Teen Titans S02E05 Review: Wicked Scary

Teen Titans, Season 2, Episode 5: Fear Itself

This episode is kind of underrated for not being a big plot episode, nor did it feature a classic Teen Titans villain... but I loved this episode! It's a great horror episode, and I remembered it frightening the balls off me as a kid. The villain of the episode is Control Freak, a fat nerd dressed as a Klingon who assaults a random rental store for not putting "Warp Trek V" on their top movies list, with a remote that animates inanimate objects. Control Freak is obviously not based on a canon comic villain, but he's hilariously weird and zany, and gets taken out in the first six minutes. He's fun here, but sadly the writers will end up giving him two entire episodes to himself in later seasons which is less bearable.

The episode then has the Titans watch one of the horror movies from the CD shop, and then start going through some really scary things with a very atmospheric blackout and lightning flashes, with monsters from the horror show attacking the Titans and one by one kidnapping the Titans into darkness. Cyborg and Starfire's "deaths" are absolutely horrifying even if it didn't stick, and, yeah, it gave Raven a bit of development as she has to deal with her tough emo girl persona and admit that, yes, she was horrified by the horror movie and the refusal to acknowledge it ends up spawning the tentacular monsters, demon rats and all sorts of horrifying shit I didn't expect them to get away with in a children's cartoon.

Yeah it ultimately ends up being just a filler episode, but I really loved it. It manages to give a horror feel to the cartoon without feeling too dark, because there are some nice jokes scattered all throughout it.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the evidence room, we see Slade's mask (presumably the one recovered from the robot Slade in "Masked"), one of Mad Mod's busts, the soulless body of the Puppet King, Puppet King's remote, Warp's clock device thing and Overload's chip.