TEEN TITANS SEASON FIVE (2005-06)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                        The final season of TEEN TITANS provides an overarching plotline concerning Beast Boy's first superhero team The Doom Patrol, though said group wasn't mentioned in any previous TV-episodes. In comic books, DC debuted both TEEN TITANS and DOOM PATROL within a few years of one another, and though they were largely independent, Beast Boy of PATROL guest-starred in one issue of TITANS-- which later resulted in the shapeshifter becoming a New Teen Titan in the 1980s.  The 1980s comic also concluded a hanging plot-thread left over since PATROL's cancellation in the 1960s, and this storyline resulted in the Patrol's old foes, the Brotherhood of Evil, becoming members of the New Titans' regular rogues' gallery.                                                                                            

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 POOR     Only one episode this time is a waste of time. The Titans pursue their recurring villain Doctor Light into a subterranean domain where prehistoric life has persisted. It's too complicated to go into the comics-histories of the two quasi-heroic locals, Gnarrk and Kole, but as far as I've concerned, both were boring in the comics and the TITANS writers aren't able to make them any less so. I suppose the eating contest between Gnarrk and Cyborg is moderately amusing.                                                                            

    FAIR                                                                                                     GO! -- This episode, whose title is a patent reference to the catchphrase "Teen Titans Go," is the only fair-mythicity episode which isn't tied into the overarching "Brotherhood of Evil" plotline. The episode is a very condensed version of the origin of the 1980s Titans, in which Starfire escapes her captors, the extraterrestrial marauders called Gordanians. Various contrivances cause Robin, Raven, Cyborg and Beast Boy to oppose the Gordanians' attempts to recapture Starfire. The story naturally emphasizes action more than character explication. But some strong moments include Beast Boy's first meeting with Robin, acting the fanboy to the Teen Wonder. Starfire appears as the product of a ruthless warlord culture, so the episode's not able to explain how she transitioned to the "puppies and kittens" Starfire of the later episodes.                                                                                                                            HOMECOMING PTS 1-2, TRUST, FOR REAL, SNOWBLIND, HIDE AND SEEK, LIGHTSPEED, CALLING ALL TITANS, and TITANS TOGETHER-- All of these episodes are organized around the resurgence of the Brotherhood of Evil. This villain-team's core members are The Brain, the intelligent gorilla Monsieur Mallah, General Immortus, and the rubber-limbed Madame Rouge, though by the last episodes they've managed to enlist nearly all of the Titans' recurring enemies in their project to "destroy all Titans."              HOMECOMING chronicles Beast Boy's first encounter with the Patrol since he resigned from their ranks, which include Robotman, Negative Man, Elasti-Girl and Mento, the latter serving as the team's leader. All four are under-characterized, probably because the writers knew that they weren't to make more than token appearances. Beast Boy's reasons for leaving that group aren't articulated, but it's likely that he rebelled against Mento's severe and unforgiving attitude. In fact, all four Patrollers are bereft of any humor or fellow-feeling, and the HOMECOMING script treats them as if they were ultra-military types, focused only upon beating the enemy. This is more than a little ironic, since in the original comics from the 1960s, PATROL was distinguished by its display of rollicking humor, while the TITANS comic was usually only funny by virtue of its writer seeking to emulate the speech patterns of 1960s teenagers.                                                                                         TRUST follows Robin as he seeks to prevent Madame Rouge from abducting Hotspot. This episode feels much like filler, given that Hotspot had only a minor appearance in WINNER TAKE ALL and certainly didn't do anything to earn himself a big fandom.           FOR REAL-- Control Freak breaks out of jail and invades Titans Tower to challenge his old foes. Instead of his usual foes, the villain finds that the Titans East have taken up residence in the Tower while the other heroes are on missions. There are a few funny moments where Control Freak debates with other cyber-chatters as to whether he should even bother battling such rank unknowns. Of course, he does, and he even goes the "average villain" route by setting up physical challenges for the Easterners-- who naturally kick his butt just as hard as the Western branch did.         SNOWBLIND-- This story, only tangentially related to the Brotherhood arc, involves the Titans going to Russia to fight a marauding monster. While searching for the creature, Starfire is separated from her group but finds shelter in a quarantined facility occupied by Red Star, a soldier given unstable powers in a government experiment.  There's an involved comics in-joke here, in that although Red Star did appear in the 1980s TITANS series, he was derived from a sixties character, who was the first DC character to be named-- Starfire.                                                HIDE AND SEEK-- Raven gets her only solo comedy episode, as she's charged with protecting three grade-schoolers from being captured by the Brotherhood. The humor's very predictable, made palatable only by the characterization of Raven.                               LIGHTSPEED-- In this odd segue, loner-hero Kid Flash-- a frequent Titan in the comics but seen here for the first time-- makes life miserable for the "Hive Five." But even without the Kid's interference, the Five's leader Jinx finds herself constantly undercut by her lazy-ass comrades (now upped to six with the inclusion of Billy Numerous and two newbies, See-mour and Kid Wycked). Moreover, when Jinx tries to curry favor with the Brotherhood, she finds that they're something less than accomodating.                                                                               CALLING ALL TITANS just sets up the action for TITANS TOGETHER, when the principal Titans invade the Brotherhood's sanctuary and free all the prisoners the villains have captured. There are various character bits that enhance TOGETHER's mythicity, but the main appeal is kinetic, as the animators unleash what may be the largest multi-character fight-scene in the history of world cartoons. This episode seems to have been conceived as a possible conclusion for the series, though one more episode was produced to give the series a more wistful send-off.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

