Teen Titans, Season 3, Episode 9: The Beast Within
This is an episode that other review sites rate relatively highly which... I found simply average. It's not particularly bad, and it centers on a pretty good characterization point -- Beast Boy's desire to be a badass superhero. And that's one of the strengths of Teen Titans, in that all but the most wacky of its episodes at least try to tackle one aspect of a character's personality. And Beast Boy basically turning into an alpha male and being a huge douche while possessing the power to transform into a monstrous werewolf creature is a decent concept... the execution and pacing is just bad, though, messy throughout the episode.
One of the things that really didn't work were Adonis -- in a show populated with such colourful and bizarre villains like Gizmo, Control Freak and Killer Moth, some random dude running around in a big robot suit isn't interesting at all. Especially when Adonis didn't have any personality to speak of, whereas his fellow giant robot villain Atlas at least has the quirk of being an internet gamer that beats up his opponents in real-life gladiator matches.
And the mystery? The mystery of the werebeast just doesn't work, with the thing feeling jumbled and messy instead of 'ooh, the plot thickens', and Beast Boy being a douche just doesn't work that well. And it's so obvious that something is wrong with Beast Boy and he's actually in pain, not just being particularly grouchy that day, and it's evident to the in-universe characters, so it's hard to take the mystery being presented to us by the episode remotely seriously.
There is a very nice bonding moment between Beast Boy and Raven near the end, where Beast Boy is in a morose 'it's my fault, and whatever people may say the beast came from within me' while Raven helps to ease Beast Boy's worries in that noting that the fact that Beast Boy regained control of it is proof of his worth as a superhero, a nice rare moment of Raven being nice to people, and it's capped off with the perfect Beast Boy goofing off and Raven going "we're having a moment. Don't ruin it." in all her glorious snarkiness.
Kudos for the pretty atmospheric sewer fighting scene, and some hilarious lines courtesy of Raven ("oooh, bad grammar. That'll totally scare him") and the touching moment in the end, but the bulk of the episode is just a big mess.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- There is a minor Golden Age era Superman villain called Adonis, but other than the name, that villain does not have any particular similarities with the Teen Titans version of Adonis.
No comments:
Post a Comment