Titans S01E01 Review: When There's Trouble

Titans, Season 1, Episode 1: Titans

So the Titans show has been hit with a lot of negative flak from the internet community, something that, well, the internet tends to do with practically anything that tries to be different. I must admit, though, that I certainly wasn't very optimistic about this show at all. The costumes looked good, sure, but the trailer seems to promise nothing but a dark'n'grit fest, and the fact that the trailer ended up hinging mostly on dark shadows, ultra-violence and Robin's "fuck Batman" seems to be a hilariously off-the-mark adaptation of the Teen Titans. Sure, while I'm a big fan of the 2003 light-hearted comedy cartoon, I am also familiar with the source material. And the source material of Teen Titans do explore darker and more mature themes than its title might imply... but honestly, I was pretty soured by the original trailer. Throw in some weird bit of confirmation that they were going to do spinoffs even before the first episode was aired, and it is pretty much an obvious case of putting the egg before the chicken.

I decided to give the show a chance anyway, because, well, I still love the superhero team enough to give it a chance. If nothing else, at least we'll get some really cool costumes and action scenes, right? And thank god that I did, because this wasn't a horrid bore-fest like Krypton was. Sure, it certainly was far away from being perfect, but it was definitely watchable.

The first episode of Titans, interestingly, plays its cards close to its chest. Out of the four main members of the team (Cyborg is left out of the cartoon gang because apparently he can't pull double duty in the JLA and the Titans), Beast Boy's appearance is relegated to a glorified post-credits scene while Starfire spends all of her screentime separated from Robin and Raven, both of whom are our two main characters here.

Raven and Robin are delved into a whole lot -- we start off with Raven witnessing the tragic sequence of the Flying Graysons as young Dick sees his family die before his eyes. We don't actually get a long scene, but the fragments and flashbacks we saw -- as well as context clues -- make Dick's origin story clear without spelling it out. It also very neatly plays into Raven's whole deal of being an emotional empath that can't really get a grip on her powers.

It's definitely a neat way to showcase Raven and this retool of her character from mostly being an enigmatic, secretive and mature young woman into a scared girl that has no fucking clue about what's going on is definitely a move that pays off. The brief bits of the darker-eyed Raven manifesting in bus windows or glass tables is a neat bit of horror trick as Rachel goes on with her life, until some lunatic bursts in and shoots Rachel's mother (not her real mother!) in front of her, causing Rachel to go berserk and unleash some demonic screaming that throws the Acolyte away. With nowhere to go, Rachel just runs and runs all the way to Detroit, where her ghostly evil side manages to keep her out of harm's way and into the path of one Detective Dick Grayson.

Dick, meanwhile, also gets a fair bit of build-up. A newly-transferred cop from Gotham City, who's completely distant to everyone else due to problems with a "former partner", Dick clearly hasn't hung up his utterly fantastic-looking Robin suit, as he shows up to break a drugs deal in a genuinely fantastic alley fight scene. The Robin costume looks absolutely fantastic, doing the dual job of staying very true to the comic-book look while also looking practical and armoured, and I do love how they keep some of the more exotic comic weaponry like the R-symbol shuriken or the collapsible staff.

Also, because it's been so memetic, the "Fuck Batman" line was actually the punch-line of a joke, and it's actually not a bad one.

Anyway, coming back to the police department and seeing that the local cops are definitely not tolerant of vigilantes, Dick ends up meeting Rachel, who's picked up by the policemen after the Raven demon-persona steers her away from... someone who may or may not mean harm to her. Rachel just wants them to lock her up, while at the same time realizing that this officer Grayson is the same boy she saw from her nightmare with the trapeze artists.

Dick, meanwhile, tries to play things safe the police way, while pondering about angsty stuff. I approve of the angsty stuff, though, as Dick points out while talking to his co-worker Amy, as Dick talks about his 'partner', a hero everyone looks up to, and someone that solves everything with violence... but Dick ended up walking away because he was becoming "too much like him". It's the same cause of Dick and Bruce's spat in the comics, and seeing just how brutal Robin was in this episode, it's definitely a great direction to take the character in.

Of course, Rachel ends up being kidnapped by the Acolyte, who rants and rambles about how Rachel is some sort of a gateway to hell, and through a horrifying ritual (that involves cutting Rachel's heart out and burning it alongside the hearts of an animal and a simpleton) he is going to close the gateway to hell to save them all. Those who are more in-tune to Raven's backstory would certainly know what the Acolyte's babbling about, but, shit, Rachel's just a kid! Interestingly, though, it's not Dick that saves the day, but Rachel herself fainting and activating her Raven persona, who straight-up pulls a horror genre show, transforms into a swarm of shadows that enters the Acolyte and kills him, causing him to... vomit his organs or something.

