Knuckles, Episode 1.06: What Happens in Reno, Stays in Reno

Knuckles, Episode 1.06: What Happens in Reno, Stays in Reno

Original Release Date: April 26th, 2024

In the final episode of "Knuckles," our favorite spiny anteater and Wade Whipple face their mutual enemies. Knuckles and Wade trick Agent Mason and Willoughby, before rescuing Wade's mom and sister. Next, it's time for Wade to match-up against his dad on the lanes in the final round of the bowling tournament. While this is going on, the Buyer takes to the streets of Reno in a fearsome mech with the ability to directly drain Knuckles' special energy. The weakened echidna comes crashing through the walls of the bowling alley, forcing Wade to stand up not just against his father but for the life of his best friend and mentor. 

I found myself annoyed with the cliffhanger of the previous episode of "Knuckles." One could assume that Wade hadn't actually betrayed his best friend. That he would find some way to turn the tables on the rogue G.U.N. agents. Yet Wade Whipple is such a feckless schlub of a protagonist – and Adam Pally is so much better at playing a defeated sad sack than a clever schemer – that it really felt like Wade might have sold Knux out. Of course, this is not the case. Yet the solution that is cooked up isn't really satisfying either. Turns out Knuckles had his ear piece in, listening to the conversation with the agents the whole time. I guess Wade and Knuckles figured this out off-screen or something? It feels like a cheat. Wade couldn't have slipped a note into Knuckles' hat or whatever? I guess this development is still less of a cheat than Knuckles using the big red mascot outfit briefly introduced last time as a decoy. Now how the hell did he lug that up there in time? Moments like that make me feel as if the writers of this show – John Whittington is credited with the screenplay of this one – don't respect our intelligence. 

As unbalanced as "Knuckles" approach to its characters has been, at least the show knows which side its bread is buttered on. The final episode does feature its fair share of action featuring Knuckles. The opening battle with the agents is pretty good, with lots of laser beams getting tossed around and people thrown through stuff. By this point, it's clear that Mason and Willoughby have personal grudges against Knuckles, explaining why they run into hand-to-hand combat with someone that outmatches them. If nothing else, this sequence does feature Knuckles actually using his gliding and hand spikes, two of his trademark abilities that have been mostly ignored in this show. The climax of the fight, involving two Warp Rings being opened right next to each other, was kind of cool too. 

However, there is a moment during this penthouse pummeling that really speaks to the entire problem with the "Knuckles" show. When Knuckles is wailing on the henchmen, something we've been waiting to see again since the first episode... The scene cuts away to Wade trying to save his mom and sister. What follows is another very dumb series of jokes about Wanda Whipple grossly overestimating her FBI training and bickering with her brother. It feels as if we're finally getting some satisfying pay-off when the show decides it's time for Stupid Whipple Tricks again. What Wade and Knuckles are doing never feel connected. Knuckles does the cool stuff, the Whipples do the schtick, but the two never truly meet. For what was supposed to be a buddy show between these mismatched characters, it feels very strange. 

This frustrating separation is present all throughout this last episode. Ya know, when I was in screenwriting class, I was taught that something a properly structured script should always try and do is integrate its main story line and any subplots by the finale. I don't think this is a rule you have to follow and there's plenty of great films that don't. However, it's also not a bad piece of advice. Generally leads to a more even-handed, smoothly flowing narrative. I kept waiting for Knuckles' final fight with the Buyer to connect with Wade and his dad's bowling match. Maybe the big scary mech smashes through the alley right as Wade is waiting for the last line to fall over. He'd rush to Knuckles' rescue, realizing that his bond with his new friend is more important than any lingering issues he has with his dad. Or maybe Pistol Pete would attempt to sell his boy out to the final boss, proving to Wade definitively that his father isn't someone he needs in his life. And maybe something Wade taught Knuckles would help him defeat this new adversary, really bringing everything together. 

Instead... These two plot threads simply never meet. Wade and Pete have their bowling match, with son defeating father. Knuckles is then tossed through the wall, causing our chubby hero to rush outside and help in the fight against the Buyer. After the big, action packed, special effects filled final fight, the show gets back to re-emphasizing what a – to burrow the term Little Susie uses to describe him – "turd bucket" Pistol Pete is. It's like a really hacky comedy about a clumsy man-child confronting his shitty dad on the bowling lanes and the "Knuckles the Echidna" solo movie are randomly cut together. 

