The Self-Indulgent 200th Episode Spectacular!

The Self-Indulgent 200th Episode Spectacular!
Season	4
Episode	44 (201) 45 (202)
Original Airdate	Friday, November 24, 2017
Premiere Time (EST)	6:00 PM
Produced By	Michael Jelenic Aaron Horvath Peter Rida Michail
Written By	Michael Jelenic Aaron Horvath
Directed By	Ken McIntyre
Production Code	422b 423a
Chronology
Previous Episode	Thanksgetting
Next Episode	BBCYFSHIPBDAY
Video

"The Self-Indulgent 200th Episode Spectacular!" is the forty-fourth and forty-fifth episodes of the fourth season of Teen Titans Go! and the two-hundred-first and two-hundred-second overall episodes of the series.

Summary

Part 1: When their world starts disappearing, the Titans must confront their creators at Warner Bros. Studios.

Part 2: The Titans learn how difficult it is to make a cartoon when they try to animate Michael Jelenic and Aaron Horvath.

Plot

Part 1

The scene starts off with the five Titans sitting on the couch, doing nothing. They decide to wander around the room, but are shocked to see other rooms disappearing. Soon, the whole living room starts fading away as well. This forces them to go through the fourth wall, and they end up at the Warner Bros. Studios. There they meet the whole Teen Titans Go! Crew. They are soon taken to meet their voice actors. All seems to go well, but a fight breaks out between the two parties, causing the Titans to be kicked out of the studio.

They soon head to San Pedro in California to find Michael and Aaron. They go to Michael's house, and his father welcomes them. At first, they have a great conversation, until the Titans argue with Michael's father, causing him to order his pets to fight back. Frightened, the Titans retreat quickly, before Michael's father shouts that he wants them to come back.

Meanwhile, while they're walking to Aaron's house, parts of their bodies start to disappear, so they rush quickly to his house. A little boy opens the door; Beast Boy asks the child where his dad is, and he tells them that his dad's "pooping". The child introduces himself and his younger sister, before he decided to play with them, with him being the protagonist while the Titans will be the antagonists. Again, they asked where his dad is, while the child still gives the same answer. Shortly, the child transforms into a dinosaur; Robin claims that it's the power of make believe. The Titans confront the "dinosaur", but they are beaten.

Meanwhile, the Titans start accepting that they're just make believe. Suddenly, their bodies start disappearing as they freak out. The episode ends with a "To Be Continued..." caption on the screen.

Part 2

With their very existence on the line, the Titans take drastic action to avoid oblivion. They head to a bread restaurant where a bunch of other sad sacks are hanging out, and they just so happen to stumble upon Michael and Aaron! But their good fortune is short lived, as they’re beleagured by their burdenous schedule and want nothing more to do with The show.

The Titans then set out to make the 200th episode themselves, with the help of the show’s crew of course. They write a rather lousy script (mostly about Michael and Aaron farting), but the episode is somehow how able to be produced nonetheless. The Titans are amused by their creation, but Peter Rida Michail tells them that it won’t fly with the audience and refuses to give them a do-over. They consult Michael and Aaron again who mock thier failed attempt and tell them that make believe only becomes real if there’s actual quality to back it up.

The team then returns to their own world where they prepare to accept their fate, as they fade along with the rest of the tower. But all hope wasn’t lost, as farts started to sound, and miraculously, Jump City reappeared, along with our heroes! The Titans celebrated as the crew sang about their accomplishments in “Work On An Episode”.

Characters

• Robin
• Cyborg
• Starfire
• Raven
• Beast Boy
• Michael Jelenic (speaking debut)
• Aaron Horvath (debut)
• Teen Titans Voice Actors (debut)
  • Scott Menville
  • Khary Payton
  • Hynden Walch
  • Tara Strong
  • Greg Cipes
• Peter Rida Michail (debut)
• Chris Battle (debut)
• Sam Register (debut)
• Albert Jelenic (debut)
• Graham and Stella Horvath (debut)
• Teen Titans Go! Crew (debut)
• Octopus

