Teen Titans S01E03 Review: The Pilot We Didn't Get

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 3: Divide and Conquer

This episode is supposed to be the first episode aired, and honestly I could see why... there's a painfully long sequence where the Teen Titans did an actual roll call going 'one!' 'two!' 'three!' 'four!' 'five!' while the big angry villain monster just stands around and do nothing, and there's a painfully obvious sequence where they use their respective powers (or lack thereof, in the case of Robin) to fight. And... it's another "oh no, the Teen Titans is falling apart!" episode, which honestly is running thin at this point. 

This time around, Robin and Cyborg fails to do a combo move, and Robin ends up pissing Cyborg off so much that he quits the team. Meanwhile, the show tries to present main villain Slade as this mysterious figure in the shadows doing this super-smart plan to use strategy and whatnot to outwit the Titans... which honestly just amounts to 'have monster mooks attack two places at once', which honestly isn't that impressive. But then nothing in this episode was impressive, really, due to the very slow pacing of it (even for a twenty-minute episode) especially during the initial battle against Cinderblock.

It tries to present Slade as a threat that uses minions and plans to do his plans... but without any real indication or hint to just what his plans are, he just fell flat. At least in 'Final Exam' even when his minions, the HIVE trio, failed, Slade was still triumphant in the fact that his message is delivered to the Titans and that he also got to see the measure of their skills. Here? He just feels like a silly mob boss who's angry, dangnabbit, that those meddling kids beat up his mooks.

Admittedly there was some awesome visuals, most of them relating to keeping Slade in the shadows, and the horrific thing that is Plasmus. In the comics Plasmus is just a generic supervillain that happens to be made up of radioactive goop. Here? Plasmus is a human stuck in a fluid tank who can't wake up, ever, otherwise he transforms into a giant purple goo monster who he can't control. We never have any explanation to why Plasmus is this way, how he got into this way, and, surprisingly darkly, Plasmus never gets fixed in the show. Plasmus himself is pretty horrifying for a goop monster, too, with the sequence where he splits apart into little monstrous things being a pretty cool action sequence.

But other than the concept of Plasmus, the episode is pretty blah. Cinderblock is a giant monster made up of concrete, the first of MANY of Teen Titan-original villains. I told you that this show kind of is a very loose adaptation of the source material. But Cinderblock is a very boring villain, just going rawr rawr and I get it, it helps to keep our focus on the Teen Titans, but it's also boring as all hell when you spend half the episode just having them go one-on-one with Cinderblock, and the other half going 'man, we need Cyborg! I regret pissing him off!'. Of course, they're all buddy-buddy at the end, but it's just 'man, we really shouldn't have fought' and not in a way that explored the Titans' personality the way last episode explored Starfire's insecurity and awareness of her culture-shock awkwardness.

Oh well. They can't all be winners. A lot of these early episodes honestly are pretty basic and there isn't much to talk about.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Slade, better known to more experienced fans as Deathstroke the Terminator (he'll always be Slade first to me) is a villain introduced in the early issues of New Teen Titans and is one of the most iconic of the Teen Titans villains, being very closely associated with Nightwing/Robin. He'll later on graduate to menace 'bigger' titles like Batman and Green Arrow. Deathstroke gained his powers (basically heightened senses and strength) due to certain military augmentations done to him, and he nominally works as a mercenary except when the Teen Titans are concerned.
• Billy Wintergreen, Slade's evil butler, was a constant supporting character in the Teen Titans comics, literally meant to be an evil version of Alfred. He makes only a single appearance here (although he does have several cameos in season 5 far far down the road). 
• Plasmus, real name Otto van Furth, was a villain introduced in the Teen Titans comic. He was an unfortunate miner who was trapped during a cave-in and exposed to radiation, and further mutated by the Brotherhood of Evil. The whole 'transforms when waking up' thing is original to the show, though. 
• Cinderblock is an original villain to the show.