Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.43: Coachnik

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.43: Coachnik

Original Air Date: October 18th, 1993

In the episode "Coachnik," Robotnik becomes so disgusted with Scratch and Grounder's continued inability to capture Sonic, that he decides the robots need some extra education. He builds a robot coach, the eponymous Coachnik, to whip his pathetic underlings into shape. Sonic and Tails quickly catch wind of this plot, infiltrating the area where Scratch and Grounder are training and undermining the operation. As a back-up, Robotnik builds a bomb shaped like a football and installs it in Grounder's head.

"Coachnik" was an episode that really had me asking "Which fad was the writer chasing this time?" There's been almost no point in modern pop culture when sports weren't massively popular. For a lot of people, sports is the only form of pop culture they really engage with. But in the nineties, the crossover appeal of iconic athletes like Michael Jordan, Dennis Rodman, Tiger Woods, and Wayne Gretzky made sports a bigger deal than ever. Listen, "caring about sports" ranks somewhere around "septic tank maintenance" and "live vivisection" on the list of things I want to experience. But even I was invested in the Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire home run rivalry of the late nineties. That's how big of a deal the ol' sportsball was in the decade of my youth. You couldn't not be wrapped up in this stupid shit.

So it makes sense that "AoStH," being the desperate and lazy program it was, would draw inspiration from that. Sports-based video games were also very popular in the early nineties. After all, the Sega Genesis led the market in that area. The line of football video games named after former coach John Madden was extremely popular on that console at the time. So it's possible that was an inspiration too. Does the Coachnik resemble John Madden, a man I'm not sure I've ever seen a picture of in my life, in appearance or mannerisms? People who are more knowledgeable than I on this subject, let me know. Also, there was a mildly popular sitcom named "Coach" on at the time and, considering "AoStH" based a whole episode on an old SNL sketch, that might've been an influence too.

But I'm probably just overthinking it. I've been accused of that before. It's not like "Sonic + sports" is a hard idea to come up with. In fact, I suspect that was the entire thought process behind "Coachnik's" writing. As a narrative, this one is especially poor. It's another one of those episodes with little-to-no plot, that instead quickly degrades into Sonic humiliating his enemies through various gags. You can tell the episode wanted to be like the old Looney Tunes cartoons. The opening scene, involving a desert and a flamethrower, is an obvious attempt to emulate the Road Runner/Coyote series. Yet this show has no timing or discipline behind its absurdity. A gag like Sonic reversing the old "paint a tunnel on a cliff side" joke might've been funny if it wasn't rushed through and delivered with sludge hammer bluntness.

The show is so desperate to emulate classic cartoons, that it seriously abuses the bongos sound effect for characters running. That sweaty desire to produce big, goofy side gags – as it often did with this show – produces increasingly disturbing sights. When Coconuts is weight-training, Sonic shows up in an unsightly muscle suit. (Jaleel White does one of the weakest Arnold Schwarzenegger impression I've ever heard in this scene and I've heard a lot.) As recent event let us all know, Sonic with muscular, humanoid legs is an inherently unsettling sight. The show then doubles-down on this with a mildly homophobic bit where Sonic dresses as a ballet instructor... Also with distressingly detailed legs. The episode ends with a disembodied leg kicking Robotnik's ass across a landscape, a sight that would be utterly grotesque in any other context.

The biggest indicator that "Coachnik" is a half-assed episode is that it can't even commit to its own premise. The Coachnik, ostensibly the main motivator behind this whole plot, doesn't actually do anything! His attempts to improve Scratch and Grounder only serve as set-up for a series of underachieving gags. He's not in most scenes and has no involvement in the climax. Usually, the guest characters serve to create a wacky new situation but you could remove the Coachnik from this story and it wouldn't be much affected.

 

The only actual plot here involves Tails feeling like he never gets to help Sonic save the day. This gets briefly set up in the first scene and the most cursory of mentions at the end. Otherwise, this conflict between Sonic's hyper confidence and Tails' growing maturity informs the script in no way. It's another useless episode and I greatly resent my nerdiness forcing me to watch and review it. Also, the "Sonic Sez" segment informs us to always stretch before any physical exertion, a moral that greatly overestimated childhood me's interest in going outside and moving. [4/10]