Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.46. Robolympics

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.46. Robolympics
Original Air Date: September 13th, 1993

I was not an athletic child, to say the least. Not only could I not have been less interested in sports, I also didn't understand how anyone else could possibly see the value in a conflict that didn't involve robots, dinosaurs, or monsters. Yet I did find myself somewhat interested in the Olympics. I don't think it was the techniques or specifics of the various competitions that interested me. Rather, it was the idea of a bunch of different countries competing in an organized event that made the growing OCD in my brain tingle. (“G Gundam” would scratch a similar itch years later.)

Naturally assisting this interest is the various ways over the years that the Olympics have been marketed towards children. The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia was heavily promoted during my childhood. The games introduced an extremely toyetic mascot named Izzy, who was directly pitched at the kiddie crowd. Something that attracted me to Izzy was that he bore a superficial resemblance to my beloved Sonic. Both were blue, fast, cartoony critters in sneakers who starred in a Sega Genesis video game. Izzy even had his own animated special, which I can vividly recall watching and is now considered lost media. (Around the same time, Cartoon Network was also airing reruns of “Laff-A-Lympics,” which surely added to my sudden Olympic fever.) Years later, I would learn that Izzy was a widely loathed mascot, mocked for his ugly design and cartoony appearance, with the character generally being seen as a symptom of the crass commercialization of the 1996 games. But that shit worked on me. Just another example of how kids will eat up the stupidest nonsense.

What does any of this have to do with “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog?” Not a whole lot, considering the topic of today's post aired two whole years before the '96 games. But that “Adventures” would build an episode around an Olympics style event further shows the premise's appeal to children. Anywho, “Robolympics” has an extremely slow turtle scientist approach Sonic and Tails. Apparently, an asteroid is on a direct collision course with Turtle Town. Robotnik quickly steps in and – in a bizarre and otherwise unrelated decision – says he will destroy the asteroid if Sonic beats him in the annual Robolympics game. Naturally, the mad scientist has no intention of playing fair.

I'll be honest with you, folks. I did not enjoy watching this half-hour of television. “Robolympics” represents “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” at its most sophomoric. The episode is packed with the kind of middling slapstick that would only amuse a toddler. The turtle scientist in the first scene leads to a shotgun blast of “turtles are slow” jokes. Scratch and Grounder produce a great deal of sigh-worthy shenanigans. The various Olympic props open the door for lots of heavy and hammy gags. So Robotnik gets a shot put dropped on his foot. A barbell is also dropped on his foot. He finishes the pole vault by landing in a pool of piranhas. Later, Robotnik slams into concrete and a frozen swimming pool. Scratch and Grounder argue over who gets to light the torch or who is stronger. A sequence involving a rowing competition and a heat-seeking torpedo doesn't even make sense. The surest sign that this is a terrible cartoon made in the early nineties is a random Arnold Schwarzenegger reference, via a weight-lifting robot that Sonic defeats through some incredibly dumb subterfuge. 

It's all extremely dire but not in a way especially unique to “AoStH.” What's a little more distinctive is the weird grotesque streak that continues to run through this show. (And even that was not especially rare in a post-”Ren and Stimpy” world.) An early gag has Sonic pausing right before eating a chili dog, on account of Dr. Turtle showing up. His mouth hangs open in a painful looking rictus grin for several minutes. Not long afterwards, Robotnik licks his lips in a needlessly detailed way before Sonic deforms his face with a marker. Later, the villain shows Grounder's nose-drill straight through his head. You can definitely feel the show writers just not giving a shit on this one, most obliviously during a bit where Sonic stretches his spines out into an umbrella. How the fuck does that work? That's a “this storyboard needs to be ready in the morning and it's four A.M.” punchline if I've ever seen one.

As far as I can tell from my notes, there's exactly three jokes in this episode that made me chuckle in the most mild of ways. Robotnik's attempt to throw the shot put goes array, the heavy ball landing on his head. A robot referee then rolls out and measure the handful of inches the shot traveled. That's a solid gag. A moment where Sonic prefaces blowing a raspberry by saying “a situation like this calls for precisely the right kind of communication” is also visibly recognizable as a joke. As for the vulgar acts of slapstick, Scratch and Grounder beating Robotnik to the punch by hammering their own faces in is one of the better ones.

Seeing as how this is an episode concerned with sportsmanship, you'd expect the “Sonic Sez” edutainment segment to focus on the values of not cheating and playing fair. Instead, we get a brief sequence of Sonic working out on a pull-down machine before Tails decides to pick up a small hand weight. Sonic encourages his little buddy not to overdo it and then some weights fall on Scratch and Grounder's heads. Once again, I question the bizarre series of choices that decided a cartoon hedgehog – who is best known for running fast, not being strong, and who regularly performs logic-defying feats of physical stamina – should educate kids on proper gym safety. I send a message back in time to the children of 1993: Do not take athletic advice from a cartoon character.

About the only value I think “Robolympics” actually has is some pointless bits of trivia it clarifies. At the beginning of the game, it's declared that Robotnik weighs exactly 375 pounds, if you were ever curious about that. (That seems like a much more realistic number than the earlier assertion that Sonic can run at warp factor 4.) In general, “Robolympics” is a painfully unfunny episode with a dumb – even by the standards of this show – premise. Why would Robotnik want to compete with Sonic in an athletic competition anyway? And what the fuck does any of this have to do with an asteroid crushing a town of turtles? And why did I agree to review all sixty-five episodes of this fucking show? [4/10]