Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.44: Untouchable Sonic

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.44: Untouchable Sonic

Original Air Date: November 1st, 1993

After the ambitious Quest for the Chaos Emeralds four-parter, "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" would immediately get back to business as usual. While zooming around the globe, Sonic and Tails run into Mobius Corners, a small town where the local residents seem very afraid. Stopping into the local diner, they soon learn Robotnik has been running a protection racket with robots as his enforcers. Sonic immediately cleans out the goons and Robotnik sends Scratch and Grounder in to continue the scheme. Aligned with Burt Who – the town's cook, mayor, and sheriff – and his waitress Roxy, Sonic naturally takes the fight right back to Robotnik. 

In theory, "Untouchable Sonic" is a parody of gangster stories. The title is, after all, taken by Elliot Ness' mob-stomping cop squad and the TV show and movie they inspired. Unlike the previous episode goofing on westerns, this one never commits to the theme. Aside from the barebones protection racket plot, and Scratch and Grounder and Robotnik's other robo-goons wearing colorful fedoras and suits, the episode utilizes none of the other tropes of the classic crime movie genre. Otherwise, the show degrades towards its usual antics, of Sonic putting on disguises and fooling his goofball opponents, immediately. There's not even a cheesy Edward G. Robison voice in there somewhere, which really surprised me. 

There might be a cultural reason why "AoStH" whiffed so hard on the gangster element. The Sonic Sez segment carries an anti-gang message, which points towards the general cultural fear around kids joining gangs in the early nineties. (Which was probably as much a low-key racist moral panic about gangsta rap as it was anything else.) The attitude of the day was that gangs were nothing to make light of. Which begs the question of why the writers wanted to spoof "The Untouchables" anyway... Other than laziness and boomer nostalgia, which is usually the answer this show brings to mind.

Of course, that Sonic Sez segment is hideously tone-deaf. It involves Scratch and Grounder trying to intimidate some protection money out of people before Sonic monologues to the camera about how you'll go to jail if you join a gang so stay in school instead, kids. (This is, by my count, the third "Stay in school!" moral Sonic has delivered.) That doesn't really address the difficult cultural/economic circumstances that led most inner-city kids towards crime. Not that the "gangs" of the early 90s in anyway resembled the gangster movie stereotypes of the 30s and 40s. So the whole thing just comes off as horribly confused and wrong-headed.

But anyway... Aside from just being an incredibly half-assed homage, there's another reason "Untouchable Sonic" doesn't really work: You never care about the town Robotnik is exploiting. The only characters we actually meet in the town are Burt Who and Roxy. Burt is little more than a walking joke, as his last name and multiple professions set-up several easy gags. We learn absolutely nothing about Roxy, making the kiss she shares with Sonic at the end even more baffling. (This show really made Sonic into a bit of a man-whore, didn't it?) We learn so little about the town and its residents, giving us little reason to be invested in their struggle against Robotnik. I know this is just a twenty-one minute cartoon but I've seen shows in the same area pull off the more before. 

The biggest question "Untouchable Sonic" left me with is one I've asked before: What the hell kind of villain is Robotnik supposed to be anyway? Here, he acts as a simple gangster, using thugs to drain small-town people out of petty cash. This is certainly at-odds with his previous depictions as a would-be dictator, mad scientist, evil businessman, or time-traveling supervillain. I guess the obvious answer here is that the writers saw Robotnik as an all-purpose bad guy that could be slotted into any sort of villainous plot. But it certainly is weird to see him collecting magical relics or building physics-bending doom weapons in one episode and intimidating small business owners in the next. 

But "AoStH" was a weird show. Another weird element here is the introduction of two Badniks from the first game. Roller and Ball Hog are the initial enforcers Robotnik uses in Mobius Corners. They barely resemble their video game counterparts. They both wear suits, of course. Though he snorts like a pig, Ball Hog has a bird beak on his face. Roller looks more reptilian than the weird armadillo thing he's supposed to be in the game. Aside from Ball Hog pulling a bomb out of his jacket and Roller rolling into a ball for a split second, they might as well be original characters. (Their voices and behavior also resembles Bebop and Rocksteady more than a little.) Still, it is sort of neat when recognizable video game elements crop up on this show. 

"Untouchable Sonic" is also notable for re-using footage from the pilot... But not in the way you're probably expecting. Considering the pilot really isn't that different from the show it birthed, you'd expect the writers to integrate that footage into a story. Instead, the pilot scenes are shown as something Scratch and Grounder are watching on TV. How are we supposed to interpret that? Does this mean there's a scripted television program on Mobius inspired by Sonic's battles against Robotnik? Or was this simply news program footage of a previous adventure? If so, why do Scratch and Grounder spend a solid two minutes watching a previous humiliation of their boss? I'm kind of guessing that the episode was just running a bit short, so the writers or animators or whoever padded it out with some pre-existing footage. But it raises so many questions that this dumb-ass show is not prepared to answer!

Anyway, I've rambled on way too long about this one. "Untouchable Sonic" is a typical lazy, half-assed episode of this show, notable only for its weird quirks and not for any of its actual creative qualities. It's bad. Don't watch it. [5/10]