It’s more like a helmet than a hood, but talking about the man under the hood sounds cooler. The second episode of Titans season 3 starts with an homage to ‘Under the Red Hood’ and ends up going its own direction. With the Titans arriving in Gotham, they quickly learn the City will never let them sleep as Dick works on figuring out that “better Batman” thing.
1. Under the Red Hood
In the previous review I mentioned how producers these days only real play they have with audiences is ‘when’ they structure a specific plot beat not if it happens. “Red Hood” continues to show the writers room is willing to speed up the timetable of certain reveals in ways that also alter the source text they are riffing from. Who was under the Red Hood was likely never in doubt for audiences. The comic book readers were clearly familiar with Jason Todd’s new nom de plume given the characters, surprisingly, resilient presence despite a solid half decade under the pen of one of the worst writers of the past three decades. Todd’s return arc the 2004-2006 ‘Under the Red Hood’ written by Judd Winick with art by Doug Mahnke became a new classic in the “Batman” canon. In 2010 the storyline was adapted into a popular direct to video animated featured directed by Brandon Vietti from a screenplay by Winick exposing the character to a new audience. While Jason Todd might not be as mainstream popular as Harley Quinn, his property appreciates a similar albeit cult status due. With Curran Walters donning the Red Hood his popularity will surely receive another boost.
The costume itself works well in live action. Previous marketing material had been limited to production stills and a few brief shots from trailers which are never good indicators of how something will look in motion. The hood itself is always going to be a problem much like the Iron Man helmet in live action you can’t really tweak it to emote, it just stares back at you dead eyed. The mask isn’t as bulky as I thought it would be, which is another real issue of how to make it proportional to Walters body. The costume designer is credited to Joyce Schure with specialty costumes by Laure Jean Shannon, together I think they did an effective job of translating the suit from the comics and making it fit the overall design language of the show.
With the evident lack of mystery revealing Jason under the cracked Red Hood, in an image not far off from Darth Vader-Anakin’s reveal in Star Wars: Rebels “Twilight of the Apprentice,” is a smart move that both shakes up the typically understood structure of these types of shows and doesn’t waste the audience’s time. Typically, in the Berlanti Production side of things the seasonal Big Bad isn’t revealed until about the mid-season finale – the advent of mid-season crossovers has changed this trope somewhat. Titans is obviously working on a much shorter time frame but even Slade Wilson’s presence in the second season wasn’t revealed to the protagonists until episode 4 “Aqualad” and 5 “Deathstroke.” One of the consistent flaws of the Marvel Netflix series has been holding off the intersection of hero and villain until the back third of the series and often the season finale. By pushing the Jason revelation to the second episode Titans forgoes the more typical mysterious tormentor plot for the more effective antagonistic one.
It leaves Dick in a vulnerable spot, but also a novel one. He and the rest of the Titans will obviously be confused and torn over how to handle the Red Hood now that they know it is Jason. That soul searching however now has time to be drawn out and meditated on over the span of roughly 13 episodes. The writers now have the emotional ‘A’ arc for the season setup from which everything can now orbit. While the show has not been great at effectively using its ensemble nature setting, setting this up now is better structure than the previous two seasons have had by miles.
2. Bird’s Opening and Queen’s Gambit
Now with the setting of Gotham City Titans finally went for a convoluted supervillain plot for the core plot an episode. Previous episodes if they featured costumed villains where often limited to simply wanting to kill the Titans (ex: Dr. Light in season 2) that didn’t interact with the location-based aspect of superheroes narratives or the shows. From the opening bombing to the bank heist, the plot is all part of a multilayered game of cat and mouse to concocted to punish Dick Grayson and the Titans. In the end Red Hood probably just wants to kill them, he’s just doing it with a bit of style. That style involves using the people of Gotham as bait and expendable pawns as part of a convoluted chess metaphor. While the show has glanced at the celebrity-hero nature of the Titans we’ve never seen them meaningfully interact with the public or seen them fail the public they extra-judiciously chosen to protect. Until now as the bank plot blows up in their face.