Songs

• Shrimps and Prime Rib (sung briefly)
• Work on an Episode

Trivia

• This is the sixth half-hour special of the series. The previous ones were "Two Parter", "Operation Dude Rescue", "The Streak", "BBRAE" and "Justice League's Next Top Talent Idol Star".
• Outside their voice roles as the Titans, this is the first time the voice actors appeared as themselves in the series
• This episode celebrated the success of the cast and crew recording over 200 episodes for the series. It was teased during their Teen Titans Go! 200th episode celebration party back in March 2017.
• During a panel, when talking about this episode, Robin's voice actor, Scott Menville, mentions Starfire's voice actress, Hynden Walch, had trouble "voicing herself" when recording the episode.
• This episode is nominated for the Prime Time "Outstanding Short Form Animated Program". Other nominations are episodes from Adventure Time, Robot Chicken, Steven Universe and We Bare Bears.
• When the Titans come out of the computer and into the real world, there is a Lego figure of Slade placed on the desk.
• A Joker Jr. plushie can be seen next to Khary Payton on the couch in the voice actors' recording studio.
• One of the members of the Teen Titans Go! production crew is sitting on a pile of plush dolls of characters from the show. There are dolls of Silkie, Ravager, Sticky Joe, Butterbean, Sparkleface, Jinx, Commissioner Gordon and Raven in her demon form.
• There were many promos for this one episode. Each one had a similar theme, first showing a single object on a table, then two hundred of that same object falling from the sky, landing on the table. This was done mostly with food associated with the show. But other objects associated with the show also appeared on the promos, even some living creatures. The things that appeared on these promos included:
  • Waffles (a Titan food staple since "Waffles")
  • Burritos (a Titan food staple since "Burger vs. Burrito")
  • Meatballs (a Titan food staple since "Meatball Party")
  • Hawaiian Style Pizza (as seen in "Ones and Zeroes")
  • Avocados (Robin's super power source in "Avogodo" )
  • Shrimps and prime ribs (as seen in the song and episode with the same name)
  • Tofu chips (as seen in "Breakfast Cheese")
  • Kale (referring to a lyric in a song about vegetables, found in "Titan Saving Time".)
  • Basketballs (referring to Robin's personal obsession)
  • Kitten dolls (referring to Starfire's personal obsession)
  • Pegasus dolls (referring to Raven's personal obsession)
  • Water balloons (thrown at a cutout of Mammoth from the "In and Out" episode)
  • Worms
  • Bees! (first prominently featured in "Two Bumble Bees and a Wasp" )
• The fanart wall that appeared in this episode has a real life equivalent in the Warner Bros Studio. However, all the artwork in the scene were drawn by the crew themselves since they aren't suppose to display Internet images on TV.
• Nobody has died during the course of producing this two-parter, fortunately. The skeleton of an apparent crew member who appeared is merely a joke on how exhausting animation production can be.

Continuity

• Producer, Michael Jelenic, makes his third overall appearance in the series. His previous appearances were in "Let's Get Serious" and "The Academy"; however, this episode gives him his first speaking role.
  • He also has a slightly different design in this episode then in the previous two.
• After a previous episode, this is the second overall episode of the series that has a plot that focuses heavily on "breaking the fourth wall".
• In one of the promos for this episode, many references from several previous episodes were seen:
  • The Titan version of Mount Rushmore from "Halloween" was shown.
  • The Beast Boy version of the Great Sphinx of Giza, Egypt from "Pyramid Scheme" was shown.
  • Cyborg wearing an astronaut uniform and walking the moon is a callback to his and Beast Boy's history story from "History Lesson".
  • The scene shown where Starfire, Cyborg and Robin are celebrating is a scene from the first part to "BBRAE".
• The Teen Titans Go! staff complains about their aggressive work schedules. This was first mentioned in "The Fourth Wall" when Starfire was explaining why the quality of their animation was so low.
• Albert Jelenic (Michael Jelenic's father), mentions making the Titans shrimps and prime rib and then shows the same shrimps and prime rib backdrop from the episode with the same name.
• One of the posts shown during the crew's song, is of Beast Boy and Raven kissing, posted by a user, "TeamBBRaeRae", on a parody site of Tumblr named "DCUmblr". The kissing image of Beast Boy and Raven is from "Rocks and Water".
  • Also during the crew's song, there was a scene of Robin doing the booty scooty, which the dance was first seen in the episode with the same name.
• The golden bear and golden car from Beast Boy's song, Pyramid Mummy Money from the episode "Pyramid Scheme" was seen during the crew's song.
• The Shrimps and Prime Rib song from the episode with the same name is sung briefly in this episode along with the reappearance of the song's backdrop.

