Why 'Teen Titans Go!' is the Worst Superhero Show On TV
As funny and blindly entertaining as it is, 'Teen Titans Go!' isn't fit to be a show about superheroes.
Teen Titans Go! is in the midst of its third season, putting characters like Robin, Beast Boy, and Raven in outrageous and perilous situations. However, these scenarios aren’t what you would expect of superheroes on screen.
The show isn’t bad when taken for what it is. It’s funny if you just want something lighthearted that will make you smile, and the songs are pretty catchy. Unfortunately, knowing its predecessors and categorizing it as a superhero show makes it extremely tough to appreciate.
It’s the worst superhero show – and that’s mainly because even though they don the bright costumes, there’s not really much super-heroism happening. Then when they do show up to save the day, the gang’s domestic disputes overshadow saving the day, usually ending with them destroying half the town or their credibility as heroes by being total assholes and/or lazy.
Teen Titans Go! is a comedic take on what happens to heroes when they’re not saving the day: from working in pie shops to tracking down the ingredients to make the perfect sandwich. A lot of episodes deal with some kind of food, actually. From this, the show devolves into random and ridiculous nonsense thats fine to watch while eating a quick bite to eat, but not really when you want consistent and complicated characters and plots. That’s not Teen Titans Go!.
It’s simple and amusing, but when it’s based on a medium that’s as highly layered and emotional as superhero comics, it kind of puts a damper on what the creators are trying to do with the characters, especially when those characters and voice actors were used before in a way that’s more befitting the comics and superhero genre of cartoons.
Most fans of the original, myself included, find it difficult to watch the new reboot of the beloved 2003 series Teen Titans, especially after its abrupt end with its Season 4 episode, “Things Change.” Not to mention the plethora of loose ends and cliffhangers that were never addressed before the series aired its final movie, Trouble in Tokyo.
The new show took a beloved series and made its characters mere caricatures of the originals, taking one trait from each and making that their personality. Those traits aren’t usually positive, either, and make the characters . . . kind of horrible people. Robin is an obsessive spaz that stalks Starfire. Raven is a little too much like her father, Trigun. Beast Boy is a lazy bum that hates doing work. None of them have traits befitting heroes. They wear their masks and spandex, live in a giant T-shaped tower, and have superpowers… but they’re not superheroes.
It also doesn’t help that when it first aired, the series replaced the spectacular Young Justice that was cancelled ahead of its time and took over its spot on the cartoon lineup, leaving Cartoon Network with a lack of more serious shows. Already there was a strike against it before it even started.
Teen Titans Go! might be good if it wasn’t a spin-off of its more serious counterpart and didn’t try to overly domesticate its heroes. The jokes would probably work for a lot more audiences if the gang were five other people and not the Teen Titans.
Yes, the series is still continuing and kids watching Cartoon Network now enjoy the show, but those that like watching noble, professional, and dedicated heroes can’t help but cringe.
