Sonic Boom, Episode 2.17: Blackout

Sonic Boom, Episode 2.17: Blackout

Original Air Date: March 4th, 2017

As far as action/adventure cartoon plots go, "Blackout" has a fairly standard one. Sonic and friends are just chilling on their couch, watching some trash TV, when the power goes out. A quick trip to Mayor Fink's office reveals that the magical Meroke Crystal that powers the entire city has run out of juice. Sonic and the others are tasked with braving the snow swept near-by mountains to retrieve another one. They soon find themselves in an ancient temple, completing a series of deadly tasks, in order to appease some stone guardians and get a new rock to generate electricity for the village. But will they succeed in time???

I think I've made this observation before but the "Sonic Boom" island is just lousy with ancient temples, magical relics, and other left-behind magical juju. All this stuff just laying around and waiting to be dug back up and form the basis of an episode or video game plot. "Blackout's" script does not outright state if the Meroke Crystal and it's surrounding temple are from the same ancient civilization as all the prior relics the show has featured. Considering how different the vaguely Olmec inspired designs of this temple and its stone guardians are from the previous similar locations and golems the team gave encountered, I'm beginning to think that the term "Ancients" doesn't refer to just one group. Instead, it increasingly feels like the island was home to a number of competing ancient civilizations that all had advanced, magi-tech of their own. 

Not that I ever expect the show to actually explain this stuff. And not that it matters either. The various ancient temples and magical doohickies they left behind serve their purpose as plot devices and that's all that really counts. Instead, Sonic and his pals encountering one old temple filled with booby traps after another serves another purpose. "Sonic" is, after all, a video game based franchise. And temples riddled with traps and pitfalls are among the most common locations in platforming game history, precisely because they make good video game stages. The "Boom" cartoon going back to this well is really just an example of this show following the source material in a generalized sense. 

In fact, I figured that was the case literally at first. While watching this episode, I assumed that the Meroke Crystal and the associated temple must've been taken from one of the later "Sonic Boom" video games that I never got around to playing. The wiki informs me that this is not the case. In fact, this episode appears to be the only appearance of the Meroke Crystal ever. (Not that this stops it from essentially filling the same role the Chaos Emeralds do in the main series, being both a source of power and a MacGuffin to seek out.) If this episode isn't based on one of the games, its source of inspiration is easy to spot then. Once again, we can't undersell the impact "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and later "Indiana Jones" media had on wider pop culture. Aside from the general structure of this episode being taken from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade's" final act, there are several expected, explicit shout-outs to that film series. The old movies and serials that George Lucas and Spielberg ripped off ended up inspiring like half of all pop culture in the last fifty years, didn't they?

The focus on our heroes traversing a temple in pursuit of a magical plot device, while completing a number of challenges, does make this one of the more plot focused episodes of "Sonic Boom." There are still room for plenty of jokes though. One of the main reoccurring gags here that Knuckles ends up resolving each of the riddles the temple's guardians gives them, usually by mistake or dumb luck. You'd think the other characters would make more of a big deal out of their densest friend unexpectedly saving their asses with some hidden depth. Instead, the episode just brushes it off. "Boom" Knuckles' intelligence has always fluctuated with the needs of the story and comedy but, between this and the last episode showing him holding down a demanding advertising job, maybe we should all give "Boom" Knuckles more credit for being less of an idiot than he appears. I'm sure we'll get another episode based around him being an utter simpleton soon enough though. 

Nevertheless, this is a funny episode with a number of solid gags. As the cadre climbs the blizzard infested mountain on their way to the temple, Tails narrates a letter back to Zooey. (Good to know she is still around.) Sonic ends up agreeing with Sticks a few times. Various deadpan remarks about Eggman's front door, Mayor Fink's lack of communication, Tails struggling with a simple slide puzzle, and just building jokes around the island suffering a power outage all made me chuckle. This deep into its run, "Boom" has really turned into a reliable comedy machine. For every one-liners or gag that doesn't land – Eggman insulting Orbot and Cubot's intelligence is a pretty limp one – a better joke is usually right around the corner. Even totally expected bits here, like the stony temple guardian actually being fairly laid-back, manage to work simply through decent timing and delivery. 

Despite "Blackout" having a typical action/adventure plot – voyage to this foreign location and answer me these riddles three – the show is expectedly glib about all of it. However, there are some elements that the program was clearly forbidden from joking about. After the power outage occurs, Sonic and the gang's Luminescence Suits activate. They are named out-right several times and featured all throughout the episode's first half. The one joke we get about these power-ups is awkwardly built around how useful they are. Later, Sonic saves his pals from the heavy snow on the mountain by jumping in the Blue Force One and activating its snowmobile mode. What follows is a lengthy montage focusing on the vehicle's special abilities and heroes looking cool, snowboarding behind it. You'd expect a show as self-aware and meta as "Boom" to mock such blatantly radicool moments as these. The lack of dialogue pointing out how toyetic "Boom" is being in these scenes suggests to me that these moments were intentionally inserted to sell toys. (Especially since we know that the popularity of "Boom's" merchandise helped redeem the sub-series commercially after the video games flopped.) This is an expected element of children's television but "Boom's" usually sarcastic, in-joke prodding writing makes the lack of such comments during a very commercial moment like this all the more noticeable. 

This episode being a cog in a vast corporate machine designed to sell kids plastic bullshit doesn't stop it from including some of "Boom's" darker humor. While discussing the Meroke Crystal, Mayor Fink has a line about how it has been passed down from generation to generation. This suggests that, despite Fink ostensibly being an elected official, some dynastic system is actually in place here. The town's lights being kept on by some magical rock is probably intended as a hand wave to brush over why such an otherwise primitive community has television and motorcycles and robots. However, it does feel a bit imperialistic to me, a modern day culture using the leftover relics of an ancient one to power their modern conveniences. As always, Fink is depicted as a buffoon, going right along with the program's repeatedly displayed cynicism about society in general. We also see this in how the village's residents going into riot mode after only a few hours without electricity, before the TVs flicking back on pacify them once again. Maybe this is less unusual than it seems to me but I still maintain that a show designed for seven-year-olds pushing the message that the populace is irrational and violent and only kept in-check by mindless drivel while the political systems put in place to police them are run by hopelessly incompetent stooges is... Pretty dark, ya know? 

Anyway, did anyone actually buy the Blue Force One toy? Was it as bitchin' as the show makes it seem? Or has a cartoon lied to me once again? If nothing else, the writers repeatedly emphasizing the vehicle's various alternate modes has helped justify why super-fast guy like Sonic needs a motorcycle in the first place. (Other than just him thinking it's cool which, in "Boom's" goofy and laidback world, is probably justification enough.) I think I've rambled on about this episode enough. It's decent! [7/10]