Titans “Dick Grayson” Review

Titans has always been fighting an uphill battle in terms of gaining popularity and viewership.  The show’s place on an obscure new streaming service and the poor marketing leading up to its release certainly didn’t do it any favors, but it’s done a good job overcoming these and other outside problems through the sheer force of its own quality.  That said, while the positives of this season outweigh the negatives it’s become increasingly clear that Titans is all too often its own worst enemy.  The final installment of the first run encapsulates that perhaps better than any other.  “Dick Grayson” is of mixed quality as an individual episode, relatively well-written, executed, and performed, but needlessly bleak and as a season finale it fails on almost every level.

The episode’s anti-climactic nature is due to yet another inexplicable pacing decision.  Rather than expand its focus to touch on everyone’s stories before the offseason the show zooms in tighter than ever, with the entirety of the episode save for a brief conclusion taking place within Dick Grayson’s subconscious.  Our conflicted crime-fighter’s mind is trapped within a fantasy Trigon is controlling in order to corrupt his soul which he hopes will have the added benefit of breaking Rachel’s spirit enough that she’ll join her parents on the dark side.  The scenario Dick is faced with is at first effectively his ideal future.  He’s married to Dawn with one happy and healthy kid and another on the way and in close contact with Rachel and Gar, who are happily in college.  He’s no longer Robin but still helps others as a cop (though he trades Detroit for Los Angeles).  However, the dream quickly becomes a nightmare as Trigon warps events to make Dick give in to his darkest impulses.  A wheelchair-bound Jason Todd arrives on Dick’s doorstep, pleading with him to return to Gotham.  Jim Gordon has been killed by the Joker and Batman is preparing to end the sadistic criminal once and for all.  With Alfred dead Jason is convinced Dick is the only one who will be able to stop their mentor from crossing the line and Dick eventually, reluctantly agrees to try.  However, things only get worse once Dick returns to his old home town.  Bruce ignores his surrogate son’s pleas and kills Joker and, having broken his own self-imposed code once then abandons it completely.  He launches an assault on Arkham Asylum, executing not just assorted members of his rogue’s gallery but guards and nurses.  At this point Dick tells the Gotham police Bruce’s identity and agrees to lead an attack on Wayne Manor to arrest him, with a team that includes a disguised Trigon and the dream version of Kory, a liasing FBI agent.  But it is only when dream Bats has killed the entire force including Kory that Dick gives in to his own darkness and kills his old friend.  This cements Trigon’s domination of the former Robin’s mind, as the broken hero takes on a similar appearance to that of Rachel’s demon half.

Again, taken as just another episode “Dick Grayson” is at least ok.  Trigon’s comic book counterpart is effectively a thinly-veiled excuse for DC heroes to face the devil and that’s no less the case here.  As a self-contained story of Dick’s temptation and eventual corruption by evil this is a fairly well-executed hour.  Brenton Thwaites has been doing great work all season and he excels at highlighting the contradictions inherent in the character, namely the conflict between his desire for a normal life and his inability to separate himself from aspects of his Robin identity and his grudge against Bruce.  Dick shifts from being likable to a total jerk throughout the nightmare scenario and Thwaites makes the transition in a perfectly subtle manner.  Given that Trigon is manipulating everything Dick’s choice to kill Bruce is much less authentic than the demon tells Rachel but some important insight into Dick is gained nevertheless.  If the transition to Nightwing takes much longer the show runs the risk of beating the “Dick must battle his inner darkness” storyline into the ground (to some extent it already has) but the hallucination exposes a perhaps even more critical flaw that ensures there will still be plenty of stories to tell about the former Boy Wonder even when he eventually reclaims his heroic status.  Many details of both Dick’s ideal life and his worst fears highlight a massive degree of arrogance inherent in the character.  Perhaps none of the other fantasies are quite as clearly petty, however, as when Jason Todd tells Dick that the latter is “the real Robin”, something the younger sidekick says he has even heard the likes of Superman say.  Deep down there’s a part of Dick Grayson that believes he’s better than pretty much everyone and that has the potential to be an even more compelling reoccurring problem for the character to face than his violent tendencies.