GOOD                                                                                                                REVVED UP-- In the 1960s TITANS comic, the writer introduced a villain with the improbable name of "Ding Dong Daddy," who executed crimes with the help of specially rigged vehicles. This was a rare (for the time) shout-out to a cartoon character outside the boundaries of four-color comic books: the artistic persona of Earl "Big Daddy" Roth, a caricaturist renowned for weird monsters driving fast cars. REVVED UP introduces the new Ding Dong as a guy who somehow gets hold of a secret treasure owned by the Teen Wonder himself. When Robin and the other Titans try to reacquire the mysterious item, Ding Dong compels them to participate in a car-race-- and Cyborg, who dearly loves his T-car, is more than happy to oblige. A bunch of other villains show up to try winning Robin's mysterious prize, including Red X, the mystery thief who took over Robin's phony criminal identity-- though in some ways Red X shows some of Robin's own sense of personal honor. Ding Dong is aided by a mobile pit crew, whose monstrous servicemen look like the ghouls of "Big Daddy," and that alone gives extra heft to the episode's mythicity.                                      THINGS CHANGE-- Every other TEEN TITANS episode, no matter how good or bad in terms of symbolic discourse, is structured as formula entertainment. This observation isn't meant to have any negative connotations. It simply means that the raconteurs structured their narratives to respond to the expectations of the audience, rather than obliging the audience to follow where the storyteller wants to go. But in THINGS CHANGE, the production team concluded their series with the superhero equivalent of FALL OUT, the final episode of the 1960s teleseries THE PRISONER. Like FALL OUT, CHANGE is full of uncertainties, of questions without answers. The five Titans stride into town looking for their favorite haunts-- a pizza place, a video store-- but those touchstones have been closed down. From a construction site a metamorphic monster pops out and attacks them. While four of the heroes pursue the creature and eventually defeat it-- though they never know what it was or why it attacked-- Beast Boy is astounded to see, amid a crowd of onlookers, a dead-ringer for the deceased Terra. No other Titan sees her, nor do they join Beast Boy when he investigates the place where they enshrined Terra's body, converted into pure stone during her battle with Slade. Not only does the changeling find the statue missing, he's attacked by a being that resembles Slade, who keeps telling him to leave the young girl alone. When Beast Boy defeats Slade, Slade turns out to be a robot, but there are no clues as to who programmed the mechanical man for this exigency. As for the girl, she denies any identity with Terra but rather significantly never gives her "real" name. While she's fairly kind toward the confused young superhero, she flatly disavows any connection with the world he lives in, and the story ends with Beast Boy, committed to the life of a hero, rushing off to join his friends in their next mission and reconciling himself to his loss. Many fans didn't like this mysterioso conclusion, but I was glad to see the producers bow out on this atypical note of loss and heartache.                             

TEEN TITANS SEASON FOUR (2005)

                   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*

CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                         This season proves noteworthy for the very involved Trigon plotline. 

                                                                                                                     POOR                                                                                EMPLOYEE OF THE MONTH-- Beast Boy wants to buy a moped but has no money, so he goes to work at a burger restaurant. Though as a vegetarian he's grossed out to sell meat products, he's shocked to learn that aliens control the restaurant, and they want to kill all humans with alien tofu-burgers so they can take their cows (?) Easily the most unfunny episode.                           