References

• The building the Titans walk into has a huge "WB" logo on the wall. It's obviously Warner Bros. Studios (the company that produces Teen Titans Go!).
• Several references are shown in relation to the voice actors of the Titans when the Titans first meet them:
  • Greg Cipes and Tara Strong were seen taking pictures together. This could be a reference to what they call their "Fondle Fridays".
  • When Raven meets her voice actress, Tara Strong, Tara states she does a few voices of other characters. She demonstrated the voices of: Bubbles from the original Powerpuff Girls, Timmy Turner from the Fairly Oddparents, Truffles from Chowder and Butterbean, a fictional character she also voices in Teen Titans Go! from Raven's favorite show, Pretty Pretty Pegasus.
  • After meeting Starfire, her voice actress, Hynden Walch, tells Starfire to not take her picture. It is very true Hynden Walch does not like getting her picture taken due to her camera shyness. 
• There are various pictures of the Titans on the walls in the Warner Bros. animation studio:
  • Some of the pictures are rigs, which are used as character references for the animators.
  • Some pictures are covers from the Teen Titans Go! comics or other promotional art.
  • Outside the Warner Bros Studio, there's a picture of the Titans with the Powerpuff Girls and Mojo Jojo from "TTG v PPG".
  • There's a large wall covered in what appears to be Teen Titans Go! fan art or parodies of similar kinds of fan art drawn by fans of the show. What can be identified are:
    • Pixel art of Monsieur Mallah and The Brain, made to look like the classic Donkey Kong and a barrel.
    • A furry version of Cyborg.
    • BBRae shipping fan art, drawn in an amateur anime style. The style actually appears to be similar to how Panda (a character from another Cartoon Network show We Bare Bears) draws his anime.
    • Robin turning into a Super Saiyan.
    • A pin-up model version of Starfire.
    • Cyborg drawn as a Pretty Pretty Pegasus
    • Gender-bent versions of Robin and Starfire
    • Robin drawn as Sonic the Hedgehog and Beast Boy drawn as Tails
    • The Titans drawn in South Park style.
    • Raven drawn in a very goth style, almost like Lydia Deetz from the animated version of Beetlejuice. Interestingly, both characters are voiced by Tara Strong.
    • RobStar shipping fan art drawn in anime style, depicting a heartbroken Starfire watching Robin walk away, the kind of fan art more widely associated with the classic series
    • A childish crayon drawing of Beat Box and Birdarang and another depicting equity.
    • A shrimp and a prime rib on a moped.
    • A drawing of the Titans resembling the characters from another Cartoon Network show, Steven Universe.
  • When the Titans are fading, Cyborg says that it's similar to Back to the Future.
  • There were a few references to haters of the show. Robin mentioned people on the Internet complain about how Teen Titans Go! has ruined their childhood, and during the crew's song, it showed a large man wearing a t-shirt that said "TEEN TITANS NO!" on it, disliking any posts about Teen Titans Go! on DCUmblr (a parody site of Tumblr).
  • The way Graham Horvath, Aaron's son, dresses in orange shirt and blue jeans resembles Lincoln Loud, a character from the Nickelodeon show, The Loud House.
  • The little kid turns into a huge T-Rex with "The Power of Make Believe", which Robin says is stronger than he thought. "The Power of Make-Believe" is a reference to a "Barney And Friends" episode, "The Queen Of Make-Believe". Ironically, in the Barney episode, Barney explains that imagination can turn things into other things, which also happens here.

Errors

• Despite the name, and incessant Cartoon Network promos, the 200th episode was actually "Thanksgetting".
• The Titans have an existential crisis when they learn that they are actually cartoon characters, but they would have already known they were cartoons since "The Fourth Wall" when Control Freak mentioned that they were a show. And in that same episode, Robin directly communicated with the animators to make the Titans appear more whimsical.

Running Gags

• Robin yelling "Will you stop that!"
• The Titans getting thrown out by security.
• The Titans almost disappearing. 
• The Titans laughing at fart jokes.
• The show's staff complaining about their aggressive work schedule.
• Aaron and Michael eating excessive amounts of bread.

Transcript

The transcript for "The Self-Indulgent 200th Episode Spectacular!" can be found here.

Gallery

The image gallery for The Self-Indulgent 200th Episode Spectacular! may be viewed here.