It's a neat little setup as Dick rushes in to find Rachel, as it builds Dick up as basically being placed in the same role that Bruce Wayne was to him -- an adult that has been through the same sort of tragedies that the other person has been through, and this new mentor dynamic between Dick and Rachel is something that's certainly interesting. Brenton Thwaites and Teagan Croft play their roles really well, and play off each other neatly.

The bit with Starfire, played by Anna Diop, is... it's definitely more than a bit underwhelming. The poor actress has come under heavy fire by some really racially-charged comments before the show's release, but at the same time while I don't really have much to criticize about her performance in this episode, it's also not particularly spectacular. Throw in some genuinely odd choices of fashion for Starfire (I know that's not her costume, but still) and a pretty bland story for this pilot, and she unfortunately becomes one of the weaker parts of the episode. They're giving Starfire a dose of amnesia, and I'm genuinely not sure if it's necessary. It's neat to see her wander around, not even sure what she's doing, and the idea of an amnesiac who finds herself embroiled in this insane conspiracy that includes a super-expensive hotel room, some dude gagged in a closet, a Russian club and Kory Anders having super-strength, the ability to burn bullets and shoot out gouts of flame... it's an interesting concept, but not executed particularly well. She just wanders around, kills some fools (including minor antagonist Konstantin Kovar) before leaving.

Overall, it's the Raven/Robin stuff that really sold me on this pilot. It's not a perfect pilot -- the Starfire subplot was trying too hard to push the mystery angle, and there were definitely moments where the show was trying a bit too hard to look edgy and go "this ain't your Sunday morning cartoon!" but it's definitely a decent enough pilot that made me willing to give this a chance. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• The entire premise of this TV show is based on the superhero team Teen Titans (later just Titans). While initially a group of superheroes made up of "the sidekicks" and a series of side-stories, it would later on be rebranded as "New Teen Titans", featuring a cast made up of older versions of those kid sidekicks and revamping and introducing some of the most iconic DC characters. The team that we're seeing in this show are the most prominent faces of the 80's New Teen Titans series, itself the biggest inspiration of the vastly popular 2003 cartoon.
• Robin, a.k.a. Richard "Dick" Grayson, is the first sidekick taken in by Batman. When his trapeze-artist family was killed in a sabotage, Dick Grayson was taken in by billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne, who saw potential and a kindred spirit in the young boy. However, despite serving as Batman's sidekick for years, Dick and Bruce came to heavy disagreement, leading to Robin going off solo and devoting much of his time to the Teen Titans.
• Dick moving out of Gotham City and taking a job as a policeman in a different city (Bludhaven in the comics, Detroit here) is taken from the 90's Nightwing solo series.
• Raven, a.k.a. Rachel Roth, is a mystical empath who is the daughter of a human/demon union (more on that later, since I assume it'll lean heavily towards the main story of this season) and found kindred spirit among the Titans. Able to manipulate emotion and powerful dark magics, Raven must also fight a darker side of herself as her father's dark influence seeks to take over her. 
• Raven having prophetic dreams about other Teen Titans and being the catalyst to the formation of the team is true to her initial appearance in New Teen Titans. 
• Raven being younger than most of the Titans is a possible reference to the third Teen Titans rebranding, where the spirit of a then-dead Raven was summoned by a villain and placed in a younger teenage body.
• Starfire, a.k.a. Koriand'r, a.k.a. Kory Anders, is an alien from the planet Tamaran, able to manipulate heat, flame and other forms of energy. Koriand'r was captured by alien slaves and experimented upon, granting her said powers, but she broke free and arrived on Earth. Again, just like Raven, she was introduced during the New Teen Titans title, and I'm not going to really spoil all that much.
• Starfire having amnesia was a huge (and often-criticized) plot point during her stint on Red Hood and the Outlaws. 
• Beast Boy, a.k.a. Garfield Logan, was a former sidekick of the superhero team known as the Doom Patrol. When Logan was young, he was sick with an incurable rare illness. Logan's wealthy scientist parents injected Logan with a serum which had the side effect of bleaching his hair and skin green, as well as granting him the ability to shapeshift into animals. 
• The Acolyte is an enemy of the Young Justice team (itself sort of a junior Teen Titans), a psychotic cult leader obsessed with replacing god with another deity of his choosing. Clearly, the show's Acolyte doesn't share much with his comic-book counterpart.
• Konstantin Kovar is a relatively minor antagonist of the Teen Titans, an agent of the USSR who clashed heavily with the Teen Titans, usually in respect to Kovar's son, Leonid Kovar, himself a superpowered hero called Red Star. Konstantin Kovar's most famous appearance is probably as a recurring villain in Arrow's fifth season, played by Dolph Lundgren. 
• The Joker and Batman both get brief mentions, but I'm sure I don't need to say anything about them.