Teen Titans S04E09 Review: All Work And No Play

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 9: Overdrive

After the piss-poor Cyborg focus episode in this season (the abominable Cyborg the Barbarian), and Cyborg's season-wide arc being the weakest compared to Robin, Beast Boy and Raven when they are carrying their own seasons, you might be forgiven for thinking that Cyborg only works well as a character that plays off other characters. When did a Cyborg focus really felt good other than the Fixit one and the infiltrate-HIVE one? But the show clearly still tries to give all five characters equal billing... well, all except poor Starfire, at least, so we get another Cyborg focus episode.

This one is a bit better, I think. There's a theme of Cyborg being obsessed and trying to upgrade himself and eventually purge himself of all of the 'fun'-ness of himself and just basically be a literal robot. It's a plotline very common in fiction, with Teen Titans even using it with Season One Slade-Obsessed Robin. It just takes it to a higher extreme by likening it to... drug abuse? Being a super-perfectionist over-achiever? On one hand, yeah, you can argue that catching a villain terrorizing the city is a very important goal, especially for a group of freaking superheroes, but honestly Billy Numerous is another in a series of disappointing Teen Titans villains in recent episodes. You can make a villain annoying and still likable -- Gizmo is a prime example of that -- but Billy Numerous is just irritating. On paper he's probably a lot funnier, a dude with Multiple-Man style powers that speaks in a funny hillbilly accent. In practice? He's absolutely irritating both in his behavior and accent, and I find it hard that this fellow is the one dude that makes Cyborg go to such extremes to better himself.

But Billy Numerous aside (which, by the way, marks a nice cool moment where the students that cameo'd in S3E1 start showing up as actual villains), the episode was pretty great, with some really fun jokes on Beast Boy and Starfire's end, and some really cool glowy-robot action scenes with Cyborg.


DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• STAR Labs, a facility prominently featured in Superman, Flash and Justice League related stories, is briefly mentioned during the Max-7 commercial.