Teen Titans – Review: Go!

How did Robin meet Starfire? What was Beast Boy’s first joke? Why did Cyborg
build his Sonic Cannon? When did Raven first call the Titans her friends? Return
to the very beginning and see how it all started – from the word “Go!”

Review by Bird Boy
Media by Bird Boy, Jim Harvey

Titans Voices
Greg Cipes as Beast Boy
Scott Menville as Robin
Khary Payton as Cyborg
Tara Strong as Raven
Hyden Walch as Starfire
Gary Sturgis as Trogaar

In what may be the only episode of Teen Titans I was anticipating for a good season or two, I’m met with an episode that has a plot fit for season one, really strange animation and generic music.
Maybe if this was season one (why do an origin story in season five, if, originally, this show was never meant to have an origin), I’d have loved this episode. As is it’s just an incredible back-pedal through time where all of the character progression we had with the
Titans is thrown out the window and they have all regressed to their former state of being uncomfortable around each other.

Of course you’ll say “well it wouldn’t make sense otherwise!” I agree completely with that, but that’s not my major problem with the story. The fact that it’s taken place in not only the fifth but final season of Teen Titans…it seems wasteful. This is series opener material and not a two-years-later story.

So if I didn’t want an origin story this late in the game, why did I anticipate this episode? Well I quite frankly thought it’d be something entirely different. Instead everything about this episode is what I’ve used to describe this season: generic. Familiar story lines, uninspired animation and fights and some of the poorest character interaction between the Titans I’ve seen this season.
Perhaps the creative team is getting bored with the show, I don’t know. All I know is that this is starting to get really, really aggravating that I can’t seem to enjoy an episode without feeling like I’ve seen or watched half of it already.

Now with my major complaints aside, there were a few positives in this episode. Seeing Starfire angry and Hynden Walch giving a great performance (especially with all that Tamaranian dialogue she was spouting), the obvious fan-boy pleasing references to Batman, the re-use of Robin’s theme from Return of the Joker (in what sounded like some kind of annoying keyboard version) and the throwback to
Beast Boy and the Doom Patrol. Raven was given no exposition in this episode, she just randomly showed up and Cyborg…well he was about the same as Raven, aside from snapping and calling himself a
“monster” because of all his half-techno self.

The story was kind of interesting, but I felt it dragged on way too long. David Slack said he had trouble writing this story around five origins, but it really served as one origin (Starfire) and throw-a-way references to pasts (everyone else), that took all of ten seconds of the episode. Perhaps the real task in this episode was trying to keep it interesting for twenty minutes and if that was the case…well, I think everyone knows my opinion by now.

Through it all I love Teen Titans…but this last season is really nothing but a bunch of boring episodes with an overall story arc of, so far, nothing interesting. A few random good episodes here and there, but nothing that we really haven’t seen in past seasons; I will be lynched for saying it, I’m sure, but this series really should’ve fallen prey to Cartoon Network’s fifty-two episode limit.
It would have been better off.