The next episode in season 3 that I want to talk about is episode 9, "The Beast Within."
In this episode, Beast Boy gets some chemicals on him and becomes emotional eratic and starts
being rude to and even threatening his friends.
Eventually, he transforms into a werewolf, and the team is worried that Beast Boy has
seriously hurt Raven.
This episode immediately does a good job of establishing its key elements: Beast Boy gets
a little frustrated with Raven, Adonis has a really creepy interest in Raven, and Beast
Boy gets really ticked off and becomes more wild and animalistic in his behaviours.
Although his later outbursts and strange atttitude in the episode are attributed in some part
to these chemicals, the idea here is that this anger is still within Beast Boy, though
it doesn't usually come out this way.
Ultimately thiough, I see this exploration of his character as a more minor part of the
episode.
After all, it's not like Beast Boy has ever come close to acting this arrogant before,
so this is a mostly new problem caused by something external.
This isn't some sort of inner conflict we've watched him go through as the show's gone
on; it's something different, done to let this interesting plot take place and to show
how close Raven and Beast Boy really are despite their differences.
Even when Beast Boy has been affected like this, he still wants to protect Raven, and
he still cares for her, as it's revealed that he's really protecting Raven from Adonis,
who's also turned into a werewolf type creature.
And that's where the fun and intrigue of this episode comes from.
None of the characters know if Beast Boy has hurt Raven after she disappears and we don't
either.
And, while it's obvious to pretty much any viewer that she isn't dead, it's by no means
out of the question that she may have been harmed by Beast Boy.
Overall, this episode is really a short mystery, exploring what happened between Beast Boy
and Raven in a sort-of horror film manner, with the episode's tense, tight directing,
dissonant, mysterious soundtrack, and dreary lighting and locales.
There is also this nice moment between Raven and Beast Boy.
While I wasn't a big fan of a somewhat similar moment in season 1 between Raven and Cyborg,
I feel that this scene was much more in line with her character.
She really says very little to Beast Boy, but what she says is reassuring and intelligent.
I am seeing more of what peopl ewere talking about though, when they said that this is
an integral aspect of her character.
I really enjoy Beast Boy's and Raven's brother-sister dynamic that is becoming more and more evident
as the series continues.
What a fun episode.
I don't have much to say about the next two episodes though, as both are overall comedic
episodes that don't explore any themes in a particularly deep manner - but nothing contradictory
happens and the focus of these episodes aren't on themes, so that's not much of a problem.
The first of these episodes involves Starfire taking care of Silkie, a creature that Beast
Boy previously brought in after they fought killer moth.
She tries to hide Silkie from Robin, Raven, and Cyborg, but they end up finding him and
make her give him away.
It is nice to see this side of Starfire, to see how much she cares for this creature.
It is also good to see her placed in a situation where she needs to say goodbye to her pet--moments
like those do add some more depth to her character, though she's by no means a bad character without
these moments.
As some pointed out in the comment section of the previous video, she does have depth
that's explored throughout her episodes, that has a lot to do with how she emotionally matures,
but I'll be discussing that more later.
The second episode is another one with Mumbo, but this time the titans get trapped in Mumbo's
hat and transform into animals.
There's a musical theatre type song, some entertaining animation, and it's just an overall
fun time.
I enjoy how different of an episode it is and I was consistently entertained but, again,
there isn't much to say about the episode.
It's pretty good.
Part of what makes them fun, despite there not being much to talk about, is how much
more creative this season has been in terms of direction and transitions.
Now, that's not to say that the previous seasons are poorly done (in particular, season 2 is
really good in that regard), but there are a lot more creative transitions, changes in
animation styles, and interesting shot compositions than I recall seeing in the previous seasons.
All in all, the direction just stands out to me.
So even if I don't have much to say about these episodes, that doesn't mean they're
bad.
It just means that there's less going on on a thematic level for me to really dig into
and that I think you can get most of what you're going to get out of these episodes
just by watching them.
Another thing to note is actually in regards to something I haven't talked about before
in regards to season 3, but that I mentioned in the previous seasons.
I haven't even complained once about the episodic episodes breaking up the flow of the main
arc of this season.
But there's a reason for that.
I don't care about the main arc.
Or maybe that's the wrong way to phrase it.
I don't think it's good.
In fact, I think it's very poor.
That's why I saved it till the end here.
I want to go through it all at once and really dig into why it bothered me so much.
Now, before diving into the individual episodes, it's important to consider what this arc,
overall, is trying to show us about Cyborg.
