Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.04: Slowwww Going

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Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.04: Slowwww Going

Original Air Date: September 28th, 1993

Ah, the humble sloth. Once it was just a tropical dwelling notorious only for its slow-moving. (Which has, like most animal facts, been largely exaggerated over the years.) I would go so far as to say this odd-looking animal was somewhat unknown by a large number of people. Thanks to the internet and day time talk shows, the sloth's notoriety has grown. Not only have a lot of people discovered this sluggish critter, they've discovered they think sloths are cute. Elevated to living meme status, you can now buy sloth merchandise of all types almost anywhere. "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" was ahead of the curve on the commercial potential of the sloth, cracking jokes about the moss-covered animals in the early nineties.

Sonic, we discover, has sympathy for the slow-moving sloths that are so different from himself. In "Slowwww Going," Robotnik exploits that by targeting a family of nearly immobile sloths. The family includes young Rocket, who claims to be the fastest sloth on Mobius. (Which still means he's painfully slow by any normal standard.) Anyway, Robotnik has invented a special laser beam — powered by a rare crystal — that sticks someone in slow motion for an hour. He sends Scratch and Grounder to zap Sonic with this ray, which they eventually do. However, Tails and Rocket's family end up helping save the day. 

When you have a character defined by his super speed, pretty quickly you are going to touch on the idea of draining that speed away. After all, we learn that "fast" and "slow" are opposites in kindergarten. I'm sure this plot has happened a hundred times to the Flash. Unsurprisingly, it's a premise "Sonic" writers have touched on a few times over the years. It took the writers of "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" exactly three episodes to think of this idea, as "Slowwww Going" was the fourth episode of the series produced. Speed is ostensibly Sonic's main advantage over his enemies. If he just moves at normal hedgehog speed, will he be as effective against Robotnik? It's a real challenge to the hero. It means he'll have to push himself, using only his wits, to stop the villain.

It's an idea rich with potential... Potential that "Adventures" in no way utilizes. Instead of having Sonic struggle with this new challenge, the "AoStH" writers delay him getting zapped as long as possible. Naturally, Robotnik trusts this game-changing weapon to Scratch and Grounder, who screw around with stupid traps and fuck up repeatedly for most of the episode. When Sonic is finally shot with the beam, he's totally screwed. Tails, Rocket, and a plot contrivance — when the crystal is broken, the ray works in reverse, causing super speed — save his ass instead. Yep, even though "Adventures" has Sonic outsmarting his enemies multiple times every episode, he's not given a chance to flex his brain any this time. 

That's because this show must exaggerate everything. See, the slow ray doesn't just bring Sonic down to normal speed. It traps him in slow-mo, giving the hedgehog comically slurred speech and sloth-y movements. A whole episode of that might've gotten tedious — though, again, not if the creators really thought about it — so instead they screw around for fifteen minutes. Yet this delay really just shows how unstoppable this version of Sonic is. At one point, during another one of Scratch and Grounder's dumbass ploys, he kicks up enough speed to create a tornado. Sonic then grabs the tornado by the tail and flings it into the ground. Sonic's not just super fast and far smarter than his dumbass enemies. He can also bend the rules of physics utterly to his will. Why isn't this version of Robotnik dead yet? He's clearly outclassed. (By the way, it took Robotnik nine years to perfect the slow-mo crystal, suggesting this struggle has been going on for almost a decade. I can only assume Sonic the God hasn’t killed him yet because he finds his pathetic attempts to stop him amusing.)

Anyway, complaining about this show wasting a good idea is really stupid. Why would I ever expect this show to live up to its potential? You try and think up sixty-five episode ideas before lunch and see if any of them are good. Complaining about this show being annoying is also pointless but I'm going to do it anyway. The trend of introducing characters more obnoxious than the regular cast continues with "Slowwww Going." Rocket isn't too bad on paper. But his constantly drawn-out and sluggish line-reading becomes irritating almost immediately. It's not even really a joke but the episode treats it like one, returning to it over and over again. 

After being effected by the reversed slow-mo ray, Rocket and his family are bouncing all over the place. The effects are going to wear off though, leaving them as slow as ever afterwards. I was really hoping the "Sonic Says" segment would spin this into a truly misguided anti-drug. No, they don't do that but the idea they did run with is almost as bad. In the edutainment segment, Tails is a little frustrated with Rocket. Sonic tells his body to be patient, that everyone is special in their own way. Um, wait, does Sonic see sloths as developmentally disabled? Perhaps the writers realized that was a metaphor they really shouldn't explore, so instead this "Sonic Says" swerves in an even weirder direction by having Rocket inform Tails how to escape quicksand. Because fucking quicksand is a threat kids will encounter a lot in their day-to-day lives. 

So "Slowwww Going" is, itself, pretty slow. There's lots of pedestrian slapstick and Robotnik repeatedly gets zapped with the slow-mo ray, a gag the show seemingly finds hilarious. One joke — where Scratch riding around on Grounder's back is switched around — caused the briefest dying ember of a smile to cross my face. Again, I'm the fool for expecting anything from this program. Oh well, only like fifty left to go. [5/10]