Monday 17 April 2017

Teen Titans S04E08 Review: Romantic Bonding in an Alien Deathplanet

Teen Titans, Season 4, Episode 8: Stranded


"Stranded" is a semi-serious episode (as much as a romantic comedy can afford to be serious) that develops characters outside of the main character of the season, which is a bit of a rarity. Here, though, is an attempt at actually shaking the status quo up a little. We develop Robin and Starfire's feelings by... well, splitting up the team on a wacky alien world, where Raven hangs out with a bunch of fluffballs while Cyborg and Beast Boy play comedy show with their attempts to fix both Cyborg and their part of the ship.

Yes, there's the alien threat (apparently called 'Shrieker' by supplementary material) that's somehow super-duper indestructible that menaces the lovebirds, and a couple of requisite action scenes both against evil alien and hostile alien environments, but the big part of the episode is just having Robin and Starfire try to understand each other, with Starfire's powers failing to work -- a nice callback to 'Switched' -- due to her not feeling boundless joy and exquisite happiness. Robin is a bit of a cold, badass cool kid, and seeing him stumble with trying to explain his feelings (and the difference between girl friend and girlfriend, which is crucial to anyone below the age of seventeen, and sometimes to most people above the age of seventeen) and end up kind of furthering their shipping somewhat.

It's nothing too memorable, and by all rights should've been a boring, sappy filler episode, or just full balls-out crazy comedy like the Killer Moth/Kitten one, but they got the right tone at keeping 'romantic' and 'comedy' in check to deliver an actually enjoyable episode that stars on two characters repairing a strained relationship.

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