Sonic Boom, Episode 2.36: The Haunted Lair

Sonic Boom, Episode 2.36: The Haunted Lair

Original Air Date: July 15th, 2017

When I was a kid, we just called them "haunted houses," even the ones that weren't actually set inside of houses. (My local example was technically a haunted trail.) Around Halloween, you'd pay a couple of bucks, get led into a creepy location, and a bunch of performers in monster masks would jump out and yell at you amid fittingly macabre set-dressing. Fun for the whole family, really, and a suitably spooky excursion for late October. In the decades since then, attractions such as these – now typically called "haunts," I guess to distinguish them from genuinely spirit infested locations – are a multi-million dollar industry. There are haunts out there with professional actors and elaborate, state-of-the-art special effects. Some run all year round, looking to satisfy horror nuts in search of simulated terror no matter what month it is. Some even seek to take the "simulated" part out, pushing towards more and more extreme angles. Yet humble, kid-friendly, small town haunts still exists too. These attractions have become such a common place feature that even cartoons with otherwise no scary elements feel the need to comment on them. And that brings us to "The Haunted Lair," the thirty-fifth episode of "Sonic Boom's" second season, which aired during the scariest month of all... July! What's more frightening than scorching heat waves and dog-traumatizing fireworks? BoOoOoOoO!!!

The episode begins with the gang arriving at T.W. Barker's latest endeavor: The Haunted Forest, a walk-through attraction designed to spook the skeletons right out of ya. Even though Eggman pushed to the front of the line, he soon finds the crudely engineered haunting too much for him. Even into the next day, he's possessed by an overwhelming phobia of ghosts. When a spectre seemingly appears in his lair, he's happy to get rid of it. He sells his HQ and everything inside it to Barker, who then turns it into an even bigger and better haunted attraction. When Sonic's ongoing quest to prove to Eggman that ghosts aren't real ruins the business, Barker then goes on the offensive, attacking Team Sonic with his newly acquired robot army. Now, Sonic being saved is dependent on Eggman getting control of his lair back. 

I have an unquenchable thirst for all things macabre and creepy. You probably know this, as I mention it about every chance I get. "Sonic Boom" has dipped its toes into the horror-adjacent side of things from time to time. Going into "The Haunted Lair," just based on the title, I was really hoping this would be another Halloween-y "Boom" installment. The first half certainly fulfils that promise. Sonic and the gang walk through a demonic looking gate into a mist-shrouded forest. Cardboard tombstones, rubber bats, moaning sound effects, and blinking eyes surround them. When the ghosts do appear, they are white sheets with crude faces drawn on them, suspended by ropes. I find super lo-fi attempts at the horror aesthetics like this incredibly charming, actually. The joke here is that these effects are deeply, obviously unconvincing but they still reduce Eggman to a quivering mess anyway. Despite this, I mostly came away from this scene enjoying seeing Sonic and friends hanging around a dollar store haunted location. I'm a simple man. Piped in some fog, prop up some tombstones, and sprinkled in a bat or two and I'm happy.  

Disappointingly, most of "The Haunted Lair" isn't actually devoted to the spoopy location promised in its title. After Eggman's traumatizing encounter with a sheet ghost, Sonic and Tails fuck with him in a public library by pretending to be harassing poltergeist. When it becomes clear how intense Eggman's spectophobia is, they start to feel bad and back off. Exactly one scene is dedicated to showing a ghost appearing in Eggman's lair, this being enough to scare him off. We never even see the full width of what Barker does to the place once he converts it into an attraction either. Sonic leads Eggman down one hallway, points out a projection of a ghost, and that's it! Instead, the episode quickly turns towards Barker taking over Eggman's position as the biggest thorn in Sonic's side and the doctor's attempts to get back that which is rightfully his. I'm just sayin': An episode called "The Haunted Lair" probably could have spent a little more time showing how haunted this lair is. 

Instead, the second half of the episode is focused on another idea. Though he has shown flashes of competence over the 88 episodes of "Sonic Boom" I've thus far watched, Eggman's credentials as a villain have long since come into question. (That was literally the premise of the last episode, after all.) Eggman will always be undone by his wafer thin ego, his own self doubts, and his general incompetence. While T.W. Barker has suffered his own humiliating defeats over his handful of previous appearances, "The Haunted Lair" suggests that he's at least better at utilizing Eggman's tech than he is. The second act has Barker using actual strategies with Eggman's armies of Badniks, eventually overwhelming and cornering Team Sonic. They even admit that, with someone more competent at the wheel than Eggman, the machines they usually tear through like tissue paper are creditable threats. This presents an interesting idea on its own. Namely, Eggman has the ability to be a genuinely dangerous villain, he simply lacks the necessary ruthlessness. Probably because he secretly wants to be friends with Sonic or whatever. 

It's a big, action-packed finale. Eggman does prove his competence, in a roundabout way, when he outsmarts Barker and gets control of his horde back. Yet, as the episode ended, I felt disappointed. I really expected "The Haunted Lair" to circle back around to the titular haunting. Wouldn't it have been a funny ending if Eggman goes through all of this, only to discover his base is genuinely haunted? Or maybe he simply doesn't realize the ghost is real, after going through all of this. Instead, the episode simply never returns to that moment. It wraps up on the image of Sonic and friends posing on the battlefield. That abrupt conclusion definitely feels like a case of the limited runtime these episodes have catching up with the ideas the writers had. Or maybe the haunted house set-up truly was merely set-up and I should stop expecting everyone to be as enamored of spooky shit as I am. (That will never happen.)

Despite that serious, gaping reservation I have with this episode, it's still funny. This is the sole "Sonic Boom" credit of Sandrine Joly. Her resume is a real grab-bag of licensed cartoons, having also provided scripts to shows based on Maya the Bee, Lassie, Noddy, and Robin Hood. Judging from that work, it's surprising to see some pretty sharp, caustic jokes from her. There's a great gag about what really frightens Sticks. There's an off-hand line about the Haunted Forest attraction being built in a Gogoba burial mound. Probably the funniest line has Barker assuring everyone that his attraction is not the most morally bankrupt, as at least he's not hurting any whales. Did I expect a "Sonic the Hedgehog" cartoon to reference the SeaWorld/Blackfish controversy? I did not. I also didn't expect the show to include a joke about Eggman deleting his browser history, which has got to be among the edgiest one-liners in the show's history. Did Joly actually write these jokes or did the "Boom" home team spice up the French script to make it smarmier? I can't speak French, so I'm not going to watch that version of the episode to know for sure. 

So, yeah, I did laugh. I laughed at Orbot and Cubot doing some Eggman themed roleplaying. I laughed at Barker's verboseness on the battlefield. I laughed at Sonic debunking the haunting. I'm just saying, this episode needed to emphasize the "Haunted" aspect a lot more. Don't promise me ghosts if you aren't willing to deliver! And it's not like ghosts aren't canon in the "Sonic" universe! At least give me a proper "Scooby-Doo" mystery or something. I'm just saying, if I had the chance to write a haunted house themed episode of a "Sonic" cartoon, it would go a lot harder than this, alright? [6/10]