As
long as filler episodes continue to provide us with character
development, we will keep our complaints to a minimum.
This
time out we get another Cyborg episode, which further explores
the depths of both his humanity and his machinery alike.
We get a peek into Cyborg’s personal time management
approach to his daily schedule, and what we see is Cyborg’s
own frustration with his inability to complete all of the
tasks he intends to accomplish within the confines of the
day.
Limitations
are often the key to capital gain, and the same seems to
hold true even for those with cybernetic enhancements. Think
about it; if one feels as if they’ve reached their
maximum potential they usually seek the remedy through expensing
of funds. If your computer is too slow, go pick up a RAM
upgrade. If you feel overweight, grab a health shake.
So naturally,
just as Cyborg is feeling inadequate, an advertisement for
the all-new Maximum 7 chipset befalls him, and suddenly
all of life’s troubles seem like small potatoes. Despite
the rest of the team’s cautions, Cyborg insists that
he has done his homework in checking the chip's compatibility
with his own hardware. Plugging this baby in is just what
the doctor ordered, or so Cy thinks.
Sometimes
the easiest solution isn’t always the best one, and
Cyborg learns this the hard way with the Maximum 7. At first,
the chip allows him to multitask beyond his wildest dreams.
Soon enough he has budgeted time into his overcrammed schedule
to “Get rich quick” and “Learn Tamaranian,”
both of which lead to amusing gags later on in the episode.
One said gag of note involves Cy’s shilling of BBQ
sauce on an infomercial-esque ad, touted as “The official
sauce of the Teen Titans.”
When
Adonis returns, Cyborg is all but stepping over the rest
of the team to get things done quickly. He finishes up Raven’s
spell casting while opening “even larger cans of the
butt whoop,” as Starfire puts it.
The
initial results would seem favorable for our beloved Cyborg,
but when the team comes face to face with the somewhat absurd
Billy Numerous, a red-clad redneck with the ability to duplicate
himself at will, Cyborg soon finds his superhero antics
conflicting with his daily routine. Attempting to get this
conflict wrapped up in time to make his skydiving lesson,
Cyborg finds that Numerous’ ability to multiply in
numbers proves more taxing than he initially thought he
would be.
Numerous
gets away, and a rampage of thievery ensues, much to Cyborg’s
dismay. He becomes so focused on stopping Numerous that
he fails to see the fatigue setting in with his human teammates.
Needing rest, the team returns to the Tower to recoup, but
Cyborg presses on. Unbeknownst to the rest of the team,
Cyborg begins shifting the power set aside for his more
human activities such as “sleep,” “fun,”
and “emotion” into his Maximum 7 chipset, in
an effort to press on further.
When
the rest of the team awakens, they find a robotic Cyborg
plugged into machinery, avidly searching for Billy Numerous’
whereabouts. The result of siphoning power from his human
attributes into the Maximum 7 has literally deprived Cyborg
of his humanity, and the team needs to step in to save their
friend before things go too much further.
The
end result is that Cyborg must learn that being the best,
or taking things “to the max” is not always
the answer. Beast Boy says it best when he explains that
his power lets him choose from the biggest and the fastest
in the animal kingdom, yet sometimes its more effective
to change into a turtle to get the job done.
The
easiest way out often takes an important aspect of the process
out of the equation, and that aspect is the thought process
of assessing each situation as needed. In the case of Billy
Numerous, the Titans needed to outnumber someone who could
not be physically outnumbered, and no matter how fast Cyborg’s
Maximum 7 chip allowed him to multitask, the answer was
in outthinking their opponent, not actually outnumbering
him physically.
