Teen Titans S01E11 Review: Fast & Furious

Teen Titans, Season 1, Episode 11: Car Trouble

I didn't really like this episode that much as a kid, though my opinion of it has improved on rewatching it now. The main plot is a simple 'boy loves his car' moment, with Cyborg going absolutely goo-goo-ga-ga with the newly-created T-Car, bordering on the obsession that honestly a lot of people have with their shiny new cars. On the way, the T-Car gets carjacked, of course, and it ends up finally at the hands of Gizmo, a recurring villain from the first episode, and Cyborg ends up finally destroying the T-Car to defeat the other villain of the episode, Overload. I've used to think that it's a filler episode that overran its 'Cyborg freaks out over his car' gimmick to the ground... but it's a lot better than I thought.

Sure, Gizmo is slightly annoying, Overload is a one-note character (though a cool design as a chip able to manifest a giant electrical body) and the Cyborg-swoons-over-his-car gets boring after a while, but the relationship between Cyborg and Raven, and the moments they have, are really well done. Raven acknowledging the importance that the T-Car has to Cyborg, yet also nothing that it's ultimately, well, just a car that can be rebuilt, and Cyborg himself ending up growing up enough to blow up his own car so that he doesn't let the villain run amuck is great stuff. And the ending showing Raven being more open and actually helping Cyborg to rebuild the second T-Car is pretty cool.

I don't really have much to say, really. The plot's straightforward, the villains are one-note (Gizmo is at the height of his annoyingness here) but it holds up better than I thought it did. So yeah, it's a pleasant surprise.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• While there is a minor Flash villain called Overload, he has absolutely nothing to do with the show's Overload and it seems like the dude's original to the show. Man, the DC Easter Eggs Corner is very thin in these Teen Titans episodes, yeah?
• Metropolis, Superman's city, gets mentioned by Cyborg early in the episode, one of the few moments where the other non-Teen-Titans DC characters get mentioned.