Now that the limited pros are out of the way onto the episode’s many cons.  The biggest issue with “Dick Grayson” is how terribly it works as a season finale, which is due to the fact that it literally isn’t one.  The creators have confirmed that a twelfth, presumably more climactic episode was shot but, with a second season already ordered by DC Universe, they decided to simply repurpose its events as the beginning of Season 2 and use “Grayson” as the freshman run’s conclusion because they believed ending with Dick in Trigon’s thrall would be an excellent cliffhanger.  This is the single greatest mistake they’ve made all season.  The image of a possessed Dick could have been an OK ending for a penultimate episode, with a larger confrontation that involved the rest of the cast coming a week later, but as the final scene of the season it leaves things not on a note of intriguing suspense but of abject failure and broken momentum.  The season ends with neither resolution nor a confidence of exciting things to come.  There’s no payoff to any of the story threads the show’s been developing.  Rachel (and now the world) are still in danger.  We still have no idea why she sent Hank and Dawn to find Jason.  There’s been no follow up to Kory discovering her heritage. And most depressing of all, instead of taking on the Nightwing mantle Dick regresses to literally allowing his resentment towards Bruce to consume him.  The creators’ intent with this was likely to drag their main hero to rock bottom and that’s fine but there have been multiple points along the way that easily could have served that purpose and some (such as the sixth episode’s conclusion)  truly seemed intended to.  It’s time to start building Dick back up rather than tearing him down but the show is reluctant to do so.  In fact, it’s starting to seem like the show has a widespread problem with closing storylines.  A lot of questions have been asked these 11 episodes but few have really been answered.  “Asylum” is the only installment that featured substantial conclusive elements, given that it closed the door on Adamson and company, and it’s easily the worst episode.  In the second season the show is going to have to be more willing to let individual stories come to a close when it’s natural and shift the characters to the next steps in their journeys rather than forcing them to face the same conflicts again and again.

The one major saving grace “Dick Grayson” has is its excellent post-credit sequence.  One of Titans‘ biggest strengths so far has been its rapid and effective work in establishing it’s own version of the DC universe to play in and the promise of Conner Kent/Superboy as the next major character added to the cast is undeniably exciting.  It also represents a slight but not insignificant break from the source material as Conner is not featured in the Marv Wolfman New Teen Titans run the show loosely adapts.  As good as that run is, it’s good to see the show is willing to draw from different sources if they better fit the story it’s trying to tell.  I am a little concerned that introducing Conner at the very beginning of next season may make things a little crowded.  It would probably be best to finish the Trigon arc first and then use the introduction of the Boy of Steel to take the show in a new, more sci-fi direction for a little while.

Comic Book Observations and Other Odds and Ends:

• Well that’s it for Season 1 (unless DC Universe makes a really cool decision and releases the episode 12 footage and some new stuff for some kind of special episode or TV movie that better sets up Season 2.  Considering how messy this was it really wouldn’t be a bad idea.)  I won’t be doing any of these episode by episode reviews for anything else for awhile but I have a bunch of other stuff coming soon.  Will hopefully be able to do this again for Season 2.
• Conner’s intro was of course more narratively important but the most purely exciting part of the post-credits scene was Krypto, the Superdog!  I can’t believe there’s a modern, live-action version of the little guy.
• In addition to what I believe were the first clear references to Superman (other than some T-shirts) Barbara Gordon/Batgirl was name dropped!  It would be great if she appeared on the show at some point but with a film in development I’m not sure it’s going to happen.  Admittedly, there are probably enough women in Dick’s life at the moment.
•  I count Two-Face and Riddler among the dead at Arkham in the nightmare, along with lesser known Bat-villain(s) Ventriloquist and Scarface.

Titans “Koriand’r” Review

Damn it Titans, I said I was never going to type that name again!  Ugh.  Well, despite introducing Kory’s annoying-to-spell birth name this installment is quite strong, with important developments in most of the season’s major storylines and an interesting set up for the finale, though I’m still a little concerned at how everything is going to be wrapped up, unless the rumors of a two-hour special episode next week turn out to be true.  Still, there really isn’t much to complain about in “Koriand’r” other than that darn title.

The continuation from the Kory-centric cliffhanger two weeks ago is solid, even if it doesn’t really do anything unexpected.  Donna Troy gets to show off a little more of her Wonder Girl side (whipping out her own magic lasso!) by quickly putting an end to Kory’s attempt to kill Rachel.  Following that, Kory is back to herself but her memories continue to flood back and she leaves Angela’s house in search of answers, with Dick and Donna in pursuit to help her.  They stumble upon the ship Kory came to Earth in and Kory remembers more details of her Tamaranean heritage and her mission to kill Rachel in order to stop her father from making his way into our dimension and wreaking havoc throughout the universe.

