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Teen Titans Season 2: Huge Plot meets Things that should never have been. Episode 1: How Long is Forever?
A man named Warp comes from the Future to steal a clock. Huh? Starfire ends up being stuck in the future and finds that the Teen Titans are no more. Actually, she finds that Robin is still crazy and has changed his name to Nightwing. Closer to being cool Robin, but still a bird. Sorry, no prize for you. The rest of the team is all over-the-hill and eventually come to Starfire's aid, allowing her to return to the past. The best part of this episode is seeing Robin "rock out" with his stereo blasting. He's even got the head nod going and everything. Watching Robin get jiggy with it is a special thing, indeed. Episode 2: Every Dog has His Day
Plot Summary: Giant alien toddler lands on earth and accidentally loses its mutant alien green dog. By coincidence, Beast Boy is wandering around the city as a (green) dog as well. The alien infant (who I'm assuming is a child and not just retarded) captures Beast Boy as his new pet and makes him do tricks. Not really that interesting, save for the "alien bondage" you get to see at the end. The mutant dog (who can talk, just so you know) is convinced to stay by the alien infant when said infant offers to be the dog's "doggy" or slave. As in, the thing puts on the shock collar and goes down on all fours before licking his new master's feet. Very, very strange. What's great about this show is that the characters actually just sit there, shocked, and refuse to comment.
Plot Episodes: Episode 3: Terra, Episode 8: Titan Rising, Episode 10: Betrayal, Episode 12 & 13: Aftershock Part 1 & 2
Five of the thirteen episodes of Season 2 are all about the plot. That's pretty ambitions for a Anime-Americana cartoon that's after the preteen demographic. The series does balance this ambition with one fact: all the other episodes, with maybe the exception of the "Starfire lost in the future" episode, are completely and utterly insane. This more than makes up for the Plot. The plot of Season 2 revolves around a girl named Terra who can control earth. She even has Navajo theme music whenever she's on the screen (get it...Terra, earth, nature, it's very clever, don't you know?). It's actually not a bad plot...involving several episodes that were just set-ups for the season finale. One big change, though: Property Damage. In season 1, the Titans were pretty good at keeping the property damage low. In Season 2, particularly the Plot episodes, the Teen Titans are maelstroms of Destruction. Watching Cyborg throw a randomly parked car at a giant robot only makes me think: "I wonder if that guy's insurance will cover THROWN BY SUPERHERO." Raven rips up a city street so they don't have to stop driving and Starfire blasts various buildings with death beams (of love). Maybe the Titans should rethink their "We live in a giant T" decision. It might not be a good thing to have an obvious address for all those subpoenas about Property Damage. You'll notice I'm not talking about Terra or the plot too much. Mainly this is because a) it's just not that funny, b) it's kind of cool and, well, if you're the one guy that likes the show I would feel bad ruining an entire season just giving away spoilers, and c) I'm lazy and want to talk about the other weird ass stuff in this season of Teen Titans. Don't try to decode the secret message: What the hell am I saying? I'm all about spoiling crap! Terra is Slade's slave and she almost kills all the Titans before turning herself to stone. Suffice to say the ending of Season 2 will amaze and surprise you....or not. Depends. Let's move on. Episode 4: Only Human
Watching this episode is enough evidence to suggest that one should never, ever play a game online. The basic plot is Cyborg is sitting in the living room and beats someone else (who's screen name is Atlas) while playing online. The loser Instant Messages Cyborg and challenges him to a rematch. Then the wall explodes and a very pissed off video-game playing robot starts to kick Cyborg's ass in reality. It's weird, but listening to the guy who did the voice of Spawn (from the rather gruesome HBO cartoon) do the voice for a giant killer robot that just sits around playing computer games is kind of lame. Spoken by Atlas the war machine to a random kid online: "Wyatt Peterson of Gotham city, I dominate you." So very strange.
Episode 5: Fear Itself Forget the episode's plot. Suffice to say the first fight scene is the Titans fighting flying cash registers, demonic candy, evil video cassettes, and murderous televisions, all led by "Control Freak"...an obese Star Trek fan dressed as a Klingon. A fat Star Trek fan, dressed as a Klingon. Oh my God. Look at his expression. He's daring you to look at him. Sweet mother of Christ. Episode 6: Date with Destiny: The Prom.
