Sonic Boom, Episode 2.19: Robot Employees

Sonic Boom, Episode 2.19: Robot Employees

Original Air Date: March 18th, 2017

Most episodes of "Sonic Boom" have some sort of joke or pun for a title but sometimes they are really literal. As is the case with "Robot Employees," an episode about robot employees. Eggman stops by Meh Burger to try a chili dog but is served a cheese burger instead. Infuriated, he pitches an idea to the CEO of the company: Replace all your workers with robots. The filthy capitalist loves the idea and introduces Eggman's fast food drones to Meh Burger immediately. Dave the Intern is aghast, especially since the customers seem to like the machines way more than they do him. The CEO agrees to a contest, where Dave has a chance to prove his superiority against the robots. This goes badly for him, resulting in Dave the Intern becoming Dave the Unemployed. Meh Burger throws a big party and everyone in the village is invited. This is, of course, a trap set by Eggman. He activates an impenetrable forcefield around the location and rockets it towards space. Only someone outside the forcefield can stop it... That means Sticks – whose natural distrust of technology had her avoiding this whole scenario in the first place – and Dave have to team up to save Sonic, his friends, the villagers, and his mediocre place of employment. 

I talked a little bit about this in my "Strike!" review but the idea is even more pressing towards this episode: The robots are coming for all of our jobs. Even the lowly fast food worker is now facing the looming threat of being replaced by automation. Even in 2017, this wasn't really fiction. My local McDonalds location now has those computer kiosks set up, cutting down on the number of employees technically needed to run the place. Never mind that removing the human element actually slows the so-called "fast" food experience to a crawl. Never mind that the computers are constantly freezing and, in general, just harder to use than simply talking to another flesh and blood person. And certainly never mind that taking out the people and putting machines in their place turns what should be a hospitable, welcoming establishment into a cold, industrial, purely transactional process. It cuts costs for the execs and CEOs, saving a few bucks on the bottom line, so McDonald's doesn't care if it leaves people unemployed and makes the overall experience much worse for everybody. It's only a matter of time before the company attempts to replace all the jobs in the average restaurant with robots. The first fully automated location opened in Texas in 2022, so it's already started. The company assumes the customer will just put up with the worse service. And I don't even know if the teenagers looking for their first work experience or the people who simply don't have access to better employment options even cross their minds. This is what happens when you build your industry, your country, around a system that prioritizes profits over everything else. 

Excuse my leftist political rant here but I do believe the ideas are related to this stupid cartoon show. There's no way the very real threat automation poses to workers in the food service industry wasn't on Annie Raraou's mind when writing this episode. Not that "Robot Employees" is an especially deep criticism of this threat. In fact, the robots do seem to make Meh Burger better at first. Dave's service is so ridiculously bad that the hyper-efficient machines do improve things. After all, Eggman's scheme here is inspired by Dave's apathy resulting in him getting the wrong order. On the whole though, I do think this episode supports the idea that replacing fast food workers with machines is bad. Especially since, ya know, it's all part of a plot by a supervillain to exact petty revenge on his enemies and random bystanders. 

That doesn't stop the script from making the easiest possible jokes about the fast food industry. There's gags about flipping burgers, scrubbing up mysterious stains, and attempting to understand speech through the crackle of faulty speakers. The episode just takes Dave's lack of enthusiasm and incompetence as a given. Not as the result of a crushing, capitalistic system that has replaced all chances for satisfying self-actualization with a dehumanizing, spirit-killing daily grind. The joke is that Dave is a lazy, wheezy dork, not a victim of a society that totally devalues the individual. This, perhaps, represents the flaw in trying to find deep, probing social commentary in a ten minute long cartoon designed for young children. Still, I will go ahead and say that anything that sows a distrust in the Way Things Are in the minds of little kids is a good thing. "Robot Employees" makes a lot of lazy jokes about fast food workers but, if it teaches kids that companies replacing people with machines is a bad thing, that's good. 

