 | |
| Series | Sonic Boom (TV series, 2014–2017) |
| Season | Season 1, episode 51 (S01E51) |
| Episode no. | 51 of 104 |
| US premiere | 7 November 2015 · Cartoon Network |
| France | 20 September 2015 · Un ami qui vous veut du bien |
| Written by | Benoit Grenier |
| Storyboard | Patrick Schwerdtle |
| Directed by | Natalys Raut-Sieuzac |
| US viewers | 0.83 million (Nielsen, premiere) |
| Previous | Cabin Fever (S01E50) |
| Next | It Takes a Village to Defeat a Hedgehog (S01E52) |
Counter Productive is episode 51 of Season 1 of Sonic Boom, the CGI comedy series made by OuiDo! Productions with Sega of America. It premiered in the United States on 7 November 2015 on Cartoon Network.
Synopsis
A late-night TV plug for Soar the Eagle’s self-help book, Counter Productive, hits Knuckles hard. Anyone who doesn’t make amends to the people they have wronged, Soar says, is a monster, and Knuckles remembers Charlie, whose apple baskets he once emptied to use as stilts. Charlie lost that job years ago and now digs for ancient relics. He insists he is happy. Knuckles insists on helping.
Help, Knuckles-style, means a sandwich thrown in the lake, a priceless artifact smashed twice, a shovel to the foot, every marker flag pulled up and, finally, a buried weapon set off that blows up a ruin in front of Charlie’s boss. Fired, then thrown out by his wife, Belinda, Charlie snaps, digs up an ancient mech suit and makes Knuckles’ life a misery.
Still following the book, Knuckles refuses to fight back, until his friends find the page saying the rules no longer apply once the wronged party becomes a supervillain. One brief scrap later, Knuckles has his win and a truce, which Belinda accepts on her husband’s behalf. At home she congratulates Charlie on his new villain career; her fingers were crossed, and the pair cackle together.
Trivia
- Charlie joins Eggman’s villain team in the very next episode.
- On DVD: Universal’s UK volume No Robots Allowed (10 Oct 2016); in the US, NCircle’s Season One, Volume Two (2020), Go Team Sonic! (2019) and The Complete Season 1 (2021).
- French title: Un ami qui vous veut du bien. The episode aired in France on 20 September 2015, before its US premiere.
- About 0.83 million US viewers watched the premiere broadcast (Nielsen figures as listed by Wikipedia).
Watch the Episode
This episode does not have an official full upload on YouTube at the time of writing. Season 1 is on DVD from NCircle in the US (The Complete Season 1, 2021) and Universal in the UK (2016), and has been available on services including Hulu, Netflix and Tubi; see the series page for details.
Part of our Sonic Boom Season 1 guide. See the series page for the cast, the redesigns, the games and the comics.
Sources: air dates, writers and storyboard artists from Luke’s original Sonic Scene episode list, cross-checked with Wikipedia, Sonic Retro (Wayback copy) and Sonic Wiki Zone; synopsis written for Sonic Scene from the episode summaries on those sites; title card and screenshots via Sonic Wiki Zone, copied to our media library.