Ironically enough, finding all this out causes the three most capable members of the group (Conor Leslie continues to make a strong case for her hopeful promotion to regular status next season) to be too far away to prevent Rachel from being tricked into releasing Trigon.  In a not especially surprising twist Angela turns out to still be devoted to her baby daddy (its not clear if the two have an actual evil marriage or not) and when Gar gets sick (presumably after she poisoned him) she convinces a confused and desperate Rachel that only her father can help.  Which, to the demon’s credit he actually seems to do, healing Gar and hinting at the greater power within our young Beast Boy.  This, of course, is all a ploy to earn his daughter’s trust, which he seems to be doing rather well (Rachel is made out to be a little too naïve at times here) as he and Angela prepare to, in her words “eat the world”.

Part of the reason “Koriand’r” feels like such a good culmination of the season so far is the return of horror elements in the filmmaking, recalling the show’s earliest episodes.  A lot of this of course has to do with the reveal of the supernatural threat the show’s been holding back on letting loose for so long.  Seamus Dever makes a strong debut as Trigon and while some may be disappointed the character appears in human form (so far, that hologram in Kory’s ship all but confirming we’ll see a more openly monstrous version at some point) his performance has a chilling otherworldly quality to it, selling the idea that this is a being of immense and terrifying power.  Rachel Nichols also executes Angela’s heel turn quite well, and going dark allows her to improve upon the already solid work she’s been doing on the show.  One of the things that sets Titans apart from many other superhero shows is its approach to villains.  Rather than try to make them sympathetic antiheroes whose biggest offensives are their extreme methods the villains on Titans are gleefully aware of their evil, and as a result the actors get to ham it up just the right amount.  Neither approach is definitively better of course but the former is used so often in television and film these days that it’s nice to see a few examples of the latter.  Aside from our newly established evil couple the horror influence can also be seen throughout the episode thanks to a well established eerie tone.  The scenes of Gar’s anxiety about his and Rachel’s situation are particularly effective as the viewer is unsure to what extent he’s right to be concerned and to what extent he’s letting his guilt over eating that guard mess with his head.

After realizing Angela’s up to no good Dick, Donna, and Kory rush back to the house but only Dick is able to pass through some kind of protective spell Trigon’s cast around the place.  This looks to set up a finale with a heavy focus on mind games, as Trigon is still under the assumption that he can somehow ensure Rachel’s loyalty by breaking her heart and there’s a decent amount of tension imbued into everything even though we know Dick (and presumably but not quite as certainly, Gar) will be OK.  “Koriand’r” is more than anything a set up episode so the perception of it is subject to  change depending on how well the next episode resolves things but for now it’s a briskly paced and exciting one that gives the show a sense of focus and stakes that it’s sometimes been missing.

Titans “Hank and Dawn” Review

This  is hopefully going to be a shorter review than usual.  Primarily to keep myself sane during finals, but also because there’s less to say about this episode.  The review for the next one will likely also be delayed, also because of finals.  Moving on to the actual review now:

I’m going to try not to harp on this too much as I’ve already mentioned it a few times but good grief is Titans‘ pacing bizarre.  The choice to follow “Donna Troy”‘s excellent cliffhanger with a detour to catch up with the titular duo, who we haven’t seen since episode three is really strange, especially when one realizes that after this there are only two more episodes this season.  While the ending ties Hank and Dawn back into the main action, solidifying the idea that the guest star heroes, with the likely exception of the Doom Patrol, will be playing a role in the season’s conclusion, I can’t help but worry that taking the time to learn their backstories at this point will hinder the show’s momentum, even if those backstories (or more accurately, certain parts of them) are compellingly told.  There have been a lot of rumors of the chronology of Titans‘ events being altered through reshoots and editing and I wouldn’t be surprised if the creators considered placing the key events of this episode somewhere else but couldn’t figure out where, or more accurately, when to put them.

