Sonic Boom, Episode 2.10: Strike!

Sonic Boom, Episode 2.10: Strike!

Original Air Date: January 14th, 2017

After another humiliating defeat from Team Sonic, Eggman becomes so annoyed with Cubot and Orbot that he forces them to hitch a ride back to his base on their own. Amy assures the machines that this treatment is unfair and they should strike. After the doctor forces them to row across the water to get some decorative rocks that he then demands they return, the machines decide to do just that. It's not long before all of Eggman's robots are striking. Helpless without his peons, the scientist hires some rubes from the village to be his new henchmen. Sonic at first assumes these scabs have been kidnapped, forcing the hedgehog into the middle of this worker/employer conflict.

As I write this review, both the Writers Guild and Screen Actors Guild are striking, bringing the entire U.S. entertainment industry to a standstill. Ironically, one of the reasons writers are striking is because of studios threatening to use so-called A.I. to help write scripts. Replacement by automation has always been a lingering threat for American workers. The manufacturer industry dealt with it. The service industry is starting to deal with it. Yet, I'll admit, I never thought the fucking robots would come for the artistic jobs. Silly me, I just assumed the highly personal expressions of something deep within the writer's or illustrator's psyches could never be replicated by a computer program. I mean, it definitely can't but I guess I'm not as cynical as the brutalist capitalists that run Hollywood, who see all art as mere content to be churned out. They really think audiences will lap up machine generated slop and I can't totally shake this haunting feeling that some actually might. Thus is life in the Hell World that is 2023. Welcome to the future, bitch.

It's doubtful that the "Sonic Boom" writer's room was thinking about this much in 2017. Back then, the idea that any rube could produce their own big-titty anime waifu with an app on their phone was just a glimmer in Hayao Miyazaki's worst nightmares. Yet it's definitely a little ironic, from today's perspective, that I'm reviewing a cartoon about literal robots – the biggest threat to actual humans in today's fraught employment landscape – striking to be treated fairly as workers. Eggman, you goofball, why did you program your machines with free will? Don't you know the whole point of robotic labor is that they don't care about pee breaks and how many Amazon warehouse workers have died in their wage cages today? I'm sure writer Marie Beardmore was aware of this ironic juxtaposition, in the general sense that the idea of robots striking is funny. Yet it's bizarre that, in the last six years, this premise went from mere sitcom tomfoolery to an ironic inversion of our actual reality.

Anyways, enough doom-speech about the state of everything in the world right now. This is a pretty funny episode! "Strike!" is a good example of a "Sonic Boom" installment that really milks its set-up for as many jokes as possible, packing the brief runtime full of solid chuckles. I figured the premise of Orbot and Cubot striking would be enough to fill eleven minutes. Instead, the idea keeps expanding, to Eggman hiring scabs, who can't live up to his standards, and Amy informing Sonic that he can't cross the picket line. The final negotiation that ends the strike is also a funny take on Eggman's dehumanizing relationship with his robot minions and how much abuse they are willing to put up with. "Strike!" never undermines the importance of striking as a political action while staying true to the absurdist nature of these characters. Dare I say this episode even does an adequate job of teaching kids about their rights as future cogs in a cruel workplace that values profits far over human life?

It's also an episode full of some well-timed physical gags. The way Eggman tries to get other robots made for hyper-specific destructive tasks to do Cubot and Orbot's brand of drudgery, only to prompt each of them into joining the strike, plays out in a really well cut montage. Even an appearance from some Vuvuzelas, which I at first took to be merely another instantly dated pop culture reference, escalates in an amusingly goofy manner. Sonic is also the center of some solid gags. A "Batman '66" style scene transition occurs, which the show then dryly subverts. Nice to see "Boom" still taking the piss out of superhero tropes. Sonic also rides around in a bitchin' hover-bike in one scene, even giving it a name. Which really feels like the kind of thing shows like this include so toys can be made. A quick search shows me that this suspicious was correct. You can buy a little version of the Blue Force One you can pull your own little Sonic in. I didn't think they designed an elaborate vehicle just for a single gag, though that would've been pretty funny if they had.

Another way you can tell the "Sonic Boom" writers were actually invested in their little show is how often the minor supporting cast shows up. In a lot of shows, the random villagers would be just that, maybe used for a joke every once in a while, but otherwise simply digital extras. Yet "Boom" repeatedly brings its bit players back. The guilting Gogoba and Soar the Eagle have funny one-off appearances. Fastidious Beaver and Mike also recur, as two of Eggman's scabs, and both got some laughs out of me. "Boom" isn't necessarily a show that values setting much but I still like how total background characters like these have become reoccuring players of sorts. Makes the show feel more vital, like the cast members actually have lives outside of what we see in the episodes themselves.

I guess it's a sign that I'm fully won over by "Boom" now that this episode, which revolves largely around Cubot and Orbot, ended up agreeing with me so much. The "Boom" heroes actually don't have much to do here. Tails shows up briefly in the first scene. Knuckles and Sticks are nowhere to be seen. Sonic and Amy are prominent without being huge players in the plot. If you're a SonAmy shipper, I'm sure you'll enjoy seeing them together so much. For the most part, this spins totally solid comedy out of the fucked-up relationship between Eggman and his bots. Sometimes a toxic work environment is a more fruitful setup than more typical heroes-vs-villains shenanigans.

In fact, there's almost no action scenes in this episode at all, save for the brief scuffle at the very beginning. I really didn't expect to dig "Boom" as much as I have. Yet here's a smart, funny, short little episode built totally around situational comedy involving its colorful cast of video game mascots. This is  Marie Beardmore's first episode of "Boom" and she has a few more coming up in season two, so hopefully they are as much fun as this one is. [7/10]