yesterday seen an ep. of Sonic Boom...

[Hyram the Hedgehog]

Wasn't too bad, had Amy being a creep, Eggman being almost a goody two shoes... I'll don't chase actively the series, but when I catch an ep. I could watch it.

now back to the hole...

[Neon Black]

I've seen all the episodes in the show thus far and I must say it lost its appeal quickly, overall. To describe it in a word, for me it's been shallow.

There are moments in the show where it's not afraid to subtly poke fun at itself and the Sonic franchise overall, and that's when it's at its best. Sometimes the humour actually becomes quite clever, and when it brings up pop culture references it often does it enough to be amusing, without beating you over the head with it. But too often it's just lame puns and slapstick comedy, coupled with a generic Dreamworks-esque soundtrack that doesn't really fit right a lot of the time.

I went into the show with a good first impression. The minute-to-minute banter alone is miles more witty than anything else that's been written in any Sonic games or media (though to be fair, the games up till Sonic Colours, when the series got an actual team of writers, have set the bar low enough to trip over). Quite a few of the moments had me genuinely chuckling and the characters, while being strangely more akin to Seinfeld characters than Sonic ones, were entertaining. Sometimes small details from previous episodes get reincorporated as plot points and brick jokes later on which is always good to see.

I gave it the benefit of a doubt and enjoyed it, whilst thinking that the show would be able to ramp up some interesting drama and tension whilst also keeping the humour intact. But it didn't.

There's basically no character development aside from most of the main cast becoming increasingly flanderised - Knuckles makes his initial impression as a well-intentioned oaf, but progresses to being deranged and intellectually compromised. Tails becomes increasingly eccentric to the point that he's totally useless in most practical situations and socially broken.

Sticks' paranoia never feels genuine, and throughout the series, when the writers don't suddenly remember that she exists and throw her some random Alex-Jones-o-matic dialogue, she spends most of her time in total silence or being actually pretty down-to-earth. Strangely with Sticks, I found her to be the most likeable character in the show a lot of the time, but when the sudden conspiracy theorist lines come out, I get the distinct impression that her likeability most of the time is a total accident. Sonic and Amy are handled more consistently, but make it to the end of the season no different to how they started.

Robotnik fares better at least, as do Orbot and Cubot. All three are portrayed as having some self-awareness and Orb/Cu even show signs of gaining some confidence in themselves by the end. None of them are remotely menacing, but that was never an issue in the Sonic Boom universe.

Each episode is about 85% self-contained with a very distinct beginning, middle and end and is written to ensure that the status quo almost always fully restored by the credit reel. It makes for an accessible show, but also means that you come to the end of it with a cast of characters who have gained nothing, learned nothing, achieved nothing and in turn that same takeaway was bestowed upon me, the viewer.

Shallow.

[Lynchenberg]

*Burp.*