Titans
I had a feeling that this was coming but it was made official yesterday. HBO Max announced that "Titans" and "Doom Patrol" would be ending with their current fourth seasons. If you haven't watched "Doom Patrol," I'd highly recommend it. Maybe I'll recap that series someday. I started season one and fell off. Anyways, "Titans." Yeah, this might be the first show that I've ever hate watched, at least at first. Let's hope they can end things on a high note. Let's go.
"Jinx"
[Tim's in the midst of his VR training and he hits the ground hard.]
Tim Drake: "You're watching me, aren't you?"
Bernard: "No. Just monitoring your stats."
Tim Drake: "I look like an idiot."
Bernard: "You should see me doing lateral lunges. I look like a demented hermit crab."
The Titans are still reeling from their defeat at the hands of Mother Mayhem. Dick and Kory go to Bludhaven penitentiary to recruit a magic using ex-associate of Dick's, Jinx, to help. They get looped in to a plot to sell the heart of a dark elf back to her when the heart turns Kory to stone. While training at STAR labs, Tim, Conner and Bernard learn more about how Mayhem's victims are connected and realize that Sebastian Sanger is their next target. Rachel and Gar are lured into the forest as he keeps following his strange visions. Mother Mayhem lures Sebastian into a trap that gets him arrested for murder.
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| Into the woods. |
"Titans" has always had pacing issues. And knowing that this is the final season, those pacing issues were on my mind. It sounds like the show knew that this would be the final season prior to filming, so I'm hopeful that it will close out in a satisfactory way, I'm just a little nervous that the show will rush it's way to that ending in the last couple of episodes. I think there is a lot of good stuff here but I'm worried that the writers are focusing on the wrong stuff. Like, did we need a whole episode where Conner was in jail, wrongly accused of killing Lex Luthor? Like, what was the point of that? I would have much rather we learned a little bit more about the re-emergence of the Organization that that plot that basically went nowhere.
There are a lot of plates spinning in this episode so let's look at the storylines based on the ones that I'm most to least interested in. I was most into the Jinx plot in this episode. There is a reason she's the title of the episode and I wish that there had been a little bit more of her. I think Lisa Ambalavanar is a great addition to the cast. This show can be overly serious so Jinx is the perfect character to sort of bring down the tension and the seriousness. The sequence with Dick and Jinx is a lot of fun. I enjoyed their back and forth and they have a lot of chemistry. Brendon Thwaites is pretty stoic most of the time so anyone who gets him out of that I'm a fan of.
I am all for them introducing magic into "Titans." The Titans comics have never been super realistic. I am glad that they are bringing that into the show, but I want more! I want them to be even more fantastical. Like, when Jinx and Dick went to that club, I really wanted there to be more magic. More weird creatures. I wanted it to feel more like the cantina scene in "Star Wars" rather than a club scene in "Gossip Girl." Like, where were the non human creatures? Even Lironne, the dark elf that Dick fights with, was just a normal looking woman. Maybe you got mileage out of it. Maybe you prefer this more realistic take. Couldn't be me. I don't think anyone is shocked when we learn that Jinx knew how to cure Kory of her stone situation and that she's in deep. Dick pays off her debt with a 7 day hold in order for her to help.
The Mother Mayhem/Brother Blood plot keeps moving forward though it is kind of taking baby steps. We do get some forward momentum here. It turns out the symbol being left at the cults crimes is from Sebastian's game and all the victims share a genetic trait passed down from an ancient Assyrian culture. Mother Mayhem manipulates Sebastian back to the office of the man who passed on his video game and then has him kill himself in front of Sebastian. Sebastian is taken in and just when you think we are going to get a second wrongly accused murder plot in three episodes, Conner bursts in and grabs Sebastian before he can finish saying the magic words.
Tim goes to STAR labs to VR train and it's a lot of fun. I loved Conner not knowing what to do. I loved the flirting between Bernard and Tim. I'm going to need them to jump start this romance subplot. I'm going to need to see a Tim and Bernard make out session before the mid-season break. So hop to it!
I think the stuff with Gar and Logan and Kory's vision are interesting but they feel really tacked on. I have a feeling they are going to go somewhere soon but in this episode they really feel like an afterthought or like just necessary table setting.
Grade: B+
"Super Super Mart"
Kory Anders: "I can't believe we're doing this."
Gar Logan: "The asylum was burned down."
