Sonic Boom, Episode 1.27: Chez Amy

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.27: Chez Amy

Original Air Date: July 13th, 2015

I mentioned in my introduction to "Sonic Boom" that it sure seemed like Cartoon Network wanted to bury this show. "Boom's" schedule was incredibly inconsistent throughout its lifespan. First, they aired two episodes every Saturday morning. Then they switched to just airing one episode every Saturday, followed by a rerun. Which is a weird thing to do when you're just a couple episodes into your series. The show went on an expected hiatus at the end of 2014, before returning to its Saturday morning time slot at the start of January. After sticking with this pattern up through May of 2015, "Sonic Boom" would disappear from the schedule for an entire month before reappearing in July... At noon, on weekdays. This was not even the last of "Boom's" wacky, unexplained time slot shifts. When you consider that the network also did zero promotion for the series, one can't help but conclude that Cartoon Network just inexplicably hated "Sonic Boom" and wanted it to fail. 

While CN screwed with "Boom's" time slot, fans continued to show up and the creative staff continued to make a decent program. Such as in "Chez Amy." The episode begins with Amy visiting Meh Burger and receiving a live fish on a bun, instead of her actual order. Fed up with the lousy service, she decides to start her own restaurant. Chez Amy prides itself on quality customer service. While the strategy is successful at first, Meh Burger lures dinners back with promotional gimmicks. As Amy continues to chase success, her methods begin to drive away her friends. 

Obviously, the intended moral of "Chez Amy" is to never lose sight of your ethics. Amy starts her business with a clear objective, that is altruistically motivated. She's tired of getting bad service at what is apparently the island's only restaurant, so she seeks to save other people from that frustration. Yet she soon becomes obsessed with success, vindictively hoping to top Meh Burger and remain the island's favorite dining establishment. She forgets her original goal and alienates her friends in the process. The message to kids is clear: Stick to your principles. You might not be as successful as the other guys but you'll be happier in the long run. 

Of course, I look at this and see a slightly different message. Pinko rant incoming: Capitalism corrupts everything pure it touches. Amy has a dream with good intentions. She wants to help people, really. We never see any money trade hands in this episode or even a mention of people being paid in exchange for goods and services. Yet cutthroat business tactics clearly exist on this island. Amy's desire to be number one, explicitly motivated by petty emotions, causes her to forget the pure directive that drove her initially. Wanting to master the free market ruins Amy, changes her for the worst, and eventually leads her to collaborate with Eggman, who obviously uses violent means to get what he wants. This probably was not the intended moral here but I think it's pretty evident anyway. 

Being a cartoon show, where normal behavior is exaggerated for comedic effect, "Chez Amy" also ends up sending another message of sorts: Customers are fucking stupid. Chez Amy is obviously the superior establishment to Meh Burger. The service is obviously better. The staff is much friendlier, as Dave the Intern is apathetic. The conditions are a lot cleaner. (Dave actually drops Eggman's burger on the floor at one point and just picks it back up and gives it to him.) Yet Meh Burger repeatedly draws its customers back with stupid gimmicks. There's a big announcement of a drive-through window, even though nobody on the island has a car. Later, Dave designs a gun that launches food right into people's mouths. Obviously, this is not an ideal way to eat your meals but the people love it anyway. 

Amy has to resort to similarly grimy tactics to compete, such as including toys (literal rocks) with the meals. But the people love that too. They probably would've loved whatever weird feeding tube apparatus Amy was designing to compete with the burger blaster. Honestly, people's buying habits are ridiculously fickle and driven by utterly irrational impulses. So "Boom" actually seems to be saying that the restaurant business, and by extension all business, really isn't worth getting into. 

I was just saying, not too long ago, that "Sonic Boom" still hasn't done too many episodes focused squarely on Amy. Well, she's the protagonist here, from the first scene on, and that exposes how the show is still defining her. So who is the "Boom" version of Amy Rose? She's super girly, with a penchant for interior decorating. Except when she's smashing shit with her hammer. Usually she's the straight woman to the wacky antics of the guys. Except when she gets fed up and pushed to her limit, at which point she might freak out and scream some. 

That last mood largely characterizes her here, as she feels an increasingly vengeful wrath towards Dave the Intern every time he starts to outsell. It seems like Amy is a woman of contradictions. Or maybe the show has just failed to give her an established gimmick, like everyone else has. This is another Reid Harrison script and I've pointed out before that he tends to simplify or exaggerate characters to suit whatever would be most funny at any given time, so maybe Amy is simply a victim of that here. 

And, yes, this is episode is pretty funny. In fact, it's funny in a distinctly different way from the previous episodes Reid Harrison wrote. Instead of focusing on rapid fire absurd gags, this one packs in the fast-paced dialogue. There's several unexpected bits of amusingly dialogue, such as when a customer at Chez Amy mistakes Dave's announcement for a "voice from the sky." The script is packed full of colorful monologues too. Such as Amy's increasingly unhinged rant about destroying Dave, which causes Sticks to respond with "This is nuts." Or Eggman's various villainous statements, one of which sneaks the phrase "Simpering jackanapes" into a kid's show. 

Puns are in used to, like Sonic's early attempt to name a sandwich after Amy or Soar the Eagle – seemingly settled into his job as the village news reporter now – unfurling a whole paragraph of fast food puns. There's a few running gags here, that I enjoyed. Such as Dave's breathy repetition of "I'm on breeeeak," Tails being accused of patronizing people, or Eggman blaming his tendency to fall back on supervillain tactics on his "pretty limited playbook." About the only joke here I'm not crazy about is the repeated references to Knuckles' stupidity, which are starting to get a little over the top. In this episode, we learn the echidna can't even feed himself. 

Still, I laughed plenty and that's worth something. Seeing Amy get crazed and unhinged, at least about some topic besides loving Sonic, is amusing to me. Also, this episode reveals the village everyone hangs out in officially has no name. The Sonic News Network Wiki even refers to it as "Unnamed Village" in the episode synopsis. I don't know if that's a jab at Sega's insistence that nothing in this franchise ever have a back story or just an unrefined bit of silliness. Either way, I approve. [7/10]