Sonic Prime, Episode 2.05: A Madness to Their Methods

Sonic Prime, Episode 2.05: A Madness to Their Methods

Original Release Date: July 13th, 2023

With the fifth episode of the second season, "Sonic Prime" returns to its first alternate universe of New Yolk City. Without the Chaos Council to rule the city, Rebel Rouge and her resistance fighter have largely liberated the city. As the Council returns with three Prism shards, they build powerful new weapons and attempt to refasten their iron grip on the city. With Sonic arriving alongside the Eggmen, he helps the rebels defend their newly liberated home and fight his way back to the shards. 

The "Sonic Prime" creative staff can't seem to decide how creditable a threat the Chaos Council is. They are the primary antagonists of the series after all, ostensibly the biggest danger to the ShatterVerse. Yet, on a personal level, these guys aren't much more than technically proficient buffoons. I'm not just talking about how they spend so much time bickering amongst themselves nor how they seem to loose every one-on-one fight they have with the good guys. I mean, they just aren't very observant or clever villains. This episode marks seemingly the first time the Council is aware of Nine secretly communicating with Sonic. I think the show is trying to play it as the bad guys knowing about his deception and just waiting for the right time to capitalize on it. But the actual evidence doesn't seem to back that up. You can see their lack of cunning in what the gang does once they've got all the Prism Shards together. They... Build bigger, tougher Eggforcers. This massive lack of creativity is even called out by Nine. These are the guys who are threatening the multiverse?!

The Council quarrel among themselves constantly. They talk about conquering multiverse and yet, when gifted a reality-altering power source, all they can think to do is build a bigger gun to point at the rebels in their own city. Despite their displayed incompetence, the show is still treating these guys like serious villains. They have basically come out on-top every episode this season, including this one. Without little actual skill being shown, it just seems like these five are dangerous purely through luck and contrivance. I don't mind Sonic's archenemy being goofy – I like Long John Baldry's Robotnik – but I'm just consistently underwhelmed by these guys. They aren't serious enough to be threatening villains and they aren't absurd enough to be likable nut jobs. 

And, once again, the most frustrating part of this is that it doesn't have to be this way. There's a scene in this episode that is quite good. The toupeed Mr. Dr. Eggman confronts Nine, suspecting his treachery. He uses the boy's own cockiness against him to not only reveal his secret but also to provide the Council with a better idea. At least one of the Eggmen is capable of being a threat that can observe his opponents and plan accordingly. This shows that "Prime's" writers and directors could have given us a halfway decent villain. Instead, they decided to just latch lame gimmicks to the character and have them stumble their way towards ShatterVerse-wide domination.

Even if that individual moment is good, what is the brilliant idea that Nine unknowingly gives the doctors? As the final minute of the episode reveals, it's to build their own version of Metal Sonic. The episode treats this like a big reveal. And I guess it is. Yet it really is just another example of the Council's total lack of ingenuity. When pushed to use their massive new power source to create a tide-turning weapon, they simply create a robot double of Sonic. Sure, Metal Sonic and all his variants are a proud, reoccurring part of the blue hedgehog's rogue gallery. Yet it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, on a practical level. There's still three episodes in season two to go, so presumably the Council will eventually cook up a proper doomsday device to put all of these different realities in peril. I don't foresee one (1) robot hedgehog accomplishing that. This makes the final scene of "A Madness to Their Method" seem more like a nod to long-time "Sonic" fans, instead of a proper cliffhanger in its own right. 

That's exactly what it is, isn't it? Because, once again, I have to remember that "Prime" has never been meant to stand alone as its own narrative. This show is simply all about getting mildly altered versions of Sonic's friends and enemies on-screen and having them doing stuff. This episode certainly provides that. By returning to New Yolk City, we get to see a lot more of Rebel Rouge and her resistance fighters. Yes, once again, there are quite a few action scenes. Though none of them are as elaborate at the tracking shots and helicopter kicks we saw in the last few episodes. Seems to mostly boil down to Eggforcers exploding in a handful of ways. Via spin-dashes, punches, and bazookas. Once again, "Prime" seems to indecisively place these new, heavily armored Eggforcers as both a perilous new threat to our heroes and robot goons that can easily be clipped through.

This is a me problem. I'm one of those people who demand character depth and consistent narratives from TV shows. "Prime" isn't that kind of rodeo. Yet I have to bring up the nagging fact that this program is giving me a suggestion that it could be more than just Sonic's friends in different hats, smashing robots. Before the Council arrives back in New Yolk, there's a scene of Rebel and Knocks watching kids play with the remains of Eggforcers. They talk about how the city is peaceful now, how there might be hope for the future. I guess this is ultimately exposition. To establish that the Resistance have dismantled the Council's defenses while they are gone. Yet it gives us a peek at the interior lives of these two, what they believe in and fight for. Similarly, there are occasional interactions between the heroes that suggest they do have more going on behind their eyes, that they are more than just action figures to smash together. Rebel is a passionate and compassionate person. Knocks' rough-and-tumble exterior hides a goofier inside. They all care about their teammates. It's something.

You see this in regards to Sonic too. I return to the initial synopsis that was released for "Prime," this vague promise that Sonic would have to deal with the consequences of his own actions. A few things the blue hedgehog says suggest he is feeling guilty for causing this whole mess. He feels bad that Nine is endangered and that the Council has gotten this close to greater power. Every time it feels like "Prime" is starting to zoom in on Sonic's actual personality, it pulls back. He goes right back to quibbing during the fights and joking around with his pals. Yes, yes, I know, that's what Sonic does. He doesn't angst about his problems. He runs fast and slings one-liners. Those are his attributes, not his personality. This seems to be the biggest problem "Prime" has, mistaking the stuff a character does with the complicated thoughts that push them into action.

One of Knocks' attributes, we learn, is a hatred of pirates. Considering the last episode made a big deal about Dread stowing away on the Council's space craft, and we see him arrive in New Yolk here, you'd expect there to be some kind of conflict between these different versions of everyone's favorite red echidna. Not yet. Presumably this is something "Prime" intends to get to soon enough. Dread's one line of dialogue here is him obsessing over his "treasure" again – that seems to be his sole attribute – and that makes me suspect the pirate will inadvertently help the Resistance get the shards away from the Council. (His one scene also has him falling helplessly through the air, as if he forgot he can glide.) Still, with "Prime" being such a massively underwhelming program up to this point, that minor plot point can't help but seem like more wasted potential to me. It will be important later, it's not important now. Don't worry about it and enjoy the pyrotechnics. 

I'm tempted to give this episode a slightly higher grade than the last few, simply because I really did enjoy those very brief scenes between Rebel and Knocks, was well as Mr. Dr. Eggman's interrogation of Nine. Yet my main complaint with this show, its staggering refusal to try a little harder and include a little more depth in its wildly inconsistent and deeply underwritten plot, remains. Am I being too hard on "Prime?" Is it really this mediocre? Have I become too much of a nagging old man to enjoy a light-weight action cartoon for what it is? Or does Netflix intentionally sabotage its original programming so that they aren't too compelling and threaten the weird algorithm metrics that control our modern age of streaming? I don't know the answer to any of these questions, for sure, but I do know I've got three more installments of this season to gripe about. [5/10]