3x09 The Beast Within

[7.0/10] I applaud Teen Titans for trying to address toxic masculinity here. Beast Boy deciding he needs to be more manly, and thus acting like a jerk to everyone, including his friends, is a rap a lot of young men fall into. The show tries to dramatize that idea in an outsized way, and it’s a worthy project.

But the realization of the idea is...a mixed bag. For one thing, Beast Boy is cartoonishly jerky from the jump. There’s no radial transition, he’s just angry and prickish to everyone as though a switch flipped on.

But I guess it did? Apparently whatever random factory they were fighting Adonis in has werewolf chemicals just sitting around in giant tanks? Okay? It kind of takes away from Beast Boy’s issues when the answer is just a vat of random liquid falling on him that Cyborg eventually fixes.

To the same end, I have mixed feelings about the close of the episode, where Raven informs Beast Boy that being a man means not taming “the beast”, but knowing when to let it out. I admire what the show’s going for with that. There’s atavistic and instinctual impulses within all of us, and learning to accept and live with them rather than feel repressed and shamed over them, not to mention learning to find healthy outlets, is a good thing. But considering Beast Boy turned into a raging jerk and actual monster, the message has some rocky footing in the story.

I do appreciate the twist that Beast Boy’s random werewolfism didn’t purely turn him into an aggressor, but that Adonis was also turned into a werewolf and Beast Boy helped protect Rven from him. It caught me off guard for what seemed like a straightforward werewolf/masculinity/puberty metaphor, and made the actual story here slightly more interesting for it. That said, the preponderance of werewolf-on-werewolf combat here didn’t do much for me.

On the whole, this episode gets a little caricatured in what it’s trying to convey, but its heart is in the right place, so I’m inclined to call it good.