The bowling match is played pretty straight, all things considered. Yeah, there are awkward jokes. Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel deliver some underwhelming banter as the sports commentators, those two truly having a thankless job. Pete and Wade snipe at each other before the younger Whipple rips his pants off, male stripper style. (Don't worry, he has bowling shirts on underneath.) Yet the typical sports movie melodrama – Pete scoring a spare and Wade waiting for the last pin on his throw to slowly tumble over – is fully intact. This is the kind of shit that turns me off so many sports movies. It's especially out of place in a show that has treated the sport of bowling so derisively up to now. And, ya know, what the fuck is any of this shit doing in a "Knuckles the Echidna" show... But I think we're past the point of asking that question being a fruitful practice. 

I spent a big chunk of the previous review complaining about how the Buyer was, thus far, not an especially compelling villain. Mostly because he's barely been in the fucking show. Obviously, the idea was for this guy to be the ominous Man Behind the Man, the one pulling the strings of the secondary villains that keep mucking things up for Knuckles and Wade. The Thanos to the show's Loki, who decides "Fine, I'll do it myself" after Mason and Willoughby are defeated. That should be a big deal, this super powerful baddie who presumably has more important fish to fry stepping up to get his hands dirty, going fist-to-fist with Knuckles. Yet this guy has been such a consistent non-entity, that it's hard to get too hyped about the final boss battle. We know almost nothing about the Buyer, not even his name! His motive never developed beyond wanting Knuckles' power for his own. He simply has no personality, being nothing but a blustering generic bad guy who doesn't do much. This is the first time he's even interacted with Knuckles! So much for a big, meaningful clash between hero and villain. Wade's shitty dad was a more prominent antagonist than this guy! 

So, yes, the Buyer – arrgh, why couldn't he have had an actual name?! – sucks. I didn't hate the climatic showdown though. The live action "Sonic" franchise focusing so much on the game cast gaining their abilities from a nebulous, mysterious "power" within them continues to strike me as odd. Yet Mr. Buyer's mech having the ability to drain this electric strength from Knuckles' body at least raises the stakes for the final fight. If he could do that all along, I don't know why Mr. Alonzo Buyer was depending on his two chumps to bring Knuckles in. Why he didn't just attack with his big smashy robot – Wade calls it a "metal onesie" and I’m going with that as the official name until something better is announced – to begin with. But that's a pretty standard action trope. 

Knuckles' defeat of Sir Alonzo Lancelot Buyer isn't the most satisfying duel in the world. After grabbing a hold of the Metal Onesie's whip/tentacle accessories, Knuckles just takes The Glow back. He boots up the Flames of Disaster and that's about it. Yeah, Knux saves the day by deploying a special ability that he's never mentioned before. Wade and Michael Bolton did all the foreshadowing for this particular super move. That's not the most suspenseful, dramatically sound pay-off... But, ya know, it's still a cool fight scene. The whippy waldo thingydos are dynamic weapons. Knuckles is given enough of a challenge that it's not a totally inert climax. This actually feels like something you'd expect to see in a "Knuckles" TV show. Could've been a lot better! But I didn't hate it. 

Wade does get involved in the final fight. As is all too often the case with the live action "Sonic" stuff, the human co-star mostly stands around and watches before contributing in some way. Wade trash-talks Sir Alonzo Lancelot Buyer, DDS long enough for Knuckles to recoup. His mom swings by in a bowling pin shaped go-cart – not set up by any previous scene, by the way – and hands Wade the rocket glove he previously failed to master in episode two. He then uses that to help Knux win the battle. (Though you get the impression that he probably could've handled it on his own, at that point.) This, I guess, is the real conclusion to Wade's character arc. The realization that his mom and sister, no matter how much they annoy him, have been here for him in a way his dad never was. Yet it is not, ya know, an elegant merging of these two story threads. 

