Sonic Boom, Episode 1.31: Closed Door Policy

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.31: Closed Door Policy 

Original Air Date: July 17th, 2015

If that title seems nonsensical, don't worry, it'll make sense soon enough. Amy has to cut a battle with Eggman short, because she promised Sticks a night out on the town. Once they're at Sticks' burrow, Amy is overwhelmed by what a hoarder her friend is. She immediately throws a yard sale to sell all of Sticks' useless shit, much to the badger's consternation. During the sale, Amy removes a surfboard from an ominous stone door. This unleashes a race of subterranean frog creatures called Froglodytes, who then kidnap Sticks. This forces Amy, Sonic, and the others to descend into the Froglodytes' lair to rescue their friend. (See, that's why the door needed to be closed.)

You'll notice, from the above plot synopsis, that this episode changes premises like three or four times. The opening scene involves Eggman using spider-bots – which look a lot like the can bots from "Dr. Eggman's Tomato Sauce" – to turn cocoanuts into bombs. "Okay," I thought, "that's a wacky enough idea for this show. You could get eleven minutes out of that." That's before the swerve, where Amy meets up with Sticks. "Oh!" I then thought. "This is going to be another episode about contrasting Amy and Sticks' personality. Maybe, where "Into the Wilderness" had Sticks teaching Amy about survival tactics, this one will have Amy teaching Sticks about how to have a proper night out on the town. To be girly and shit. A nice character centric installment with plenty of potential for gags and funny situations."

That would probably be a good episode but, nope, that's not what happens. Instead, Amy discovers Sticks' pack-rat tendencies and the focus of the episode switches totally to the yard sale premise. "Alright," I said to myself, doubting my intuition by this point. "Yard sales are a totally cromulent sitcom set-up. I can see "Boom" having some fun with that." All of this is before the Froglodytes appear, shifting the premise in its by-far wackiest direction yet. I think the only reason "Closed Door Policy" didn't become about something after that is because the episode only had to run for eleven minutes. If nothing else, I can't criticize this one for being predictable. It's free-association, cartoony writing definitely kept me on my toes.

Ultimately, "Closed Door Policy's" ever shifting concept actually works in its favor. By the end, the seemingly chaotic plotting even starts to build on itself. Many of the random objects introduced during the yard sale portion of the episode are then fashioned into weapons to fight the Froglodytes with. Hey, that's pretty clever! Plus, it leads to a suiting-up montage set to totally-not the "A-Team" theme, a joke I'm always happy for the show to return to. They even bring the exploding cocoanuts back around at the very end. The unifying idea throughout the otherwise unfocused script is that Amy learns to appreciate Sticks just the way she is, which is enough to cause this goofy, short cartoon to still feel coherent and satisfying in the end. 

Of course, that draws attention to a reoccurring issue with this show: Who is Amy Rose? I've noted before that she's the least well defined member of the "Sonic Boom," a show where everyone else fits into easily understood roles. What shape her personality takes really seems to depend on who is writing any given episode. Her straight woman qualities are downplayed here and her girly side is briefly mentioned. (With the prerequisite SonAmy tease.) The manic side of her personality manifests as a desire to micro-manage her friends. The script then proceeds to mock and punish Amy for this tendency, which she's only just begun to display in recent episodes. I don't mind that so much. Who doesn't love to see a busy body brought down a peg or two? But I am a little confused by this show's continued uncertainty with what to do with Amy. 

And as I've said before in the past, "Boom" can get away with these kind of inconsistencies as long as they are funny. The yard sale portion of the episode seems to split the cast into pairs of twos. While Amy tries to sell all of Sticks' useless junk, the badger insists it all has important meanings. This introduces some likably goofy gags, such as ones about a piece of moss. Tails and Knuckles get paired up, the hyper-smart fox and the hyper-stupid echidna having an amusing back-and-forth. Lastly, Eggman appears and attempts to steal a comic book, causing Sonic to harass and haggle with him. Like I said, it would've been really easy to do a whole episode like this. Just letting the established characters play off each other within the totally mundane setting of a yard sale. Other sitcoms, and episodes of this very program, have done plenty with less than that. Maybe Eggman needs to buy something from the yard sale to complete his latest doom machine. Ya know, that would've worked just fine.

However, I am glad those crazy Froglodytes show up. An underground race of amphibious, caveman-like savages only seem like they fit this universe a little better than these hideous pepper people last time. (And it's pretty easy to imagine something like them showing up in early Archie or Fleetway.) They aren't the funniest critters. They talk like boring normal people, which is obviously the joke, but it's not delivered with much comedic spark. Nevertheless, they lead to a number of decent gags. Such as Amy's reaction to the ominous moaning the door makes. Or Sticks pointing out that all these guys live in her basement. Sometimes, you just need something crazy for the heroes to fight in the last act. Cavern-dwelling batrachian Neanderthals are more interesting than just another Eggman robot. 

Though the episode probably could've made more of the fact that one of Sticks' insane conspiracy theories turned out to be real, for once. How exactly did she wrangle all those Froglodytes into her basement? It's pretty rare that this show ever looks back, so I guess that's an answer we'll have to look to the realm of fanfiction to answer. Anyway, despite an unconventional structure, this one is fun and kept me solidly amused throughout its brief runtime. And isn't that what it's all about? Keeping me happy? [7/10]

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.04: Buster

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.04: Buster

Original Air Date: November 15th, 2014

The fourth episode of "Sonic Boom" begins with its heroes, seemingly, in their natural environment: Fighting some wacky new evil robot Eggman has made. After defeating the machine, Sticks is tasked with rescuing a cat stuck in a tree. Her solution is to shake the tree until the cat falls out. The rest of the team decide Sticks needs some sensitivity training around animals and figures her getting a pet would be the best solution. That's exposure therapy, I guess. Yet Sticks dislikes the traditionally adorable options available at the pound. Instead, she bounds with a robot dog who constantly vomits and leaks green slime everywhere. She names him Buster and immediately falls in love with him. Everyone else, of course, finds Buster disgusting and intrusive. Oh yeah, he's also an evil robot created by Eggman. Which becomes a real problem when the doctor activates his murderin' instincts. 

