Sonic Underground, Episode 1.04: The Price of Freedom

Sonic Underground, Episode 1.04: The Price of Freedom

Original Air Date: September 2nd, 1999 

"The Price of Freedom" begins with Sonia on the run from Sleet and Dingo. Though the bounty hunters are defeated, Sonia's bike is trashed and she's left covered in grime. Fed up, she heads to East Mobius to meet her old friend Mindy, daughter of a rich factory owner named LaTour. LaTour produces watches and Sonia soon discovers that Robotnik is converting them into spy drones. Sonic and Manik – who are, coincidentally in the same area, investigating sightings of the Queen – arrive to reveal the truth. As Robotnik's forces close in, Mindy and LaTour have to make a hard choice.

As with every episode of "Sonic Underground," "The Price of Freedom" begins with a voiceover narration from Queen Alena explaining the theme of the day. As the title indicates, this episode is about the price of freedom... Now, what does that mean? Is this going to be some horrible, right wing polemic about how "freedom isn't free" and we need a military-industrial-complex? Or will it get into the reasons for why taxes are necessary to support our much-needed public systems? No, the answer is much stupider than either of those. See, Mr. LaTour has kowtowed to Robotnik's demands to produce spying devices because he wants to continue to provide his daughter with a lifestyle of wealth and comfort. The episode is about him learning a lesson, that love is all you really need. Mindy willingly picks her dad over the pampered, royal life. So I guess the price of freedom is... Love? But... it's worth it? I don't know, it's muddled and trite and doesn't make a lot of sense. 

And that's not what most annoys me about this episode. It's the staunch refusal to explore any of the interesting ideas introduced here. From the first episode, we've known that Robotnik allowed the rich upper class of society to continue to exist. Mr. LaTour is introduced as a rich dude running a factory... Does Robotnik's roboticized slaves toil on these factories? Or is LaTour just exploiting the working class, like a regular evil person? We don't know because we never see the factories. The idea of a businessman willingly creating watches that double as surveillance devices could've been commentary on how the rich are complacent in the rise of tyranny. (Not to mention an eerie prediction of our modern, smart phone world.) Instead, LaTour is a victim of Robotnik and we're supposed to feel bad for him. The effects of these ideas on wider Mobian society is never considered. No deeper thought was out into the construction of this story. 

"The Price of Freedom" is so awkwardly written that I thought it was setting up an obvious twist that turns out to be nothing at all. Mindy is a mildly terrible character, your typical spoiled rich girl archetype with hilariously outdated Valley Girl lingo. (It must be said, when competed to "Underground's" hideous character designs, she has one of the better ones.) She gives Sonia the watch that is later discovered to be a spider drone. Shortly afterwards, our heroes encounter an agent of Robotnik's named Agent M. I assumed all of this was heavy-handed foreshadowing. That Mindy was Agent M, that she had laid a trap for Sonia and the others, that she was loyal to the lifestyle Robotnik made possible for her. Nope! Mindy is clueless of the watches' true purposes, hates Robotnik as much as anyone else, and Agent M is just a robot. The pattern-recognition system in my brain accidentally cooked up a better story than this show's writers did. 

The naked mediocrity of this episode isn't just present in the writing. I can't really undersell how half-assed the action scenes are in this episode. During the opening chase, there's a solid minute focused on Dingo's face as he presses buttons. Sonia survives by firing a laser from her keyboard-medallion-blaster, which somehow blankets the area in a pink fog, causing Sleet and Dingo to crash into the gorge wall. I guess the medallions can do anything! Later, all three triplets are shown being caught in Agent M's net. A minute later, Sonic is shown to have escaped. He then calls in some watches/spider drones to de-assemble Agent M, which is about the least exciting climax they could've cooked up for this one. The most baffling moment involves Sleet turning Dingo into a rolled-up rug which then unfurls and captures Mindy and LaTour. I think that rightfully earned a baffled "what the fuck" from me.

This is the part of the review were I bitch about the episode's musical number. As a change of pace, Mindy sings this one. It must be said that Mindy's voice actress has a less nasally and irritating than whoever provides Sonic's singing voice. It's a shame the song is garbage. The melody is tuneless and immediately forgettable. The lyrics are utterly inane. About half of the song is the phrase "Monet can't buy the things you really need" repeated over and over. The images accompanying the song are almost unintentionally funny, with the repeated focus on Mindy's crying face. The way the song abruptly begins, while Mindy and her dad are having a serious moment, also made me chuckle slightly. But mostly it's just boring and bad. 

The only scene I liked in this episode was when Sonic and Manic are smashing some of those spider bots together. Because Sonic spin-dashing into robots in something is actually associate with the "Sonic" franchise. Well, there is a really weird dream sequence that is interesting, if nothing else. Sonia dreams about performing on-stage when Robotnik grabs her with stretchy, telescoping arms. She's rescued by her mom's scarf floating through the air, which looks like a hairy tongue at first. But, oh no, the Queen then turns into Robotnik! The whole dream is filtered through that ugly, wavy distorted effect that this show used way too often. But it's kind of weird, so that caught my attention. 

Otherwise, this one just sucks. The characters remain as bland and annoying as ever. Once again, the triplets are defined solely by static characteristics: Sonic's attitude, Sonia's girly-girl schtick, Manic's shop-lifting. The show all but admits at this point that the quest to find Alena is nothing but a plot device. Finding their mom is brought-up exactly twice and it's just an excuse to get Sonic and Manic in the same area as Sonia. I haven't truly liked a single episode of this show so far but "The Prince of Freedom" is definitely the worst one yet. [4/10]