Dick Grayson: "We're going to take another look. Make sure we didn't miss anything."
Tim Drake: "Can somebody fill me in, please?"
Dick Grayson: "The Asylum was run by the Organization. It's a cult."
Rachel Roth: "My dad's cult."
Jinx: "Hey, your dad led a cult?"
Rachel Roth: "Yeah?"
Kory Anders: "He is the reason I came to Earth. To kill him."
Rachel Roth: "What? To kill me."
Tim Drake: "You tried to kill Rachel."
Kory Anders: "Hey, I thought we sorted all this out."
Rachel Roth: "We did. I'm just, like, telling him the facts."
The Titans have Sebastian Sanger in their custody and things start to come together. They realize that the cult led by Rachel's father, Trigon, is still running and that they are after Sebastian. The team heads to the site of the Asylum to investigate and find that it is now the site of a Super Super Mart. While investigating the underground of the site, they find some disturbing things about a cult prophecy that implicates the entire team and Sebastian. During all this, we learn about how May Bennett got involved with the Organization and her relation to Sebastian.
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| Sisters. |
Now this is more like it. One of my issues with "Titans" is that sometimes it feels like the writers are kind of flying by the seat of their pants. Like they don't really have a plan for the season. Maybe they have a beginning and ending in mind, but they aren't sure how to get there so they just wing it. And when you are only working with 12-13 episodes per season you can really feel that. This is the first season of the show to air where I really feel like they have plotted this out. I had a feeling that they would tie this season back to season one when it was announced who the villains were going to be but this being "Titans" I couldn't be absolutely sure.
But the show surprised me. Pretty much immediately Kory, Dick and Rachel are commenting on how this feels oddly familiar, much like how the team first came together. There is the blood moon that is mentioned in both the visions that Kory and Gar had. I do love that Kory tells Dick about her vision right away. There isn't any hiding this information like there would be on a lot of other superhero shows. I definitely appreciated that.
Jinx continues to be a delight. I love her continuously taunting Conner about Superman's fear of magic and the idea that he is off planet because he knew this was coming. I love watching Conner get more and more upset and you can tell that Jinx is just feeding off his reactions but Conner can't stay neutral. It does seem like aside from all the good natured ribbing, Jinx really does want to help Conner not have the brown thumb that Superman has when it comes to magic.
When the team gets to the site of the Asylum they found that there has been a Super Super Mart built there. This is a great visual gag and I kind of wish that they had done more with it. Like, maybe actually go inside the store. I think "Titans" does this a lot. They are hesitant at times to commit to the ridiculousness of this. But they lean into it at the end of the episode when they are confronted with the horde of zombies who are armed with the implements they stole from Super Super Mart.
It's a great action sequence and the Titans really get to let loose in a way that they don't usually get to. Though, I'm not sure it was super clear that these were zombies at first. I definitely thought that they were living followers of the cult that were fighting the Titans out of devotion to Trigon and the Organization. The highlight of this fight is Zombie Deathstroke. It's a cool concept that I don't think they do nearly enough with. We get to see Superboy punch his head off and then re-attach. He actually stabs Conner and harms him. The team does a bait and switch with Jinx pretending to be Sebastian and then killing Deathstroke for good. There's no explanation on how Mother Mayhem got ahold of the body but I guess it doesn't really matter.
At the end of the episode, Superboy vomits up blood and a snake. So that's great. Oh and he does hide it from the team, so I guess I spoke too soon.
The weaker part of this episode is the flashbacks to how May Bennett became Mother Mayhem. It's very run of the mill. There's no surprises. May has magical ability. She's approached by the Organization. She bonds with a woman named Gina but is then pit against her when both are put before Trigon as potential brides. May is chosen due to her resilience yet she and Gina stay friends. May becomes pregnant but her son is seemingly killed because the prophecy says a daughter not a son. This drives May mad and she ends up locked up in the basement of the Asylum until the Titans burn it down. Gina saves her. Surprise! Sebastian is her son. Which, I guess we are buying that Joseph Morgan could be Franka Potente's son. Sure. The Titans do find a fun storybook that shows them all dead. It's just a very generic origin but Franka Potente continues to kill it so I'll give it some leeway.
Grade: B+
Next up, we finish up the first half of this final season with the Titans trying to protect Sebastian and deal with some changes in Conner.
What are you all thinking of this final season so far? Any reactions to this being the beginning of the end? Let me know in the comments.
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