Sonic Boom, Episode 1.15: Aim Low

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.15: Aim Low

Original Air Date: February 28th, 2015

The fifteenth episode of "Sonic Boom" begins where most of them end: With Eggman suffering another humiliating defeat at the hands of Sonic and friends. This loss is so demoralizing, that the mad scientist falls into a deep depression afterwards. Looking to get out of his funk, he hires a self-help guru named Soar the Eagle. While Soar boosts Eggman's confidence, it does nothing to cure his lack of motivation. With the bad guy stuck on the couch, eating nachos, Sonic gets restless. With no one to direct his super fast energy at, he starts to annoy the hell out of Amy and the others. They decide to cook up a plan to get Eggman out of his stupor and give Sonic something to do.

In my previous review, I noted that, the more we learn about this version of Robotnik, the more sympathetic he becomes. I also theorized that his grandiose ego covers up a massive insecurity. This episode more-or-less proves this true. Defeat after defeat finally gets to the guy. He can't justify his own image of himself, as a super-genius so brilliant he deserves to rule the world, anymore. Thus, he falls into a deep depression. He sits on his couch, binges television shows, eats junk food, and never changes out of his pajamas. As someone who has lived with pretty serious depression most of my life, I can definitely relate to that. Even if Eggman's reasons for being depressed as ridiculous, loosing all motivation to do anything in life, and just gorging on garbage food and garbage pop culture to drown out the nagging sounds of failure in your head, is all too understandable. 

Yet this episode is more about the relationship between Sonic and his archenemy than it is Eggman's melancholy. The writers come to the same conclusion here that countless fans and analysts have noted about every major superhero and supervillain. These two complete each other. Eggman's acts of villainy gives Sonic someone to utilize his boundless energy against. The goal of defeating Sonic gives Eggman an objective in life, that allows him to exercise his genius engineering skills. Without one, the other falls into dysfunction. If you're making this point about Batman and the Joker, it comes off as trite. Yet this episode finds a mildly funny take on it but zeroing in on such pathetic foibles. Without Eggman, Sonic becomes intolerable. Without Sonic, Eggman is listlessly unmotivated. They need each other. 

Maybe Eggman wouldn't have gotten depressed in the first place if he had any real friends. When the villain is feeling down, he has to pay a self-help guru to spend time with him. This is despite the fact that Soar the Eagle is clearly disgusted with Eggman and is only there for the money. When Sonic starts getting antsy, his friends formulate a plan to help him out. Eggman doesn't have that. When he fires Soar, in a misplaced burst of self-confidence, he immediately sinks back into his funk. This makes a clear distinction between real friends, who actually care about you, and the predatory self-help industry, who only want your money. It also leads us to the unavoidable conclusion that Sonic and the others are the closest things Eggman has to friends. In the first scene, Tails even asks if anyone else has noticed that Eggman hasn't been himself lately. By exaggerating the hero/villain codependency, "Sonic Boom" reaches the point where Sonic and Eggman are as much pals as they are sworn enemies.

Despite having some clever and funny ideas within it, "Aim Low" still feels like a strangely incomplete episode. Take the subplot about Soar the Eagle, for example. Once he was introduced, I expected Soar to become the focal point of the episode. That this would be a largely eleven-minute takedown of pompous self-help gurus who claim they want to help people but can't disguise the abject contempt they hold for their customers. These guys present themselves, not as someone offering help and advice, but as personal messiahs that provide immediate answers to complex problems. In exchange for money, naturally. This is clearly the type of figure Soar is a parody of... Yet the episode never really focuses on that. The eagle shows up for a couple of easy gags, gets Eggman to try a couple of schemes, and is then written out. It feels like a half-formed skit, without a real ending, in service of an idea that isn't well explored. 

I've made this comparison before but: The idea of a self-help guru for supervillains is the kind of absurdist, clever premise that "The Venture Bros." could've built a hilarious, insightful half-hour around. (And it basically did.) Combining mundane, everyday concepts with fantastical subject matter is basically my favorite form of humor. "Sonic Boom" isn't as good a show as "Venture Bros." It doesn't even have thirty minutes to explore its ideas. 

Instead, "Aim Low" is a bunch of potentially amusing ideas that never amount to much. Eggman being depressed is an interesting idea but it only gets a shallow treatment here, the root of his feelings never really being probed. Getting into the oddball balance Sonic and Eggman give each other's lives is the episode's strongest thread. Yet even it is left half-completed. After Eggman and Sonic get each other active and focused again, the episode abruptly ends. We never see if the characters have learned anything from this or if they are comically missing the point. 

I'm really starting to think that the short runtime for each episode is why a lot of "Sonic Boom" feels rushed or incomplete. The Sonic News Network Wiki informs me that this was one of the first episodes of the series written. That series co-runner Bill Freiberger started working on it a full year before it aired. Is it possible that "Aim Low" was written before it was decided that "Boom" would only fill a brief block of time? Was Alan Denton and Greg Hahn's script cut down to make the episode fit? It kind of feels that way. That would explain why it ends so suddenly, why Soar isn't explored more and exits the story so bluntly. Or why Sticks doesn't have a single line of dialogue, despite appearing in several scenes. There's just a general sense of incompetence here. Hastily chopping a longer script up to suit a runtime would certainly explain that.

It's not like there aren't some laughs. Eggman grumbling despondently as he walks back to the EggMobile, following the opening defeat, is a funny image. The montage of Sonic annoying his friends includes some mildly entertaining sights, like Amy painting a self-portrait of her painting or Knuckles attempting to hang a birdhouse. Soar encouraging Eggman to shoplift a burger or a random appearance from the Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota on Mobius got a brief chuckle out of me. Yet "Aim Low" definitely feels compromised, in a way that keeps it from being a satisfying experience. [5/10]