The episode "The Return of Slade" is a Bait and Switch worse than Raiden being the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2. The episode starts with Robin alerting the team that Slade has returned, so they go out to face him, but they don't show the battle on screen! Instead of showing the battle, the episode focuses on Beast-Boy and Cyborg on wanting a clown.
As if that wasn't enough of a middle finger to the fanbase, the "moral" of the episode makes it even worse. The plot is that a clown shows up, but he's not as cool as Cyborg and Beast Boy remember because "clowns are for kids." So, they change him to be the clown awesome like they remember, while Raven tells them "they need to let go of their love for clowns because they're for kids and they need stop paying attention to something they should have outgrown.” The entire episode is one f**k you to fans who say the original show was better, justifying that they only like the "old awesome" show because of the nostalgia filter and they should have outgrown cartoons by now.
What really irks me is the combination of these two complaints. If they wanted to do episode about letting go of your childhood and not seeing things through nostalgia goggles, that would be fine. If they wanted to do a bait and switch joke about Slade as a jab at the fans of the old show, that would be fine too. But when you put it together one after the other, you end up creating a situation where you purposely baited fans of the old show to watch the episode just to be sure that you get as many of them as possible watching as you mock them. This bait is what made clown plot turn from a standard story into a middle finger shown to people - they knew fans of old cartoon will sit in front of the tv screen, some of them excited for Slade, some terrified how will the show handle him and some just curious and open minded. And then they went to tell every single one of these people they're idiots for liking things made for kids.
The episode "The Return of Slade" is a Bait and Switch worse than Raiden being the protagonist of Metal Gear Solid 2. The episode starts with Robin alerting the team that Slade has returned, so they go out to face him, but they don't show the battle on screen! Instead of showing the battle, the episode focuses on Beast-Boy and Cyborg on wanting a clown.
As if that wasn't enough of a middle finger to the fanbase, the "moral" of the episode makes it even worse. The plot is that a clown shows up, but he's not as cool as Cyborg and Beast Boy remember because "clowns are for kids." So, they change him to be the clown awesome like they remember, while Raven tells them "they need to let go of their love for clowns because they're for kids and they need stop paying attention to something they should have outgrown.” The entire episode is one f**k you to fans who say the original show was better, justifying that they only like the "old awesome" show because of the nostalgia filter and they should have outgrown cartoons by now.
What really irks me is the combination of these two complaints. If they wanted to do episode about letting go of your childhood and not seeing things through nostalgia goggles, that would be fine. If they wanted to do a bait and switch joke about Slade as a jab at the fans of the old show, that would be fine too. But when you put it together one after the other, you end up creating a situation where you purposely baited fans of the old show to watch the episode just to be sure that you get as many of them as possible watching as you mock them. This bait is what made clown plot turn from a standard story into a middle finger shown to people - they knew fans of old cartoon will sit in front of the tv screen, some of them excited for Slade, some terrified how will the show handle him and some just curious and open minded. And then they went to tell every single one of these people they're idiots for liking things made for kids.