  FAIR                                                                                                                                                                                                         DON'T TOUCH THAT DIAL -- Control Freak finally gets a full episode, and just as Mad Mod thrust the Titans into a world of British culture, the Freak hurls the heroes into the chaos that is American TV. Some cute bits, but the most interesting development is that Beast Boy saves the day with his superior nerd-itude.                                                                                                 THE QUEST-- Robin gets his butt kicked by an evil kung-fu fighter, Katarou (whose costume slightly resembles that of the DC hero Deadman). The Teen Wonder becomes convinced that he needs a higher level of martial arts training, so he leaves his teammates behind and journeys to Asia, seeking the counsel of the legendary "True Master." To reach this teacher, Robin must fight his way past three guardians, all of whom are humanized animals (and are never explained). Katarou also seeks the tutelage of the True Master, but this instructor is not what either of them expects to find.                                                                                      CYBORG THE BARBARIAN-- This Cyborg-centered story propels him five thousand years into the past. While his comrades seek to bring him back, Cyborg takes shelter with a barbarian tribe, led by the warrior-woman Sarasim. He takes the tribe's part against monstrous invaders, but if he can't find a way to recharge his batteries in this non-technological world, his systems will crash and he'll perish.                                                                              TROQ-- This anti-racism episode comes close to being a lecture but avoids pure didacticism by stressing the camaraderie of the central five characters. The Titans render aid to Val-Yor, an alien hero seeking to neutralize a swarm of mechanical invaders, at least partly to protect Earth from possible danger. But Val-Yor holds Tamaranians in contempt-- for reasons never articulated-- and he refers to her by the insulting name "troq." The episode gains points in that when Cyborg finds out what the epithet means, he doesn't reference his own personal experiences with racism.                                 OVERDRIVE-- Cyborg downloads a new high-performance chip into his system, and his buddies soon see him going into "overdrive," constantly seeking new challenges. At the same time, new villain Billy Numerous makes the Titans' lives miserable with his ability to conjure up countless self-duplicates. Cyborg must not only find a way to counteract the evildoer's powers but neutralize the aspects of the chip that have made the hero so hyper.                                MOTHER MAY-EYE-- The strange woman of the title places the Titans under her maternal control by constantly feeding them brainwashing pies. This circumstance makes for a lot of comic setups where the heroes are subjected to being treated like small children, but the Mother's motives for playing mommy remain obscure, and she never gets an origin as such.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

GOOD                                                                                                                                                                                                              STRANDED-- Though Starfire and Robin never become lovers as they did in the comics, this episode delivers some level of closure to their romantic arc. While the heroes are exploring a wrecked space station, they find a giant monster aboard and are forced to flee in their spaceship, and they all end up getting "stranded" on an alien world rife with hostile forms of life. But the real challenge for Robin is that when Cyborg teases him about his relationship with Starfire, he rashly denies any such connection-- which naturally alienates Starfire, since he's sent her various mixed signals. The two of them have to hash out their emotional bonds while coping with the giant monster, which continues to pursue them for no obvious reason. To dispel some of the heavy atmosphere of the main plot, Beast Boy and Cyborg get into assorted wacky antics as the green guy must play repairman to their ship and to Cyborg's scattered components, and Raven gets her first solo subplot devoted to humor, as she finds herself pestered by some odd little ETs.                                                                                                                                                                                           BIRTHMARK/ THE PROPHECY/ THE END 1-3-- These partly non-consecutive episodes devote themselves to a plotline only hinted at in the first season: that Raven is the daughter of the supremely powerful demon Trigon, and that he has plans for her on her impending birthday. The Trigon of the comics wasn't much better than Deathstroke, but here he gains greater mojo partly because the writers wisely chose to build up to his advent slowly, allowing for much more attention to the way Raven compensated for her being the spawn of Supreme Evil. Trigon raises Slade from the dead and imbues him with magical powers, and Raven soon recognizes Trigon's plan to use her as a dimensional doorway to invade the Earth-realm. She seeks for a time to defer revealing the truth to her friends, though anyone who's not read the comics may not completely follow the fine points of Raven's origin here. In any case, Slade continues to do Trigon's bidding until the demon-lord has what he wants, at which point Trigon reneges on the deal. (Thus Slade gets a taste of what he put Terra through during her apprenticeship.) Slade then lends aid to the Titans to spite Trigon, though it's clear that Slade does so only out of spite. Three of the Titans are forced to battle doppelgangers of themselves while Robin seeks out Raven, who as a result of being used as a doorway has de-aged to childhood. The world is saved, and the demon-spawned heroine passes her baptism of (literal) fire, though by the next and final season she'll return to being familiar, eternally grumpy Raven.   