All of that aside... What do I think of the episode itself? Well, it's okay. Probably the cleverest thing the script does it force two characters that usually don't interact much to work together. I'm talking about Dave and Sticks saving the day. The two don't have much in common but are united by their mutual distrust of robots. The ranting, paranoid badger and the apathetic capybara do make an interesting pairing. Dave's experience with interacting with average people helps him translate Tails' technobabble into something Sticks can understand. While Sticks' insane energy and tendency to stand up to the system pushes Dave to actually be proactive. I wish the episode did more with this unlikely pairing. Really, the only pay-off we get on Sticks and Dave's differences is a cute joke where he mistakes a simple command as a romantic gesture. It's still a decent idea. 

That joke does make me imagine a fanfic where Sticks is Dave's Manic Pixie Dream Badger, the two thrown together in an unlikely romance. He does specify she isn't his type. I bet Dave, being a shallow male nerd, fantasizes about girly-girl bombshells or improbably proportioned superheroines. Considering the toxic, supervillain traits he's shown in past episodes, he might even think he's entitled to a babe like that. A gremlin-like tomboy conspiracy theorist probably isn't on his radar. However, Sticks certainly would shake his life up for the better. And you could turn such a story into a subversion of the entire premise, since Dave is way too lazy to ever actually improve himself and Sticks is way too unhinged for the average person to ever safely tolerate. We're people, not tropes, and the impulsive free spirit girl won't actually save the nerd unless he saves himself first. Still, it's a pairing I'm kind of digging. Maybe Sticks drags Dave to a rally and it radicalizes him? 

But I digress... Sticks and Dave's partnership does lead to a satisfying climax. With Tails' direction over the communicator, the two manage to slow the dome's ascent by taking out its thrusters. Once the force field is deactivated by a gizmo Tails has laying around, the citizens can leap to safety using the table clothes as parachutes. When the restaurant starts to plummet, Dave has to man up and pilot the plane fast enough for Sonic and the gang to leap on. (Dave can fly airplanes, by the way.) The whole thing is set to a soundalike of "Danger Zone" and is well orchestrated in general. You know, it's satisfying to watch people work together to solve a problem in a smooth, orderly fashion. The point that robots could never improvise and collaborate like this is kind of left on the table but I'm going to give the writer the credit of assuming that was intentional. 

Ultimately, "Sonic Boom" is a comedy so you have to rank "Robot Employees" on the question of whether it made me laugh or not. A few times! The best jokes revolve around Sticks' eccentricities. The whole sequence of Tails calling her up and asking her to get the necessary tech from his work shop is probably the funniest bit in the episode. Especially Sticks doing an adorable "I Told Ya So" dance when Tails informs her the robots are evil. Her reaction when she reaches the spot where Meh Burger formerly was is pretty good too. I also like a random sight-gag of a bizarre slide getting into Eggman's presentation to the Meh Burger CEO. Mike Pollock's delivery really helps salvage quite a few otherwise clunky lines. 

Overall, the episode is burdened by that snarky insistence on explaining most of its jokes. Such as when Soar the Eagle explains how the final part of the contest is designed to "create false dramatic tension." Or when Dave's boss clarifies that it wasn't so hard to fire him. Sometimes it's okay to let the story just breathe, you guys. You don't have to amend a sarcastic comment to every moment! The timing is simply off with jokes about "rat's patootie" or Mr. Slate being "very suggestible." Dave's wheezy stereotypical nerd bit is also producing diminishing returns. You can see a line about his "mom's boyfriend" coming a mile away. Though his catchphrase comes back around in an amusing way in the final scene. 

Also, the show is hammering the joke that the villagers are all total idiots a little too hard lately. Such as when the goat lass chews a hole in a tablecloth or the rest of the Lightning Bolt Society immediately caves at the promise of infinite hamburgers. Still, this does lead to a bizarre moment of the Old Monkey announcing he hates the Gogobas, totally unprompted. Just an elderly man being racist out in public for no particular reason! Anyway, "Robot Employees" is an episode with some interesting ideas and clever moments, even if it ultimately comes up a bit short on laughs. [6/10]