Knuckles, Episode 1.04: The Flames of Disaster

Knuckles, Episode 1.04: The Flames of Disaster

Original Release Date: April 26th, 2024

Thanks to social media, it's difficult not to have some aspects of a new show, movie, video game, or comic book spoiled for you before you consume it. For folks like me, who tend to take their time catching up with new media, it's not unusual to have all the surprises ruined before I actually watch something myself. I'm just used to this now. I haven't had everything about the “Knuckles” show revealed to me, not yet anyway. However, I have gleamed a few things from people's reactions and discussions. Namely: Episode four seems to be the most divisive installment of the entire series, making or breaking the program for quite a few people. I guess it's time for me to reflect on this one myself. 

"The Flames of Disaster" begins with Wade Whipple awakening in his childhood bedroom, his mom's house still in shambles from the brawl the night before. As he steps outside, he's caught in a snare and dragged down the streets by a motorcycle. His former friend and bowling buddy Jack Sinclair: Bounty Hunter has tracked him down. Wade is shoved into an electrified cage, dragged behind Jack's limo on the way to Reno. Knuckles says that Wade should learn to fight his own battles, ya know? That's when the deputy meditates himself onto the spectral plane, where he encounters the spirit of Pachacamac, re-enacts Knuckles' origin story via a rock opera musical number, and learns that a true warrior's strength comes from within. 

Episode four makes something clear about the "Knuckles" series that I probably should have realized a lot sooner. The writers and creative staff clearly had few actual ideas for what kind of story they could tell with these characters. That's baffling to me. The "Sonic" franchise is full of scenarios and premises to pull from. Even if you focus solely on the video games – excluding the many, many cartoons and comic books due to whatever legal issues might be involved – there's still hundreds of things you could have done with a "Knuckles" series. Even limiting the setting to Earth and insisting that Wade Whipple be a secondary protagonist doesn't necessarily mean there isn't a wealth of material to pick inspiration from. But maybe that's the attitude of a life-long "Sonic" fan and not an experienced Hollywood screenwriter or big shot studio executive. Maybe they just see "Sonic" and its related elements as this wacky Japanese thing. I would hope that, thirty-three years into this series' existence, we'd have moved past the knee-jerk reaction of "Oh, a blue hedgehog that runs fast and fights robots? That's so raaaaandom!" I'd hope people could see Sonic and his massive supporting cast as actual characters, with personalities and complexities, that inhabit a world full of mythology and history. But I guess not. 

I say this because "The Flames of Disaster" seems to suggest a specific attitude. That attitude being: "There's nothing else we can do with this weird, dumb thing other than just go for maximum wackiness!" "A red echidna that punches things is such a weiiiiiird idea, that we just have to be as kooky as we can to sell it at all!" I've said before that, for a decade or more, "Sonic's" cultural impact was treated as a joke. A relic of nineties nostalgia that produced a rabid internet fan base of hardcore furries and autistic giga-nerds, baffling the majority of people. I had really hoped people had moved past that. The comics and recent games have gone for an approach of overall sincerity, without losing sight of the series' sense of humor. And even if the movies focused more on quibby comedy than I definitely would have, I got that impression from them as well.

"Knuckles," however, seems fatally poisoned by irony. At the very least, episode four certainly is. Any serious development the characters undergo has to be followed up with a sight gag or joke. No actual emotional resonance is ever allowed to build, because every second must be devoted to making the viewer chuckle. Wade Whipple must always be the butt of the joke, slinging doofy dialogue at every opportunity. Everyone must always be cracking wise or acting like a lunatic, in order to produce laughter. In this light, devoting a chunk of an episode to an eighties inspired rock opera, filled with intentionally lo-fi and campy special effects, is a logical decision. Why not? Nobody is going to take this ridiculous thing seriously anyway! 

Inserting a musical number into an otherwise non-musical comedy is, truth be told, a gag that reliably wins me over. "Barbie" created one of the best mainstream cinematic moments of last year with such a scene. "Billy Madison" is an all-timer. Yet "Knuckles" doing the same reeks of desperation. It doesn't compliment or emphasize any themes or ideas the story might have. It takes its place. You can see this in the climatic Flames of Disaster sequence, which explains the origins of Knuckles' superpowers. Knuckles defeats the demon Iblis and takes his power for his own by summoning up an inner strength and fighting with a pure heart. It's a corny concept but you gotta believe in this shit, or else your story is going to ring as totally emotionally hollow. Instead, typically, the show treats it as an ironic, campy joke. A little neon heart is placed over Wade's heart at this moment, the series saying "Oh, the hero fighting from the bottom of his heart, we know that's such a silly cliché, but we are using it anyway." Doing something you think is dumb, while rolling your eyes and acknowledging to the audience that you think it's dumb, doesn't make it any less dumb! It just makes you look like an insincere asshole!

Part of what made the "I'm Just Ken" scene work is, no matter how wacky the rest of the "Barbie" movie got, it had many moments of genuine sincerity. There was a legitimate investment in the story's characters, in its heart. When every person in "Knuckles" is a shrieking, shrill goofball, it's hard for any oversized gag to breathe. I'm talking about Jack Sinclair now, a character that screams to the heavens with jokey elements every minute he's own screen. He doesn't remember people's name! He likes karaoke! He lost all his money in a lawsuit against the Rainforest Café, a bit he literally screams towards the heavens. He has an over-inflated ego! He covers himself in macho signifiers – sporting an aesthetics that is part biker, part Crocodile Dundee, part Highlander – while being devoted to a mundane hobby like bowling! Since little Susie is now Jack's bowling partner, the implicit idea is that this is a hobby for children, that this grown-ass man is waaaay too excited about. Of course, the minute he's defeated, his hyper-masculine exterior crumbles and he's revealed to be a preening wimp. 

