Teen Titans – Review: Homecoming, Part 2

The Doom Patrol has been saved, but the sinister Brotherhood of Evil is still on
the loose. It's just like old times for Beast Boy when he finds himself back on
the team for one last mission – to stop the Brotherhood once and for all… no
matter what the cost.

Reviews by Bird Boy
Media by Bird Boy

Titans Voices
Greg Cipes as Beast Boy
Scott Menville as Robin
Khary Payton as Cyborg
Tara Strong as Raven, Elastigirl
Hyden Walch as Starfire, Madame Rouge
Xander Berkeley as Mento, General Immortus
Peter Onorati as Robot Man
Judge Reinhold as Negative Man
Glenn Shadix as Brain, Monsieur Mallah

After having enjoyed the first part of this story, I expected something a little different for the follow up. So in this story we get Mento being a jerk some more, the Titans themselves barely being in their own show, a showdown with the Brain and the Brain getting away. Sounds awesome, eh? It would if that wasn’t exactly what happened last week.

Granted, the thing that WAS different was Mento finally figured out that he was being an ass to everyone and it took a young, shape-shifting boy to tell him so. I really can’t find any joy in any of the Doom Patrol. They’re all pretty crappy, generic characters and I don’t care if they’re based on some incredibly awesome comic book from decades ago I never read. On this show, they bore me and I found it incredibly dull for twenty minutes. If fans of the original comic were entertained by this, then that’s awesome.
But as a person who doesn’t read the comics, the characters are just boring.

As for the episode itself, it was redundant until the very end, when we got to see the end with the Doom Patrol and Titans being friends and the Brotherhood of Evil expanded into a massive legion. Now, since we saw this expansion to the Brotherhood of Evil after Brain was defeated, could we not have seen this at the end of part one?
Could this simply not have been a two-part episode, allowing for another single story or one in the overall arc in the season?

I think that’s my main problem with this episode. They could have condensed it into one; it would’ve been pushing it yeah, but part two gave us very little exposition on the characters that we didn’t see in part one. Pull out Robot Man’s rampage in part one and you’re left with a few extra minutes of story time. This two-part episode came off as sloppy simply because it felt like they were pushing time out more and more and giving us more of the same. It really didn’t need two parts; I simply can’t say that enough.

Aside from the generic story, we got more of the same animation.
What was once a shining show is slowly beginning to tarnish. Cool, fancy 360 degree turns are becoming old hat and nothing really wows or amazes me. What the fights once did in Teen Titans, I’m seeing trumped and amplified on The Batman in terms of intensity.

The music, at least, was a saving grace. It wasn’t quite as The
Incredibles-ish as last week, but it certainly had its charm. A few really nice notes when Mento and Beast Boy are choosing which hall to go down stick out in my mind as nice cues.

Overall, I was sorely disappointed. A retread of the same story last week, generic animation and stale characters; I hope this season improves, because if this is what the rest of the season holds, I’m going to be reaching for the remote.