly. His machine produces a rainbow of colors, which reminds me of the rainbow lettering in the Heaven's Gate cult logo. 

In a very simple way kids could understand, "Healer" attempts to tackle the idea of why people are drawn in by scamming faith healers and cult leaders. Seeing Lady Windermere, her actual mother figure, reduced to a robotic slave reawakens Sonia's trauma. Titus provides the key to resolve this pain, to heal Sonia's psychological wounds by providing an easy cure... In exchange for a sizable donation. This is a message kids actually need to hear: That anyone providing miraculously easy answers to difficult problems probably just wants your money. 

This premise also sets up some good tension between Sonic and his sister, as he remains skeptical the entire time. Hurst manages to pull off that thing he's really good at, where he mines the schism between siblings without making either one into the bad guy. Sonia's need to believe in Titus' magic solutions is so obviously rooted in her pain. Sonic being the skeptic matches his "cool dude with 'tude" persona but it also works another way: He's just worried about his sister falling victim to an obvious hoaxer. (I wish Sonic was this skeptical of the bullshit the Queen and the Oracle puts them through.) 

Unfortunately, because it's a twenty-minute installment in a very dumb cartoon series, "Healer" neither has the time nor the intelligence to explore the emotional ideas in its premise. After a (relatively speaking) decent first fifteen minutes, the episode falls apart in the final minutes. Just as he's about to Roboticize Sonia, the amoral conman Titus has a completely unexplained change of heart. He pushes Sonia out of the way and is then Roboticized himself. It's the sloppiest, most unsatisfactory conclusion to that story that the writers could've thought of, as it goes against everything we know about Titus up to this point. The episode then collapses into totally uninvolving action theatrics, as Sonic and Sonia spin together into a tornado to destroy some airplanes. How and why can Sonia do that? It's lame. 

A completely disappointing ending is all too typical of "Sonic Underground's" brand. Also typical of this show: Uncomfortable weirdness that isn't obviously sexual but feels like it probably secretly is. The show's reoccurring gunge fetish is indulged when Sonic and Sonia emerge from a dumpster, covered in trash and gray slime. Later, Dingo is transformed into a fly and hides in Sonia's hair, leading to a very disturbing close-up of him handing onto giant hair follicles while sitting in a fleshy pink scalp. Also typical of this show: Ugly character designs! Titus is a skinny humanoid with a vaguely animal-like nose who towers over the "Sonic" gang. He kind of looks like a Peter Chung character, which is not a compliment. His partner in crime is another one of the hideous alien creatures we see in the background of this show all the time. 

Thankfully, the "Sonic Underground" music team did not attempt to squeeze this episode's moral about predatory scammers into a sixty second pop ditty. Instead, the obligatory song is "We're the Sonic Underground." The upbeat rock number simply has our heroes stating what they are all about. While no less clumsy than any other of this show's songs – the title is rhymed with "listen to our freedom sound" – at least it's not about friendship or never giving up or some other trite motto. It's a simple mission statement for our characters and that's honestly preferable. While playing the song, Sonic and his siblings kick around large balloons shaped like Robotnik. The song is placed randomly midway through the episode, revealing it as a generic number that was rammed in because it had to be. 

Oh yeah, one more thing: Maurice LaMarche voices Titus, doing a not-bad Rod Serling impersonation while playing him. Because, when this show didn't know what else to do, it let LaMarche impersonate a dead celebrity. "Healer" is one of the better episodes of "Sonic Underground" I've reviewed so far. It tackles some big ideas in an only somewhat half-assed manner. I'd be willing to forgive the rushed ending if this was a different show that wasn't held down by so many bad aesthetic and narrative choices. It's hard for me to forgive "Underground's" overwhelming "Underground"-ness, which means even a halfway decent episode still gets a [5/10].