I said this last time, in reference to Wade's sister being an even bigger lunatic than him. You can't populate your entire show with Cloud Cuckoolanders. If every character is going to be Kramer/Cliff/Reverend Jim/Dwight/Urkel, the comedic potential of that personality is a lot less effective. Yet I guess the "Knuckles" showrunner didn't get that memo. And so, we have Jim Sinclair challenging Wade to a katana motorcycle joust, minutes after Wade got shocked by an electrified cage over and over again and had to pay off a little kid to use his bike. I suppose this is a big problem when you decide that a goofy, comic relief side character from the movies is going to be the protagonist of your spin-off streaming series. Maybe that's why a character as wafer thin as Wade Whipple probably shouldn't have been elevated to this prominent of a role! 

We're four episodes deep into this show, with only two left to go. I need to get accustomed to this being The Wade Whipple Show And Knuckles. Yet, really, this character had no business being the star of this program. "The Flames of Disaster" is a pivotal moment in Wade's character development. His experience on the astral plane – which takes the form of a bowling alley, because this show is undyingly committed to that bit – change him for life. Wade is a warrior now. He was a boy, now he's a man. "The Flames of Disaster" packs the entire Hero's Journey into one montage. This is, unsurprisingly, not satisfying to watch. Wade goes from being a total clown to Shoryuken-ing his way out of Jim's cage. Of course, Wade remains a giggly goofy goober after this transformation, because you can't have a duo with two straight men. Jokes are still cracked about his incompetence. Instead of Knuckles gradually molding Wade into a warrior, he magically becomes an action hero – except when the show needs an easy joke – over the course of a handful of scenes. To writers James Madejski and Jorma Taccone, I say: You're not supposed to do it that way, man. 

What makes this all the more frustrating is that.. I think there are moments in this episode that are actually pretty good. When Wade meets Pachacamac, he repeatedly stumbles over the echidna's name. Even though he in no way resembles the game namesake, I do think having Pachacamac as this show's Obi Wan, but doing things like putting on a bowling shirt, isn't a bad gag. Christopher Lloyd is perfectly deadpan during this scene because – despite having previously played one of the wacky characters I referenced above – he actually understands comedy. A small crowd of normal people standing back and watching Wade and Jim's duel is a decent sight gag. I'm not even going to deny that the visual of Wade, clad in a bathrobe and pajamas, swinging a sword around isn't without comedic potential. 

And, yes, okay, we've got to talk about the musical number. It sees Wade acting out Knuckles' previously unseen origin story, inside the bowling alley. To match this mundane setting, the fantastical elements of this story are brought to life with intentionally crude puppetry and costumes. Wade wears a ratty Knuckles suit. Dancers portraying the owls sway around in community theater get-ups. The special stages and Green Hill Zone's elements from the game are brought to life as papier-mache creations. Stagehands dressed, in black morph suits, are visible moving the puppets and props. Iblis – referred to only as the Fire Demon but that's who he is – appears as an elaborate marionette. Is it just me or is this actually kind of cool? I know it's all a big, dumb joke. That everything looks less than realistic is part of the hyper-ironic gag. "We know it looks shitty and dumb! That's part of the joke, tee-hee." But I actually see a lot of charm in home-made, lo-fi effects such as these. 

The musical component is similarly flippant. Jim Sinclair sings most of the lyrics, while wearing a silly owl costume and swinging a keytar around. His vocals are over-the-top in their verbosity, backed up by hard rock power cords and glowing synth. Michael Bolton – the latest stopover on the in-on-the-joke portion of his career, that previously included appearances alongside the Lonely Island and Teen Titans Go – appears as Knuckles' singing voice. Iblis stops to name-check Facebook Marketplace, the second time the site is mentioned in this episode, as part of the aggravating self-aware product placement running gag. It's all very intentionally cheesy, haha-look-at-how-stupid-this-is postmodern in its tone. Everybody mugs through it and there's a lot of crude humor in the lyrics. Yet the song is still kind of a banger. I like stupid comedy music. I'm not immune to whatever charms this might have. 

The team behind the live action "Sonic" franchise has been reluctant to actually detail the lore around these characters they're building in any form. We knew about some sort of lingering animosity between the echidnas and the giant owls on Sonic's world, though there's been a stubborn refusal to actually expound on that too much. We still didn't know where Sonic and Knuckles' superpowers came from. Now, thanks to this musical number, we know that Knuckles' electric superpowers come from beating Iblis in combat. Does this mean that Sonic gained his similar abilities from also defeating some sort of eldritch abomination? Chaos, perhaps? Even though he was shown as having his superspeed as a baby?! I don't know, these shows and movies will get around to explaining that eventually. Or they won't, because they are making it up as they go along. Still, it's nice to have some of these tidbits and that they connect in some way to established game lore. (Though Knuckles' origins being rooted in "Sonic '06" – instead of, you know, the games he first actually appeared in – certainly isn't a decision I would've made.) 

Also, we now know Knuckles had a dad that died right in front of his eyes. He appears as a guy in a fursuit and then a felt hand puppet, which made me laugh. Some folks are saying that the glasses and mustache makes Knuckles' Dad look like Ken Penders. I'm guessing that's a coincidence. Come on, my dad wears glasses and has a mustache. All dads look like that. Anyway, "The Shabbat Dinner," no matter how aggressively wacky and bizarre it got, had a molecule of actual heart. That made it more than just a long gag. "The Flames of Disaster" sees the "Knuckles" show being totally consumed by the Flames of Irony and Hacky Comedy. I didn't totally hate it. It has some merits. But I'm beginning to feel like this entire enterprise might have been ill-conceived. [6/10]