Well fuck Batman y’all it’s time for Titans! This week’s episode “Together” is again the best one yet. In fact every episode has improved over the last. Now that doesn’t mean that this show is good, as I have told many a person recently, but it means that there’s a possibility it could be. And that makes all the difference. And, as I’ve been saying, less crazy blood, more characters being realistic, and less absurdity, goes a long way toward making Titans watchable. This was very much watchable. We got sexy time, plot progression, and good fight scenes. What more could you ask for. Let’s dive in!
1. Still uneven, but a marked improvement
So again as I stated above, this is the best episode of this show thus far, for multiple reasons. First, focusing on the actual plot is usually a great place to start. We’ve had five episodes thus far, and 2 have been standalones mostly, and the other three could very well have been condensed and cut. Hell this could have been the second episode of this show, or even the first at times. While I think “Doom Patrol” was not awful and featured weird and interesting team, and that it was exciting to see live-action Hawk and Dove, they didn’t serve a purpose other than to showcase those characters. Hawk and Dove have shown up in the hospital, and I doubt we see the Doom Patrol again. It would have been great to get these characters together and established before we threw more world-building at us.
The whole experience has been very turbulent, and with next week’s focus on Jason Todd, it seems we are only going to continue that. Even this episode is still dichotomous between scenes of humor and seriousness, not all bad, but not altogether good or coherent. Hell we don’t even get the title screen til a fourth of the way through. Just forget it at that point. I did until it showed up. We’ve also had completely different writing teams every episode and very little consistency in the amount of humor, the tone, the grotesque violence (which while up this week from last, was not gross), and in the plot as it has been revealed. Upcoming “Batman and The Outsiders” scribe Bryan Hill tackles this week alongside co-executive producer of Titans Gabrielle Stanton who is a former The Flash executive producer and writer (and who co-wrote the season one finale of the show). You can maybe tell who wrote what in some aspects. It’s a much “lighter” episode with more jokes and less moodyness, that happens to land.
I think this show is working out its identity as it goes, which is something maybe most shows on primetime do. It seems odd that for the first show out of the gate for DC Universe they couldn’t have figured out what they were going to do, executed it, and gone back and re-filmed episodes if need be. But they didn’t. And that’s ok, because if it’s more of this and if Akiva Goldsman never writes an episode again, I’d be happy. I lament it took five episodes, but this, yes this, finally is starting to feel like a Titans show we can be proud of.
2. Training montage
We begin this episode with an old fashion training montage, after of course Dick almost bangs it out with the owner of the dumpy hotel they’re staying in. A perfectly apt thing for a young group of heroes who don’t know each other: it’s a hilarious sequence, a long one too, until it’s not. We laugh at Kory who can’t hit a tractor and learn her strengths and weaknesses which come up again later. We laugh at the jokes Kory makes about Gar’s transformation. The, “I promise it’ll be worth it,” + the “I’ve heard that before” line slayed me. Also Gar having to go get naked to transform was great, and I can’t wait to see how we resolve this and get more animals out of him. Then we turn to Rachel, who freaks everyone out with her weird black mouth gas. And we move on, right as Gar asks Dick what he can do.
Continued belowEveryone about this is what a show about the Titans should be. I don’t even so much mind the swearing here. The “shits” are starting to warm up to me. I guess it is how normal people talk. I want more fun training bits. I love the team bonding, the dynamics, the having an actual cause instead of just the discrete and disconnected events. I could have seen this happening in a fun team comic, and I would have enjoyed it in both places.
3. Meet your new daddy!
All the Nuclear Family stuff, so far, hasn’t really landed for me. Mainly because I don’t know anything about them, or their brand of crazy. We remedy that this week as we’re introduced to a new daddy after Kory killed Daddy Numero Uno. It’s a creepy sequence with an asylum that’s not Arkham, but it’s ok cause the writers make up an “Arkham of the Midwest,” in Agnews Asylum, named after a real, former, insane asylum in California.
They definitely kill and torture a used car salesman, but when I don’t have to see it and there’s just a passing comment about blood on shirts remedied by Tide to Go, it’s all good. As long as I don’t have to see the ridiculousness of the blood, I’m good. Even the fight scene with Dick, Kory, and co. was way more tasteful than episode’s past. The mom gets one of Robin’s “R”s to the face, and doesn’t coat the camera with a bucket of blood. I can handle unhinged, odd, comic book, crazy, just as long as it doesn’t diminish and take away from the big things going on. I am a little confused at the Amanda Waller/Suicide Squad-level bombs in the heads of the family that Dr. Adamson sets off at the end of the episode. They seem a little lazy, but at least the weirdest and worst part of the first few episodes is gone, and off on a high note.
4. The “intended activity”
So Dick and Kory have the sex. You definitely think he’s gonna hook up with the widowed hotel owner, but nah Kory throws her hat in the ring. For a pair of characters that have a history of hooking up and so forth in the comics, this development is sure to excite many. Kory wants to know more about Dick, and Dick doesn’t wanna share secrets at that moment so instead he opts for his…well you know. It’s funny too as the interaction is padded by Kory’s visit to the liquor store, but then the fight on the other side. It’s a well filmed and executed moment. They pause the camera long enough to see Dick and Kory and all the tension, and don’t give us a ton of the action, but definitely enough. More to come? We’ll see.
5. “So you’re Robin?”
Finally, after five episodes of secrets, Dick reveals to the team that he’s Robin as they take down the Nuclear Family. Watching Rachel and Gar’s mouth to the floor reactions is priceless. Watching them stumble after the battle is better. Gar and Rachel’s jokes and comments are how I imagine most people would react there and it totally works. Even Dick’s shift to definitively not killing, and being much less angsty is much needed. This is the first time Robin has felt like Robin.
This is protracted by Dick getting saved by Jason Todd, the new Robin, who I imagine we’ll learn more about next week. Dick goes to confront their tormentor and get more information about “Rachel’s father” and ends up almost killed. Instead, Jason swoops in and does about what Dick did moments ago with the Nuclear Family, although Jason is much more cocky. I imagine that sense of being right and arrogance will fade some, but probably not next episode as the pair work together. Might be no plot progression, but should still be interesting?
That’s all we have this week folks. Come back next week for more Jason Todd, and if patterns continue, a halfway decent episode of this show. Shout off in the comments below as we continue this journey!
