“I don’t know what I hate so much about that show.”
“The way he says, ‘I’m waiting . . . .'”
“Ooooooh, yeah. That’s it.”
–conversation I had with another parent about this show once
It’s always interesting to me what shows from before his time my son Simon gets into. I don’t remember playing this for him—well, I’m slightly too old to have been the slightest interested in watching it when it aired originally. I’m not sure if his father cared, come to that. There are a few shows he got into that way, and this might be one of them. But I don’t think so. Maybe it ties into all those gaming videos he’s watched on YouTube; he might have gotten into Sonic that way.
As near as I can tell, though, this has little to do with any actual video game. I’ve never owned a gaming console, and when I played games at friends’ houses, this wasn’t the sort of thing I was interested in playing. Still, this is indeed adventures featuring Sonic the Hedgehog (Jaleel White), who is on the planet Mobius, apparently, a member of the rebels against the evil Dr. Robotnik (Long John Baldry), who I guess rules the planet? Anyway, he’s got robot minions and Sonic has Tails (Christopher Welch), and there are goings-on.
I’ve been accused of not liking things because I don’t understand them a lot, to the extent that I’m hesitant to bring anything I don’t understand up, but if I don’t start there with this show, well, we’re leaving a lot out. Because this show makes very little sense. I suppose it’s hard to inject story into something about a video game like Sonic the Hedgehog, which is just him running around collecting rings, but I’m pretty sure there have been multiple PacMan shows, so who even knows? But while I’m quite sure the attempt was made in search of fat sacks of cash money not unlike Sonic’s own (if you translate rings to money, as I believe you ought), I’m never going to understand why they did it this way.
Because Sonic is supposed to be the resistance, and a sort of symbol against the oppression of Dr. Robotnik, and things like that, and how in the name of Gods can this obnoxious little twerp inspire anything but being beaten severely? Which, sure, he can outrun, because that’s his thing, but you know, that was also a thing for Speedy Gonzalez, and he was less obnoxious while also being a racist caricature, and that takes some doing. (Jaleel White was apparently trying to prevent Sonic from sounding “too black,” and boy does that take some unpacking.) He doesn’t seem very bright, so he’s able to think his way around Robotnik’s robots but then so could a paper bag. He only seems to free people when it benefits him in some way. And Robotnik is out to get him, but is very bad at it.
And all this is at roughly the same time as another series about Sonic the Hedgehog, which I’m told is different but do not care enough about to look for. I find myself slipping into italics about my bewilderment, because really, what answer for all this is there other than “piles and piles of cocaine”? And Simon likes it a lot because he’s six, which is the age at which you have terrible taste, but I am given to understand there are adult humans with fond nostalgia for this show who rewatched it as adults and didn’t hate it immediately.
My own visceral loathing is so intense that I can’t really give many details about any individual episode of the show, because I can’t get more than about thirty seconds in without wanting to do pretty much anything that isn’t watching it. I don’t restrict Simon and his sister from watching shows that make me feel that way unless I have an ethical reason for it, but this is probably going on the list of “not when I’m around,” which is shows that I won’t outright forbid but cannot bear to ever watch again myself. And Jaleel White’s peculiarly nasal “I’m waiting” whenever Sonic is feeling particularly obnoxious tops the reasons for that.
Also, while I’m talking about what I don’t understand, what’s with the chili dog thing? Okay, so I don’t myself like chili dogs because they tend to involve chili. But unless there’s something our own Douglas Laman isn’t telling us, they are not to my knowledge a common food of hedgehogs. And, sure, rabbits don’t actually eat carrots no matter what Bugs Bunny taught us, but at least carrots are a food that rabbits have been known to encounter now and again, right? Whereas chili dogs are a food that hedgehogs don’t eat put inside a food that hedgehogs don’t eat and then covered with, and forgive me if I repeat myself, a food that hedgehogs don’t eat. I’d argue they are, given the level of processing of every aspect, one of the most human foods on Earth. But everyone in this universe treats them like haute cuisine. It’s probably an attempt to appeal to the target audience’s tastes, now I really think about it, and it’s clear this show has no interest in raising that. Even with the then-mandatory two-minute social lesson at the end of every episode.
Actually, I’m not sure Simon’s ever had a chili dog or expressed interest in one, but help keep him in food he does like by sponsoring my Patreon or Ko-fi!