Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog: "Coachnik"
Written by Doug Torilon
Reviewed by Chaos Theory T. Echidna
This is gonna be a short review, 'cos this episode STUNK. Yes, I am aware that most Sonic fans consider this entire series to stink, but this one was worse than most. UGH. I ain't watchin' it again to get the details, so you'll have to make do with that my memory didn't manage to repress.
Well, actually, it wasn't THAT bad. But after the complexity and real humour of the one before it, this episode seemed very flat. It has only one plotline, and you totally know what's going to happen at every second. It's boring and predictable.
What is it about? Well, basically, Robotnik decides that Scratch and Grounder need to be toughened up and trained so they can better catch Sonic, so he throws a lot of weird random ingredients (including 300 pounds of ham?!) into this weird chomping metal machine to produce: "Coachnik." A metal football coach who is about 7 feet and 300 pounds of major annoyance. He tries to train Scratch and Grounder while Monkey-Boy comes in for no apparent reason 'cos HE wants to be trained TOO.
Meanwhile, our heroes are having troubles of their own--poor cute little under-used Tails wants to have more of a part in the escapades against Robotnik, and Sonic PROMISES him that he'll give him more to do. Yeah, right, I've heard THAT before...I felt sorry for Tails here. Sniff. Thank the gods he finally got a clue--just listen carefully to the lyrics of the first verse of his theme song in "Sonic Adventure" to see what I mean...
Sonic confounds all the robots by dashing about in different costumes and corny accents. And here we find out Sonic doesn't just like to dress, he likes to CROSS-dress! I'm serious--at one point, he shows up in a leotard, tights, scarf, and LONG FLUFFY BLONDE WIG to supposedly teach Scratch and Grounder ballet so they can be more graceful, and talks in a higher-pitched voice with a phony French accent. (The other disguise had him in the guise of a HUGE muscle-man, telling Coconuts in an Austrian accent that he was going to PUMP (clap!) HIM UP! hee hee) Grounder is doing a pretty darn impressive set of super-fast pirhouettes--while CARRYING Scratch!--when Madameioselle Sonique le Hedgehogue trips him with "her" dainty tight-clad foot.
And here I must break to say something that I just realised while watching this episode--it's a Loony Toon, yes, but it's not just ANY Loony Toon in general--it's Road Runner! Sonic is, obviously, Road Runner himself, and Wile E. Coyote's roles are broken up between several people. Robotnik makes the wild evil schemes to catch the super-fast creature, but his ROBOTS are the ones that actually do the work. (Whereas Wile E. does it all himself. He's always been one of my favourite cartoon villians, by the way.) This episode SLAMMED that idea home. Not only did we still have the desert, the weird perspectives, the crooked, "off" lines, and the flat painted backgrounds of the first episode I saw, but now we ALSO had rock formations and stuff (it looks like Sonic was either somewhere in Utah, Arizona, or New Mexico, would be my guess. HEY, I live in one of those states! (no I ain't telling you which) HEEEEERE, hedgehog, hedgehog, hedgehog...hee hee hee.) and that, combined with the speed, the slapstick, and the goofy villian who ALWAYS fails, made me go, "OH MY GOD! WILE E. COYOTE!" But is it a "tribute" or a "rip-off"? Because this episode was so badly written, I'm leaning towards "rip-off". If it had been a good episode, then I would consider the imagery to be simply a respectful hommage to the original Warner Bros. classic--as it is, however, it seems as if they were using Road Runner 'cos they COULDN'T think of their own ideas.
Anyway, back to the "plot"--and I use that idea laughingly--the robots continue to TRY to train, and Grounder keeps losing his head--literally--and goes through an obstacle course. Including the step-through-the-tires part. Wait, don't you need LEGS for that? Evidently he DOES have them after all--he just lifts up his chassis with both hands and there they are! He starts walking through them while Sonic puts down more and more tires ahead of him, leading him towards a cliff. There they find a tunnel. Sonic says, "It's like the old paint-the-tunnel-on-the-side-of-a-cliff gag, but there IS a tunnel." ROAD RUNNER AGAIN, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. Anyway, Tails then gets a different idea, and they get a huge piece of paper, nail it over the tunnel entrance, and paint it to--sort of--look like the surrounding rock. So instead of making it look like an entrance is there when it's not, they made it look like there was NO entrance. Despite the fact that Sonic didn't even use the correct shade of brown for his paint, it fools Scratch, and then Sonic and Tails come WHAMMING into them on a train, through the real tunnel. OF COURSE.