While I at first thought that it would focus on his feelings about being part robot, I
was surprised to see that it doesn't, which is by no means a bad thing.
Instead, we focus on another part of his personality: his want to be a leader, to do the most he
can the best he can.
This is first explored through Cyborg's time in Hive academy.
Oddly enough though, this episode does spend more time forcusong on Cyborg's feelings about
his robotic parts, and simply starts introducing the idea that Cyborg might want to act on
his own or prove himself through his own work.
After all, he gets closer to looking completely human than he ever has before in this series,
and Brother Blood offers him the opportunity to get even closer to that.
In some ways, I like this: We learn more about a conflict within Cyborg that we've already
seen a lot of, and come to learn that he won't betray his friends or his own ideals to get
closer to removing his robotic parts.
But we also get to see just a bit more of how he starts to work on his own, to do things
his own way, and of how Robin wants to check up on him a lot of the time to make sure everything's
going all right.
It also establishes that Brother Blood's mind control abilities don't work on Cyborg, which
is going to be integral to the later parts of this arc.
Overall, I have no big complaints about this episode in and of itself.
However, I am curious about one thing: If Brother Blood was controlling the student's
minds, does that mean that Gizmo, Jinx, and Mamoth aren't really villains?
Were they just under his control the whole time?
Maybe the show will go into that more later.
Either way, I suppose that doesn't matter all that much for this arc.
In the second episode of this--which is also episode 8 of season 3--the cracks in this
arc start to show.
Here, Brother Blood has stolen Cyborg's technology and is using it to try and destroy their city,
and the team has to go on and stop him.
Cyborg is particularly upset about this and starts questioning orders a lot and just generally
tries to work on his own more, though in the end he does accept other people's help and
realizes that he needs to work together with others to defeat Brother Blood.
However, we still see a lot of him clashing with Robin, as Robin continually takes the
lead when Cyborg is trying to.
All of this stuff is fine enough so far, but I do have a problem:
Brother Blood.
I find him so bland and boring.
While I also felt we didn't know enough about Slade's motivations in the first and second
seasons, he was at least intimidating.
In other words, he had some level of interest to him, and felt like a genuine threat.
His voice was chilling, the way he moved around was daunting, and the fact that he could take
on the Titans without any powers of his own by getting into their heads lent him a certain
unpredictability.
With Brother Blood, some of the problems with Slade carry over.
He seems to just be your typical villain that wants to destroy stuff and to help teach others
to be destructive; he doesn't have any ideology deeper than that, at least not that we see.
Thus, we don't know much about him, and I think knowing more would go a long way in
making his and Cyborg's interactions more interesting.
On top of that, he's simply not intimidating, even though he should be.
I mean, the ability to control people's minds and his sheer level of craziness should make
him feel like a threat, but due to his overall design and voice, I just never took him very
seriously.
I found his voice in particular to seem comedic more than anything, especialy when he yelled.
But this is all pretty subjective.
Then there's the more important part: his mind control doesn't always work?
After all, Bumblebee manages to withstand his mind control just because "there's not
a man alive who can tell me what to do".
[actually play this video clip of her saying those words; it happens at around 11:00 minutes
into episode 8] The jokes practically write themselves here.
[I'm thinking something related to "I'm a strong independent black woman who don't need
no man," but take this whatever direction you want with your editing.]
But this also leads to a bigger problem overall: If there are just some people who he can't
mind control for some reason, it means that this mind control is a plot device that can
be changed whenever the plot demands it, and that means that he's way less threatening.
It's lazy writing, to give a villain an ability that random people can just get past because
of the power of will.
Also, why can't he mind control her now, but he can mind control her later?
What's going on there?
Does he use stronger mind control on her later than he did now?
I don't know.
It simply seems like, for the sake of the plot, she needed to be mind controlled later,
but they also wanted her to be free now.
This really bothered me and took me out of the final episode of this conflict, but lets
focus on episode 12 before we move on to that more.
In episode 12, Cyborg goes somewhere else to help a new group of Titans establish themselves;
however, when they encounter Brother Blood things become a bit more complex and dangerous
than they may have expected.
The first problem with this episode is how lazily it introduces us to its concept, with
Beast Boy repeating information to Cyborg that he already knows in a way that is obviously
just to get the audience to understand what's going on.
However, it is good to start with the other Titans talking about how much they miss Cyborg,
since Cyborg is going to reject them later in the episode.
It makes the moment when he says he's not coming back hit harder than it otherwise would,
and gives thie episode a fairly strong structure.
