Welcome back to Boomb Tube, Multiversity’s weekly column detailing the current Cape Cartoons scene. This week, Red X finds his way into Teen Titans Go! and Doom tries to work his Doomplomatic Doommunity on Avengers Assemble. Spoilers ahead!
Teen Titans Go! opens with Cyborg completely unable to use anything in Titan Tower as everything’s breaking like Geoff Johns’s promise that he’d make Cyborg really prominent in The New 52. While everything’s falling around them, Robin explains to the rest of The Titans that HIVE and their better tower are working to destroy Titan Tower which, at this point, could be knocked over with a gentle nudge. Disguised as Red X, Robin infiltrates HIVE in order to destroy them and immediately retracts his plans when he discovers they have a pizza oven and, real talk, if you don’t ever wanna get murdered then buy a pizza oven for your home. If I sneak into your home for whatever reason (rude comments, bored, etc.), I will immediately forgive you in exchange for some anything that doesn’t taste anything like Little Caesar’s. Please have mushrooms on hand, maybe some peppers and onions too. Cyborg would like some ‘za too, as he puts on a disguise simply so he can infiltrate HIVE Tower and play Air Hockey with Red X.
Okay, I’m a drama student and as a result I tend to analyze a lot of dialogue in shows looking for objectives. Like, if I were the actor on this show how would I deliver a character’s line if that line’s objective was “to demand” or “to beg.” It’s a process that’s really helpful and can really take you into the psychology of a character. What I’m trying to get at here is, every single person on Teen Titans Go! has the objective of “Pizza” and for that I sincerely cannot fault Teen Titans Go! at all. Unfortunately, this course of action leads to doom for all the Titans, each of whom join HIVE Tower for the pizza, when they react to getting kicked out by HIVE with a massive fight resulting in the tower’s destruction. Now they have to live with HIVE crashing at their place, then exploding at their place as Robin forgot to throw away the bomb he’d been carrying with him all episode.
Final Verdict: 7.Pizza
Over on Avengers Assemble, The UN is allowed Doctor Doom to give a speech which is pretty considerate considering that the dude was straight up trying to take over Yggdrasil the World Tree and summon The Midgard Serpent the other week. Then he has the nerve to be all bossy when The Avengers agree to run bodyguard duty on him, with Cap saying that it’s the right thing to do. I’m pretty sure they could just let D-Man guard Doom and write that off as a”solid try” while reclaiming Doom’s charred corpse from The Cabal who’re coming after Doom because he doesn’t want to join them. To be fair, this is a team that has two separate MODOKS. I don’t know why Doom wouldn’t wanna join either. Unfortunatley, before Doom can give what I can only assume would be the most balla speech in the history of the world to the UN, Hyperion bursts through to be all Hyperion about everything. Thankfully, Doom calmly says “No” through his microphone which results in Hyperion being defeaned and literally yelling “WHAT?!” at Cap for a solid minute like he’s Li’l Jon. If you can watch this episode, I assure you that scene is well worth your time.
Also worth your time, Doom just straight up finding a live electrical wire and stabbing MODOK-Adaptoid with it. Tragically, MODOK-Adaptoid can’t just let playas be playas and trashes Doom and his aspirations of being a Spanish beach. Then, Hyperion, AKA the second worst, beats up Doom as does Dracula, AKA the actual worst. After getting chased around by Lords of Shadow 2 for a while, they find themselves in a sewer where they kind of just float in the water staring at each for a little before remembering, oh right, Attuma is on this show. Surprisingly, they run away instead of just laughing at him for being Attuma. I mean, they only do the first part but really treating Lame-Black-Manta as anything more than a threat is just patronizing to the guy, ain’t it? Apparently the Cabal don’t believe in him either because, after a gigantic fight with The Avengers topside, The Cabal just leaves because Avengers Tower has too many defenses. Too many defenses for Dracula. And like two MODOKS (though floating MODOK didn’t show up this episode.)
Continued belowNow, I don’t want to say The Cabal is the worst super villain team ever – they have a Dracula and two MODOKs on it, that should put them on top – but I cannot stand by this sheer lack of work ethic. When did security measures ever stop Dracula from laying waste to Transylvania? Oh let me guess, they needed an invitation for Dracula to get into the tower in the first place thanks to his Let the Right One In rules. Dracula, you and your anime haircut are two steps away from being replaced with Paste Pot Pete who at least gets results.
Speaking of getting results, no one in this episode really does. Doom reveals that he was planning to steal Iron Man’s USB drive the whole time (probably to get his downloads of Bored to Death) but that drive ends up being a virus because of course Stark wouldn’t just leave a flash drive around. Do you know what happens when you check people’s flash drives?
Hentai.
You get hentai.
Final Verdict: 4.5 – Not very engaging for a show that literally has Dracula.
