“Car Trouble” Teen Titans S1E11 Review: Examining Why I Was So Obsessed With This Show
I remember not liking this episode when I watched it on the air in the early 2000s, mostly because at the time it was used as primary evidence for the RavenXXCyborg pairing, which I staunchly opposed.
Anyways, years later, here I am going through Teen Titans again reliving the obsession.
Car Trouble, S1E11.
After a groovy intro sequence that I will title “Car Stuff Happening”, we see Cyborg dabbing at his head with a rag. What sweat are you wiping away? Does your robot head have sweat glands?
I like this intro, actually, because we get to see Cyborg be passionate and intense about something. It’s a nice change from tortured moody sadness about am I a man, or am I a machine, and as a bonus, it’s the most 3-dimensional we’ll see him be for the rest of the season.
Cyborg reveals his newest creation, a souped up SUV dubbed the “T-Car” to the rest of the Titans.
The others ooh and ahh as Cy rattles off a list of specs. It’s weird hearing “anti-lock air brakes” as a feature along with a plasma turbine engine, hover jets, and specialized computer system. It would be like hearing all about the power steering in the Batmobile.
As always, Raven serves as a foil to the other Titans’ unbridled enthusiasm. Her flat disinterest in the T-car balances out the group, and pretty much embodies my reaction to this scene.
“Can we go now?” she drawls, bored, a statement Cyborg wonderfully misinterprets to be a desire to take the T-car for a spin.
Cyborg’s obsession with his new toy is played out pretty well, especially when Trouble Calls™ and the Teen Titans spring into action against an electricity-based villain called Overload. There are some good moments now and again: Cyborg’s reaction to the Titans poking and prodding everything on the inside, him dallying behind the other Titans to make sure his vehicle is all locked up and safe once they arrive on the scene.
But okay. First I need to talk about these two guys.
These two Grease extras are named Sammy and Cash. Seriously. Everything about them is perfect. The toothpick. The belt buckle. The slicked-back hair. The shoes (not pictured). They ooze up to the T-car (parked in front of an electronics store) with the absolutely fantastic line “Dude, that is fat”, thereby solidifying my theory that Jump City exists in a sphere unaffected by things like consistency of time.
Inside Cook’s Electronics, the Titans brawl with Overload, who is easily subdued. Back outside, the T-car has (of course) been stolen. Cyborg falls to the ground in anguish. Boom, there’s your inciting incident. Off we go.
Immediately after the commercial break is a great scene demonstrating the Teen Titans writing trick called Cyborg Storms Off. Pay attention, class. We’ve seen Cyborg Storms Off as a device in two previous episodes: “Divide & Conquer”, and “Sum of His Parts.”
In “Divide & Conquer”, Cyborg demonstrates stubbornness and intensity on par with Robin. He refuses to admit he did something wrong, he yells loud, Robin doesn’t budge, he becomes a baby-child and storms off.
In “Sum of His Parts”, Cyborg wrestles with the ups & downs of being Human 2.0. After bitchily telling the other Titans to keep on without him, he becomes a baby-child and storms off.
“Car Trouble’s” instance of Cyborg Storms Off is my favorite, because if you pull it apart, you can see how each beat is driven to the next by Cyborg’s flaw of being stubborn, hot-headed, and somewhat of an asshole.
(The scene I’m talking about is after we see the T-car drive off, and opens with tears streaming down Cyborg’s face)
- Cyborg weeps openly.
- Starfire moves in to comfort him with an adorably Tamaraian anecdote. “I understand your pain, Cyborg. When I was small, my favorite Xarnick was eaten by a rampaging Glorg. Believe me, after your Xarnick has been inside a Glorg, you do not want it back.”
- Cy sharply rejects Star’s attempt at empathy, likely objecting to the idea of “not wanting it [her Zarnick; his car] back. He snaps at her with,“my car wasn’t eaten. It was stolen.”
- Beast Boy attempts to lighten to mood, is shot down by Robin. No reaction shot from Cyborg, which is interesting.
- Robin assures his teammate that they will make finding the T-car a priority — after they bring a subdued Overload to prison. Seems reasonable, right?
- Cy gets in Robin’s face, rejecting Robin’s proposal. “We gotta go NOW!”
- Raven: “lol calm down m8”
- “She’s not just a car. She’s MY car. And I’m gonna find her. Whether you guys help me, or not!” Cyborg storms off.
Each time a Titan attempts to deal with Cyborg, you can see him scaling the Ladder of Attitude rung-by-rung, until he arrives at his vengeful state that maintains itself all the way through Act II.
If this scene were done poorly, it wouldn’t make sense how he went from wailing crybaby to fucking Christian Bale Batman in 0.000006 seconds.
Cyborg’s search for the T-car takes him to a diner preserved from the 1950’s (see: my Jump City spacetime theory from earlier), where he interrogates another Grease reject, pictured above. I mean, I just don’t get it. Here’s a picture of other people at the diner. There’s people dressed normally, but the only people Cyborg interacts with are the ones who look like they’re gonna rumble with the Socs later.
Anyways, Cy sets off on a tip to a mysterious place called Crash Alley, where Sammy and Cash are participants in some sort of race, the rules and qualifications for which fill me with so many questions.
Okay, so the “race” starts by a drag race Christmas tree, so are they drag racing? But there’s turns on the track? You can race actual cars vs what is obviously an RC Car? Using smoke and oil fields against your opponent doesn’t immediately disqualify you? How are there, like, dozens if not hundreds of people in the stands? Why can’t .. doesn’t .. alright.
