Starts out admittedly kinda solid, or at least as solid as these Paramount Sonic projects have been. Far from high art but there's certainly a charm, in particular I liked a lot of the Knuckles gags as while different from how he's usually portrayed Idris Elba's portrayal of the character is quite fun and wayyyyyy more interesting than how modern Sonic has used him in a whiiile. Unless maybe Frontiers did something with him? Idk that gaming was boring as fuck I never finished it lolol. But after Episode 1 which is maybe not coinicidentally the only one of the six directed by Jeff Fowler, "Knuckles" quickly loses its steam and becomes less and less a Knuckles focused spinoff and much more "Wade Whipple and his family get into wacky bowling hijinx". Not sure if advertising showed any of that shit in preview footage but considering I tried and successfully went in as blind as possible, safe to say it was more than a wee bit of a shock that by Episode 4 the title character quickly starts to become more and more of an afterthought. Like by Episode 3 it sort of teeters a line as the introduction of Wade's family kinda brings this to a halt in order to have this oddly laid back episode focused on the weird sitcom like dynamics that brings (including a Holocaust joke of all things lol), but that second half man....if you're not interested in this show I recommend just watching clips of Episode 4 out of context because dear god that becomes a wiiiiiild fucking rideieffeofeokf. And then the bowling shit you think is just gonna be a brief little section of Episode 1 becomes majorly prominent?? Like deadass the final episode of this show contrasts Knuckles fighting the big who doesn't even have a damn name with a bowling tournament that becomes a borderline parody of the sports movie tropes, and it's not even tongue and cheek enough to where it seems like it's supposed to be funny so really it just leaves me scratching my head wondering what the hell even happened here.😭 Such an anticlimax too with the ending barely feeling like it wrapped up, I thought more was gonna happen by the time it did but nah credits were already rolling and I was out the door! Not a l l bad as I do quite like those first two and even when the show reached its worst I was having a fun time, but even without directly seeing numbers you can certainly feel the cheapness radiating from this project as Knuckles is wayyyy less a fun Sonic universe side story than they'd have you believe. Still definitely hyped for Sonic 3 as Fowler is 100% confirmed and I doubt this would have any of the similar budgetary problems this seems to be faced with, but good god I reeaaallly hope it doesn't come across as lazy as this even if there's a good gurantee it'll be pretty dumb. Declined a use of the iconic SA1 track "Unknown from M.E" for the a millionth "I Need a Hero" needledrop this decade too, what a ripoff the Knuckles lore fans were NOT eating tonight :(.