(Before we get to tonight's review, I'm happy to announce that Hedgehogs Can't Swim is now an official affiliate of Archie Sonic Online! That's a fan continuation of the original Archie "Sonic" comics and, in my opinion, the best of all the similar projects. If you're reading this blog, you'll probably enjoy their work. Check it out!)
Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.47: Magnificent Sonic
Original Air Date: October 7th, 1993
Not too long ago, I was talking about how lots of nineties kids media parodied "King Kong," despite that being a movie the target audience of young children probably hadn't seen. Something else that was frequently referenced around the same time, by the same sort of shows, were western. As someone who was there, I can attest to this: Nineties kids didn't really give a shit about westerns. Yes, there were on television all the time, so we probably were familiar with the genre. Lots of us had dads who ate that shit up. But I never played cowboys and Indians with other kids my age. I didn't idolize John Wayne or Clint Eastwood. Ten-gallon hats and cap guns were not part of my play times. Only as an adult have I come to enjoy this particular genre, and usually of the spaghetti variety. Considering the western has become more and more of a niche thing in the intervening two decades, I'm going to say the oater has retreated even further from the forefront of pop culture.
But actual kids don't write kids show. Back in the nineties, they were mostly written by dudes in their forties. And boomers fucking love westerns. So my childhood landscape was filled with parodies of cowboy flicks. A good half of the Nicktoons and Disney Afternoon shows at the time riffed on the genre. Sometimes there were even whole shows based on westerns, such as oddities like "Wild West C.O.W.-Boys of Moo Mesa" or "Santo Bugito." So, of course, "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" did a western episode. Did you really expect the writers to think of an original idea for a script that day?
"Magnificent Sonic" is not a parody of "The Magnificent Seven," though it does vaguely resemble the Lone Stranger plot of films like "A Fistful of Dollars." Robotnik wants to destroy the desert town of Tranquil Gulch and build a casino in its place. He sends a robot gunslinger in to drive out the residents. Sonic happens by and saves the day. The town folks ask Sonic to become their new sheriff, which he reluctantly agrees to. Despite all his skills, Sonic is a lousy shot with a pistol. He has to use his other skills to save the town when Robotnik sends more trouble their way.
When doing a parody episode, "AoStH" usually just picks a theme and vaguely runs with it. "Magnificent Sonic," for what it's worth, actually does riff on many reoccurring themes of classic westerns. There's a stagecoach chase, a gorge for it to drop into, a saloon and a poker game. Hero and villain meet for a duel in the middle of the streets. There's a montage of people slamming their windows shut before shit goes down. The plot of Robotnik wanting to run off the locals and buy up the town recalls any number of villainous railroad lord plots.
The episode even features a few surprisingly specific homages. Sonic dons a poncho, concealing a bullet deflecting mirror underneath, a direct callback to "A Fistful of Dollars." (Which was also referenced in "Back to the Future, Part III," so it was in the air at the time.) Robotnik assembles a league of robots with pun names based on classic frontier heroes, like Wired Earp or DOS Holiday. There's a predictable Lone Ranger shout-out at the end. The entire episode's plot even sort of resembles "Support Your Local Sheriff!" None of these parodies or references are especially funny but I have to give the show runners some credit for actually committing to the bit for once.
There is, potentially, a good idea contained within "Magnificent Sonic." Here's an episode where our hyper-confident hero discovers there's something he's not good at. Sonic is a sub-Stormtrooper level shooter. The best joke in the episode is that he literally can't shoot the broad side of a barn. Instead of building a story out of this, of Sonic confronting a flaw and working hard to overcome it, the show just sidesteps the whole issue. Sonic is good enough at everything else that he doesn't need to be a good shot. Fine, that makes sense. But they wasted the potential dramatic tension and character development.
Perhaps a reason the western declined as kids entertainment in the nineties is because this was also the decade of heightened gun safety awareness. Enough kids had been hurt or killed in gun related incidents that gun safety was a common subject in PSAs at the time. (Including a propaganda campaign from the garbage bags at the NRA.) Censorship often prevented realistic firearms from appearing in kids media. So it surprised me that there's so many gun jokes in "Magnificent Sonic." Yeah, everyone uses sci-if laser pistols, instead of normal six-shooters. But there's still a lot of firing and blasting here. There are three separate jokes were characters mimed putting a gun barrel to their heads and pulling the trigger. The "Sonic Says" segment, unsurprisingly, is focused on gun safety. It comes off as incredibly half-assed after twenty minutes of robots shooting and being shot at.
That's not the only inappropriate reference in this episode, as Sonic also plays a round of strip poker with Scratch and Grounder. It goes very literally – the robots disassemble themselves after every losing hand – but I was still surprised that term was even used in a kids cartoon. This is also one of the rare "Adventures" that gives Sonic a love interest. He gets pretty cozy with Miss Possum, the owner of the local saloon... Who also always wears fishnet stockings, a clothing choice more associated with another type of frontier businesswoman. She's not as oversexed as Breezie but only barely.
This episode also includes a bizarre sequence where Robotnik is wearing a hyper-realistic Sonic mask, destroying his own lab in his attempt to remove it. This show was fucking weird sometimes. Anyway, it's another middling episode but it definitely could've been worse. I'll give this one some points for that. [5/10]
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