TEEN TITANS, SEASON THREE (2004-05)

                                                                                                                                                           

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          No "poor" episodes this time, but the same number of "good" ones as in previous seasons. The most significant development is the show's introduction of recurring villain Brother Blood. In the comics, Blood was the leader of a mind-controlling cult, but here, he's the headmaster of a school run by H.I.V.E., involved in training new villains for their criminal operations.                                                                           

                                                                                                       FAIR                                                                                             DECEPTION-- In this debut episode for Brother Blood, the Titans need to send a mole into his school to suss out his dastardly plans. Cyborg disguises himself as a new villain, Stone, and becomes a student at the school, where he antagonizes Gizmo and charms the gamine Jinx. When Blood finds out Stone's true identity, this sets a running grudge between Blood and Cyborg.                                                                                                                                      X-- A never-named thief steals the costume and gimmicks Robin used for his sham villain "Red X" in Season One. At first, the other Titans strongly suspect that Robin is playing games again, but though they acknowledge that this Red X is a threat, they're not able to catch him by episode's end.                                                    CRASH-- Beast Boy accidentally causes Cyborg's systems to go haywire. The heroes force the scientific genius Gizmo to shrink himself into Cyborg's body in order to set things right. The guilty Beast Boy tags along to make sure the job is done right, and the two have a "fantastic voyage" through Cyborg's innards.           HAUNTED-- Though all of the Titans witnessed Slade's fiery demise, Robin becomes obsessed with the villain once more, insisting that the evildoer has returned. Has the Teen Wonder gone mad, or is some malign influence calling the shots?    SPELLBOUND -- Raven, needing escape from her dire destiny (fully on display in Season Four), becomes fascinated with a fantasy-novel, and soon learns that there's a real wizard held captive in the book. And yes, it's another trite tale about youthful crusaders getting caught up with their obsessions, though there's enough wit and action to keep the preaching to a minimum.          WAVELENGTH-- Aqualad brings the Titans ill tidings: Brother Blood has constructed a new installation beneath the sea. Further, he's constructed a doomsday weapon based on tech stolen from Cyborg, which increases the sense of personal enmity between hero and villain. The Titans launch a search-and-destroy mission that requires Cyborg to go off alone and destroy the weapon while the others keep Blood busy. However, Bumblebee, one of the students from Blood's H.I.V.E. school, appears to stand in Cyborg's way. Parenthetically, this Bumblebee is a distinct improvement over the mediocre comics-original.                                                                      CAN I KEEP HIM? -- This is an OK comedy episode in which the young adult heroes often act like children. Following the episode DATE WITH DESTINY, Beast Boy secretly kept one of Killer Moth's genetically engineered worm-creatures. The worm causes damage in the Tower, and when the heroes look for the intruder, Beast Boy convinces Starfire to cover for him. Starfire bonds with the repulsive little creature, naming it "Silkie," but the beast grows to huge proportions and is reclaimed by Killer Moth. This forces Starfire to choose between her friends and her pet, though in the end Silkie is spared. I was tempted to give this episode a poor rating just because Silkie was grotesquely overused for dumb shenanigans in the TEEN TITANS GO series.                                                                                                              BUNNY RAVEN-- The criminal magician Mumbo uses his powers not only to capture the Titans, but to turn them all into funny-animal versions of themselves, with the exception of Beast Boy, who gets changed into a lamp that can only shapeshift into other inanimate objects. Mumbo singles out Raven for special mockery by turning her into a bunny-rabbit version of herself, leading to assorted jokes about rabbits in hats. However, even though Raven isn't able to use her demon-powers, she figures out how to conquer Mumbo using the stage magician's methods of misdirection.                                                                                                                                               TITANS EAST PTS 1-2-- It's a new grudge match between Cyborg and Brother Blood. Young man Cyborg travels east to help a new group of heroes set up their HQ as "Titans East," comprised of Aqualad, Speedy (introduced in WINNER TAKE ALL), Bumblebee and two new interdependent speedster-heroes, Mas Y Menos. Cyborg is invited to become this group's permanent leader, but then Brother Blood invades, again using Cyborg's tech against the heroes.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

