Review: Teen Titans Go! "Ghost Boy"

In my opinion, this episode marks the moment where the Titans' sociopathic tendencies are truly born.

I mean, sure, there were glimpses in earlier episodes.

Cyborg made fun of his best friend. Beast Boy chewed up Cyborg as a T-Rex. Robin kidnapped and impersonated Speedy.

But Cyborg didn't realize how much he was hurting his friend's feelings. Beast Boy thought he and Cyborg were having fun. Robin... Well, there's no excusing Robin.

But Beast Boy does what he does in this episode basically for no reason. He regurgitates partially-digested food into Cyborg's cereal, tries to scare Robin, and tries to gross out Raven. And then he takes advantage of the nicest person he knows and forces her to do his chores and smell his dirty underwear.. And when he figures out that the other Titans are trying to convince him that he's dead, he plays a prank on them in return that results in their deaths.

Beast Boy is sort of a piece of crap in this episode.

And since we're only eight episodes into the series... Well, the show's still finding itself. Beast Boy being an outright ass is pretty unexpected at this point, which is probably why this episode stands out in a bad way. If this episode had aired in the second season, I don't think it would be as shocking to see this behavior.

Plot/Themes
This was yet another Beast Boy episode, but certainly not the last. While the first one was about him and Cyborg, to the point that Cyborg could be called the main character of that episode, this one is definitely about Beast Boy. And to a lesser extent, Starfire.

So let's talk about how the audience is intended to react to all this.

At the beginning, Beast Boy's pranks aren't very effective against the other Titans. Ostensibly, we're supposed to sympathize with Beast Boy's frustrations... But his pranks are kind of mean-spirited. especially regurgitating half-digested biological matter into Cyborg's lunch.

As an aside, aren't owl pellets made up of things like fur and bones that the owls can't properly digest?
How does that work if Beast Boy's a vegetarian?

But whatever. For the sake of argument, let's assume that we're rooting for Beast Boy to pull off an awesome prank on Starfire. And let's also assume that we're all in on on the whole "pretending to be a ghost thing," because honestly, I can't really fault Beast Boy for seizing that opportunity.
Fast-forwarding a little, it's clear that we're supposed to sympathize with Starfire when she collapses in the living room, having done mountains of laundry.

So... At what point in between are we supposed to not sympathize with Beast Boy?

By which I mean, when all he's doing is making Starfire sniff his disgusting laundry and throwing his dirty underwear at her face, are we supposed to be laughing? Or did the writer intend that he'd already crossed the line by this point? Are we supposed to laugh at Starfire as she stands there with dirty underwear on her face?

Now, presumably, fast-forwarding a bit more, we're supposed to think it's funny when Beast Boy gets a taste of his own medicine toward the end. But everything sort of falls apart at the end. Beast Boy knew the whole time that the others were trying to trick him, so he tricked them back with the whole volcano thing, which turned his friends into real ghosts, and ended up turning Beast Boy into a ghost as well... Did Beast Boy get what was coming to him? Is his actual transformation into a ghost supposed to adequately punish him for what he did to Starfire and the deaths of his teammate's?

Who knows? I certainly don't. And I hereby give up on the topic, because as soon as I started discussing this in detail, I realized how pointless it was.

After all, the show got me invested in the Beast Boy/Starfire story to the degree that I typed several paragraphs examining it... Only to leave the whole thing hanging, arguably ultimately unresolved, as a joke on the audience. All the Titans are dead, the episode gears up for it's big laugh ending... And then it has a moment of self-awareness as the main characters wonder what they're going to do about this whole "ghost" thing, which puts a few cracks into the fourth wall, since we as the audience know that things will be fine by next episode in the usual unexplained fashion.

The episode ends on a note that is specifically crafted to not be satisfying, rather than simply ending up that way. Some Teen Titans Go! episodes simply stop in their tracks, this one stops in its tracks and specifically points it out to you.

And I can't help but almost admire this episode now, in a weird sort of way. Forget Beast Boy's pranks on Starfire, the ultimate prank here was on any audience member who wanted a satisfying conclusion.

This sort of... well, let's call it an "Intentional Non-Ending," is a prank the writers will intentionally play on the audience time and time again. Because while "Meatball Party" will mark the beginning of the show's signature random and zany humor, this is truly the beginning of Teen Titans Go!'s romance with meta-humor.

But I think this episode gets a lot of hate from Beast Boy fans not just because of his behavior, but  because the events of this episode are a riff on the original series episode "Forces of Nature." In that episode, Beast Boy accidentally hits Starfire with a motor-oil-filled balloon that was meant for Cyborg. She calls him a "clorbag varblernelk" (just like in this episode, demonstrating that the creators were trolling when they said they weren't familiar with the original show), and Beast Boy ends up maturing a bit when all is said and done.

Yeah, sort of the exact opposite of this episode, huh?
I can see why some people feel like this episode is a kick in the teeth.

Characters
Beast Boy
Beast Boy is a fun-loving prankster, but this episode kind of shows off a mean streak to him that, judging by the comments I've seen online, came as a shock to a lot of people who were mostly familiar with his previous Teen Titans portrayal. As well as some people who were only familiar with his portrayal in the previous episodes.

Starfire
Starfire is the sweetest and nicest person inside Titans Tower. Which is probably why I'm not going to find it funny when Beast Boy does things that make her so visibly uncomfortable with not one hint of remorse.

And she tells a lie, in flagrant disregard of future canon. Although there's a lot of that in this show. Cyborg and Beast Boy know what "teeth" are... Only to suddenly decide that they're called "smile bones," and what are "teeth"? Robin's face is seen before that suddenly becomes an issue, his hands aren't baby-sized here...

I can't really fault the show for this sort of thing, since the writers can't exactly say "We can't show Robin's bare hands because we might do an episode in a few seasons that shows him comedically-tiny hands!"

Animation
Visually, this episode doesn't really stand out in any major way, although I did notice that the pale blue ghost-Titans as shown here look distinctly different from the milk-white, wispy-tailed ghosts of later episodes.

....Man, the Titans become ghosts a surprising amount, looking back on it.

Final Thoughts
Honestly, this is just an okay episode at the core. Tricking Beast Boy into thinking he was dead in revenge for the joke he played on Starfire (only for Beast Boy to flip his supposed "punishment" onto the other Titans) was a pretty funny situation... But that made up only a small portion of the episode. The rest of it had Beast Boy acting unsympathetically, gross-out humor, and little else.

Next time, Beast Boy and Cyborg team up to game the system for free pizza while Robin oversees a construction job in Jump City. And somehow, these two plots don't collide in the wackiest possible way. See you then!