"It's Meat-tastic!"
While the rest of the team tries to deal with an UFO that steals cows, Beast Boy finally cracks down and looks for a job to buy himself a moped, but the only place he can find work is a restaurant that serves nothing but meat (which disgusts him since he's a vegetarian.)
Tropes:
- Accidental Misnaming: The Bobs' constant misnaming of Beast Boy eventually gets on his nerves.Bobs: Say goodbye, Tammy.
Beast Boy: Dude, that's a GIRL name! (smashes the Bobs) - Action Prologue: The scene of the Titans fighting off aliens just before the opening counts as this.
- Affably Evil: The Bobs.
- Alien Invasion: By a race of sapient space tofu, or New-Fu!
- Aliens Steal Cattle: Naturally, but spoofed as they don't want to eat them, but use them as a (harmless) power source for their machines.
- And a Diet Coke: Cyborg’s order.Cyborg: I’ll have eight number threes, five number twos, two number ones...and a diet soda.
Beast Boy: Actually, we don’t have soda; only meat.
Cyborg: Okay. Then make it a cup of meat juice. - Anti-Climax: At the end of the episode, Beast Boy keeps putting off trying to stop the Destructo-Tron since it's a huge, formidable, glowing green machine. When he finally decides to confront the Destructo-Tron, he expects huge resistance or an explosion... but it ends up being taken down with a simple Off Switch.
- Bait-and-Switch: Throughout the episode, Beast Boy accidentally destroys every machine he touches. When it's time to stop New-Fu's Destructo-Tron (the giant machine powering the UFO's and Bobs), he reasons that he breaks machines all the time. He then flips an off-switch, clearly expecting another explosion... but the machine just powers off normally.
- Comically Missing the Point: When the Titans, save Beast Boy, defeat one of the spaceships and open it up, they discover a cow inside. Starfire believes the bovine to be from a different planet until it is discovered that it's just a regular earth cow.
- Cool Bike: Beast Boy's moped. It even comes with a turbo boost.
- Debate and Switch: Downplayed. While the episode isn't moralistic in any way, Beast Boy's horror at the meat industry butchering animals he empathizes with (since he turns into said animals on a regular basis) is understandable. When he learns a species of space tofu called New Fu are abducting all the cows to use as a harmless power source for their machines and replace with their own meatless substitutes (that humans can't even taste the difference), he isn't at all bothered. However, when New Fu casually mentions they intend to blow up the earth on their way out, any potential ethical dilemma is thrown out the window and even Beast Boy vows to stop it.
- Defensive "What?": Cyborg ends the episode with this after accidentally eating New-Fu.
- Deranged Animation: This episode has some of the wackiest animation in the show, and that's saying something.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?:
- Beast Boy is seen drooling over a magazine that says 'hot rides' and saying that he's in love, it takes several seconds for Starfire to point out the object of his affection is "merely a land vehicle."
- When he makes the Bobs, the Source grunts and pushes blobs into pipes. Now what could that possibly resemble...
- Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion: Zig-zagged. Beast Boy, thanks to intel extorted from New-Fu, thwarts the invasion with comedic efficiency, whereas the rest of the Titans have trouble dealing with the invaders due to lacking this knowledge.
- Eating the Enemy: Beast Boy threatens to eat New-Fu in order get intel from him. At the end, Cyborg unknowingly eats New-Fu, whom Beast Boy locked up inside the fridge.
- Employee of the Month: Beast Boy ends up working as a Burger Fool to pay for a moped. He manages to earn Employee of the Month, probably aided by the fact that he's pretty much their only actual employee. And his "boss" can't seem to get his name right.
- Foreshadowing: The extraterrestrial origins of Mega Meaty Meat is hinted at with their employment notice explicitly asking for human help.
- Just like the alien Starfire, Bob refers to the moped as a "land vehicle".
- It's What I Do: After getting cows to power his ship, the Newfu plan to blow up the Earth simply because "it is our way".
- Large Ham: The Source. Made extra-funny because of his ultra-high voice.
- Latex Perfection: The elderly farming couple at the beginning of the episode turns out to be Robin and Starfire, disguised and anticipating the UFO's arrival. With the farmer pulling off his latex mask revealing himself to be Robin and announcing, "Titans, now!".
- Let's Meet the Meat: A T-bone proclaims Mega Meaty Meat is "meat-tastic!" Also literally with Beast Boy, as all the 'meat' is space tofu excreted by New-Fu.
- Living Battery: The spaceships use cows as their power supplies.
- New Job Episode: Poor Beast Boy goes through several in his quest to afford a moped.
- Noodle Incident: Apparently, Starfire has encountered a cow-like alien race, but we don't get details.
- Running Gag: Beast Boy getting blown up every time he tries to get a new job, and Bob can't ever remember Beast Boy's name.
- Sapient Eat Sapient: Played with: Cyborg eats the alien, sentient tofu—by accident. Beast Boy uses this threat to blackmail New-Fu into giving intel to thwart the latter's invasion.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Again, the Bobs.
- Shout-Out:
- The Vespa Beast Boy rides is designed like Haruko's. Complete with an alphabet on a circular sticker on it's front (a "T" instead of a "P" like in the anime). Beast Boy even dresses in a similar getup (scarf, helmet, goggles) to Haruko's while riding around using the Tidwell 3000 to transport cows.
- Robin's battle outfit, with the stylized-wing cape and bird-beaked helmet, is a shout-out to Battle of the Planets.
- Cyborg's lunch order is possibly a reference to Big Smoke's order.
- An Easily Thwarted Alien Invasion where the aliens can be defeated by water. Nothing too familiar about that...
- Tempting Fate: Near the beginning of the episode Beast Boy emphatically states he'll never go into Mega Meaty Meat, cut to the middle half of the episode where he needs money to buy his dream moped and it turns out the restaurant is hiring. To his credit Beast Boy resists for a long while but, after all his other jobs fizzle out, he finally relents and applies for the position, especially when he finds out that the restaurant was offering the exact moped he wanted as a reward to their Employee of the Month.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Beast Boy is the only vegetarian in the city since he's the only one who has ever been the kind of animals his friends eat on a regular basis.
- Bob and New Fu being killed and eaten are Played for Laughs since they're sentient space tofu.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Beast Boy finally gets his moped...but it breaks down from overuse at the end of the episode.