  GOOD                                                                                                              BETROTHED -- Here, the writers boiled down into one 20-minute episode a very long comics-plotline about Starfire participating in a political marriage on her homeworld to benefit her Tamaranian people. Blackfire, last seen getting taken to prison by cosmic cops, has somehow ascended to the throne of Tamaran, and she brokers a marriage between her idealistic younger sister and a disgusting slime-creature. Robin reveals some of his carefully guarded feelings when he argues that she ought to marry for love. However, though Starfire is saved from the altar, her relationship with the Earth-hero remains largely unchanged.                REVOLUTION-- In what might be the best of the "funny episodes," Mad Mod returns with a much more ambitious scheme. Just as the young heroes plan to celebrate the holiday of America's independence from Great Britain, Mad Mod cancels the American Revolution by reprogramming the whole nation into believing that they're still a British colony. Further, Mad Mod uses a device that switches the ages of himself and Robin, so that the villain becomes young and the hero a doddering old fellow. The other four leaderless Titans must formulate a plan of they can do so is to emulate the principles of American compromise.                                                                                                                                                         THE BEAST WITHIN-- The heroes encounter a new villain, the armor-clad Adonis, and during their battle, Adonis throws some verbal barbs at Beast Boy. The usually genial green guy strikes back, defeating Adonis with extreme violence. Moreover, Beast Boy doesn't seem willing to dial down his aggression even among his own friends, and they become concerned that he may gone on an animal-like rampage. He apparently attacks and harms Raven-- or is there another force at work? Definitely the best episode to focus on Beast Boy.                                 

TEEN TITANS, SEASON TWO (2004)

                                   

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological*                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Season Two of the TITANS wasn't slow to follow up on the obsessive relationship between Robin and the show's faux-Deathstroke Slade. Slade apparently gives up on trying to convert Robin and turns his attention to new Titans member Terra. The writers made huge revisions to the original comic-book story of Terra and Deathstroke, which I reviewed here. More on those alterations later.                                         

                                                                                                  POOR (On reconsideration, I did think some of the comedy episodes this season were subpar)                                         EVERY DOG HAS HIS DAY-- when Beast Boy happens to change himself into a dog, a goofy alien mistakes the hero for his own pet, who's gone missing on Earth. The other Titans have to bring owner and pet together to free their friend.                                       FRACTURED-- The Titans have the pleasure of meeting an other-dimensional duplicate of Robin, who takes the name "Larry." I wonder whether the writers had some notion of introducing a Robin-centered version of Bat-Mite from the comics. While the later BATMAN THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD managed to pull off this silly conceit, FRACTURED is just a jigsaw with a lot of pieces missing. The episode introduces recurring foe Johnny Rancid.                                                                                                                              

                                                                                                                  FAIR                                                                                                                                                                                                        HOW LONG IS FOREVER? -- The always bubbly Starfire often finds it hard to cope with her more fractious partners, but never more than when she gets to see a future without Titans. During a battle with a time-traveling villain named Warp, Starfire's flung into that future, where she finds that all her old friends have gone their separate ways, whether because of age, declining expectations, or general cynicism. She inspires the Future Titans to come together once more, and then returns to her own time, not knowing if she's changed the undesirable events to come.                                          ONLY HUMAN -- Cyborg faces off against the super-strong robot Atlas and finds that his cyborg body can't "give more than 100 percent." Can he figure out a way that his human mind and spirit can compensate for the strength differential?                                WINNER TAKE ALL -- The three male Titans are whisked to an alien world by the Master of Games, who persuades them and other fighters (including their earth-enemy Gizmo) to contend with one another for fun and prizes. It's not clear why the Master only selects males for this contest, for after he fails to benefit from the first game, the episode ends with his convening Starfire, Raven and various unnamed female contestants for another go-round.       FEAR ITSELF-- Recurring foe Control Freak makes his debut but plays second fiddle to horrors conjured up from the depths of Raven's demonic consciousness.                                                                                                                                                        

