Well fuck Batman y’all, it’s time for Titans! We are now over the hump on the debut season of the first of the DC Universe original shows, and this seventh episode moves the story along ever so slightly as we inch forward to the conclusion of this 11 episode first season.
This week the blood is BACK baby! Or did it ever leave? The horror and gore makes a return as Rachel finds her real mom, the entire team becomes murderers, and Dick and Lil Dickie do the psychotherapeutic, torturous tango on the road to Nightwing. Let’s dive in shall we!
1. Asylum horror, don’t mind if we do.
We move from Chicago off to the asylum where the Nuclear Family’s are created very quickly and early on in the episode, and then slooowwwwww down as everyone is tortured. You know, typical asylum stuff. Bryan Hill and Greg Walker tackle the writing for this episode, and while the previous Hill/Gabrielle Stanton written episode (episode 5) might be the best of the series in my opinion so far, this one struggles a little. We take a very stereotypical asylum-horror-esque story and loosely sprinkle some of the Rachel plotline on with references to her “father” and we that’s Titans this week. It’s all sort of by the book. Dumb teenagers get captured, get tortured (psychologically and physically with tasers and autopsies alike), and then kill people and break out. Also isn’t this like the third or fourth time members of the team have been kidnapped in barely twice as many episodes? I’ve been saying this show has been improving, and I watched “Asylum” this week and saw some of the most grotesque blood and violence since episode one, mixed with more Dick and his childhood demons. All this does not a great episode make. Especially as we still know next to nothing about this organization, why it wants Rachel (other than to “purify,”), who’s in charge, and what the heck is going on with Kory’s memory. Luckily, it’s looking like we’ll get Kory’s past next week, as per the “Donna Troy” trailer, as Dick decides to bail (yet again). I feel like we’re going in circles. I want this show to go forward.
2. Angela Azarath
Alright so now for the “why” of the asylum. Dr. Adamson decided last week he wasn’t going to talk to anyone but Rachel, so Dick gives her five minutes with him this week. He tries to kill himself and she heals him, miraculously, and then while Dick and Kory torture him later, he reveals Rachel’s real mom is still alive and held captive there. The wife of the demon, held captive, incentive enough for Rachel and Gar to childishly go off to rescue her. With Dick and Kory not far behind, and them all captured shortly after, it’s night in the asylum with Rachel eventually finding her mom after re-killing Adamson.
We don’t learn much about Angela, other than her name, which evokes both the comics’ name of Rachel’s mom (Angela Roth) and the catchphrase Raven spoke to use her powers in the animated Teen Titans. Those words themselves, “Azarath, Metrion, Zinthos” come from the interdimensional realm Rachel was born in in DC continuity. All of this is a nice nod, and I’m glad Angela is now a part of the crew by episode’s end. I’m also happy to see a character as disgusted by Dick wrecking the asylum security, leaving them bloody, beaten, twisted, and gnarled, as I am. She’s also horrified seeing Gar embrace his anger, but we’ll get there. We finally a point of view character who is wondering what the fuck is going on. Hopefully, we have time this next episode (or I guess in two episodes given this show’s propensity to sideshow every other episode) for her to explain what’s going on, and for the demon father story to wrap in a compelling way in four episodes time.
3. Purify me
If you read any of my Lucifer reviews last year, you’ll know I’m no fan of shallow theological or spiritual concepts. I often think pop culture’s inclination to invoke demonic and mythological themes comes from our fascination and intrigue with them, which is wonderful. But, we often write such things more from a realm of ignorance, than from a place of having spent at least an hour going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. This episode is no different. Dr. Adamson talks about needing Rachel to “purify the world,” to “save,” and to “heal,” which are all religiously coded words. It’s all very abstract though. Rachel has already been tied to Christianity through her interactions with the Catholic nuns (and yes the destruction of the convent, I’m sensing a theme here). We still don’t have a sense of where Rachel’s powers come from, what this “organization” wants, what mythologies or motivations they have or where they come from, and we’re seven episodes in. All we have are a shallow and esoteric prophecy and a scenario that looks somewhat demonic. I’m not saying that we have to explain things scientifically or academically, I just want some details and intrigue, development, more than just blood, bullets, and bombs. There’s so much potential here, and like I said in point #1, we’re going from kidnapping to side plot every other week. I should get off my soapbox though on this point.
Continued below4. Now we’re all murderers
Alright so now to my other big gripe of the week: Gar’s now definitely a murderer. The vegan, green tiger totally attacks his torturer and shreds the hell out of him and transforms back into a human with blood on his teeth and in his mouth. I just…why does the whole team gotta kill people? And before any of you say “Oh maybe he wasn’t dead,” Dick tells Kory to burn the asylum down on the way out. There was no way any of those people that they beat into unconsciousness made it out alive. Now everyone on the team has killed people. Bravo. The body count keeps rising, with a little bit of psychological fallout for Dick and Gar, but this show is just loving that everyone is capable of gritty murder. I don’t need a Beast Boy that has bloodstained teeth.
5. Burning Robin away
Alright so Dick confronts Lil Dickie in his mind and Kory almost gets vivisected during their torture plots, which leads to Dick going full “no more Robin” and Kory burning the asylum to the ground. The Lil Dickie beating up Robin, telling him that being Robin ruined his childhood scenes actually were an extremely great use of Tomaso Sanelli’s (Lil Dickie) presence on the show.This has been Dick’s conflict from episode one, dealing with how Bruce, Batman, and Robin ruined his childhood and misplaced his anger. We get some closure on that front this episode. Hopefully it marks the end of the flashback sequences for Robin though and gets us forward to fighting the “big bad” of the season.
While I don’t know if the sections really “go” with the Rachel asylum plot stuff in this episode, it’s a great follow-up to the feelings brought to the fore last episode. I don’t love Lil Dickie making Robin’s blood go splatter, but everything else about that scene was good. Especially as it led to Dick abandoning the Robin costume at episode’s end. Throwing the suit into the fire after being disgusted by the half-smile he sees of himself in his costumed-reflection in the asylum was great. Hopefully, this means he’s done with what Bruce made him, and strikes out to do something new. Maybe when he gets reinvented as Nightwing, things will improve. We’ll see in a few episodes.
That’s all for this week folks, sound off in the comments below and feel free to disagree with me, and come back next week as Dick (probably) puts the moves on Donna in true Grayson style!