This is the best episode, of anything, ever. The show opens with a dark basement, the Killer Moth (oh my lord) cackling about his evil plans. Suddenly he's interrupted by the screams of his apparently teen-aged daughter "Kitten." If you ever wanted to see a "Prom Themed" episode of Teen Titans, this is it. The entire plot hinges on Killer Moth blackmailing Robin to go out with his daughter. Oh, and her ex-boyfriend, who by coincidence has a SPIDER FOR A HEAD, shows up to "win her back.". God, season 2 is so random. I thought it couldn't get weirder after the Klingon. This? This is out there. This episode will scar you. Robin in a tux. Starfire catfighting with Kitten. Killer Moth as Hannibal Lector. Spider for a head. Don't ask. Just accept it. This is the better season of Teen Titans, but my head is melting. Too much cartoony weirdness in too short a time. Let's speed this up, we're almost done. Episode 7: Transformation
Alien puberty kicks in for Starfire, which apparently involves not zits and mood-swings, but growing antlers and gaining giant monkey feet. There's space travel, sewage eating, and a planet filled with little monsters who's civilization is endangered by Starfire's ass. You think I'm joking. Episode 9: Winner Take All
The episode that shows you that this show would make a great video game. Our heroes are transported to an alternate dimension where they are pitted against other random heroes. Gizmo makes another appearance, as does Aqualad. Aqualad gets his butt handed to him, thankfully. The "Game Master" steals the losers' powers and well, looks like a comic book guy that I would have drawn when I was twelve...gaining Cyborg's arms, Hot Shot's head, Beast Boy's "gorilla" arm, Wildebeast's horns, etc. In the end he's just far too complicated, and more or less embarrassing to look at. Then again, at least he's not an online-game playing robot. This season is so frickin' weird. There are no less than 3 "geek" villains. To quote Vanilla Ice, the moment his popularity dimmed: "Like, what the hell, yo?"
Hardcore Comic Trivia Warning: Another weird thing is the appearance of "Speedy," who just screams "crappy sidekick to SOMEBODY". He's Robin's clone and the show even makes a joke to that extent. Why is this interesting? It's noteworthy because EVERY hero had a sidekick in the early days...and they all tended to be just about the same. Hell, even the Human Torch (the first Super-Hero ever) got a 12-year-old sidekick pretty early in his career. (See, I do know comic book geeky stuff...I just don't feel like researching something these cartoons are only loosely based on. The first hero was a robot made of fire (or some such crap) that was born when Marvel comics was publishing those World War 2 horror/kill-all-the-Nazis comic books that were just so darn popular.) Episode 11: Fractured
A chibi (super-deformed, whatever) version of Robin saves the day after a motorcycle riding Nazi beats up the real Robin. Nazi versus Chibi. Wow. The actual plot of this episode? Robin breaks his arm and "his biggest fan" from another dimension shows up to help him. As in in some other dimension, Robin's clone (or something) does nothing but sit around and read comics/watch cartons about his own adventures. Talk about wasted potential. It's also a good thing to keep in mind when you really think you're by yourself. Forget about making Jesus cry when you touch yourself---you might be giving some cross-dimensional alien a little more "bang for his buck" as it were. Jesus, aliens, and masturbation...all in one sentence. I think I'm just about done here. Message from Jared of 2005: The following "final thoughts" were written in 2004 before Seasons 3 & 4 were amongst us. Please ignore the whole "this article is done" vibe...because there's still another two pages (at least) to go. Continue here to read my wrap up (at the time) and some very weird thoughts (and actions) I had/did over a year ago when I wrote this. Or just skip to the bottom of the page and continue. That is all. -jared of 2005 Teen Titans is a strange and funny Japanese slice of Americana. If the show is really based off the comics in the 1950's, I'd want to know exactly what kind of psychotropics they used. From D.C. comics, the company that brought you Superman, Batman, the Superfriends, and the Wonder Twins, Teen Titans seems to make fun of their own genre. By this time, I've got so much super-hero stuff going on in my brain....the age old question has resurfaced: If you were a super-hero, what would your name be and what powers would you have? This is an important
question. While you could just bust out with "I want to be invincibl My first thoughts gave birth to a particular favorite idea: I would become SUICIDE LAD! I would have the ability to die and, well, come back. That's about it. I can just imagine how this would work in a Super-team of some sort: Wonder Twin #1: Jeepers! Horribly Caustic Acid-Spewing Bill is hiding somewhere in that warehouse! Quick Suicide Lad, go find him! Suicide Lad: Screw. You. or.... Wonder Twin #2: Quick, swallow the bomb Suicide Lad! Suffice to say all the adventures of Suicide Lad pretty much end with me being used for anything dangerous, while the other heroes would pretty much come in after I got killed a couple times. Nihilism would probably kick in pretty quickly. And thus, DEEP-FRIED MAN was born! The perfect anti-hero, he is both loved and loathed. His products seduce us into obese contentment, while his dark powers clog our arteries oh-so stealthfully.
I can't believe I actually had a costume for Deep-Fried Man just lying around my house. I'm going to use my "batter of justice" and fight for good and, well, gain weight I suppose. In fact, I think I'm just going to wear the costume every time I type one of these articles. Isn't that spooky? (It's either that or my anthropomorphic Beetle costume.) The joys of the internet, right?
copyright 2004 Jared, and some such stuff. Teen Titans and Cartoon Network can sue me, but they still own the rights to Teen Titans...Suicide Lad and Deep-Fried Man are products of Head Injury Theatre. See Samuel Jackson as Deep-Fried Man in the Hollywood movie coming to theatres this summer! (I'll be playing Suicide Lad. Guess who dies?) Keep an eye out for the Suicide Lad comic on the website in the coming month or so.... |
e,
and be able to fly and shoot beams of doom at people," you really can't.
Those powers belong to Superman and Jesus, and both will probably beat the
living crap out of you if you thought you could get them. Flaws are
important to. A hero without a flaw, is just, well cheating.
What the hell did I come up with?