Last week, I did something I haven’t done in years and went to the movies.  I missed it, I really have.  I used to love going to the movies, it was my refuge; I would wait for a film to be out for a few weeks, then try to find a weekday to go and watch an early showing in what would usually end up being a mostly private theater (when I went to see Wonder Woman in 2017, I was in the theater with a single other person; we both liked it).  I saw Sonic the Hedgehog 3, but that’s not what I’m writing about today—but spoiler alert, I thought it was great.  Easily the best of the three Sonic movies, and I did like all three, even though the first one was a confusing fusion of a road trip movie and an Olive Garden commercial.  But I’m not here to talk about that; I left my notebook in the car and just enjoyed the film as a regular moviegoer.  What it did was remind me of the Paramount+ series Knuckles, so I rewatched it, pen in hand.

On the surface, Knuckles doesn’t really make any sense.  It’s a strange concept from the get-go.  Even discounting all the strange decisions in the Sonic movies, focusing a six episode series on Knuckles and Adam Pally’s character Wade Whipple was a decision a cut above in strangeness over the others.  I couldn’t really understand who the show was for—the music ran older, lots of 70s, 80s, and 90s music make up the soundtrack, the pivotal challenge for Wade is a bowling tournament, and for Knuckles, it’s boredom.  At least at first.

Knuckles is having trouble adjusting to life after his purpose has been fulfilled following the events of Sonic 2 and the mundanity of the suburbs is kind of driving him insane (I know how he feels; once I leave the concrete comforts of the city and the sirens begin to fade, I start to slowly lose my mind).  Who among us hasn’t wanted to turn their surrogate parents’ living room into a gladiator pit for the family pet to finally go mano-a-doggo with his greatest nemesis, the mailman?  Too much time in even the most idyllic of scenery can drive a person—or echidna—mad, I tell you.

After the incident with the mailman, Knuckles is grounded and in a state of meditation, has a vision of a tribal elder Chief Pachacamac (Christopher Lloyd voicing a character whom I will be referring to as Chief Doc Brown from here on) from beyond the grave.  Chief Doc Brown tells Knuckles that his new purpose is to train Wade Whipple to become a true warrior and win the Tournament of Champions, the aforementioned bowling competition.  When we cut to Wade, he is indeed bowling with his best friend Jack Sinclair (played by Julian Barratt, from Mindhorn and one of my favorite, too short-lived series, Truth Seekers), a writer and bounty hunter who talks like a Baldur’s Gate character, against a Girl Scout who proceeds to beat Wade when he chokes on the final frame.  Jack kicks Wade off the team in favor of little Susie and he is humiliated.  Knuckles attempts to train him and they embark on a journey to what is apparently the heart of the bowling world, Reno, Nevada.  Why road trips are such a staple in a series about a little hedgehog who is best known for running really fast, I have no idea, but I can’t say that I mind it.  But, as the pair leaves Green Hills, things start to come into focus.  Two rogue GUN agents, Willoughby and Mason, whom you might know as Sassy from Ted Lasso and Kid Cudi from Westworld and being Kid Cudi, respectively, track him for an arms dealer in order to capture Knuckles so he can use his energy to create more weapons.  Similar to Vulture in the MCU Spider-Man films, cleaning up after the superheroes’ wake of destruction, he has been using the quills left behind by Sonic and Knuckles to supercharge futuristic weaponry.  The dealer is played by the always imposing Game of Thrones alum Rory McCann and known only as “The Buyer”.

As Wade and Knuckles bond over their shared loss—in this case, Knuckle’s dead echidna tribe, leaving him the last of the echidnas, and Wade’s father abandoning him as a child in a TJ Maxx, leaving him in a state of arrested development, bumbling man-child.  Wade takes Knuckles to a bowling alley so he can show the little red guy his battleground.  Agents Sassy and Kid Cudi show up using specialized quill-powered weapons The Buyer gave them and they capture Knuckles, leaving Wade as his only hope.  Wade has to decide to step up or let his friend fend for himself.  As you can imagine, he decides to step up, become the warrior Knuckles says he can be, and go save his furry friend.

But that doesn’t mean things go smoothly.

