Teen Titans Go!

	"YOU WINNNNNN!" —Patrick Wayne This article has been featured on Terrible TV Shows Wiki!

Teen Titans Go!

"Evil beware, we have waffles"

Genre:	Adventure Animation Comedy Superhero
Running Time:	11 minutes
Country:	United States
Release Date:	April 23, 2013 — present
Network(s):	Cartoon Network Boomerang (2014-2017)
Created by:	Aaron Horvath Michael Jelenic (based on the 2003 series by Glen Murakami & Sam Register)
Distributed by:	Warner Bros. Television Distribution
Starring:	Scott Menville Hynden Walch Khary Payton Tara Strong Greg Cipes
Seasons:	6
Episodes:	315
Previous show:	Teen Titans

Teen Titans Go! is an American animated television series based on the DC Comics fictional superhero team. It premiered on April 23, 2013 and continues to this day.

Plot

This follow-up to the popular Teen Titans series takes a more comedic look at the superheroes, showing what life is like for the teens when their capes come off. Funny things happen to Robin, Starfire, Raven, Beast Boy and Cyborg between saving the world and being regular teens, living together without adult supervision. The teens, in their ordinary lives, deal with the everyday issues of adolescence that include such important things as having staring contests to determine who does the laundry and going on a series of quests to construct the perfect sandwich. But, of course, the heroes still fight crime in Jump City when the need arises. Whatever the situation, they're always ready for an adventure - inside the house or out of it.