Using the chess opener, Bird’s Opening, and the home address of the first bomber as part of a series of layered references was convoluted, but a nice change of pace. Beast Boy figuring out that the answer to the riddle is by reversing the question seems deus ex-esque but fits the free-thinking nature of the character. At the very least it isn’t somehow reconstructing a fingerprint from a digitally reconstructed bullet. For all the theatrics of this plot, it forces the show to become something of a procedural which is a structuring element most episodes have lacked.
3. Down at the End of the Hall
One element that should hopefully bind the season going forward is the introduction of Vincent Kartheiser as Dr. Jonathan Crane aka the Scarecrow. After being stopped by Batman in the past he now serves as a consultant for the GCPD in return for certain privileges. The show is clearly positioning him as a Hannibal Lecter type, which could be interesting. The character was previously portrayed in live action by Cillian Murphy and David W. Thompson on Gotham, audiences haven’t seen one quite like this. Jonathan Crane likes to mow the grass. There isn’t anything wrong with that, it serves as an interesting real world references point that grounds a character who appears to have some attention deficit disorder.
For all the Hannibal Lecter posturing I’m a little surprised-let down that director Carol Banker, who has directed multiple episodes of this show along with Gotham and other DC related series, didn’t go for the obvious play of mimicking either Michael Mann’s direction from Manhunter or Jonathan Demme’s in Silence of the Lambs. Mann’s Lecktor* scenes were a neo noir extension of Billy Wilder work in Double Indemnity by going one step further to not just symbolize entrapment but to blur the line between who is and isn’t in prison. If it weren’t for the costumes, you wouldn’t after a while. Demme takes that but adds in sight line matching to visually represent who is and isn’t on top of a conversation. These would’ve been obvious references points, but they would have been effective ones that could have told the audience about Dick’s state of mind. Instead, we get a kind of bland shot-reverse-shot setup without much tension.
The presence of Crane does help to add a further wrinkle to the shows view of Batman and by extension vigilantes in general. Dick is aghast at “taking advice from a crazy guy” which is a bit rich coming from the protégé of the “crazy guy” who put him in there. It might not always be nice or nuanced, but the show has done a real effort to treat their characters with a level of psychological realism. In doing so it helps to put the lie to Dick’s anger at asking Crane for advice. To him Crane is a “crazy guy,” but not Bruce. The man who psychologically weaponized his guilt and tortured him as part of a larger response to the psychic trauma of his parents’ murder.
*oh the convoluted rights issues that are those Harris novels.
4. Violent Parasomnia
That attempt to ground things within a medical reality also extends to what is going on with Starfire who has another incident. Her psychologist friend thinks she is experience Violent Parasomnia, which is a violent episode before and after entering REM mode of sleep – essentially. Having a name for this is interesting, what it doesn’t do is make it feel integrated into the fabric of the show. As previously mentioned despite having an excellent ensemble cast, connecting A-B-C plot threads for episodes or giving the rest of the cast something to do hasn’t really been these shows strong suit. Starfire feels isolated from the rest of the cast who outside of Beast Boy and Superboy don’t appear to know she is having these episodes. On one hand that feeling of isolation is a good representation of where the character is at emotionally, but as a structural element of the show it reads as vestigial. We know Blackfire is coming, this isn’t an elegant way of setting it up.
5. Suddenly, Bike Shorts
The suddenness of Starfire’s episodes doesn’t feel intergraded into the larger narrative of the series, but that seeming randomness allows the transitions too them feel effective within the episode itself. Once again Titans pre and post title sequences are jarring shift in tonality that just reads as odd as we discover what Hank and Dawn have been up to. Hank is now a bicycle cop in those little bike shorts. The comedy of Alan Ritchson’s hulking frame in those shorts and bikes is well done. The comedy of that sequence, however, feels completely out of place compared to the gangland brutality of Red Hood’s head hunting and takeover scene. Once again, I’m left with the recognition of just how plainly brutal our heroes are to every minor problem.
The second episode of titans is an overall tighter and better episode that brings the cast together to begin dealing with the nascent problem of the Red Hood.