If you’re thinking that this is all weird, you’re not alone.  Many times while watching this show, I thought to myself “What am I watching?”, but I never quite wanted to look away.  As the story unfolds, Knuckles and Wade’s collective journey only worked to endear them both more to me.  Now, I’m an odd one when it comes to these franchise characters, it seems.  When I was a kid, I always preferred to play as Luigi to Mario and as Tails to Sonic.  And when Sonic & Knuckles came out, I was thrilled to play as Knuckles and played as him as much as I could and I was very happy with Idris Elba’s portrayal in Sonic 2, so he had a leg up in the endearment category.  Elba’s deadpan delivery almost always works for laughs and never feels forced, overdone, or cheap.  I could not have been happier with Knuckles, in both Sonic 2 and the Knuckles series.  But pairing him with and centering the story on Adam Pally’s Wade Whipple, the incompetent sheriff’s deputy who was equal parts Barney Fife and Launchpad McQuack?  Actually, when I put it that way, I can see why the character works for me.  But I never thought he’d make the jump from funny side character to properly endearing co-lead and I’m glad he did.  Because while I tried to peg down the reason why I enjoyed Knuckles so much, I kept getting the feeling that they made the show kind of for me.  The whole Sonic movie franchise is aimed pretty well at 90s kids, even including a gag in the new movie where someone has to blow on a USB drive to get it to work, and this is no different.  This wild fever dream of a show just felt like something they plucked out of my mind when I was a kid and put it directly on a streaming service.  The choice of music reminds me of the songs I heard growing up.  Not always ones that I sought out and listened to myself, like Real Life’s “Send Me An Angel” which features heavily in an episode, but ones that I heard around.  On the radio, in TV shows and movies, when parents of other kids would play music, etc.  When Knuckles and Wade roll down the street on a motorcycle to “Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta” by Geto Boys (censored, obviously), it took me back to the first time I heard it in Office Space and immediately went to Napster to find a copy to listen to in Winamp.  Now, if you don’t know what any of those words mean, I don’t blame you.  But you may not connect with this show the same way I did.

The series has many ups and downs, with characters being placed in peril and rescued in a game of hostage-taking musical chairs (in addition to Knuckles being pursued by the rogue GUN agents, a bounty is placed on Wade’s head, and you may remember that his friend who kicked him off the bowling team has a whiff of Boba Fett about him), which keeps it from getting stale episode to episode.  There are a lot of quick payoffs that keep the story moving; it’s not trying to be Twin Peaks where one central conflict drives the whole show and red herrings and dead ends act as barriers to resolving it.  It’s fluid, it’s dynamic, it jumps genres sometimes—in one episode Wade has a vision of Chief Doc Brown culminating in a full on, properly epic stage rock opera which tells Knuckles’s backstory with the help of Michael Bolton’s singing.  I may not have been a theater kid, but it was one of the most entertaining pieces of television I’ve seen all year.

But the show isn’t all silliness and nostalgia, there are some genuinely touching moments as well, like when Wade goes to ground at his mother’s house just in time for Shabbat dinner and Knuckles shares his story with her and she relates it to the story of Moses, with the two of them fighting side by side to keep the Shabbat candles lit.  Some of it is played for comedy effectively, but there’s a heart to the show that’s undeniable.  And to do something that can move you in the midst of such a preposterous story is, frankly, impressive.  Seeing Wade’s journey, seeing Knuckles find a new way through life, it mirrors what regular people struggle through when faced with everyday adversity and how they get through it.  It’s surprisingly relatable storytelling and I really commend that.  It could have been off the wall insanity constantly, Aqua Teen Hunger Force style, and that would have been fine, I probably would have enjoyed that too.  But that they went just that bit further and wrote in parts that could easily have been cheesy but are actually nice instead, well, that’s really great.  It’s, again, a kind-hearted, joyful show in a time when that’s needed.  It just clicked with me and I seriously doubt this will be the last time that I watch it.

Now, I can’t promise you that you’ll like it, I don’t think it’s for everyone.  It’s not like it’s a masterpiece like The Penguin or a perfectly crafted comedy-thriller like Bad Monkey, but it is a truly surprising delight that I enjoyed more than I ever thought I would.  If you enjoyed the Sonic movies, Knuckles is well worth your time, or even if your kids just like them and want to watch, you have pretty good reason to stick around and watch it with them.  Plus, cameos from Rob Huebel and Paul Scheer in a reference to Dodgeball, what more could you want?

As this is the last post of the year, I want to let you know that I won’t be doing a Game of the Year post this year because I basically only played Astro Bot, which I positively adored, older games like Forza Horizon 5, and games that infuriate me on the reg, like EA Sports FC 25 (or whatever it’s called, we all know it’s FIFA by any other name).  In addition to that little housekeeping, I would like to wish you all a truly Happy New Year and all the best once the calendar ticks over.  What happens between now and then isn’t on me, you’re on your own until the 1st.  Thank you all for being here, thank you all for coming back week after week, thank you for sharing this blog with your friends.  After a long unplanned hiatus, 2024 became far and away my biggest year since I first started this as a little car blog 12 years ago and relaunched with a media focus in 2019.  I have you all to thank for that and I really, truly, deeply do.  See you next year!