Why It Sucks

The main problem is that it doesn't have the same charm as the original series. No serious or dramatic moments or character development, it's all just supposed to be comedy.
- In addition, it barely stays true to the source material at all. The universe of Teen Titans Go! is a pancake surrounded by a butter wall, for crying out loud!
- Attempts at humor are often either rude, disrespectful, or contrived, consisting mostly of extremely low-brow jokes and toiletries, twerking, and gross-out humor. There are dated pop culture references that feel out-of-place because they don’t even need to be there.
  - The episode "Toddler Titans... Yay!" mostly parodies Dora the Explorer, with Beast Boy's character, Greenie the Clue Dog, parodying Blue from Blue's Clues and its reboot, Blue's Clues & You!
The series now has 6 seasons and over 300+ episodes and counting, meaning it’s lasted longer than the original show, and while it isn’t too much, it's too long for a widely-hated show. The show will also often jump the shark because of this, and for a series like this, it could've been cancelled earlier.
- Clearly, this spin-off only exists just to try desperately to get a cheap laugh out of the audience and for Cartoon Network to try boosting ratings so that newer shows like Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart won't be cancelled.
The Flash animation, while not terrible by itself, is pretty mediocre and choppy-looking compared to the original's animation.
- On top of that, there are easily noticeable errors in some episodes (e.g. characters' eyes disappearing, frames where someone stands still like a statue, characters switching places from time to time, characters' emotions not matching what they are saying and voice acting pauses).
- The animation is worse than usual in some episodes, like "Staring at the Future".
- In Seasons 1-3, the color scheme is way too bright.
Some episodes have misleading titles such as taking a line from the episode:
- "Croissant" barely has any croissant, and almost the entire episode is gross.
- "Hey You, Don't Forget About Me in Your Memory" is not even an actual line.
- "The Return of Slade" is probably the worst offender.
- "Smile Bones" shows no bones at all.
- "Man Person" is about Beast Boy getting a scar and realizing that it makes him look tough, and as a result, he purposely loses his body parts to look tough. What's his name? If you guessed Man Person, you're wrong. It's Scar Man. Man Person is, again, a mere line. Ugh.
- "Batman v Teen Titans: Dark Injustice", being an April Fools' Day episode, isn't about the Titans fighting Batman. It's about the Titans pulling pranks on each other.
- "Dog Hand" is not the main subject. The dog hand is Cyborg's hand from Trigon. What it's actually about is Trigon coming to visit Raven.
  - Not helping was that it was originally called "Raven's Daddy Dearest". So that begs the question: why did you change the title?
  - The same thing went for "Nose Mouth" since it's another episode which the title is a play on Cyborg's physical alteration when it isn't the main focus.
- "Breakfast Cheese" was, once again, a very forgettable line at the end. Instead, Starfire tries to enact world peace and end fighting.
- "Serious Business" hardly ever deals with serious issues. Instead, it's all about the Titans getting emotional over the bathroom.
Many villains aren't much of a threat. For example, Trigon, once an embodiment of evil in the comics and the Teen Titans series, is portrayed as a sitcom father rather than a demonic antagonist.
The creators and writers cannot handle even the slightest form of criticism whatsoever, going as far as purposely making episodes specifically to mock either the criticism they get or critics, Internet reviewers, and even fans of the original Teen Titans, with "The Return of Slade" being the worst offender.
More than enough inappropriate moments to make the show suffer from a lot of censorship, alongside shows like Regular Show and Adventure Time.
- One of the most infamous examples is in the episode "Real Magic". During Raven's "Hate It" montage, there is a scene where Beast Boy is laying on Raven's bed in only his underwear, gesturing her to come closer. This scene was cut out in the UK, Australia and Southeast Asia due to sexual content and complaints from parents.
- Characters are seen twerking in some episodes, as seen in "Booty Scooty", "Boys vs. Girls", and "The Fourth Wall."
- "Squash & Stretch" has animal cruelty in a kids' show.
- The episode "Butt Atoms" has a panty shot.
- The Titans are shown worshiping Raven's legs after she becomes "Lady Legasus" in "Legs."
The Titans look way too young to even be teenagers. They actually look more like fifth graders than actual teenagers.
- On top of that, they have been flanderized to the point where they scarcely behave anything like their old selves:
  - Robin went from a strict team leader to a dominant and severely paranoid arrogant jerk. He has also become a bit of a punching bag, as his team often doesn't listen to him, and often ridicules him, even if he didn't do anything wrong to them. He also has an obsession for Starfire.
  - Starfire went from the perfect romantic love interest for Robin to a child-like and immature alien. In the episode "Breakfast Cheese" she acts like a hypocrite, as she tells the Titans to make peace with the H.I.V.E. Five, even though they fought them in previous episodes. She also adds "the" in almost every sentence she says and it gets annoying really quickly. Not to mention that she screams a lot that it sounds like Hynden Walch is yelling at the top of her lungs. Though she is at least more likeable than Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy.
  - Beast Boy went from a childish yet serious shapeshifter to an immature, whiny, destructive party animal and a lazy couch potato who barely gets up to do something simple.
  - Cyborg went from having likable comedic traits to being an annoying, idiotic slacker like Beast Boy, with his giraffe neck gag being annoying, old and irritating at times.
  - Raven, despite being the most likable out of the five, went from a gothic short-tempered, yet caring girl to a hypocritical fan of Pretty Pretty Pegasus (a parody of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic). She has also been turned into an emo, depressed, and disastrous teenager who has her hood up all the time.
