Sonic Underground, Episode 1.32: Haircraft in Space

Sonic Underground, Episode 1.32: Haircraft in Space

Original Air Date: October 12th, 1999

Before we go any further, I have to ask: Seriously, what the fuck does the title mean? As I mentioned last time, we are officially into "Sonic Underground's" "completely out-of-ideas" stage, which is why this episode revolves around a salon and people getting their hair styled. This explains the "hair" part title but what about the rest of it? It seems to be a pun on the phrase "aircraft in space..." Or, at least, it would be if that was an actual phrase people used. But it's not! It's just a string of words! Moreover, the rest of the episode has nothing to do with aircrafts or space. It's maddening! Is this a mistranslation of a pun that only makes sense in French? What the fuck is happening? 

"What the fuck is happening?" is, in fact, not an unreasonable reaction to this episode at all. To start, royal princess Sonia is getting tired of cohabiting with two teenage boys. She runs off to a salon to be pampered. She is unaware that the robot that runs the salon, named Doo-bot, is a Robotnik spy. She hypnotizes people and then records their confessions. When Sleet and Dingo realize Sonia is in the salon, they attack. Sonia takes Doo-bot, unaware of her powers, back to their secret lair. As soon as Sonic and Manic discover this, they try to return Doo-bot, unaware that their own confessions are already recorded. It becomes a race to get to the machine before Sleet and Dingo do. 

"Haircraft in Space" is the sole "Sonic" related credit of Tracy Berna, a veteran television cartoon writer. She's worked on shows like "House of Mouse," "Timon and Pumba," "Fairly OddParents," "Sam and Max: Freelance Police," and many others. I like some of those cartoons but they're all comedies. Which might explain why Berna's "Underground" episode focuses more on humor than action. And it's not especially good humor. The early scenes, of Sonia being increasingly exasperated by her filthy brothers' antics, are pretty sigh-inducing. A segment in which Sonic attempts to cook a chili dog with a hairdryer really baffles. Moreover, building an entire episode around a robot hairdresser that sounds like the halfway point between Arleen Sorkin and Fran Drescher is not a premise that really lends itself to super fast hedgehog action. 

Most of the humor here is of the unintentional variety. A lot of the plot just doesn't make much sense. Doo-bot's whole purpose is to record people speaking ill of Robotnik, information he can use later against them. When they've got Sonia, one of the regime's most wanted fugitives, under Doo-bot's sway... They attack, giving her a chance to fight back and escape! If Sleet and Dingo had just waited, let Doo-bot record Sonia's vital information, and grabbed it later... That would've been the end of the series. And I realize this is a kids' cartoon and the villains are supposed to be idiots. But when the bad guys are so actively undermining their own schemes, it really breaks immersion. (The attack scene also includes a moment of Sleet being covered with shampoo, because this show can't go a single episode without covering someone in a slimy, viscous fluid.)

Also, there's the issue of the technology here. Doo-bot doesn't record people as they mindlessly gossip with their hairdresser. No, that would've made too much sense. Instead, the machine actively hypnotizes people into a state where they share their secrets. If Robotnik can build a machine capable of doing that, why not use it to hypnotize the masses into being his willing slaves? Mind control of that level would be incredibly valuable to a dictator and this guy uses it to mine petty gossip. 

Additionally, there's some humor in the fact that Doo-bot records... On tape. So much of this episode revolves around tapes! Robotnik can build an advanced A.I. with mind control powers and it records on tapes! Not discs or floppies or Mini-DV, all technology that existed in 1998, but regular ol' cassette tapes. Why not broadcast the information back to Robotnik via radio waves? Radios existed in 1999! I guess Robotnik really loves the warm hum of the cassette format. What a quint and retro futuristic totalitarian state. 

All awkward and dumb writing aside, this episode doesn't work because the audience doesn't care about Doo-bot. She's more annoying than anything else and I do not understand why Sonia is so immediately attached to her. The show also undermines its own moral here. Obviously, the lesson that we should learn is that gossiping is bad. Yet the people under Doo-bot's spell have no control over what they are saying. They are being manipulated into revealing this information. Even Doo-bot is unaware of what she's doing, as her memory is wiped every time her tape is changed. And dissident information in a dictator state is not really comparable to gossip anyway. The moral, in execution, is that "mind control is bad" which is something kids probably don't need to be taught. 

Yet the show runs with this message anyway. The song is "Don't Be a Backstabber" and is explicitly about how no one will like you if you gossip about them. Though the lyrics also include the couplet "Don't be the bearer of bad news/When it comes to your friends, mind your business," a message I'm not entirely sure how to interpret. The music actually isn't too bad. It sounds a bit like some Robert Palmer/Huey Louis-style synth pop... Or rather, the Weird Al version of that style of music. Which is funny, as Tracy Brena worked on the short-lived "The Weird Al Show." Though I genuinely don't know if the episode writers had any influence on the sound or content of the episode's songs. 

More amusing is the music video sequence accompanying the song. For some reason, it depicts Sonic, Sonia, and Manic as either game show hosts or TV pitchmen, I'm not sure which. They snap their fingers and speak directly to the viewer. They wear monster masks, baseball caps, and are chased by ambulatory letters while random numbers float around on-screen. A giant note with the words "You are stupid" on it appears briefly. Making all of this stranger is the in-universe suggestion, just before the song, that Manic is making the entire song up in the spot. Which raises far more questions than I'm willing to ask right now. 

"Haircraft in Space" is another junk episode, though it is bad in a sort of amusing way. Especially when compared to so many episodes that are bad in a merely tedious way. Oh, by the way, the title makes even less sense in different languages. The French title is "Minute de coiffeur" – "Hairdresser minute" – which I'm assuming is some sort of French pun that doesn't work in English. Most of the foreign titles translate as the nonsensical "Hairdresser in space." The Italian title translates as "Coma in Space," which makes even less sense. Only the German title, which translates as "A Hairy Affair," actually works. I never would've guessed that the Germans would be the ones to actually understand what humor is... [4/10]