Sonic Underground, Episode 1.37: Bartleby the Prisoner

Sonic Underground, Episode 1.37: Bartleby the Prisoner

Original Air Date: October 19th, 1999

Let's jump right into this one: Bartleby is just hanging out in his mansion, doing rich people shit, when a SWATBot barges in and arrests him. He's immediately put on trial for assisting the Resistance. Little does he know, this is actually a trap to lure out Sonia and her brothers. Who are on the other side of the planet! The triplets are currently trying to destroy a mine where Robotnik are harvesting ultra condensed rubies, that can be used to create extremely powerful lasers. Will Sonia be able to destroy Robotnik's new resource and save her ex-boyfriend? 

In case you were wondering, and the above plot synopsis didn't make it apparent: No, the two plot lines in "Bartleby the Prisoner" never actually interact. Sonia travels back and forth between helping her brothers out at the mine and checking in on Bartleby. No attempt is made to link these two ideas on a narrative level. Instead of focusing on one over the other, "Bartleby the Prisoner" attempts to make equal room for both. Which means we have two story lines here and they are both horribly underdeveloped. It feels like two vaguely fleshed out plot synopses just awkwardly existing next to each other. Two writers are credited with this script – Eleanor Burian-Mohr wrote an episode of "AoStH" but this is Terence Taylor's only "Sonic"-related credit – and I honestly wonder if both didn't just write their own scripts and then haphazardly mush them together. 

I really have very little to say about the ruby mine portion of the episode. It leads to some extremely underwhelming action scenes, devoted to Sonic and the gang traveling around in a drill-tipped tank and blasting uninspired looking robots. The big moment, when Sonia jabs a ruby into the muzzle of her blaster and produces a powerful laser beam that collapses the mine, is so listlessly brought to life. The animation is weak, which is especially apparent during the odd moment when the drill tank explodes out the ground atop some sort of dirt geyser. Trevor, the hippy-looking Resistance member that has shown up twice before, is also here. He almost dies, when his shuttle is shot down, but the scene has so little dramatic tension that it barely registers. 

And, really, who gives a shit about Trevor? He's just some random guy, that we've never really gotten a chance to know. I hate to say it but I think I'm actually more invested in Bartleby. And Bartleby is a terrible character. Bartleby's haughty attitude, obnoxious voice, and unapologetically bougie personality has made him hard to like. I think the character was meant to function similarly to Antoine's role in "SatAM." Namely, a ridiculous stuffed shirt for our heroes to mock. Yet the semi-prominent role this idle rich idiot has played, especially his connection with Sonia, continued the distressing undercurrent in this series that "maybe the aristocracy isn't so bad." In other words: Bartleby is annoying, both because of who he is and what he means for this show.

Yet, at least after a dozen appearances, he undergoes some degree of character development here. Bartleby being persecuted by Robotnik for helping the Resistance could've led the aristocrat to a change of heart. It could've helped him realize that being a rich piece of shit totally complacent in Robotnik's cruel dictatorship is bad and that he should stop doing that. Instead, it's all just a trap and Bartleby doesn't face any real consequences for his actions. (Even though he actually has helped the Resistance multiple times, meaning Robotnik actually has a point here.) But by the end of the episode, Bartleby does realize that Sonia is never coming back to him. That they have chosen two incompatible paths. So that's something. He's still an obnoxious one-percenter fine with fascism as long as it doesn't affect him but at least he understands where his ex-girlfriend is coming from now. 

The episode chooses to show this growth with a final scene that parodies "Casablanca," for some reason. The other nineteen minutes have nothing to do with the rest of the film. Sonia and Bartleby's relationship isn't really comparable to Bogie and Ingrid Bergman. It's a pop culture reference inserted with no particular point. That is a good representation of this episode, which veers towards dumb-ass humor and weird parody. There are at least two references to the O.J. Simpson trial: Sleet drops the line "If he lies, you must Roboticize," an obvious callback to a notorious rhyming defense, and Sonic obsessively watches Bartleby's trial, even while on the mission, much the same way average Americans were hooked in the proceedings in the Simpson trial. The episode has nothing else in common with the 90s' most notorious miscarriage of justice. Yet at least these moments are funnier, due to sheer randomness, than the other attempts at humor here. Like Dingo being Bartleby's incompetent lawyer or Robotnik wearing a powdered wig. 

Oh yeah, there's a song too. When Sonic Underground shows up to rescue Bartleby, they rock out as they blast Robotnik's court room. Consider this the faintest of praise but the show's songs have gotten slightly better as it's gone along. "Justice Callin'" has childish lyrics but the message they're sending – Robotnik, we're coming for your fat ass – at least makes sense for this world. The songwriters for this show seemed to realize, late in the game, that songs strictly about the Resistance's struggle against Robotnik are a lot more natural than, say, a rap song about mummies. The hard rock backing track is also tolerable. It's not music I would ever listen to in other context but at least it didn't make me grit my teeth and look away in shame. 