- Ignoring this, they also behave more like villains than heroes and are far more annoying and unlikable than the villains themselves.
  - In "The HIVE Five", the Titans continuously torment the H.I.V.E., even though no one in the latter group was doing anything bad throughout the entire episode.
  - In "Finally a Lesson", the Titans deliberately and harshly kick out the villains from their apartment homes.
  - In "Movie Night", Robin attacks Control Freak and steals his television, even though he was innocent at the time.
  - In "Caged Tiger", Dr. Light tries to redeem himself and join the Titans, but Robin, Cyborg, and Beast Boy refuse to accept his redemption and instead mercilessly beat him up for no apparent reason.
  - In "Snuggle Time", to get more free time with their cats and drink hot cocoa, the Titans straight-up become villains, build an evil lair, and remorselessly slaughter Batman, Batgirl, the Titans East, Aqualad, and Aquaman.
  - The Titans are constantly gunning for Robin's position as leader to near-Starscream levels.
  - The Titans claim they are "protecting" Jump City to justify their destructive behaviors and cause more collateral damage than any of the villains. They treat it like their playground and are disrespectful towards citizens and even villains on their day off, intentionally creating enemies through ridiculous insults and inflicting harm on individuals such as the Mocking Birds, Zan (one of the Wonder Twins), Aqualad, etc.
It can essentially be an 11-minute long "it's made for kids" excuse, and even a huge insult to the fans of the original Teen Titans since it disrespects the content and characterization from its predecessor.
Bad dialogue that requires more work.
Annoying and repetitive songs such as "Waffles", "I'm a Hot Pepper", "Pee Pee Dance", "I Love Pie", "Uncle Jokes", "the Poop Song", "Tofu in My Mouth", "the Booty Scooty Dance", and the short remixed title theme by Mix Master Mike.
It often insults many other franchises of every type among other stuff, especially other DC properties as well as some film franchises like The Matrix, E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, and Indiana Jones. Two episodes, "Let's Get Serious" and "Money Grandma", even insulted the Young Justice fan community and George Washington, respectively, as well.
There is little-to-no continuity, and so many episodes aren't even connected. This is because Michael Jelenic confessed that he’s stressed about the idea doing episodes that are all connected because he worked on Young Justice and admitted it was difficult to keep up with the whole story.
- The Titans get killed off in some episodes and get revived in later episodes, which is executed poorly unlike the Kenny gag in South Park.
Many episodes in the series have a lot of padding, despite each of them having a regular run-time of 11 minutes.
- In "Waffles", there is a scene where Robin makes waffles, and it goes on for 25 seconds.
It became self-aware of how bad it is and is proud of that, as shown in the episode "The Fourth Wall" where the Titans tell this to Control Freak in the end.
In the series, Darkseid is voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic, who never once sings.
It completely ruins the relationship between Robin and Starfire, because in this series Robin is either psychotically obsessed with Starfire or really violent towards her (especially in "Hey You, Don't Forget About Me in Your Memory"), and Starfire states in no uncertain terms that she doesn't love Robin at all.
The scary and/or dramatic music from episodes in the first season is basically recycled from videos on YouTube.
Bad morals and life lessons that include, but are not limited to:
- The Titans, throughout the entire series, teach kids to be extremely immature and never act their ages.
- "Pyramid Scheme" and "The Dignity of Teeth" both encourage greed.
- "Staring at the Future" states that responsibility is bad and that if your friends are responsible members of society, their lives are horrible and you absolutely must screw them over.
- "Artful Dodgers" encourages cheating.
- "Mas y Menos" encourages glory-hounding and showboating.
- "The True Meaning of Christmas" states that Christmas is all about the presents and nothing else; the Titans even blow up Santa's workshop when he preaches the true meaning of Christmas.
- "Books" states that books are bad for you.
- "Knowledge" states that intelligence is bad for you; it makes you an insufferable, judgmental, and overly-critical person who no one wants to be friends with.
- "Boys vs Girls" is about accepting sexism. It teaches kids that gender equality is for wimps and that cooties exist, neither of which are true.
- "Hot Garbage" encourages hoarding, a serious psychological problem.
- "Accept the Next Proposition You Hear" states that you shouldn't think and act for yourselves, but instead depend on others.
- "Hey You, Don't Forget About Me in Your Memory" boils down to "If you fail to live up to your label, take it out on your friends."
- "Nean" teaches it's okay to be mean sometimes.
- "Think About Your Future" says that you should make bad life decisions and live your lives up to the shortest.
It spawned two bad crossover episodes with The Powerpuff Girls (2016) and ThunderCats Roar titled "TTG vs. PPG" and "Teen Titans Roar!".
Later seasons have little, if anything, to improve over the earlier seasons.
Bumblebee, a member of Titans East, becomes the sixth Titan who appeared in the "Flashback" episode before she began to be part of the Teen Titans of "Forest Pirates" "to "The Viewers Decide".
Whenever the Justice League characters make an appearance in any of the episodes, they never speak but make minor human noises such as laughing and crying, which is a huge insult to Justice League. That's because the creators couldn't pay to hire the voice actors who voice the characters when they could've just hired new ones to replace the original ones!
The film had such a random cast voicing superheroes, with Nicolas Cage voicing Superman, Jimmy Kimmel playing Batman, Lil Yachty playing Green Lantern and Halsey playing Wonder Woman.

