Teen Titans S05E06 Review: Odd Couple

Teen Titans, Season 5, Episode 6: Kole

It's another episode that uses the 'Teen Titans hang out with a guest star' thing again, this time featuring a weird Savage Land-esque location in the middle of the Antarctic, as well as the relatively more obscure titans Kole and Gnarrk. It's a fun little concept that... really didn't do that much with its concept. The episode starts with the Titans fighting Doctor Light (have I told you how much I love Teen Titans' version of Dr Light?) in the Antarctic where he's trying to siphon the aurora or something to empower his light-based doomsday weapon. After several episodes of disappointing action that never lives up to the big action scenes promised with the Doom Patrol opener (though to be fair, Snowblind's plot really didn't lend itself to good action scenes) we get a couple of impressive bit both in the beginning and the end of the episode with Doctor Light being this final boss in the center fighting the Titans, and later combined with Kole and Gnarrk.

The thing, really, is probably how similar it is to previous episodes guest-starring a single (or two, in this case) character. While the setting and the characters and the powers are different, it's retreading most of the same ground and the somewhat-interesting Savage Land setting ended up being nothing but a backdrop. The two new honorary Titans are Kole and Gnarrk... who are both two relatively obscure Titans that never interacted in the comics. Kole is pretty cute, this little pink-haired excited girl that's just happy to hang out with the Titans, while Gnarrk is a dumb caveman that's jealous that Kole is having such good time with Cyborg that are so obviously superior to Gnark's caveman ugga-ugga-ing. I find Gnarrk somewhat irritating, honestly. Not every character with a speech impediment can be Groot, and Gnarrk's just... well, very one-note.

The little sub-plot of Gnarrk's jealousy and inadequacy is self-imposed and unimpressive, though Dr. Light kidnapping Kole to use her as a prism in his doomsday weapon is a nice way to integrate the villain to the new-Titan-introduction plot. All things considered the plot felt quite generic, and despite the cool redesign of Kole (Kole's design is one of my favourite comic-to-cartoon translations that this show makes) both she and Gnarrk really failed to be interesting, and I think that's one of the biggest problems of the guest stars like Speedy, Aqualad, Mas y Menos, Hot Spot, Kole, et cetera. While the Teen Titans themselves are very interesting and fleshed-out, the guest stars tend to be one-note and generically heroic, with one or two small conflict balls like Gnarrk's jealousy or Red Star's cowardice that's ironed out at the end of the episode... and they really cold afford to be far more interesting than that. Justice League Unlimited manages to do this with a far larger cast and far smaller screentime for the characters it features, so it's a bit of a shame that Teen Titans never quite got the same amount of grip on its guest stars. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• In the comics, Kole Weathers was genetically modified by her paranoid scientist father to survive a nuclear holocaust, and gained the ability to create silicon crystals at will -- instead of transforming into super-hard crystals as she did in this cartoon. Kole never officially joined the Teen Titans team, but was considered a member by most characters involved. She was killed during Crisis of the Infinite Earths, and has remained dead ever since. 
• Gnarrk is a time-displaced neanderthal that was frozen in ice with some mystical comet thing keeping him alive for a relatively long time until Lilith Clay/Omen (who was Gnarrk's love interest instead of Kole in the comics) of the Teen Titans discovered him frozen in ice. While still grunting and gnarrking all the time, the comet gave him heightened intelligence beyond normal cavemen, and he served as a member of the Teen Titans until the comet's power ran out and he expired. 
• The Journey to the Center of the Earth/Savage Land style land that the Titans find themselves in is probably supposed to be Skartaris if we're going by DC lore, which is the setting of the Warlord comic book series. When we reach Justice League Unlimited's "Chaos at the Earth's Core" episode, we'll talk more about it.