If this review seemed unfocused and half-assed, I apologize. This episode is unfocused and half-assed and I can only work with what I'm given. It has a couple of moments that amused me, because of how out-of-place they are, but I can't really recommend it. As far as I can tell, this is Bartleby's final appearance on the show, so at least I won't have to look at this stupid face and hear his annoying voice ever again. [5/10]

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.04: Slowwww Going

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Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.04: Slowwww Going

Original Air Date: September 28th, 1993

Ah, the humble sloth. Once it was just a tropical dwelling notorious only for its slow-moving. (Which has, like most animal facts, been largely exaggerated over the years.) I would go so far as to say this odd-looking animal was somewhat unknown by a large number of people. Thanks to the internet and day time talk shows, the sloth's notoriety has grown. Not only have a lot of people discovered this sluggish critter, they've discovered they think sloths are cute. Elevated to living meme status, you can now buy sloth merchandise of all types almost anywhere. "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" was ahead of the curve on the commercial potential of the sloth, cracking jokes about the moss-covered animals in the early nineties.

Sonic, we discover, has sympathy for the slow-moving sloths that are so different from himself. In "Slowwww Going," Robotnik exploits that by targeting a family of nearly immobile sloths. The family includes young Rocket, who claims to be the fastest sloth on Mobius. (Which still means he's painfully slow by any normal standard.) Anyway, Robotnik has invented a special laser beam — powered by a rare crystal — that sticks someone in slow motion for an hour. He sends Scratch and Grounder to zap Sonic with this ray, which they eventually do. However, Tails and Rocket's family end up helping save the day. 

When you have a character defined by his super speed, pretty quickly you are going to touch on the idea of draining that speed away. After all, we learn that "fast" and "slow" are opposites in kindergarten. I'm sure this plot has happened a hundred times to the Flash. Unsurprisingly, it's a premise "Sonic" writers have touched on a few times over the years. It took the writers of "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" exactly three episodes to think of this idea, as "Slowwww Going" was the fourth episode of the series produced. Speed is ostensibly Sonic's main advantage over his enemies. If he just moves at normal hedgehog speed, will he be as effective against Robotnik? It's a real challenge to the hero. It means he'll have to push himself, using only his wits, to stop the villain.

It's an idea rich with potential... Potential that "Adventures" in no way utilizes. Instead of having Sonic struggle with this new challenge, the "AoStH" writers delay him getting zapped as long as possible. Naturally, Robotnik trusts this game-changing weapon to Scratch and Grounder, who screw around with stupid traps and fuck up repeatedly for most of the episode. When Sonic is finally shot with the beam, he's totally screwed. Tails, Rocket, and a plot contrivance — when the crystal is broken, the ray works in reverse, causing super speed — save his ass instead. Yep, even though "Adventures" has Sonic outsmarting his enemies multiple times every episode, he's not given a chance to flex his brain any this time. 

That's because this show must exaggerate everything. See, the slow ray doesn't just bring Sonic down to normal speed. It traps him in slow-mo, giving the hedgehog comically slurred speech and sloth-y movements. A whole episode of that might've gotten tedious — though, again, not if the creators really thought about it — so instead they screw around for fifteen minutes. Yet this delay really just shows how unstoppable this version of Sonic is. At one point, during another one of Scratch and Grounder's dumbass ploys, he kicks up enough speed to create a tornado. Sonic then grabs the tornado by the tail and flings it into the ground. Sonic's not just super fast and far smarter than his dumbass enemies. He can also bend the rules of physics utterly to his will. Why isn't this version of Robotnik dead yet? He's clearly outclassed. (By the way, it took Robotnik nine years to perfect the slow-mo crystal, suggesting this struggle has been going on for almost a decade. I can only assume Sonic the God hasn’t killed him yet because he finds his pathetic attempts to stop him amusing.)

Anyway, complaining about this show wasting a good idea is really stupid. Why would I ever expect this show to live up to its potential? You try and think up sixty-five episode ideas before lunch and see if any of them are good. Complaining about this show being annoying is also pointless but I'm going to do it anyway. The trend of introducing characters more obnoxious than the regular cast continues with "Slowwww Going." Rocket isn't too bad on paper. But his constantly drawn-out and sluggish line-reading becomes irritating almost immediately. It's not even really a joke but the episode treats it like one, returning to it over and over again. 

After being effected by the reversed slow-mo ray, Rocket and his family are bouncing all over the place. The effects are going to wear off though, leaving them as slow as ever afterwards. I was really hoping the "Sonic Says" segment would spin this into a truly misguided anti-drug. No, they don't do that but the idea they did run with is almost as bad. In the edutainment segment, Tails is a little frustrated with Rocket. Sonic tells his body to be patient, that everyone is special in their own way. Um, wait, does Sonic see sloths as developmentally disabled? Perhaps the writers realized that was a metaphor they really shouldn't explore, so instead this "Sonic Says" swerves in an even weirder direction by having Rocket inform Tails how to escape quicksand. Because fucking quicksand is a threat kids will encounter a lot in their day-to-day lives. 

So "Slowwww Going" is, itself, pretty slow. There's lots of pedestrian slapstick and Robotnik repeatedly gets zapped with the slow-mo ray, a gag the show seemingly finds hilarious. One joke — where Scratch riding around on Grounder's back is switched around — caused the briefest dying ember of a smile to cross my face. Again, I'm the fool for expecting anything from this program. Oh well, only like fifty left to go. [5/10]