Sonic Boom, Episode 1.17: Don't Judge Me

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.17: Don't Judge Me

Original Air Date: March 15th, 2015

The seventeenth episode of "Sonic Boom" follows the pattern of a few other recent installments of this show. It begins where your typical action/adventure show would be ending. The first scene has Sonic and the gang fighting Eggman in his latest machine. After easily defeating him, the villain feigns a neck injury. The next day, Sonic is served a legal notice. Eggman is suing him for assault and battery. What follows is an absurd lawsuit, Eggman attempting to sway public opinion against the heroic hedgehog. 

Before we dig any further into "Don't Judge Me," I really have to praise the sublime silliness of that opening sequence. It takes one central premise – Eggman creating a moth-themed robotic vehicle – and exploits that joke for all it can. Sonic attacks the Moth Bot with an oversized flyswatter. Knuckles leads the machine into a trap with a giant lightbulb. Tails then defeats the vehicle with oversized mothballs, deployed like bombs. I respect a series that follows through on a gag so rigorously. The only thing I would've done differently is included some sort of reference to Mothman but I can't expect everyone to be as well-versed in cryptozoology/West Virginia folklore as I am. 

That so much effort was put into that opening joke is especially impressive, considering the rest of the episode has nothing to do with it. The majority of "Don't Judge Me" instead follows another reoccurring instinct of this series: Taking these outrageous action/adventure characters and placing them inside a mundane setting. In this case, Sonic and Eggman don't resolve their differences with punching and fighting but in the courtroom, like real people who can afford to hire lawyers can. The contrast is so clearly ridiculous that it makes the multiple times superhero comics have seriously done storylines like this seem goofy in retrospect. 

Just sticking Eggman and Sonic into a civil suit probably could've spun enough jokes for an eleven minute cartoon. Yet "Don't Judge Me" actually uses its characters within this context very smartly. As I've pointed out countless times, the "Sonic Boom" cast members all fit archetypal roles, that have predictable personalities. Fitting those silly personalities into a courtroom allows for some inevitably amusing scenarios. If Sticks is a witness, of course she's going to discredit herself with a paranoid rant. The same way Tails being an irrepressible Sonic fanboy would work against him. Or how Sonic's pride in his speed would incriminate himself. This escalates to one of the episode's most well paced gags: Knuckles, who is acting as Sonic's lawyer, puts himself on the witness stand. It's only natural that the echidna's lunkheaded egotism would lead to such a goofy scenario. Once Amy, the straight woman, shows up, the silliness ends and the episode concludes. It's a well calibrated set-up, designed to deliver maximum yuks. 

"Don't Judge Me" is riffing on something else too: The celebrity trial and the public's morbid fascination with it. The case itself is totally ridiculous. Eggman's crimes are self-evident and his attempts to paint himself as an innocent victim are unconvincing. Meanwhile, the judge is a robot Eggman built himself and is obviously partial towards him. Sonic thinks the entire thing is so ridiculous that he hires imbecilic Knuckles as his lawyer, an idea that backfires horribly on him. Yet the facts don't seem to matter so much in the courtroom, where clever lawyers can twist the laws to favor their client. Sonic is instantly convicted in the court of public opinions even though everyone should know better. (This is depicted during Comedy Chimp's talk show, which features a Yakety Sax homage. And I always enjoy a good Yakety Sax homage!) As I write this, an especially tawdry celebrity trial has just wrapped up, showing us how truly ugly these things can get. "Sonic Boom" doesn't go that deep into social commentary but it is a decent depiction of how our ostensibly fair legal system can descend into hideous theater. 

What easily makes this the funniest episode of "Sonic Boom" thus far is how jam-packed full of jokes it is. The central premise is funny enough but writer Reid Harrison sneaks in as many delightfully absurd gags as possible. Knuckles attempts to eat a sandwich, only for all the contents to slide out, to the point where he ends up munching on his own hand... Which he seems genuinely confused by. Probably the best goofy aside here has the judge and lawyers deciding to have a "groovy hippy-themed dance party" while the jury deliberates, which the show then depicts. That's an example of completely unexpected silliness that made me laugh way too hard. "Don't Judge Me" is so dense with jokes – Judge Bot hammers his gavel wildly and blames cockroaches, Sonic and Tails eat a six foot long party sub, Comedy Chimp hosts a bizarre New Years Special – that it's one of the few episodes of "Sonic Boom" that doesn't feel constrained by its short runtime. If anything, the episode feels longer than eleven minutes, because it machine guns so many gags at us. 

"Don't Judge Me" is so successfully funny and silly that I don't even mind the obligatory action sequence at the end. Since this show is based on a video game, you'd think it would follow game logic and make Judge Bot the boss of this courtroom scenario. Instead, Amy manages to derail the entire trial with a single action, causing Badniks to swarm into the courtroom. Sonic and the gang smash the machines with ease, as they have done in nearly every single episode before this one. Maybe that was cheaper to animate. There is at least one clever moment in the fight though: Tails somersaults over a MotoBug, using its antenna as parallel bars before yanking them off on the drop down. I don't know why that causes the robot to fall to pieces afterwards but it's still a cute moment. 

This episode is also notable for having some familiar faces reappear, though not in the roles you might expect. Fastidious Beaver being an overly precise jury member, which leads to a pretty funny bit, makes sense. Sticking T.W. Barker into the role of Eggman's lawyer or suddenly having Soar the Eagle act as a tabloid reporter is kind of odd though. As I've said in the past, this might just be an example of the show cutting cost by reusing character models. Or maybe "Boom" is trying to build up its own supporting cast? Either way, it's a weird quirk that doesn't distract from a highly amusing episode. If more installments of "Boom" can master this rapid-fire style of absurd humor, I will come away from the show with a higher opinion than I previously expected. [8/10]