Now that I’ve dealt with the episode’s problematic place in the season as a whole I”ll focus on its own pros and cons. The main things “Hank and Dawn” has going for it are how good  Alan Ritchson and Minka Kelly are in their roles, both individually and together.  We get insight into the psyches of both of their characters this week that is deeper and more complicated than one would have guessed after “Hawk and Dove”.  Kelly’s performance is more similar to that first appearance, offering more of Dawn as a thoughtful and compassionate person who happens to have a violent streak.  What sets this appearance apart is that here we get to see where that streak comes from.  Still, there’s nothing especially suprising about the Dawn-centric parts of the episode.  No, the real twists here are all about Hank.  I mentioned in my review of “Hawk and Dove” that Ritchson’s performance is seemingly purposely over-macho, something of a satire of the thug with a heart of gold action hero stereotype.  That’s still the case sometimes but the most intriguing and effectively emotional aspects of “Hank and Dawn” are the ones that let you see how vulnerable and in need of help the future Hawk is.  Ritchson’s work here is electrifying, bringing to life the torment a victimized man goes through as he tries to conform to societal expectations of masculinity.

It’s good the lead performers are as reliable as they are because the rest of the episode is a bit of a mess, even if a sometimes affecting one.  It doesn’t take long for the viewer to get the feeling the writers kind of just threw as many dark tragedies at the future vigilantes as they could think of, especially Hank, in the hopes that some of them work in a compelling manner.  That said some actually do work, almost in spite of themselves.  The idea that both Hank’s brother and Dawn’s mother would be killed by the same car crash (that left both Hank and Dawn alive no less) is a different, less charming kind of ridiculous than this show usually deals in.  And after having seen Dawn’s mother and their relationship for such a brief stretch of time her death really isn’t one the viewer can feel invested in, as sympathetic as Minka Kelly is in in the scenes in which Dawn struggles with grief.  The same fortunately cannot be said about the death of Hank’s brother, Don (Elliot Knight).  The more extensive history we get of the Hall brothers, coupled with a likable and charismatic performance from Knight and a thoroughly broken one from Ritchson ensure that at least half of the Hawk and Dove tragedy is compelling.  But Don’s death isn’t even the hardest-hitting part of Hank’s journey.  It’s the character’s complicated and realistic struggle with surviving sexual abuse that makes Hank’s origin and the episode as a whole work.  A lot of Titans has been about providing answers to the question “What makes a person want to put on a mask and beat up criminals?” and Hank’s answer is one of the more interesting and tragic ones.  While Don’s plan of replacing football with crimefighting as the outlet for Hank’s anger doesn’t make a whole lot of sense logically, given that his goal is preventing Hank’s post-concussion syndrome from getting worse, it works thematically.  The abuse Hank endured to protect his brother has left him with an unshakeable, uncontrollable rage that won’t go away even after he and Dawn (presumambly) kill the monstrous coach.  Still, that moment when Dawn stays with Hank as he takes his revenge is the dark heart of the episode, the beginning of a twisted but endearing romance.  Upon seeing the scene of the coach trying to take Don, and then Hank into the weight room I was initially more than a little skeptical.  The show has proven it can handle adult topics in serious, effective manners but this was on another level.  However I was ultimately quite impressed at how gracefully the important topic was addressed in the midst of everything else going on.

The other major pro for “Hank and Dawn” is that it isn’t quite as removed from the season’s main storyline as it first appears to be.  The brief scenes of the Rachel projection trying to get through to Hank and Dawn are well-timed hints of the episode’s larger significance before the welcome surprise that Rachel needs them to find Jason Todd.  That revelation is exciting both for the multiple questions it poses heading into the final two episodes and for clarifying that the season’s frequent detours have been more than just attempts at setting up spin-offs and a shared universe.

Overall, “Hank and Dawn” isn’t one of the best episodes Titans has produced so far and placing it after “Donna Troy” was a poor decision in regard to pacing but it’s still an interesting deep dive into two compelling characters played by talented performers.

Titans “Donna Troy” Review

It’s been two weeks since “Jason Todd” so naturally Titans has to introduce another new superhero.  I’ve written a lot about how weird (if still fun) the show’s extensive use of guest stars is, and the stop and go pacing the practice brings is starting to become a hindrance as the show tries to build momentum heading to the finale, but it’s still impressive how naturally said guest stars fit into the individual episodes focusing on them.  “Donna Troy” is the best example of this so far and probably the most balanced episode in general, at least after “Together” in regards to managing narrative focus.  While Conor Leslie’s debut as the titular character, the first DC Comics heroine to bear the mantle of Wonder Girl, and the advice she has for childhood friend Dick Grayson predictably take up considerable screen time, everyone gets at least some time to shine this week and the main storyline benefits from a shift to exploring the truth about Kory.