We are only four episodes into this show and, given the short runtimes, we still don't know a lot about these particular iterations of the "Sonic" gang. Yet we know even less about Sticks, because there was no prior version of the character to compare the wacky sitcom version too. Aside from her conspiracy theorizing and unpredictable quality, what defines Sticks? This episode seems to suggest that she was raised in the jungle, maybe explaining some of her eccentric behavior. But it really seems her aggressive weirdness is her most prominent characteristic. This is why she goes nuts for Buster, a critter that is obviously repellant to everyone else. Sticks just doesn't like cute puppies and kittens. She loves gross shit. You could definitely read into that and see Sticks as some Keaton-esque outsider who is a contrast against the polite impulses of society. But "Sonic Boom" isn't that kind of show.

It's also, up to this point, not the kind of cartoon I would expect to impose a moral lesson on the children watching... Except this episode kind of does. See, I recently made the decision to bring a puppy into my life. Meet Spooky. She's adorable. She's also a massive amount of work. It's taken some time to break her of the habit of randomly pissing and shitting around the house. Maybe it's just cause these things are on my mind lately but: Buster's habit of excreting a viscous green fluid at all times really reminds me of the rigors of house-training a puppy. The climax of the episode involves Sticks finally imposing some boundaries on Buster, disciplining an unruly new pet that requires those lessons. 

If “Buster” is an admittedly tongue-in-cheek attempt to teach kids about how new pets are a lot of responsibility, it kind of blows it at the end. There’s a joke at the beginning about how building evil robots is just what Dr. Eggman does. When it’s revealed that Buster is one of those evil robots, Sticks makes the hard decision to send him packing, back into the wild. I get that “Sonic Boom” is a sitcom and status quo is king, so Buster obviously couldn’t stick around for long. Yet it’s weird that they explicitly wrote him out of the show, instead of just not referencing the little guy again after this. That ending makes the episode’s moral seem like “If you can’t train a new pet quickly, just give it away.” This is not a great message to tell kids. I know I'm probably (definitely) thinking too hard about this but it’s still a weird ending. 

Obviously, Sticks loves Buster, finding the traits that repel the others charming. But what do I, the viewer, think of Buster? Well, he's more cute than disgusting. He's dog-shaped but made from random objects. His nose is a lightbulb. His body appears to be some sort of toolbox. His tail is an old-timey crank and his feet are little plungers. He's rusty and discolored but overall still more cuddly looking than grotesque. His behavior is written as very puppy like, in the sense that there's no malice behind the misdeeds he wreaks. His habit of pissing and puking globs of green shit all over the place could easily be mitigated with training and Sticks just needs to be firmer. (And her friends just need to be more patient.) The joke probably would've been funnier if Buster was genuinely ugly, if Sticks was over-the-moon for this horrible little goblin. The most off-putting thing about Buster, truthfully, is how badly animated his green slime is. The way it sluggishly plops through the air looks like something out of a PS1 game. I still generally dislike the stiff, weightless, crunchy animation of this show. 

Overall, this is probably the least funny episode of "Boom" I've watched thus far. It starts out with some strong gags. The evil robot in that first scene is dressed like a firefighter but actually sprays fire. Amy points out how counter-intuitive this is and Eggman – who is still denying at this point that the robot is his – says that's entirely the point. Instead of just leaving that one-liner there, the script runs with the absurdity of a reverse firefighter. He doesn't save a baby from a burning building, he attempts to put a baby into a burning building. He doesn't get a cat out of a tree, he puts one up there. It's a simply enough structure but, honestly, made me chuckle. The show could've taken this bizarro logic even further and given him a black dog with white spots or have him chop down a large axe with a small door. Go even further into that silliness. 

Instead, most of "Buster" sums up why "Boom's" humor doesn't always work for me. This is an episode that does a joke and then draws attention to it. Knuckles makes an obvious, goofy pun about "firing" the robot. Sonic then repeats the joke later, getting praised for it where Knuckles' quip was ignored. There's a scene where Cubot and Orbot rob an inexplicable warehouse of villainous resources, a gag that definitely needed to be way subtler to work. The best example of this occurs at the end, when Buster goes fully evil and attacks Sticks. She seeks to remind him of all the good times they had together. What follows is a montage of events that never happened, like the two performing in a circus or discovering some sort of ancient temple together. That's a good joke! Sadly, the script doesn't let the absurdity of that moment ride and has to have Sticks throw in a line about how she "doesn't remember that stuff either." Or the very last scene where, after going through this whole ordeal with Buster, Tails immediately decides a giant octopus is the pet for him. This is punctuated with an unnecessary gag of the cephalopod attacking Tails. The episode seemingly has to draw attention to its own jokes, as if it doesn't trust audience to grasp the absurdity on their own.

This is episode is all the more disappointing, especially because the previous one was the funniest installment of "Boom" yet. Oh well, can't win 'em all. I think the premise of "Sticks becomes enamored of a horrible pet" is amusing but the execution fumbles it. As I progress through "Sonic Boom," I guess I'll see if this is a regular problem with this cartoon or dependent entirely on who the writer was that week. It's still better than any of the "Sonic Underground" episodes that feature the characters getting splattered with slime, which I'm thankful for. [5/10]