Well fuck Batman, y’all welcome back to our review of Titans, the first of the DC Universe original series. After last week’s pilot episode, we get an introduction to Hawk and Dove and the plot is streamlined into just the Dick and Rachel narrative. Also if you expected less blood and violence…well you shouldn’t have. Let’s dive in!
1. Somewhere between Watchmen and Gotham
I’m just gonna come right out and say it. Parts of this episode were very nearly unbearable to watch. It might just be me, maybe I’m squeamish, I’m open to being wrong, but there is an unnecessary amount of violence in this show. Not violence that serves the show in any way, just blood splattering across windows, people’s hands being sliced open with scissors, and the classic garden shear to the testicles. None of this is beneficial to this show in any way shape or form. It’s not tasteful. It’s gratuitous, and indulgent. I’m not a fan. Also if you were turned off by “fuck Batman” last week, do be advised there’s plenty of “fucks” and “motherfuckers” this week.
There’s just sense of reveling in the violence that seems to me to be the wrong lesson from superhero comics. The jokes made about the costumes, and the sheer, seemingly perverted, thrill of the first fight scene of the episode featuring Hawk, Dove, and Robin reminded me entirely of “Watchmen,” mixed with the darker silhouette of Zach Snyder’s Watchmen. I have never understood Alan Moore’s, and others like him, critique of the genre so clearly until now. Likewise, the introduction of the Nuclear Family to track down Rachel and Dick and their torture of Detective Rohrbach was tinged with all the more ridiculous aspects of Gotham. Both are tonal choices I’m not really into.
This combined with the phrenetic skipping between cities, and the sort of comic book-esque plotting that moves haphazardly from scene to scene leaned into the worst aspects of last episode. I recently finished watching Marvel and Hulu’s Runaways, and am grieving the show this could have been with less sepia tone, less fake blood, and more DCU deep dives and connections. Alas.
2. Hawk and Dove
So, we start the episode with Hawk and Dove, having not been introduced or mentioned at all last week. It turns out Dick is taking Rachel to rendezvous with them and plans on dumping her with them and running off back to Detroit because he’s somehow not a good person anymore. Hawk and Dove have been dating for three and a half years at this point and Hank gifts Dawn an aviary for their anniversary. They can’t have sex cause he’s so decrepit from all the fighting crime. Their both alcoholic and pill addicts, and their relationship is losing its flame in their regular civilian lives. Dawn totally fantasizes about Dick cause he put on that Dick Grayson charm and they had a fling as teens. All weirdly mature stuff, somewhat extraneous, and also an excessively large part of the episode. No Starfire or Beast Boy to be found here at all this week despite being a huge part of last episode and the cliffhanger. Oh well.
Positives though: the Hawk and Dove costumes look amazing. Extremely high-quality, not at all like their CW Arrowverse cousins. These are beautiful, cinematically realized costumes. Dove’s looks particularly great and the wings really work, and the should-be-goofy-goggles really sell everything and bring it together. They look great while they’re getting tortured and shot at. Also Alan Ritchson, former Smallville Aquaman, gives a great performance as a tired, broken man trying to keep his life together. He looks huge and ripped and is one of the most convincingly menacing superheroes I’ve seen depicted in live-action. I’ll give credit where credit is due. Both Hawk and Dove seemed like great additions to the show, especially as established heroes since Robin is the only one we have seen thus far.
3. Alfred cameo!
With Dick and Rachel on the run to Washington D.C. for him to go full deadbeat dad on her, Dick of course pulls what is probably the “shitty Bruce Wayne” move of throwing a bunch of money at a problem. He pulls out his fancy phone with numbers of people like Donna Troy and calls Alfred! The man that picks up definitely sounds like an Alfred (caring British man). He calls Dick Master Grayson and obliges Dick in wiring him a bunch of money to do this crappy thing, like an Alfred would probably do. It’s both charming, and a showcase of the potential this show could have to be tied into the wider DCU. It’s weird this show is playing so close to the Batman mythology but skirting it worse than Supergirl did with it’s first season with Superman references and Lucifer does with the constant “My father” lines. It both highlights a problem, and is a moment only this show could deliver.
Continued below4. Dick stabbed that guy’s dick
Yeah I mostly just have this here to say: what the hell happened to Dick Grayson in this universe? Did someone make him watch his parents die like 500 times? Did he realize his mom was wearing pearls as she fell off the tightrope and now is reliving terrible, pearl-related nightmares? I just don’t know! But the guy is intense, sad, and somehow struggling with some inner demons. Dick literally takes the garden shears that were gonna be used to cut Hawk’s penis off and stabs the torturer in his nether region before tossing his “R” at a guy’s eye. WHHYYYYYYYY?!?!?!??!!?!?!?!?!?!?!? I don’t get it, this is not the Dick Grayson I know.
The guy was going to also leave Rachel with Hawk and Dove and take off. That’s neither heroic, nor should be possible for Dick. I guess in a universe where Dick didn’t have a lot of friends besides Hawk and Dove, and whoever that fourth woman in the picture at Hank and Dawn’s house was, he turned out a little bit evil when he finally gets tired of Bruce’s shit. This is like all grown-up “All-Star Batman & Robin” Dick Grayson, and I hope we find out soon who shoved their escrima stick up his ass cause I’m at a loss.
5. Kill your darlings
Right that makes sense. Introduce two first-time, live-action versions of a DC tag-team duo and then definitely kill the lady. I’m guessing they did this to build masculine, frustration energy between the two dudes that slept with her, but need to put aside their differences to defeat the bad guy or whatnot by the end of the season? C’mon you can do better than using a fully-capable, fully-realized heroine as a pawn in a larger narrative.
But that’s what happens. In a Gotham level moment of insanity the weird murder family somehow finds Dick even though his detective partner shouldn’t have known he was in D.C. and tracked him there. They then give Hank a concussion and toss Dawn off the roof. She’s still alive, but, c’mon we know she’s dead. I just don’t understand why we’d spend so much time being introduced to Hawk and Dove to possibly shove them off to their mortal coil by episode’s end. Oh well.
That was mostly negative. Lo siento. I’ll try to be better because somehow this show has an 8.1/10 on IMDB. Somebody explain that to me in the comments and we’ll see you next week as the Titans finally all meet each other for the first time.