The final shot of "What Happens in Reno, Stays in Reno" before the credits roll is a freeze frame of Knuckles and Wade doing an enthusiastic high-five. This really clarifies that the entire show was something of a gag, not to be taken too seriously. I'm fine with comedy in the "Sonic" franchise. I'm a certified "Boom" defender, after all. Yet Paramount+'s "Knuckles" definitely felt too flippant overall. The aggressive wackiness of its first four episodes sour most of the attempts at sincerity in the last two. The first episode promises a story about Knuckles training Wade to be a warrior. Yet that's not really what we got, is it? Whipple completes his training in episode four, via a magical dream sequence, and spends the rest of the show bowling and putting his Daddy Issues to bed. Wade is still, at the end of the day, not a character I have any desire to spend more time with. Yet the scenes of him interacting with Knuckles were still the best moments of the show. It's so odd that their banter is sidelined so often to focus on – and I cannot stress the randomness of this enough – motherfucking bowling. 

Ultimately, it's hard to escape the impression that the "Knuckles" series was a rush job. Paramount's attempts to relaunch the "Transformers" film franchise, building a shared cinematic universe with their "G.I. Joe" series, flopped. (Though they are still trying, apparently.) The "Sonic" movie, meanwhile, was a surprise hit and its sequel was even bigger. A rush happened to prioritize this one I.P. over the other ones. The producers looked around at what they had easy access to, realized Adam Pally's phone probably wasn't ringing off the hook, and conceived of The Wade and Knuckles Show. The connection to the game was loose. Fusing the demands of a big budget streaming show, with enough special effects spectacle to draw more eyeballs to Paramount+, with lowbrow comedy and half-ass family drama never truly gelled. The excessively wacky splurging of the third and fourth episodes felt like desperate attempts by writers given very little to work with trying to cook up something interesting. I don't know if this speaks to regarding the source material with a certain degree of contempt or simply a lack of time and money. I can't say. But that's my theory. 

Despite the boatload of reservations I have about this show, I also didn't hate "Knuckles." Idris Elba's take on Knuckles still feels a little unfinished. A "why are you punching yourself?" joke in this episode struck me as out-of-character. Yet I still enjoyed spending time with him. Hell, as utterly unnecessary as I think elevating Wade Whipple to co-lead status was, I didn't even hate him either. The action is solid. Stockard Channing was an unexpected highlight. We got a little more expansion on the universe's mythos. Basically, a show that ends with Knuckles developing a love of Challah bread can't help but charm me a little. That musical was, ya know, bold. Some big swings were taken here. Is it "Knuckles?" I don't know. It's certainly not any version of "Knuckles" that I would've expected. But at least it wasn't six hours long. 

Initially, the "Knuckles" show was referred to as a mini-series. Suggesting this was a one-and-done deal. There's since been a little bit of chatter that a second season isn't impossible. Considering this show couldn't have been cheap to produce, and the complexities of your star being a CGI cartoon character, I'm not expecting a season two anytime soon. Considering Paramount's commitment to making "Sonic" an actual cinematic universe, and their continued quest to make Paramount+ successful, I think we probably will see another "Sonic"-adjacent streaming event. Maybe Tails and Crazy Carl can go looking for Bigfoot together. Or perhaps Shadow will latch onto Jojo as a Maria surrogate in the third movie, setting up a cross-country adventure to a sneaker designing contest. Or, ya know, maybe Paramount will get a fucking clue and just greenlight an animated series set in this universe, finally dispensing with the meat bags. Kind of doubt that though... 

In conclusion, "Knuckles" was a not entirely unsuccessful attempt to weave something entertaining out of unpromising ingredients. I don't know if the live action "Sonic" series will ever stop feeling like there's a serious disconnect in it, between what fans want to see and what the producers want this franchise to be. The second movie proved a smoother blending of these attitudes is possible. Hopefully the third movie will continue down that route. Because six episodes of Take the Echidna Bowling as another weird one-off in a multi-media franchise full of them is one thing. But I don't want it to be the future of the series. Anyway, "What Happens in Reno, Stays in Reno" gets a [6/10]. The title probably refers to Knuckles and Wade definitely committing a crime in the final act, which they don't seem to face any consequences for. There's a post-credits scene but it's another dumb joke, not these two consulting a lawyer and Knuckles struggling to understand the legal definition of manslaughter. Just one missed opportunity after another with this show, let me tell you.