Sonic Underground, Episode 1.11: Winner Fakes All

Sonic Underground, Episode 1.11: Winner Fakes All

Original Air Date: September 13th, 1999

Long time Hedgehogs Can't Swim readers are probably aware of the fact that I bank reviews many months in advance. An extensive backlog insures a steady flow of new content. Or, at least, this is the idea. The periods of inactivity this blog has had in the past can be owed to me running out of stuff to post. Why am I mentioning this? Because I've been reviewing episodes at a much slower rate than I was previously. I can attribute this to “Sonic Underground” being a really unpleasant show to watch. “Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog” was frequently stupid as hell but I at least had some weird nostalgic connection to it. “Underground” is like getting your teeth drilled. The point I'm making is: If the updates suddenly stop again, you'll know it's because “Sonic Underground” broke me.

So, uh, anyway.. What is “Winner Fakes All” about? Manic, Sonic, and Sonia stop a truck hulling innocent Mobians into the city to be roboticized. Upon freeing the prisoners – who don't even thank them – they realize Robotnik has been capturing runners. That's because he's building a super-fast robot. This is step one in holding a race to determine the fastest thing on Mobius, an obvious trap to lure Sonic out. Sonic doesn't take the bait but his brother and sister assume he will, putting themselves in danger. 

I've commented before that “Sonic Underground” was pretty heavily influenced by “SatAM,” at least as far its world and general premise goes. This would lead you to assume the “Underground” writers were passingly familiar with the previous cartoon. I guess this is not true of Mark Edens, the writer of this episode. As “Winner Fakes All” is rather similar to the “SatAM” episode, “Sonic Racer.” In both, Robotnik throws a race to lure Sonic out. In both, he builds a super fast robot, to match the hedgehog's speed. Much like in that episode, Sonic also throws on a disguise to enter the race. (Here, he's in drag, because this show just has to be like this.)

Then again, maybe Edens was familiar with the previous cartoon. While its initial premise is very similar to “Sonic Racer,” the episode goes in a very different direction from there. Sonic opting out of the race is, at least, something different for that character. However, it ends up leaving the episode with little in the way of stakes. Okay, Manic and Sonia end up being in danger, by presuming their brother will be in trouble. Sonic has to rush in and save them, in an extended action scene. Yet a large part of “Winner Fakes All's” run time is still devoted to this race... A race that has no importance to the actual story. Sonic isn't participating and the outcome doesn't matter at all. It's just weird that the episode focuses so much time on this irrelevant event.

Then again, maybe I've got the wrong idea. Maybe “Winner Fakes All” isn't suppose to be suspenseful or compelling or interesting. Instead, perhaps this is suppose to be a funny episode. There's a lot of surreal, mildly obnoxious attempts at humor here. When Sonic puts together his gender-bending disguise, he races into a salon and spins everyone inside around. Sleet wears a baby bonnet in one scene, for poorly explained reasons. Later, he transforms Dingo into a little girl in a dress on some sort of motorized unicycle. Before the race starts, a SWATBot rockets into the air and explodes. Bartleby, Sonia's sometimes boyfriend, is repeatedly made an object of mean-spirited mockery here. He's left with a fucked-up hair-do in the salon and later gets Robotnik's race-bot – who looks like a turtle, presumably as some sort of half-assed reference to the Tortoise and the Hare – dropped on him. These jokes range from badly timed to utterly meaningless. 

Perhaps the most blatant example of the episode's random sense of humor is its musical number. Once Sonic realizes what is happening – that Sonia and Manik have put themselves in danger ostensibly to save him – he goes speeding off to save the day. The musical montage that follows is, for no particular reason, set to a bluegrass number. Bluegrass is a wonderful genre of music that is, too often, reduced to an annoying stereotype of hee-hawing noise. That's, naturally, what we get here. Also, included in this montage is a truly unnecessary shout-out to Marilyn Monroe and “The Seven Year Itch.” 

It's not the most offensive, annoying, or outright bad episode of “Sonic Underground” I've watched thus far. The animation and character work is typically bad, a fact that barely feels worth commenting on anymore. Honestly, “Winner Fakes All” is almost impressive in how it manages to be both pretty weird and incredibly boring. I guess we can credit this to a story largely devoid of dramatic tension, that the writer attempted to bolster with lots of wacky humor. As with everything to do with this show, it's an abject failure. I've just got to power through, uh, 27 more of these. [4/10]