Final Exam: Analysis

In…celebration? Prepration? Of the new Teen Titans Go! series coming out on Cartoon Network, I’d like to take a look back at the original Teen Titans series, episode by episode, to remind us of the old times and discuss each episode. The good, bad and ugly of the series, if you will. So, let’s sit back and relive our childhoods.

Final Exam, as many know, wasn’t originally going to be their pilot episode, it was. And it was a very sucky start. Wait, wait! Don’t get upset, and I’ll explain to you why it was a very weak beginning to what grew to be a great show. Have you viewed this recently? Just watch the first minute and thirty seconds, pretending you’d never seen any of this show before, and this was the first thing you saw. Seriously. They open the series with that? A boring narration? Granted, I see what they’re trying to get at; they’re making the school for super villains look prestige and posh. It’s a joke. But it sucks. If you’re going to parallel the fancy British advertisement with violent American teenagers, then DO that. There’s SO much you can do to make that funny but the joke falls flat on its face.

Thankfully this is only a minute and a half, and it gets better. Slade. Slade! Granted, he’s not Deathstroke but hey, his mysteriousness is what kept us watching. He’s constantly in shadow and with Ron Perlman’s voice you can’t go wrong. He hires the H.I.V.E. students to do one thing: Destroy the Teen Titans. Okay it’s really cliché and boring, but when he says it, it sounds ominous. Yay Ron Perlman!

Here I will give you a list of our heroes and all the detailed character profiles that go with them just from this episode.

Robin: Goody-two-shoes leader.

Starfire: Really weird foreign exchange student.

Raven: Female, goth Spock.

Cyborg: Black guy who’s half robot.

Beast Boy: Childish vegetarian jokester.

That’s it. I’m serious that’s all you get from them the first episode. Granted, no one’s character starts out developed, especially if it’s only the first episode but that’s all the writers came up with. This would be less stupid if they’d stuck with what they started with and just added more but some characters grew to be completely different. That’s not bad, though! That’s called character development! That’s great! But somehow it bothers me that they started off with the really, painfully easy stereotypes. Alright, fine, it’s a kids show. But you can show kids in-depth characters, it won’t hurt them!

Where was I? I dunno let me just talk technical, that is the voice acting, animation, music, and plot. It’s childish. All of it. Of course you can’t expect too much from them, this is just the beginning episode and the people who are making this show, from all perspectives, are still figuring out how to do it right. They’re finding the style of the show, and of the characters. It just gives it a weak beginning. Even the plot is so stupidly simple that it makes this episode even weaker. Here, I’ll tell you the rest.

The teens are all still getting used to living together, and because they’re teenagers they fight all the time and it’s really messy. So they lose their leader for all of an hour and things go to hell. They lose their beginning battles, pretend to learn a lesson on teamwork and win their last fight. The formula of every kids show ever, for at least one episode of whatever series you’re looking at. Generally the pilot, for that matter. Is this episode even worth watching? Maybe. Let me tell you why.

The bad guys. Not so much the H.I.V.E. kids, they’re just as flat as our heroes at least. They’re supposed to be the best of their class (literally) but they really aren’t good. They were paid to destroy the Teen Titans and they declare themselves winners just because the heroes are knocked to the ground. Do they not understand what destroy means? You have to give them credit, though. They do pretty well for pilot villains. They break into the Tower and kick the Titans out, making it their own hideout. Again, this isn’t destroying anything but the Titans’ pride. You didn’t finish your job. You know what else they do? They clean the tower! The bad guys are better at organizing the hero’s hideout than the Titans are!

So, somehow when Robin comes back they suddenly learn about friendship or teamwork or something like that and suddenly they can beat the H.I.V.E. I don’t know why one person (the one without powers) makes a difference, but it does. Yeah, yeah, I get it. Robin gives orders and has a strategy so they can win but really? There’s no emphasis on that at all! You have to look for it! And then, there’s the end. If you watched the last few minutes where the “moral” of the story should be, you’d think the episode was about balancing work and play. Really, go listen to Robin’s lines at the end and that’s the message you get. So it’s even more confusing!

Just a few things really bother me about this episode, besides what’s written above. Where was Robin? How did he get back? Why does his belt clasp seamlessly in like, three different places? Does the H.I.V.E. team really suck or are they good? Where’s the consistency?

Is this episode worth watching or should you skip it?

On one hand, there’s nothing new about the plot and it serves no purpose to anything. Except…. Slade. He’s the only reason to watch this. Just watch the beginning and near the end and you get everything you need out of the episode. Unless you need an invisible lesson on teamwork. Or friendship…? Teenagerhood? I still don’t know. Overall a weak episode, not a good one to start on.

Well, thank you for reading, stay tuned for the next episode, and have a good one.

—Alex