Teen Titans S01E10 Review: Silly Symphony

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 10: Mad Mod

A fully filler episode and the first of Teen Titans' tradition to have an utterly batshit crazy episode every season, "Mad Mod" introduces us to this insane British fellow, the titular Mad Mod, who has trapped the Titans in a psychedelic Wonderland themed on schools and British visual jokes. It's an episode that people absolutely love or absolutely hate. It's an exercise at how ridiculous they can be, with some segments basically being "Teen Titans in an anime rendition of Looney Tunes". It really felt like it was made on drugs, but it's rather hilarious.

That said, though, spending the entirety of the episode on just a single comedy character isn't the basis for a good episode. It's memorable all right, as 'that weird episode where the Titans are stuck in a British Escher painting", but Mad Mod's just a crazy British fellow and the Titans just stick to their relative stereotypes throughout the episode. It's a bit of a surreal experience, and the eventual reveal that it's all part hypnotism and part mechanical props is honestly just weird because throughout the episode it really felt like Mad Mod's trickeries are so much more powerful than what props would have, and Mad Mod's pretty one note and ends up being repetitive around halfway through. 

Oh well, as far as insane, throwaway episodes go, Mad Mod isn't the worst we'll get, and is a pretty harmless fun episode, and it did entertain me as a kid... but while it isn't as bad as some of the episodes we'll get later in the series, and certainly isn't as bad as X-Men's attempt at a ridiculous fun episode (Mojo *shudder*) it certainly isn't the best the series has to offer, even from a comedy standpoint.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Mad Mod is an actual Teen Titans villain from the comics, and is actually one of its first villains. Neil Richards was a fashion designer who used his fashion store as a smuggling front. And he dresses in the Mod fashion style popular in Britain at that time. That's about it, really. 
• There's a lot of random pop culture references (that I don't really care about) but one that stands out is Robin activating a secret switch by lifting a bust of Mad Mod's head, a reference to the Adam West Batman TV show.