Redeeming Qualities

The art style, from backgrounds to character designs, while mediocre compared to in the original, are nice to look at.
The Titans admitted that the original Teen Titans is better than themselves, as mentioned in the episode "The Fourth Wall".
- The same can be said in The Cape, where they watch an episode of the original Teen Titans, and actually enjoy it.
The Flash animation is okay in some aspects.
While most episode provide bad morals, some of them ironically manage to give out good lessons every now and then, these include, but are not limited to:
- "Pyramid Scheme," although it encourages greed, states that pyramid schemes are bad.
- "Spice Game" states that you should live life in the middle; not too bland, but not too dangerous.
- "Vegetables" encourages staying on a balanced diet.
- In "Permanent Record," Beast Boy and Cyborg's lessons are about the colors of the sky and romantic chemistry.
Every now and then (to be fair), there are good episodes, such as "Legendary Sandwich"(Ironically the first episode of the entire show), "Pie Bros", "Drivers Ed", "Dog Hand", "Double Trouble", "The Date", the critically-acclaimed "40%, 40%, 20%" and the four-part miniseries "The Night Begins to Shine" or "The Day the Night Stopped Beginning to Shine and Became Dark Even Though it Was the Day", “Video Game References", as well as the episode "Ghost with the Most", which is a crossover with Beetlejuice, and also "Cartoon Feud", a crossover with Scooby-Doo in which the Titans and the Scooby Gang play Family Feud, even "Huggbees", which is a crossover with Freakazoid! as well as the DC Super Hero Girls crossover episode "Superhero Feud".
The movie is considered an improvement and wasn't that bad, despite the negative criticism.
The voice acting (for the most part) is at least decent, compared to the original, despite all the wasted talent. This is because most of the voice cast from the original still retain their respective roles. For example, Hynden Walch still reprises her role as Starfire, while Tara Strong still voices Raven.
It contains lesser-known corners of the DC canon.
Although flanderized like the rest of the Titans, Starfire still remains as the nicest member of the Titans for the most part, and Raven is at least the most tolerable.
Fall Out Boy appeared in this and they are actually based on the real-life members. They also have a pretty decent role in one episode.
There are at least some good amounts of funny moments and here and there.
There are catchy and good songs like the credit music and "The Night Begins to Shine" (not to be confused with the miniseries of the same name). Puffy AmiYumi (the J-pop duo who sang the theme song for original Teen Titans) even did a cover of "The Night Begins to Shine".
- To add to this, the remixed theme song can be catchy despite being short. The theme song was remixed by Mix Master Mike.
- Depending on what you think, some songs that are annoying might also be catchy.
The action scenes can be entertaining.

Episodes With Their Own Pages

Reception

Teen Titans Go! has been met with a mostly mixed-to-negative reception.

It has been heavily panned by Internet reviewers and fans of the original show and is often considered to be one of the worst Cartoon Network shows of all time. It has below average ratings on TV.com and IMDb. WatchMojo has criticized the use of irony in the show, fearing that kids might not understand it. It was ranked #1 on their "Top 10 Worst Animated Superhero Shows" and number #4 on their "Top 10 Worst Cartoon Network Shows." WatchMojo has also created lists for the show's worst episodes, why the show is hated, and awful lessons it teaches kids.

However, most media reviewers have had a reaction to the contrary, believing that this was a well done reinvention of the original show. Children have taken the show very well, as it performed positively far beyond expectations. The series has garnered record ratings among children, with it currently being the one of the most popular shows on Cartoon Network.

Trivia

Between 2014 and 2018, it dominated the network as episodes aired non-stop and took up a lot of the schedule, just because it was pulling in better ratings than other shows. However, the series' ratings began dipping significantly due to the target audience becoming fed up with the lack of diversity in the schedule; Not helping was the fact that Nickelodeon and Disney were beating Cartoon Network in ratings (Nickelodeon due to The Loud House and improvements to SpongeBob SquarePants, and Disney due to Star vs. the Forces of Evil, and the DuckTales reboot. As of September 2018, the series now only has four hours of airtime on weekdays, five on weekends, in an effort to return diversity to the schedule and reverse the falling viewership trend.
- However, a day-long marathon still airs once in a while, but not as frequent.
The creators of this show claimed that they only seen a couple of Teen Titans, but they do admit it was a pretty good show.
Some of the crew members of the 2003 series returned to work on Teen Titans Go!.
As of 2021, the show has over 310 episodes and counting.
Since Season 5, viewership for the show has declined.