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Boomb Tube: Teen Titans Go! (Away)

By | April 24th, 2013
Posted in Columns | % Comments

This is not going to be a pretty week.

For some reason, the only superhero cartoon that aired this week was Teen Titans Go! and I feel uneasy describing TTG! has having to do with either of those things. Why? Imagine that you’re going on to DeviantArt and someone’s drawn some fanart of the original Teen Titans show. The art has all the creativity and skill of a twelve year old who only listens to anime theme songs and their parents’ dissapointment. Imagine the fanart was about Raven wanting to watch My Little Pony while Beast Boy tried to buy pie for Cyborg. The characters are shallow, but it’s just fan art; it’s not like money is being poured into this.

Imagine if that fan art was aired on television.

Welcome to Teen Titans Go!

I can’t even begin to comprehend why this show was made. On one hand, it’s a genius move on Cartoon Network and DC’s part to revive one of their most popular shows. On the other hand, they took that “revive” part too seriously and resurrected Teen Titans as a shambling corpse. Teen Titans Go! makes no sense in ways that make the entire art movement of Dadaism jealous. If Firefly were to come back onto the air right now with an episode about Mal being a closet brony people would die in real life. I’m not even making up the brony bits, the first half of the episode is literally about Raven, voiced by Tara Strong AKA Twilight Sparkle, trying to get people to leave Titans Tower so she can watch a My Little Pony knock-off. Since Raven and Twilight both share the same voice actress its cute, albeit in a “we should never have done this” way. You don’t watch Boardwalk Empire and see Steve Buscemi’s character jive on down to the local 1920’s nickelodeon to watch The Big Lebowski. Truth be told though, I would absolutely condone Busception even on a historically inaccurate scale.

There isn’t even any real climax to Raven’s segment of the show. Everyone gets the magical sandwich ingredients (the sandwich being a BLT which Beast Boy is totally down for eating even though he’s a vegetarian) and when put together the sandwich is immedietly eaten by Starfire’s worm Silky who immedietly ascends to God Tier or something. The Titans then decide that the God Tier sandwich was probably only alright and go back to eating Robin’s sandwiches.  Then what was the freaking point? I sat for a good ten or eleven minutes watching the Teen Titans fight bread monsters so Raven could watch My Little Pony. I swear to whatever God has abandoned me, Starfire literally says the words “This sandwich will be so beautiful in my hair!” That doesn’t mean anything in any language! If I were the producers for Teen Titans Go! I would look up from that line in the script and realize that the person who wrote that line has been a crazed maniac who broke in here and is now wearing one of the actual writer’s skin as a suit this whole time. At least then my confusion would only last for a few brief moments more.

The second segment of the show does worse, probably because it’s written Will Friedle. Cyborg’s birthday is coming up so Beast Boy drew him a RADICAL picture. Raven tells Beast Boy this is not an actual present because she doesn’t allow fun since she’s the SUPER SERIOUS ONE. Just then, Cyborg stops by so he and BB can sing about how much they love pie.Cyborg then takes everyone to a restaurant that serves exclusively pies which everyone decides is where they’ll hold Cyborg’s birthday party the next day since they’re as lazy as the writers. Beast Boy goes off to get a part-time job in order to raise some cash for Cyborg’s birthday party, making detours at jobs like Lawyer where he accidentally gets a man imprisoned and surgeon where he straight up gets someone killed on the operating table, before finally settling on working at the pie shop.

There, Cyborg asks Beast Boy if he’ll be at his birthday party. Beast Boy says no, he’s going to be working that day. Working. At the pie shop the party is at. Cyborg flips his table that Beast Boy is ditching the party by being TEN FEET AWAY BEHIND THE COUNTER and so at the party, WHERE BEAST BOY IS LITERALLY TEN FEET AWAY, Cyborg starts a massive pie fight with BB. Meanwhile, Mother Mae Eye, the old show’s Eldritch Horror stand-in and this show’s pie shop owner, lures away the other three titans to a pie making machine so they can be mashed into the confectioneries. This happens. Cyborg and Beast Boy reconcile over their love for pie and sing the same exact pie song from earlier. Exactly the same. It’s literally just the song from before but Beast Boy’s been edited into his pie store outfit. Beast Boy and Cyborg then sit down to eat some pies which are shaped and colored like their friends. They eat them. Yes, the camera does pan out and we do see the other Titans, alive and fine, having defeated Mother Mae Eye but still getting some hair or costume or whatever into the pie vat, but for a good minute we’re left to assume that TTG! just turned into Hannibal. Which is crazy.

Continued below

Because Hannibal’s an actual good show.

Review Score: -3. I’m not even doing an “out of ten” for this. Teen Titans Go! gets a straight up negative three.

If you want the same effect as Teen Titans Go! but with a better art style, go read “Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.”


//TAGS | Boomb Tube

James Johnston

James Johnston is a grizzled post-millenial. Follow him on Twitter to challenge him to a fight.

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