With Rachel seemingly safe and reunited with her mother, Dick, in typical fashion, heads off on his own.  This time it’s to seek the guidance of his fellow ex-sidekick as he tries to figure out who he is without Robin.  Leslie is another perfect casting for Titans, balancing strength, compassion, and dry humor in just the right amounts and she has a nice easy-going chemistry with Brenton Thwaites.  You immediately buy that as close as he’s come to Rachel and Kory, Donna understands Dick in a more detailed, clear way, therefore offering the kind of comfort that can only come from a longtime friend.  Donna has been more successful in moving on from her superhero life, though she says she’s “stopped” rather than “quit” and keeps the Wonder Girl suit in her closet, but recognizes that this isn’t exactly what Dick needs.  While he definitely needs to lessen his brutality and learn how to have more of a civilian life it’s clear to Donna that Dick doesn’t actually need to stop crime-fighting altogether and indeed probably can’t.  In a very Arrow-esque scene Donna tells him that he needs to “become something else, someone else”, all but confirming that the Nightwing identity will be created soon.

Probably the best thing about “Donna Troy” is how, unlike the other guest-star centric episodes it keeps things moving for all of the main cast.  Rachel continues to try and get to know her mother, though she’s probably not as inquisitive as she should be.  Rachel Nichols does some strong, emotional work in these scenes as Angela is solidified as an important member of the cast but the frustrating vagueness of the details she gives about Rachel’s father and the conspicuous lack of a current antagonist makes her an inherently suspicious character.  Gar is trying to come to terms with killing that guard last week but he makes the mistake of turning to Kory for counsel.  The young Beast Boy is once again the least important of the show’s core foursome and while this is a problem the show needs to address at some point, the tone deaf nature of Kory’s advice is a nice segue into the episode’s focus on her.  I’ve talked about how Kory’s status as the team’s rock will need to be upended at some point, as enjoyable as Anna Diop is as the put together, ultra-competent member of the ensemble, and the show succeeds in doing just that this week.  “Donna Troy” is the first installment to reckon with the many unheroic acts Kory has and continues to commit.  This starts with the aforementioned bad advice she gives Gar and culminates with her burning of half the train, likely killing the FBI agents who were after her for her battle with those Michigan cops back in episode three.  Even before the big twist ending this episode condemns Kory’s violent tendencies, which both Dick and the show have written off as necessary evils until now.  This change in connotation along with the aforementioned twist shifts the viewer’s perception of Kory from the glue holding the group together to a reckless threat.  The latter is the status the character has through a lot of the New Teen Titans run the show is adaptating, even if the show’s version predictably goes a bit overboard (the creators have their work cut out for them redeeming Kory for the train thing whenever she comes out of the altered mental state she’s in by episode’s end).

Speaking of the twist, let’s talk about it a little.  Ignoring the convenience of the language of the writing from the storage locker being one Donna can read, it’s one of the show’s strongest storytelling choices yet.  The reveal that Kory was sent to Earth to kill Rachel is itself not that suprising, as people on this show only want to protect, use, or kill her but it’s well executed enough that its impacts on the rest of the season look to be good.  If the earlier part of the season was about bringing the Titans together as a surrogate family it looks like the show is shifting to focusing on testing those bonds.  Kory’s attack on Rachel is the show’s strongest swerve so far not because it was especially unexpected but because it represents the first of what will likely be many forks in the road that threaten to tear Rachel, Kory, Dick, and Gar apart and this even greater devotion to interpersonal stories as the show’s primary concern is exciting.  On a more practical note it also looks to have drawn Donna into the main action, cementing this as the most focused of the guest star episodes.

“Donna Troy” may not repair all the damage done by “Asylum”, and some of the problems that episode brought up are still present, but it puts the show on much more sure footing thanks to the charms of the titular character and a strong plot twist that sets the team on a new and unexpected course.

Comic book observations and other odds and ends:

• This was probably the best episode yet in terms of name drops with the Justice League, the Joker, the Penguin, and the Amazons all being mentioned in addition to the usual mentions of Batman (and now Wonder Woman).  It also marks the first time the monikers of “Starfire” and “Raven” have been directly applied to Kory and Rachel.
• “Wonder Woman was born to protect the innocent.  Batman was created to punish the guilty.” Good line and delivery but man does this show really like to make Bats look bad.
• This episode effectively confirmed that there will be a romantic storyline between Gar and Rachel which really isn’t in good taste considering how much older Ryan Potter is than Teagan Croft.