                                                                                                    GOOD                                                                                                                                                                               TRANSFORMATION-- Also known as, "the one with Starfire's zit." This script could have devolved into a lot of ponderous drivel about Starfire succumbing to societally dictated body images, and I'm sure the writers did have in mind the hormonal transformations of adolescence. Admittedly it's not clear why the alien girl didn't learn as a child about her race's proclivity to manifest weird temporary mutations. But then, Earth children are usually told what they have to expect, and the "changes" still have all sorts of emotional impact anyway. One of the better "team building" stories.                                                                                                                                   DATE WITH DESTINY-- Killer Moth unleashes huge mutant insects on Jump City, and he demands a ransom. That ransom includes getting a young swain to escort his teenaged daughter Kitten to prom, and she's decided she wants Robin as her escort. When the Teen Wonder reluctantly goes along with the charade to buy time, Starfire is duly enraged-- and though the script doesn't say this explicitly, some of her ire must stem from the fact that she and Robin have not had a date together at this time. DATE is intentionally wacky. culminating in Starfire brawling with Kitten amid messy food-fights-- but it doesn't entirely get lost in silliness, contributing to the romantic arc expected by insiders.                                                                                                                          TERRA/TITAN RISING/BETRAYAL/AFTERSHOCK 1-2 -- These five mostly non-consecutive episodes all deal with the advent of Terra, a teenage girl with the power to manipulate solid earth. Whereas the Terra of the comics was written as a "bad seed," this character is more a tormented girl with an unspecified "checkered past." Beast Boy almost immediately falls in love with the newcomer, and all of the Titans welcome Terra to the team, though Raven has an intrinsic distrust of her. Terra's rampant insecurities lead her to want to betray those who succored her before they have a chance to betray her, and the arch-tempter Slade is on the scene to make sure he falls under his power. Inevitably, Terra finds that being Slade's apprentice is no bed of roses, and their conflict seems to result in their mutual extinction-- though of course, death is no barrier to revival in cartoons any more than in comics.         

TEEN TITANS, SEASON ONE (2003)

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

                                                                                                              PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*

MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, psychological* 

Based on my having re-watched the first three seasons of TEEN TITANS, I find that my overall mythicity rating must be "fair," as it is for most serial groupings. However, so far I've yet to find any episodes that rate as outright "poor," in contrast to most full seasons I've reviewed here. Even the well-regarded BATMAN THE ANIMATED SERIES had a lot more poor episodes, though it's arguable that's because the raconteurs on that series attempted a wider range of subject matter than TEEN TITANS did in its five seasons. But in many ways I found this cartoon adaptation more engaging that the Wolfman-Perez comic book that spawned the idea.                                                                                                          Because there's not as much variation, it seems easiest just to review all the "fair" episodes together, and the same for the "good" ones.                                                                                                      FAIR                                                                                                    "Final Exam"-- this was the first episode, introducing the five young heroes-- Robin, Starfire, Cyborg, Raven and Beast Boy-- in their HQ, Titans Tower. Since complete newbies had to become familiar with the characters over time, the writers made all five sympathetic by having them getting kicked out of their home. Under the command of the mystery mastermind Slade, the three super-villains of "H.I.V.E."-- Jinx, Gizmo and Mammoth-- eject the heroes, and they have to summon their fighting-spirit in order to triumph.                                                                                        "Sisters"-- Starfire's conniving older sister Blackfire visits Earth, allegedly to bond with her younger sibling. However, this episode was good for establishing the (never consummated) romantic arc between Starfire and Robin, since one of the first things Blackfire does is to hit on the Teen Wonder, as well as making Starfire think her friends like Blackfire better. But as in the comics, Blackfire never does anything without an evil ulterior motive.                                                                                                                                              "Divide and Conquer"-- The Titans' attempt to bring super-crooks Plasmus and Cinderblock to justice goes awry when alpha males Robin and Cyborg argue about who has authority in the group.                                                                                                  "Forces of Nature"-- Slade hoaxes two immortal beings, Thunder and Lightning (also from the comics), into running amuck, and the Titans have to make these wild god-children understand the consequences of their actions.                                                                                                                                                                "The Sum of His Parts"-- Cyborg's mechanical parts suffer battery failure, and he gets some timely aid from a scientific genius named Fixit. Unfortunately, Fixit's permanent solution to the hero's problems is to get rid of all those unnecessary biological parts. The original-to-cartoon villain Mumbo also debuts.                                                                                                                                     "Switched"-- The cartoon's version of the comic's Puppet King seeks to transfer the heroes' souls into his special puppets. He succeeds with the males, but the spirits of Starfire and Raven get switched into one another's bodies. The two females are forced to understand one another's powers, as well as their emotional natures, in order to overcome their adversary.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         "Deep Six"-- In one of the weaker stories, the Titans descend into the deep blue sea in pursuit of a merman-criminal named Trident. The heroes receive aid from new hero Aqualad, but Beast Boy feels threatened by the aquatic adventurer.                                                                                                                                                                   "Mad Mod"-- in a conscious updating of a moldy oldie comics villain, the evil Brit megalomaniac Mad Mod (voiced by Malcolm McDowell) introduces himself to the Titans by abducting them and forcing them to attend a school of hard knocks.                                                                                                                                         GOOD                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        "Nevermore" -- Raven's team-mates barely know anything about her, least of all her involved demonic heritage. Cyborg and Beast Boy trespass in Raven's private room and get sucked into a magical mirror that she uses to suppress her human emotions. In the mirror-world, the two heroes encounter various simulacra of Raven's emotions-- anger, timidity, gaiety-- as well as the deadly image of Raven's father Trigon. Though Raven had to rescue her partners from peril, she gains some interesting insights into her own emotional complexities.                                                                                                                                                         "Masks"-- though Slade was visually modeled after the comics-villain Deathstroke, this master manipulator is barely comparanble to the idiotic comics-character. Since Slade has repeatedly hurled menaces at the Titans but has always escaped retribution, leader Robin becomes obsessed with the goal of capturing the evildoer. To that end, Robin goes "deep cover" without informing his friends of his plans. The young hero assumes the identity of a costumed crook, Red X, and confounds his partners in order to fool Slade into enlisting Red X as a henchman. The gambit not only fails, it drives a wedge between Robin and his team-mates.                                                                                                                             "Apprentice"-- The two-part final episode of Season One shows cool customer Slade attempting to "one up" Robin by forcing the young crusader to be his apprentice. Though Batman's name is never mentioned, and his history with Robin is only indirectly suggested, clearly Slade has a devilish desire to be an anti-Batman, corrupting Robin just for pure Schadenfreude. Robin is forced to serve the master villain for a time to preserve the lives of his friends, but he still manages to save them and thwart Slade in the end. Slade's plotting, however, would attain more epic proportions in the second season.                         

THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU (1980)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*                                                                                                                                                 Question: What did actor Peter Sellers and writer Sax Rohmer have in common?                                                                                                                                                                                 Answers: If you said, "they both worked on projects with the name "Fu Manchu" in the title, you would be right. But you would also be right to say that they both worked in the tradition of the entertainment-form known as "British music hall." And you would also be right to say that in one way or another, the things they did with "Fu Manchu" were at base about the passing of social conventions.                                                                                                                                                                                              Now, with Answer #2, one would have to specify an important difference. Writing music-hall sketches was a very small part of Sax Rohmer's authorial career, while Peter Sellers' associations with Fu Manchu were a very small part of his repertoire. Rohmer wrote for the British music hall for a few years before he gained popular acclaim upon publishing the first installment of a Fu Manchu novel in a 1912 issue of the British magazine THE STORY-TELLER. And Sellers would not have existed at all but for the marriage of his parents, both music-hall performers, who raised their precocious offspring "in the trunk" of their traveling engagements. Sellers therefore worked in music-hall at a young age, though his first claim to fame came from a British radio program, "The Goon Show"-- arguably patterned on the variety format of music-hall, with its combination of skits and songs. That exposure in turn led to Sellers' cinematic career. Sellers was with "the Goons" when Spike Milligan essayed a skit about a character called "Fred Fu Manchu" in 1955 (four years before Sax Rohmer's passing, incidentally). I don't know how many moviegoers in 1980 remembered the Spike Milligan skit. But Sellers certainly did, since he recycled the same basic joke, about the diabolical mastermind preferring to be called "Fred" by his intimates since he'd used that name during his school days at Eton.                                                                                                                                                            As for Answer #3, Rohmer created his master villain against the backdrop of real Chinese history, as Imperial China essentially lost its "clash of civilizations" battle with Great Britain and other European powers. Fu Manchu represents the doomed efforts of a criminal genius to turn back time and restore Old China. Ironically, in the period of Milligan's "Goon" skit, Great Britain was somewhat in the position China had been in at the start of the 20th century. And that decade of the 1950s also brought about the steady decline of the British music-hall tradition, brought about by competition from radio, television, and one other venue I'll mention a little later.                                                                                              So-- back to THE FIENDISH PLOT OF DR. FU MANCHU, the last work in the uneven repertoire of Peter Sellers before heart issues claimed his life. Though Sellers was ill during the movie's production, that didn't keep him from ousting director Piers Haggard toward the end of the shoot. Even if IMDB didn't assert that Sellers did uncredited writing-work on the original script, I would have suspected that he was in a position to add anything he pleased to the script, as well as either directing scenes himself or having them directed by his favored insiders. What resulted was only secondarily a spoof-pastiche of Rohmer's Fu Manchu series. FIENDISH became primarily a salute (or recycling if one prefers) of a lot of goofy comedy skits, some of which explicitly reference oldie music-hall acts, like Helen Mirren singing an old Brit favorite, "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow-Wow." Of course, some of these shout-outs may have come from Haggard or the two credited writers, but if Sellers hadn't wanted to do those bits, they probably wouldn't have been filmed.                                                                                                                                                                       According to a couple of statements, the story begins "possibly around 1933" (which is loosely around the time that Rohmer's Fu Manchu began having prose and sound-cinema adventures after the character's absence for roughly 14 years). In his Himalayan refuge, Fu Manchu (Sellers) celebrates his 168th birthday with his all-male coterie of Si-Fan henchmen. On his natal day, Fu, who looks very aged, plans to drink his elixir vitae and restore his youth. But a clumsy acolyte (Burt Kwouk of Sellers' PINK PANTHER films) wastes Fu's last supply of the elixir, so he must send his Si-Fan minions forth to gather a handful of improbable ingredients, in order to preserve his life. In contrast to the books, in which Fu is usually involved in serial assassinations, here all of his crimes involve serial thefts, all to save his own life.                                                                                                                                               Once Fu starts committing his crimes, both Scotland Yard (represented by David Tomlinson) and the FBI (represented by Sid Caesar and Steve Franken) confer on the best way to counter the mad genius. They elect to bring Fu's most persistent enemy out of retirement, Sir Denis Nayland Smith (also Sellers). In addition, when they suspect that Fu is going to abduct the Queen, they have her impersonated by lookalike female constable Alice Rage (Mirren). Nayland Smith prevents Fu from getting one of his needed ingredients, but the supervillain does capture Alice. In a development that resembles nothing in Rohmer, Alice falls in love with Fu despite the fact that he's still incredibly old-- and what they bond over is a shared love of music-hall entertainment. After taking Nayland Smith prisoner, Fu gets his missing ingredient, makes his elixir, and de-ages. He then generously lets his old foe leave with a sample of elixir, if he chooses the immortality route, and reveals an absurd threat that will supposedly destroy the world-- again, more on which later.                                                                                                                                                                                     FIENDISH was roundly panned and just barely made back its ten million dollar budget. I found it extremely unfunny when I first viewed it, and time has not improved its charms. At most, some of the humor made me smile from its sheer quaintness. Sellers' performance is akin to his ersatz Charlie Chan in the superior MURDER BY DEATH, but his faux Chinese accent for Fu is not nearly as exaggerated here. As I am a fan of the books, I'm moderately pleased at a few Rohmer tropes that, by hook or crook, made it into the finished film. Fu and Smith, for instance, maintain a sort of decorous respect despite their enmity. Sid Caesar's FBI guy is mostly a waste of space, but he does resemble some American characters from Rohmer's U.S.-based novel PRESIDENT FU MANCHU, in that Americans are shown as being much more free than Brits with voicing ethnic slurs. One of FIENDISH's opening scenes shows Fu's dacoits performing involved acrobatic stunts, and though this resembles nothing in Rohmer, the scene did remind me of Marvel's 1970s MASTER OF KUNG FU series, in which the revived Fu Manchu was served by numerous kung-fu assassins.                                                                                                                                                                    And what's the big threat to the world, according to the devil-doctor? Well, it's rock and roll, and the movie ends with Fu dressed up in Elvis-gear. This is the entertainment venue I referenced earlier, and while rock and roll didn't end the world, arguably it contributed to the marginalization of the music hall, according to one Wikipedia essay on the subject. In 1980, did Sellers or others associated with this doomed project intuit rock music's complicity in destroying the type of entertainment Peter Sellers knew from his youngest years? For that question, there is no definitive answer.