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Five Thoughts on Titans‘s “Lazarus”

By | August 27th, 2021
Posted in Television | % Comments

“Lazarus” was an episode that I had to sit on and revisit to really appreciate. The Bryan Edward Hill written flashback episode tracks the months leading up to Jason’s one-sided run in with the Joker. Acotr Curran Walters, Hill, and director Boris Mojsovski come together to create one of the most affective episodes of the season, all based around events audiences at least intuitively know. The creative team turn “Lazarus” into a character piece that tracks how people respond to trauma and the very different, often toxic, ways they deal with it.

1. Jason

While I wasn’t reading at the time, it has been interesting to track the persistent cult audience Jason Todd has developed. Jason Todd transformed from the trivia note of that Robin who died, first in TDKR, then for real in “Death in the Family” due to fan vote. The supposed enfant terrible of the Bat-Family. The sarcasm and negative traits that supposedly earned him that fan vote only helped him become a better anti-hero when he was explored in “Under the Red Hood” and later in “Red Hood and the Outlaws.” These excessive traits have always defined the popular conception of Jason Todd. Curran Walters to their credit has done a fantastic job of playing the insufferable little brother to Dick Grayson. When he tries to throw a punch on Dick in Titans S2E03 “Ghosts” and is violently put in his place – no thanks the parenting from Bruce – how could audiences not laugh-cheer at it? Those actions however all exist as traits imposed on the character. “Lazarus” is next to “Red Hood: The Lost Days” as one of the few objects that begins to unpack and explore a ‘why’ to Jason’s constant lashing out.

Jason Todd is stuck in a place of non-existence. He isn’t willing to try living as just Jason Todd, a lovable wiseass with friends. Bruce, and his untreated mental health problems, aren’t allowing him to preform Robin, the perfect symbol and projection of someone else. This non-existence pushes him to the borderlands of experience and meaning, a space where both begin to breakdown. In that breakdown he begins to excessively preform identity to secure meaning and identity. A function that only serves to expose his lack of one.

“I’m still me” Jason says with his typical smirking self-confidence after identifying one of Joker’s goons.

The statement only raises the question: Who is he? His friend Molly can only respond with the astute observation that his statement “sounds really cool” but doesn’t mean anything. Jason isn’t honest with Molly about who he is, so how does she know who “me” is?

The run in with Joker’s goon is laden with sexual metaphors that point towards Jason’s impotence in this state of non-identity. He can’t perform a basic takedown. It’s the goon who pulls a phallic pistol on him and beats him with it. It is only after he puts on a new costume, another symbol constructed by someone else, with a bulbous head and new pistols that he can perform like he used to. Only what started out as lashing out and id, has turned into sadism.

Curran Walters gives a subtle performance as Jason spirals out of control. Undone by the toxic masculinity culture taught him, Walters eyes earn the moment where he states he wants to get “better.” The same teachers have rendered him unequipped to even begin to understand what “better” actually means.

2. Bruce

Bruce Wayne-Batman has haunted this series since Dick Grayson said “Fuck Batman” in the pilot. To his children he was a distant, almost unreachable, exacting Father. To others he was an irreproachable icon. Both relationships rely on distance to function, which is why the people closest to him feel such enmity towards him. Titans hasn’t shied away from emphasizing and for once naming the more toxic elements that support-create Batmen. At one point Dr. Leslie Thompkins diagnosis’s Bruce with borderline personality disorder, which features a variety of effects but can be centered around long-term manipulative and unstable interpersonal relationships, distorted senses of self, and strong emotional reactions. This is the second time I’ve seen that disorder referenced in a television show, the first being with the lead character of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. (Yes, that is a TERRIBLE name for a show, but it is a delightful original musical that handles that and a bunch of other stuff with care and musical charm.) I’m glad the writers put a name to some of the things that makeup Bruce Wayne, they often either go unstated overall or obliquely – see the cocktail of alcohol pills and Robert Mapplethorpe in BvS.

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Beginning to put Bruce’s psyche in a more defined place has the inverse effect of driving the viewer away, it creates a space for more understanding. For all darkness and bitterness, the show has painted Bruce with, from the perspective of his sons primarily, Iain Glen and the series are incapable of only letting him be the monster that they think he is. He is and can be monstrous, but he can also be other things. Bruce just isn’t very good at them and has raised sons that have learned to discount his attempts. The facets of that relationship are represented the trio of scenes as he tries to help Jason. In the first scene, after Jason up from his Nightmare, Jason rebuffs any attempt at consoling him. Jason through the attributes taught to him by Bruce and American society in general, projects invulnerability. Unable to be emotionally vulnerable he instead ridicules Bruce for being “bad” at asking how someone else is doing. A later scene is less contentious down in the Batcave as Jason goes over Bruce’s collection – which now read like the trophies you read serial killers take from their victims. The location is notable, Bruce is surrounded by Bat symbols. The show has intimated that Batman is where he feels more comfortable, a space that Jason is also more comfortable playing in as well. Surrounded by symbolic assurance Bruce appears to be able to connect with Jason better, recognizing him as his son and even giving some dry humored relationship advice. The kind of interaction that Batman is often idealized as producing. When they visit Crime Alley and Jason is forced to interact Bruce Wayne, things begin to fall apart again. For his part Bruce appears to be genuinely trying and honest in his assertion that Jason doesn’t need to be Robin to be his son. Change is hard, it takes a long time, and might kill you, but Bruce is trying to change his relationship with Jason after everything with Dick. That promise of change, however, flies in the face of years of learned responses by Dick and Jason that lead both to assume deception or that he will discard them.

