Review by Andrew Bloom

Teen Titans: Season 3

3x04 Crash

4

Review by Andrew Bloom
VIP
9
BlockedParentSpoilers2021-07-22T21:49:22Z

[4.0/10] Ouch. In most bad episodes of television, I look at them and can say, “There’s the germ of a good idea here.” But that’s not the case for “Crash”. The premise of “Beast Boy accidentally uploads a virus-laden bootleg video into Cyborg” isn’t a good one. It’s profoundly stupid.

Nevermind the fact that post-virus, Cyborg turns into a ravenous eating machine who consumes parking meters and sop signs while mistaking them for candy and other alluring sustenance. It’s the sort of zaniness that TeenTitans tends to do poorly, and it’s half the episode.

The other half is a Fantastic Voyage homage, with Gizmo shrinking down to eradicate the virus from inside Cyborg and Beast Boy becoming a single-celled organism to help out of guilt for causing this situation. I enjoy those kinds of stories in principle, but the visuals within Vyborg aren’t nearly cool enough to justify the excursion, especially since both Gizmo and Beast Boy are pretty annoying here. There’s a little visual creativity when they finally reach the virus core, and it has a vaguely 16-bit look about it. But otherwise it’s a big waste.

Likewise, the solution makes no sense. Beast Boy subdivides and becomes a giant thing of mucus, which apparently stops the virus somehow? It’s pretty gross and isn’t at all setup as a means of removing a computer virus, but whatever. Par for the course for this episode.

There’s a meager emotional throughline about Beast Boy realizing that even though he can be an idiot sometimes, he can also be resourceful too. But this is about the dumbest way to dramatize that idea imaginable. Overall, one to skip on your rewatches.

loading replies
Loading...