Robotnik is by now rather mad, so he decides to stuff tons of different explosives into that weird chomping machine we saw earlier to make a REALLY powerful bomb. One of its pellets is enough to take out part of the wall surrounding his fortress. It has a timer that can be set later and it's shaped like--what else? a football.
Anyway, Robotnik now needs a place to hide this bomb (called the "long bomb", I assume referring to a "long pass" or something like that in football. I DO NOT CARE about football at all, so if you want to correct me on this, too bad, 'cos I just don't think it's all that important.) and so he picks a place where Sonic would NEVER expect to find something valuable--Grounder's head!
His HEAD?! Yes, his head. These poor robots have already fallen apart into their seperate pieces several times during this episode, so...
Meanwhile, Sonic decides to give Tails something valuable to do--sneak into the old abandoned stadium, where Coachnik has been training Scratch, Grounder, and Monkey-Boy, and spy on them. Tails eagerly flies off to do just that. He sees Robotnik SOMEHOW stuff the entire Long Bomb into Grounder's head--even though the head is SMALLER than it--while Robotnik says a great line: "Good thing there aren't any BRAINS in there taking up any room..." but no-one ever says WHAT it is; just that they have to keep it hidden. Well, that makes Tails, who has been improbably hiding behind a water-bucket, think that it's some valuable treasure, so he sneaks off to tell Sonic about it.
Oh, and Robotnik sets the timer for 2 minutes before he puts the bomb in Grounder's head, and also says that it will blow up anything within five miles, therefore eliminating the need to actually CATCH Sonic. He then goes back to his fortress "ingeniously located 5 POINT ONE miles away," to watch the show. Complete with a weird ugly pair of pants, a bench to sit on, a bag of popcorn, soda pop, and a flag that has the letter "R" with a huge moustache sticking out of it on both sides to wave. Like he's at a football game, AGAIN. This whole episode is nothing but one big sports-pun.
Anyway, Tails somehow manages to get the bomb away from Grounder, and is prepared to throw it to Sonic, but then sees the counter ticking away and figures out that it's a bomb, so he tosses it to one of the robots. Some typical cartoon madness and mayhem follows as the robots desperately try to foist the bomb off on each other, and Sonic meanwhile keeps planting it on one of them in an unexpected location (Scratch's belt, Coconuts' tail, etc.) while the counter ticks down more and more. Eventually somehow the bomb gets punted REALLY HARD--I think by Coachnik but I could be wrong--and sails over the walls of the arena to come right near Robotnik's fortress...
...and you can guess the rest.
Sonic and Tails go along their merry way, and Tails says he STILL didn't get to stop Scratch and Grounder personally, but Sonic points out that the way he figured out that the football was a bomb so fast was very clever and that means he IS a part of the team. Tails is made happy by this, but I couldn't help thinking that the stuff he did in the episode BEFORE this--finding a hidden bomb in a large room, and also saving Sonic's LIFE--was a lot more impressive. I mean, come on, the thing was ticking away, wouldn't YOU instantly assume it was a bomb? Duh...
Anyway, back to our villians, a very irate and scorched Robotnik comes tromping into the old arena to yell at his bots, and finds Coachnik going on about, "Hey, it's a minor setback, we can pull through this. Practice, that's what it takes, if we all try our very hardest we can win anything" etc., the same garbage he's been saying all through the episode. So then Robo does something he should have done a LONG time ago--he picks up a leftover explosive pellet from the bomb (the same pellets that took out part of his wall earlier), advances on Coachnik with this maniacal expression, and SHOVES IT DOWN HIS THROAT. Heh heh. Go Robo!
This of course causes Coachnik to go BOOM and Robotnik explains to the startled Scratch and Grounder that Coachnik has...erm...retired. Then they all head back to the smoking ruins of the fortress and as far as I can remember that was the end of the episode.
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curious tourists have been by here to read Chaos Theory's review of the episode "Coachnik" since July 29, 1999. Of course, they were all smacked upside the head by a heavy metal football, but hey...