The Titans Bruce is the most we’ve seen an older Bruce Wayne, and they capture the tragedy of Batman in a way BvS,Beyond, “The Dark Knight Returns” haven’t. Those lonely interpretations are born out of loss that is often external in nature. Titans shows the loneliness of Bruce Wayne as self-inflicted, the byproduct of years of toxic relationships slowly breaking down even as he tries to improve them.

3. Leslie Thompkins

“Lazarus” tracks the slow dissolution of Jason and Bruce’s relationship due to the toxic nature of it. The corrosive effects of their actions lead one another to spiral into an abyss that destroys what they thought Batman and Robin meant. Though neither knows it, their relationship has hit terminal velocity making them all fait accompli. The locked in nature allows the solution to all their problems, expressed by Leslie Thompkins, shine brighter.

Jason and Bruce are intoxicated by toxic masculinity and the need to always be on guard and never show a hint of weakness. They will deflect, deny, and lie, to keep up the appearance that everything is ok. In contrast to that is Dr. Leslie Thompkins, someone who is honest about her feelings and experiences. She lets Jason know about her academic relationship with Jonathan Crane, then a “brilliant” graduate student. His attack on her and subjecting her to his fear gas. Such a trauma makes it seem like she would be forever broken by it, she still has nightmares about it, and yet she sits before Jason a functional adult. The incongruity of that intrigues Jason, pushing him to figure out how to conquer fear itself.

Her solution isn’t magic, though its succinct simplicity appears that way, she is just honest about her experiences. She allows herself to be emotionally vulnerable to her patients by telling them about that experience. Jason and Bruce are unable to be honest in that way with themselves or anyone. Jason is always in search of a medicative or mechanic solution to his mental health issue, a thought process that continues the body-as-machine metaphor that denies the squishy weakness the body found in hardbody masculinity. The ironic part is, Bruce is aware of all of this. He recognizes that Thompkins ability to be honest and emotionally vulnerable is what makes her a better psychologist, but it’s an awareness that is unable to spur him into action – at least not until it is too late.

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4. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

The introduction of Scarecrow as an outside consultant to the GCPD was understood as a reference to Hannibal Lecter, even if the show didn’t lean into that structure for very long or the visual language of Hannibal’s scenes in Silence of the Lambs or Manhunter. Director Boris Mojsovski staging for the first meeting of Jason and Dr. Crane doesn’t feature any of the eyeline matching of Silence. Instead plays out more along the lines of classic film noir ironically juxtaposing the cell bars onto Jason, who is contained by them, versus Crane’s mobility. The use of “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” by Iron Butterfly, however, is a clear reference to the climax of Michael Mann’s third film, Manhunter.

The use of Iron Butterflies acid opus in Manhunter frames the final battle between Will Graham and Francis Dollarhyde in biblical proportions, the obvious edit of the music matches the acid like film editing as time, space, and sound, come out of sync.

In “Lazarus” the episodes use of the song is once again biblical in nature but here framing Scarecrow as the snake in the Garden of Eden seducing Jason, in the role of Eve, into submitting to the dark side. While much of what Jason is experiencing would classically be understood as being put in a “feminized” position, and more literally in this case, the positional relationship is better understood as submissive. Submissive is both a better adjective for the mechanics of the scene, and one that moves away from a reductive gender binary that prizes a limited view masculinity and femininity. That prized masculinity is shown to be corrosive and failed in this episode. Characters like Leslie Thompkins and Molly are shown to be capable at dealing with trauma in ways Bruce and Jason are temperamentally incapable of. Unable, and denied any time, to process this latest trauma Jason begins to self-medicate into a fresh state of denial.

It’s taken a while, but Vincent Kartheiser’s turn as Scarecrow has grown on me. The show has developed an eccentric yet understated version of the character who is capable of manipulating people without his fear toxin or ghoulish mask (which remains under lock and key for now.) There is a strange, serene quality to Kartheiser’s performance which makes the moment of him suddenly Crip walking like he’s a marionette the kind of sudden absurdity that strangely worked. If for nothing else than the visual of it all.

5. Lazarus

The mechanics of “how” Jason is resurrected shouldn’t be dwelled on too much. On one hand using the Lazarus Pit fits the comics. On the other, the idea that Bruce had no idea that the pit existed feels odd, though he is seasoned and arrogant to degree. Note the Ra’s al Ghul – esque blade in his trophy vault.


//TAGS | Titans

Michael Mazzacane

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