So I just finished watching the Teen Titans Go episode, Lets
Get Serious. I watched this a while ago back when it first aired (and I was
still a fan of TTG), but had forgotten it. As a response to critics, I felt I
had to watch it again. All I have to say, “how can you idiots get so close to
understanding the problems with Go, but then completely miss the point?”
If you’ve been living under a rock, and missed my pastvideos on TTG, let me give you a little backstory. In the mid-2000s, there was
an animated superhero show called Teen Titans. It followed the adventures of
this 5 teen superhero team. It had action, comedy, 3 dimensional complex
characters, and was great. It tackled complex issues like sacrificing oneself
for your friends, feeling alienated from your close friends, the basics of
humanity, and much more. It also had sillier episodes involving how to spend a
day off and other fun with heavy use of chiibi reaction faces. It knew when to
be light hearted, and when to do some serious character development. After 4
seasons it ran its course.
Fast forward 10 or so years and a new series called Young
Justice comes along. This one also follows the adventures of a team of teenage
superheroes, but this time it’s about the sidekicks to the justice league. This
series was also a bit more serious than Teen Titans, lacking the chiibi reactions
and “how to spend a day off” story plots. It had its moments of whimsy, but it
wanted to tell the stories of these super teens trying to make a name for
themselves outside of the shadows of their respective heroes. It was great, and loved by fans and critics,
but only ran 2 seasons due to poor toy sales with no hope of crowd funding
saviors.
A couple months after it’s cancellation, another super hero
show was born; but this time, a comedic teen titans that was chiibi all the
time. They brought back all the voice actors from original teen titans, and it
had promise to be a good comedy series about a pre-established franchise
similar to Rock Lee Spin-off. Unfortunately it fell flat on that front and you
can watch why here [not for fans but it is] and here [this show is stupid].
Naturally it drew some serious criticism, some valid and some not. The most
prominent was “this show is too silly, the original show was more serious,
young justice was more serious, and this show should be more serious.” Well,
that’s how the creators interpreted it. Personally, I think the criticism was
more along the lines of “the writing is terrible, it needs to be better,” which
I explain here [this show is stupid], it did involve many instances of “to
silly, more serious,” and that is where “Lets Get Serious” comes in.
This episode opens with The Titans fighting The Hive, and
The Titans are failing because they keep making fart noises. Then Young Justice
comes in and stops the Hive. Well, Aqualad, Superboy, and Miss Martian do since
Robin and Beast Boy are titans. Aqualad says that their problem is that they
are too silly, don’t know how to be serious, and their constant goofing off
gives superheroes everywhere a bad name. While I would say that the problem is
that we have episodes that do nothing but talk about the wonders of the
bathroom and say girls are better than boys, there’s still good critique to be
had about how they do nothing but try to be silly, to the point where it
actively hurts their abilities to be super heroes.
Then we get what is probably the most valid criticism of
all. After the Young Justice encounter, the Titans are resting back at the
tower being extra goofy, and Robin is brooding and trying to be more serious
and 3 dimensional. Then Robin brings up how Cyborg is half man half machine,
and how that should be a major character point for him. And then there’s how
Starfire is an alien of this planet and doesn’t understand Earth customs.
There’s also a thing about Raven having to deal with being half demon in there
somewhere, but I can’t remember if that’s now or later. This is where the
criticism is most valid. These characters have great backstories and in all
other versions have multi-dimensional characters, whereas Go is just 1 dimensional
jokes and tropes. Teen Titans Go would benefit significantly from taking the
character backgrounds and histories much more seriously. I’m not saying making
the series more serious, but the writers taking the characters more seriously.
Rock Lee Spin-off took the characters of Rock Lee, Ten Ten, Negi, Naruto,
Tsunade, Orochi Maru, etc. seriously and made a hilarious series that was
faithful to the original characters. Even in the whimsical zany world of Rock
Lee Spinoff, the characters were still multi-dimensional. I’m sure the kids who
love Teen Titans Go and buy the toys would love to see those aspects explored
in the series, and you would probably stop most of the criticism and get some
older fans to buy your merch as well as watch the show.
But then you fail, HARD! With all the characters now
serious, they try to be a serious “dark knight” series. It worked a little when
they fought the Hive, and the whole “we need to fight at night, because night
is the most serious time to fight, even though I can’t see anything” joke made
me chuckle, they failed on so many levels after that. In the tower they did
contrived “I’m a deep character with emotional backstory forced on you through
exposition,” and Beast Boy and Cyborg trying to solve the silly problem of “he
drank my juice” with their new serious tone. Then there was Raven suddenly
having trouble controlling her demon half and the team breaking up...because
contrived serious Teen Titans tropes.
NOOOOOO!!! NO! NO! NO! That’s not what “make it more
serious” is about, at least to make it good. Being serious with the fight
scenes works because fighting is serious. It’s fighting for crying out loud. It
can be silly like Rock Lee, but it works with serious. However, no one wants a
conflict like “who drank my juice” to be handled in a serious manner. They want
it to be handled in a way that is true to characters pre-established motives
and personality and develops them individually and as a group, but they want it
to be silly, like it was in Original Teen Titans. If Beast Boy drank Cyborgs
juice in the original series, Cyborg would have reacted a little comically,
Beast Boy would have had to deal with explaining why, and in the end their
friendship would have been stronger after a slightly goofy episode. That’s what
they want. Also, the multi-level character thing is done organically through
character development, not forced exposition. We got great character
development with the sillier episodes of Teen Titans, and in Rock Lee Spinoff,
all while having silly. That’s why people love original Teen Titans and Young
Justice, the great development of the characters. Then there’s the Raven demon
powers and breaking-up of the titans, which I think was just a giant slap in
the face since both of those were real problems in the original series that
made the story really complex and grew the characters in amazing ways; and then
Go just makes fun of them as “run of the mill serious show trope.” No, bad
writers; go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done.
See, this is why people don’t like Teen Titans Go. It’s not
good, and it realizes it’s not good, but instead of making itself better, it
just wants to say “screw you critics, we have stupid kids who love us.” It
could be a REALLY great satire of super heroes and the Teen Titans just like
Rock Lee Spin-off that’s funny on itself but funnier if you know the original.
However, they went with “we’re stupid, we won’t even try to be witty with
genius writing because who wants a show that works on multiple levels, is
appealing to kids, teens, and adults with deep characters that are both serious
and fun? No, low brow humor that alienates older fans is where it’s at.” Stop.
Just. Stop. Go off the air already. You’re keeping every other series on the
network from spreading it’s wings since you’re the only thing on anymore. Well,
this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.
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