Sonic Underground, Episode 1.22: Mummy Dearest

Sonic Underground, Episode 1.22: Mummy Dearest

Original Air Date: September 28th, 1999

Ben Hurst and Pat Allee continue to attempt to build some sort of continuity between "Sonic Underground" episodes with "Mummy Dearest." Cyrus, the traitor-turned-inventor from "Tangled Web," provides Sonic and his siblings with a magical laptop computer that can spy on Robotnik's control room somehow. They spot a book with the royal family seal on it inside. Sneaking inside while disguised as SWATBots, they grab the book. It points towards an ancient scroll in a desert pyramid, home to the hedgehog's ancient ancestor, Aman-Rapi. Said ancestor was supposedly a prophet, presumably the first person to write down the prophecy the entire show is about. They go on a wacky adventure across the desert, encountering enormous sand snakes, mummies, and many booby traps. 

"Sonic Underground" only seems to have two modes as a series: Either an episode has a thin wisp of a premise that is desperately stretched into a full twenty minutes or episodes are overstuffed with ideas, never focusing into a coherent whole. "Mummy Dearest" falls into the latter category. Cyrus building perfect recreations of the SWATBots, that the hedgehogs can crawl inside of and pilot, is a pretty good idea for an episode. There could've been a lot of suspense in a story devoted to Sonic and friends going undercover in Robotropolis, always trying to avoid detection. Instead, this comprises only a few minutes of "Mummy Dearest," at the beginning of the episode. The minute Robotnik walks into them, Sonic blows their cover by telling a dumb joke. Despite the SWATBot shells being described as "super strong," Manic's falls apart after stumbling over a wire. Also, the hollow robots are super light-weight, a detail which is never actually relevant. 

It's just another example of how weird this show is that it would spend so much time setting up this plot point, just to discard it for some wacky mummy shenanigans. Stranger yet, it does something similar a few minutes later. As soon as they enter the desert, which has purple sand for some reason, they're attacked by an enormous sand snake that burrows underground. Yes, it's yet another offspring of "Dune's" famous sandworms. An episode all about trying to avoid this massive threat, or how the triplets survive once they're swallowed by it, easily could've supported a whole script. Instead, it's another bit of world-building for "Sonic Underground's" version of Mobius, that will never be relevant ever again. 

We're about half-way through this episode when it finally arrives at its main point: Putting Sonic inside a goofy ancient Egypt-inspired scenario. (Sonic uses the word "Egypt" later, so I guess we can just assume that this region of Mobius is called that.) While I was worried this would be another excuse for the show to trade off lazy cultural stereotypes, "Mummy Dearest" puts a decidedly fantastic spin on things. The ancient pyramid is not made of sandstone and rock but is metallic and sci-if in nature. There are hieroglyphics on the wall, mummies and sarcophagi about, but it's more Luxor, Las Vegas than Luxor, Egypt. The closest thing to a crude caricature we get is Maurice LaMarche giving Hothep, the temple's guardian, a Boris Karloff-inspired voice. Half this show is just Maurice LaMarche impersonating Golden Age Hollywood celebs...

"Mummy Dearest" still manages to confuse and annoy me though. Throughout the episode, we learn that Sonic and his family are descended from the pharaohs of ancient Egypt. (Or whoever the Mobius version of those rulers were.) I feel like this raises a lot of questions the show is in no position to answer. We're never told how long ago this culture's glory days was but, if it's anything like Earth's version of Egypt, it was thousands of years ago. This means Alena's family has been ruling for literally centuries. It's so frustrating because this isn't actual back story or lore. It's just a vague hint, an impression of a vast history, that never actually means anything. The writers clearly didn't have time to think through the implications of this dumb plot point they just casually throw out. 

The truth is "Mummy Dearest" is another incredibly sloppy episode. As soon as Sonic and the gang head into the pyramid, it turns into a series of hugely overwhelming comedic action scenes. The booby traps of the pyramid provide various obstacles for our hedgehog hero to navigate around. There's a river full of snapping crocodiles, plumes of fire shooting out of the ground, and a room full of mummies. While "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" used the exact same set-up to reference the famous hazards from the video game, "Sonic Underground" just has Sonic bumble around these obstacles. His fear of water is mentioned with the alligators. He gets mildly singed by the fire. The mummies just start bowing and worshipping Sonic and his siblings the minute they realize who they are. This proceeds an even lazier writing choice, when the ghost of Sonic's identical ancestor – a plot point "AoStH" also did better – appears and magically freezes Sleet and Dingo and all the other bad guys. This is an almost literal deus ex machina, another indicator of how seriously strapped for time the writers must've been. 

Any answers we might've gotten to the questions this episode raises are dismissed by another noncommittal ending. After going through all this bullshit, the royal triplets finally get their hands on the scroll. Despite Sonia's claims to being the smart one, she fails to account for the molecular degradation of ancient papyrus when you expose it to light and air. The scroll crumbles to nothing the minute they remove it from the tube, any answers about the prophecy it might've contained lost forever. Instead, they are left with hieroglyph on the scroll container, which vaguely promises victory in the future. It's the same kind of bullshit this show always does: Waste our time by chasing after answers it never intends to give and insinuating that something will happen eventually. "Sonic Underground" is basically forty episodes of someone promising that "it'll get good soon." 

The dumbest part about that ending is... Sonic, Sonia, and Manic were literally communicating with the ghost of Aman-Rapi earlier. They could've just asked the guy some questions. Instead, Aman-Rapi requests to hear some music, which is the queue for this episode's musical number to begin. And, whoa momma, it's a rough one. In the most obvious pun imaginable, "Mummy Wrap" is a rap about the episode's ancient Egypt-influenced plot. This is a classic example of people who definitely shouldn't be rapping attempting the art form. The lyrics are clunky, to say the least, full of awkward rhymes and completely lacking any flow whatsoever. Worst yet is the backing track, a repetitive bit of stereotypical mummy movie music. The entire chorus is "we are Sonic/Sonic Underground," which is repeated every thirty seconds. It's painful, a real contender for the dubious title of "worst Sonic Underground song." It's so bad that I actually had to just mute it until it was over. I'm sorry, guys. I've got my limits. 

Oh yeah, this episode also features a scene of Sleet spraying Sonic and friends with some sort of fast-acting cement, which leaves them immobilized in a sticky, cobweb-like substance. Yet more evidence that someone working on this show had an extremely specific fetish. Anyway, you can see Ben Hurst and Pat Allee attempting to make something out of the nothing here. They clearly didn't have time to develop their good ideas while their general talent was obviously pulled down by the black hole-like force of this show's suckage. "Mummy Dearest" is another fiasco of an episode. [3/10]