Sonic Boom, Episode 2.32: Planes, Trains, and Dude-Mobiles

Sonic Boom, Episode 2.32: Planes, Trains, and Dude-Mobiles

Original Air Date: June 17th, 2017

In another surprising show of continuity from season two of "Sonic Boom," "Planes, Trains, and Dude-Mobiles" is partially built around the existence of Dude-itude, the rock band Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles formed back in season one episode thirty-nine, "Battle of the Boy Bands." Despite having only played one gig a year before, the band has somehow booked a concert. Tails excitedly tells Sonic and Knuckles, who had forgotten they were in a band. The fox has built a specialized van just for the trip to the venue. Sonic is hoping for a relaxing road trip but it soon turns into a nightmare, as his band mates insist on making frequent stops at kitschy tourist traps and the group is repeatedly hassled by a hard-assed patrolman. When a notorious criminal by the name of the Bike Chain Bandit ends up hitching a ride with them, thanks to Knuckles' idiocy, things get worse. 

Aside from putting bacon in things and crippling class inequality, there is perhaps no American tradition greater than the road trip. One can make the argument that this country, as we know it today, didn't really come into existence until the creation of our modern car culture during the post-World War II manufacturing boom. And people wouldn't have bought cars unless they had places to go, which was made possible by the boom in highway construction around the same time. While the glory days of Route 66 have long since passed – as anyone who talks about Route 66 will immediately tell you – road trips continue to remain a backbone of American culture. The advent of the internet has now made it even easier to find out about cultural events or unique treasures hidden across this fair land of ours, making an extended car ride to such places all the easier. Even a crabby-ass home body like me will admit that, sometimes, you just gotta pack a bunch of stuff into your car and drive someplace twelve hours away. Maybe it's the nomad in all of us that feels the siren song of the open road. 

Since the road trip occupied such a prominent place in the American subconscious, it should not be surprising that there is an entire genre of story built around such journeys. It makes sense, as there's no narrative older or more sturdy than the journey from one place to another. In the written word, the idea has produced classics like "On the Road" and "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." On-screen, the inherent filmic qualities of driving through the countryside, and the sense of adventure and discovery that goes along with it, has led to the creation of the road trip movies. Being such a mutable premise, the idea has infected practically all genres. There's a cinematic road trip for every mood: The hippy existentialism of "Easy Rider" and "Two-Lane Blacktop," the broad comedy of "National Lampoon's Vacation" or "The Cannonball Run," award-winning dramas like "Thelma & Louise" or "Paper Moon," grisly thrillers like "Near Dark" and "Natural Born Killers," coming-of-age stories like "Yu Tu Mama Tambian" or "Corvette Summer." If you want to hit the road via fictional proxy, there's no limit of options. 

Television, being a much more limited medium, doesn't do road trip stories as often but homages do appear from time to time. Which brings me back, finally, to "Sonic Boom." "Planes, Trains, and Dude-Mobiles" takes its title from a beloved road trip movie, another John Hughes' comedy about unlikely friendships and wacky happenstance occurring during a long trip. Despite that, Alan Denton and Greg Hahn are not paying specific homage to Hughes' film. In fact, "Dude-Mobiles" seems to be more of a throwback to the general idea of road movies, more so than any specific example. The ball-busting highway cop, shitty roadside attractions, and picking up a murderous hitchhiker are archetypal concepts that can't be traced to any specific source. The sense that the episode is a throwback to the vague notion of eighties road trip movies is supported by the episode ending in a chase scene set to a cheesy, butt-thumping, synth-rock ballad. It honestly feels a little bit like someone who actually hasn't seen that many eighties movies imagining what the genre must be like. Which I guess is fine, considering the eight year olds who watched this in 2017 wouldn't be likely to have seen those movies either. 

I always believe that a callback is pointless without specificity. However, I still had some fun with this episode. Considering my taste tends to run more towards "The Hitcher" than "It Happened One Night," it should surprise no one that the Bike Chain Bandit subplot is my favorite part. When Knuckles is given the wheel, so Sonic and Tails can nap, he drives down a spooky forest. That's when he picks up a scraggy possum with a bag full of bike chains, much to everyone else's horror. Just like in the classic urban legends, a radio announcement breaks out at exactly that moment – interrupting, in a great gag, "our regular broadcast of silence" – to announce a deranged killer matching the hitchhiker's appearance precisely is on the loose. The sequence that follows is obviously played for madcap laughs. Yet that a kid's show would even feature a scene where a lunatic tries to garotte Knuckles with a chain, amid a dark and stormy night, surprises and delights me. 

All things considered, this is an amusing ten minutes. Denton and Hahn's scripts can usually be relied on for a few solid zingers. A sequence devoted to the trio visiting "the world's largest non-rocking chair" escalates in amusingly silly way. Knuckles reaction to a bad lie Sonic told or safely pulling over to the side of the road while a killer pursues them are solid chuckles. As is Tails' reaction to the cop's color euphemism for a jail cell. There's lots of good little lines here – Sonic's reaction to Amy telling him "not to do anything [she] wouldn't do" or a Knuckles' quib about wallet chains – that definitely feel like they were tossed-in last minute but still made me grin. The subplot with the asshole cop and the guys meeting the world's biggest Dreamboat Express fan in jail are plenty limp but I did appreciate the reveal that Sonic uses "gotta go fast" as a medical condition to get out of speeding tickets. 

The episode never reaches the manic blend of wackiness it is clearly striving for. Part of that is that Denton/Hahn seem a little too enamored of the idea of Dude-itude. The guys breaking into a rap-like verse after getting in the van seems played totally straight, despite the sheer embarrassing cringe factor of it all. The climax is set to what I can only assume is meant to be a Dude-itude song, built around the "Push It To the Limit" soundalike riff that has played in several previous episodes. Roger Craig Smith sings the vocals in a clearly ridiculous manner, indicating this is obviously a joke. However, it's hard to make gags out of crappy songs because, at the end of the day, you're still hearing a crappy song. You'd think the people who write "Sonic" cartoons would've learned by this point that the blue hedgehog and musical numbers do not blend. 

I guess these rather unfortunate songs – which are, admittedly, still less unfortunate than any of the "Sonic Underground" songs – were inserted to make up for the fact that, despite Dude-itude being the motivating element behind this entire episode, we never actually see the band play. While not the most memorable, hilarious, or sharpest episode of "Sonic Boom," this one still isn't all bad. Like I said, the Bike Chain Bandit's appearance makes this the closest we'll likely ever get to a "Sonic" version of a slasher movie, making it impossible for me to give thus one anything less than a [7/10].