None of that matters. All there is to glean is that Gizmo, of Hive Five fame, is the next person to run off with the T-car. Gizmo drives off literally seconds before Cyborg reaches through and holds up Sammy and Cash by their collars:
I like that in order to make Cy seem more intense when threatening people, he is drawn from the profile that shows his red robot eye.
Cyborg catches up to Gizmo, who is using the T-car as a getaway vehicle for various crimes. The two have a chase around Jump City (Gizmo driving, Cyborg clinging desperately to the hood of his car), a welcome bit of levity.
At the end of the sequence, Gizmo, Cy, and T-car careen towards a drawbridge, as a barge approaches underneath. “USE THE NITRO!” Cyborg screams. Gizmo complies, and the T-car just barely makes the jump. However, Cy doesn’t. He falls into a heap of garbage.
This next scene is another worth highlighting. A defeated Cyborg returns to the 1950’s diner for some milkshake therapy, where he is found by Raven. My Grease theory takes on even more body thanks to the “Beauty School Dropout”-esque piano plinks as background.
This scene serves as the episode’s mirror moment. A mirror moment is the point usually in the middle of Act II, the emotional climax, where the character either learns something about himself, or about someone else. It changes the dynamic of that character’s relationship, and directly affects the plot climax in the next act.
Jargon aside, it means the characters have a heart-to-heart. We learn a little bit more about both Raven and Cyborg. In particular, we learn the link the T-car has to Cy and possibly why he was being such a whiny baby earlier.
Raven reveals that right after the Titans dropped off Overload at prison, they began searching for his car. This is notable because it shows that even though Cyborg threw a tantrum and was pretty shitty to his team, they still cared enough to look for something that they knew meant so much to him.
“It wasn’t just a car .. it was .. your baby.”
Gizmo shows up, another chase ensues. This time, Cyborg has Raven as his partner in crime. I know how much of a losing battle it is to look for continuity in a children’s superhero cartoon, especially in the first season, but can we talk about how wildly inconsistent Raven’s telekinetic abilities are?
Here, we see Raven using her dark energy to suspend Sammy and Cash possibly way higher in the air than they need to be. If she can grab people by their clothes and keep them, why do the Teen Titans have to chase anyone ever?!
Also, her leading line to this interaction is “escape from that before the cops show up!” — right before she and Cyborg fuck right off, speeding after the runaway T-car. So, what, is she able to maintain their ethereal prison from afar? If the police show up for those two and she’s still got them on lock, how can they move them?
I know, I know. Slippery slope.
Speaking of slopes, Cy and Raven take off after Gizmo, causing them both to speed around some hairpin turns in a chase scene that I can only describe as ludicrous, even for Teen Titans. Just look at this image. Just look at it.
Same line of questioning for the dudes she hung from the air — Ray, if you can grab cars and hover them in the air, why are you not doing that immediately to the T-car.
From one season to another, Raven’s power levels seem to ebb and flow like the tides. She’s essentially a catch-all character. She can heal people, apparently transport people through time (which will be discussed in a future atrocious Cyborg episode), summon incredibly powerful telekinetic blasts — all which makes her super kick-ass, but in Season One she’s stuck shouting magic words and pelting people with small objects except for this one moment, which is arguably the strongest canonical display she’s made thus far in the show.
Overload makes a return when the Raven/Cy/Gizmo chase runs a police transport van off the road. And, of course, Overload can take over the T-car and turns it evil. And, of course, Overload doing this magically repairs the car of all damage.
BY THE WAY, Overload is one of Teen Titans’ recurring trifecta of “backstoryless beat-’em-up villains”, along with Plasmus and Cinderblock, used primarily to frame up the B story. So we for sure see him again, but if I remember correctly, this is the only episode where he speaks. Thank. God.
Look at this Vs. image. Get hyped. BOSS BATTLE.
Evil T-car is all jacked and ready to fight. Its opening move ranks pretty low in terms of strategy. Overload just charges straight at Cyborg instead of using any of the T-car’s hodgepodge of offensive or defensive weapons that have been shown off for the last 20 minutes of the episode.
Cyborg’s response is to swallow sadness, and one-shot it with his arm cannon. Yes. He vaporizes the entire vehicle.
Really, Cy? You couldn’t find a way to get Overload out of the car? If you could do that, you wouldn’t have to rebuild the entire thing, or cry about it being gone.
So there you have it. The rest of the episode shakes up pretty normal. The police come and haul off Gizmo, Sammy, Cash, and Overload while Raven and Cyborg look on.
The little plasticky sound Overload makes as he is tossed into the back of the van, as well as the slight bounce to show how lightweight he is just as an evil chip, is great.
What a sad group of individuals.
The episode wraps with a sequence similar to its opening — funky music, “Car Stuff Happening”, but when the New T-car hood lowers, there’s Raven with a smudge of grease on her face helping Cyborg bring his new “baby” to life.
I think the big ear-to-ear smile is a little out of place, but it’s still nice to see.
And that’s it! Credits roll right after.
This is probably the only Cyborg-driven episode that I actually don’t mind in the entire series. I may be biased, because I love Raven, and she does a good job balancing out some moments here and there, but there you go.
Anyways, that’s it for me, thanks for reading.
