Sonic Boom, Episode 1.39: Battle of the Boy Bands

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.39: Battle of the Boy Bands

Original Air Date: August 15th, 2015

As I mentioned in the introduction, I've seen very few episodes of this cartoon before. By 2015, I had stopped paying for cable, mostly due to my dislike of "prestige television" stretching narratives out for 24 hours and everything about the reality genre. Though a new "Sonic" cartoon piqued by interest, I was still skeptical of "Boom" for a long time. I guess it wasn't until I heard folks talking positively about it online that I decided to actually try the program out. While at my mom's place, I looked "Sonic Boom" up on OnDemand, and this was the latest episode. I was reasonably amused and intended to follow the series from that point on. And then I didn't do that, for reasons. Anyway, the point of this rambling introduction is that "Battle of the Boy Bands" is one of the few "Booms" I've boomed before. 

This is also a rare "Boom" episode that doesn't feature Eggman at all. Instead, the plot revolves around Justin Beaver, a new pop singer that is driving all the females in the village giddy with his dulcet tones and boyish appearance. Amy, caught up in Beaver Fever, even manages to make Sticks – initially skeptical of the corporate music – into an obsessive fan. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles quickly realize something is up. (In addition to hating Beaver's music.) They decide to infiltrate the boy band industry by forming a pop trio called Dreamboat Express. Soon, the trio does in fact uncover a conspiracy to brainwash females with hypnotic tunes. 

"Battle of the Boy Bands" takes us back to that frightful time when an earlier pandemic gripped the globe: Bieber Fever. Actually, by the time this episode aired, Justin Bieber had been a hugely successful pop star for five years. The cherubic castrato with the lesbian haircut had grown into a tattooed, abbed bad boy who was pissing in public, renting Brazilian sex workers, egging his neighbors' houses, and earning the obligatory aging child star DUI. His 2014 concert movie made 67 million less than his previous one. Two months before this episode debuted, he was the subject of a typically ribald Comedy Central Roast, confirming Justin as a punchline. Bieber Fever had been successfully inoculated by this point. But I guess the pun of combining the Canadian crooner with his home country's national animal was too hard to resist. What was the show gonna do to be more relevant in 2015? Introduce a character named Shawn Muskrat? Doesn't blend as well! Or maybe this cartoon was just written by old men who are perpetually five years behind whatever's current. I can relate to that. 

Regardless of how relevant a specific reference like "Justin Beaver" was by 2015, some things are evergreen. Teenage girls, and sometimes older females too, have been losing their collective shit for popular musicians since at least the days of Franz Liszt. Alan Denton and Greg Hahn's script nails the reason why. Justin Beaver's song titles include "Girl, I Like You" and "Yes, I'm Actually Talking About You." He tells every female at a record signing they are "the only fan he cares about." Yet his songs are filled with generic platitudes like promising to take you places you like and unspecific praise like "complex" and "interesting." Boy bands are designed to have as wide an appeal as possible while simultaneously making every girl's fantasy feel validated. Beaver's image is also blatantly non-threatening, as he promises to return home before curfew and perform only symbolic vandalism in the name of his love. This contrasts with the lewd, awkward behavior of actual teen boys, further marking teenybopper icons like Bieber/Beaver as blatant fantasy figures. 

Most guys as you probably know, haaaate this. Denton/Hahn seem to understand the root behind that as well. Part of it is jealousy. Many a sweaty, stubbly teen boy has secretly wished the Bieliebers and Directioners and BTS Army were creaming their panties for regular guys like them. This is an unspoken reason why Sonic immediately forms his own boy band. Most adolescents would never stoop to that level because the blustering, macho ego cringes when presented with such one-size-fits-all-teen-girls fantasies. Knuckles fears that dressing snappy, looking pretty, and doing synchronized dances will threaten his "street cred." Tails directly says boy band behavior isn't manly. Guys want to appear gritty and genuine, which is why Dreamboat Express quickly mutates into by a three-piece hard rock band... Which is named "Dude-itude," a moniker that rejects the innocuous androgyny of the Tiger Beat set. They are DUDES! And they have ATTITUDE! The stereotypical young female wants to be pampered by soft, cute guys who respect them. The stereotypical young male wants to establish his prowess, to leave no question that he is male. The two concepts are hard to reconcile. 

Of course, the rock star fantasy of melting faces with sick riffs and banging sexually pliable groupies is also a ridiculous, manufactured ideal designed to fan unrealistic, youthful desires. Most teen boys aren't self-aware enough to realize their own daydreams are as fake as their distaff counterparts. I guess middle-age animation writers aren't either. "Battle of the Boy Bands" has fun mocking prefab pop. Beaver's music is literally hypnotizing girls into being rabid consumers, to make his manager lots of money. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles mastering the boy band aesthetic so quickly suggests it's easily replicated. This is also reflected in Dreamboat Express' lyrics, which are all about how their music is generic, safe, and sellable. Yet the guys saving the day with The Power of Rock – breaking Justin's spell by blasting him with a bolt from Sonic's guitar, which gave me "Underground" flashbacks – is too tidy. Saying pop music caters to commonplace fantasies, in service of capitalistic greed, is subversive. Saying acts like Justin Bieber are fake and suck and rock music rocks is simply being a boomer. At the very least, Dude-itude should have been mocked more after defeating Beaver, as their music is pretty objectively bad. 

Nevertheless, this is a very funny episode. Denton and Hahn include more of those meta gags they like. Sonic and the guys master the boy band dance moves in a scene transition, so they devote the allotted montage time to thinking up a name instead. The episode then mocks the typical visual language of montages, such as calendar pages sweeping by. There's two separate lines about dramatically waiting until the scenery changes to finish a sentence. Cartoon contrivances, like the villain revealing his scheme just as the heroes are listening or characters wearing the same outfits every episode, are lampshaded. There's also a Benny Hill homage, which always makes me laugh. Overall, "Boom" simply makes good use of its characters here. Amy's enthusiasm, the incongruity of Sticks becoming a fangirl overnight, and Knuckles' attempt to play the trumpet are all worthy chuckles. Even Soar the Eagle and Fastidious Beaver get laughs here. 

"Battle of the Boy Band's" parodying of pop music and the accompanying industry could maybe be a little deeper. I’m not going to blame the short runtime, for once, as “Blue With Envy” pulled off some similar insight within the same length restraint. Then again, maybe expecting in-depth pop culture commentary from an episode built around a fifth-grade level pun is an example of me being a pretentious dweeb and not this show missing the mark. I liked this one the first time I watched it. Now that I've seen every proceeding episode, it's solidly funny. Lots of good jokes and better written than it had to be, even if the ending kind of whiffs. [7/10]