I also like that this episode brings back a few characters we've seen before, as well
as Mas y Menos.
I have no idea if I said that right.
It's intelligent to have us know who so many of them are already, since it'd be really
hard to introduce all of them in a single episode.
It's also a lot more entertaining to see him bring together other characters we've already
seen separately than it would be to see him bring together a whole bunch of characters
we've never seen before.
On top of this, there are little moments where Cyborg talks about being able to do things
Robin wouldn't let him, and getting to see him as such a compotent leader somewhat validates
his position that he should have more of a leadership role, though it is of course understandable
that the regular Titans don't need two leaders.
But the big problems here come in the end, when it's revealed that Brother Blood has
mind controlled all these other characters in his attack on the base.
If he controlled them all here already and Cyborg is in a weakened state then . . . why
doesn't he get them to take Cyborg away?
Why does he let them keep going around for a little bit before swooping in, which only
gives the heroes a chance to fight back?
It seems like he's really focused on figuring out why Cyborg can fight his mind control,
so why not move him to a different location and figure that out first?
If he did this properly, it's not like the Titans would be able to find him right away.
These sorts of problems continue in the next episode too.
Why does he let the Titans stay in this room together, secluded from everyone else?
Why not move them away from each other?
And while it's a neat idea to have Brother Blood take Cyborg's technology and use it
on himself and other people, these upgrades bring up some questions.
Like what are Brother Blood's new abilities now?
I guess he can teleport for some reason, but I don't recall Cyborg being able to do that.
So did Brother Blood do something else to himself too?
I know I'm asking a lot of questions here and, depending on your stance, you might say
that I'm asking too much.
Maybe I should just let the show go where it's going to go.
But this all speaks to a larger problem: Things are going too fast.
We aren't properly exploring each of these ideas and some of them are conceptually interesting
enough that we should explore them.
For example, I want to see more of Cyborg being afraid that other people will be made
to look and feel like him.
That could be cool.
But we don't have time for that, so this episode pushes forward with a whole lot of gaps in
logic.
It's good though that we see Cyborg taking on more of a leaderly role, even if for a
bit.
However, the show doesn't do a good job with that because, well, Cyborg doesn't succeed
as a leader but the show still sets it up to seem like he did.
What I mean is that Cyborg should lose.
His plan ends up leading him into a fight with Brother Blood and Brother Blood absolutely
destroys him.
When I had to pause the episode at this point and saw that about 3 and a half minutes were
left, I went: How the heck is he going to get out of this?
The answer: Bad writing.
It's not actually that Cyborg's robotic parts let him defy Brother Blood; it's just something
to do with Cyborg's spirit.
Which I don't like in the first place, because it would be nice to emphasize how Cyborg's
robotic parts give him advantages in the world, as well as disadvantages.
But that's not the biggest problem here.
The biggest problem is that his spirit suddenly allows him to remotely deconstruct other robots
and reconstruct his own body!?
What!?
This conflict only lands if Cyborg does something in a leadership role that allows the Titans
to succeed.
Instead, we get some tired thing about his willpower, and he's basically able to beat
the villain just because he wants to bad enough.
It undermines so much of this arc and, honestly, completely ruined it for me.
Some people say the journey matters, not the destination--but I think the destination should
at least be thematically sound with the journey.
It's like the writers knew this was bad: Beast Boy even asks Cyborg if he's "like magic now,"
and Cyborg just says that it was a one time deal?
And that he hacked into Brother Blood's brain?
So did Brother Blood have some sort of telechenetic powers that he unlocked?
I don't know.
I'm confused.
And annoyed.
This annoynce does come from a place of love though.
Because I'm really enjoying this show more now; I'm seeing a lot of what it has to offer.
It's been improving in so many ways and it's such a shame to see it stumble like this.
So all of this is to say that, despite the fact that this season had one amazing stand-alone
episode and some other ones that were good, this season has had some serious problems,
particularly with Cyborg's arc.
It's a shame that it was so mishandled.
In fact, I think as a whole that this season is worse than season 1 and it's definitely
worse than season 2.
But you know what the good thing is?
Season 4 is next, and I'm really excited to talk about that.
As always, thank you for watching this series.
I've said it before, but your support still means so much to me.
Also, you people over on Patreon?
You're the best.
Thanks for being awesome.
On top of that, I want to say thank you to ChordsBoy for letting me use their music in
both this part and the last part.
They're doing awesome work and I've linked to their channel in the description.
Check out their great stuff.
I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.
Have a good one!
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