Titans S01E02 Review: Love Triangles

Titans, Season 1, Episode 2: Hawk and Dove

Definitely a pretty strong episode, even if I'm honestly a bit unsure of introducing guest stars this early, especially when we haven't even gotten through introducing all of the main characters yet. Oh well, maybe Hawk will be a main character? I certainly would welcome it! Both Starfire and Beast Boy sit out this episode entirely -- not even a cameo -- and it's definitely a welcome lack of distractions.

The episode's fight scenes, by the way, is nothing short of phenomenal. The DC comics fan in me is screaming pretty loudly at how, no, Dove should not be causing blood to spurt out of her victims, but the big action scenes in this episode between Hawk, Dove and Robin against the random goons are definitely done and choreographed amazingly well. The body armour suits definitely do look amazing and a huge notch above most of other TV superheroes, and as much as I would like to say that visuals don't make a TV show, damn, I would be lying if I wasn't geeking out at how good these three looked.

There is one weird point in the episode where the chronology isn't exactly clear,  when Robin showed up to help Hawk and Dove and it's not immediately clear that it was a flashback to one of their first meetings as opposed to Robin showing up at that point, but that's fine.

But more than anything, I'm definitely pleased that they cared a fair bit more about the characterization of these heroes. We're first introduced to Hawk being captured and threatened with genital mutilation, when his partner Dove shows up and saves him. These two are clearly veteran heroes -- or at least, people who have been doing this heroing for a long time. They're also clearly lovers and are planning to do one last big heist before retiring from good. The episode does a pretty great deal at showing the sheer amount of physical and mental stress that Hank Hall is under, and that's without counting his... performance issues. There's a scene later on where Dawn lists the amount of injuries Hank has, and it definitely sounds pretty painful.

Meanwhile, Dick and Rachel are drinking coffee in a random cafe somewhere as they take a drive to the Hawk-and-Dove apartment, with Rachel still trying to come to grips with the fact that her mother's dead, and she probably has some weird, demonic force within her. Throw in that brief moment when Rachel is left alone in a room and the (absolutely hilarious) Bird-computer fold-out laptop suddenly prints out the face of Raven's victim from the pilot episode, which screams in her face. Man, I'd be traumatized too if I saw that.

Dick ends up driving Raven and showing up at where Hank and Dawn live, and it's clear that these heroes have history behind them, even without Raven touching Dawn's hand and realizing that she used to sleep with Dick. There's a significant bit of semi-sexual tension between Dawn and Dick, and some really, really pent-up angry tension between Hank and Dick.

As much as Dawn ends up being a positive influence on Rachel, bonding over Game of Thrones and shit, Dawn also notes how Dick can't just... foist all responsibility of Rachel to her and Hank. One of Dick's plans in this episode is calling Alfred and sort of getting a fund set up in order to leave Rachel behind, despite Rachel's continued pleadings for Dick to not abandon her. Throw in some good old-fashioned mistaken love triangle, and the conflict between everyone in the apartment is deliciously high. Raven manages to break up the fight between Dick and Hank (and break up the kitchen), but it's not until a quieter moment that Rachel manages to tell Dick that he does want to help Hawk and Dove, and it's okay to want to help them. In a sense, Rachel is to Dick what Robin normally is to Batman -- the bright one that contrasts the dark, brooding one.

Hawk and Dove ends up, of course, being ambushed, just as Dick was trying to warn them... and then Robin shows up and unleashes a whole ton of brutality upon the thugs, including stabbing some dude's dick with garden shears (to be fair, the fucker was planning to cut off Hawk's dick), and embedding a shuriken into some poor schmuck's eye. It's a huge, huge bit of brutality that is contrasted well with Dick's far more jovial and non-lethal fighting scene earlier in the episode, and even Hawk is disturbed.

Meanwhile, while all of this is going on, Dick's partner Amy is investigating the Acolyte's "derancinated" body (new vocabulary!), but Amy gets assaulted and presumably killed by a quartet of creepy people. A dad, a mom, and two children, who we previously saw in the episode playing Monopoly and injecting themselves with blue fluid -- this is the Nuclear Family, and we'll see how much of their comic-book backstory they keep. But they're clearly villains. They kill Amy, and interrupt an argument between the Titans as everyone piles on Dick for attempting to hoist Rachel on Hawk and Dove and abandoning them all.

The attack on them is brutal. Rachel gets abducted, Hawk gets beaten up, Robin nearly gets thrown off the roof, and Dawn actually gets thrown off the roof. It's a pretty great cliffhanger as Dawn may or  may not have died from that fall (knowing the comics, I won't be surprised, honestly). I really wished that they had actually spent more time building up Hawk and Dove -- maybe take two episodes to tell their story instead of one -- but at the same time, I do applaud the amount of work they managed to put in in just a single episode for these two characters and making them feel like they matter a lot, while still building up the Dick/Rachel dynamic. Of course, Hank is definitely one-dimensional, but he's going to have a chance to make up for it in the episodes to come. 

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Hawk & Dove are a pair of teenage superheroes that obtained superpowers (mostly just increased strength and endurance, although it varies) from the mystical Lord of Chaos T'Charr and the Lord of of Order Terataya. The mantles have been passed down over various different incarnations of the characters, but the show adapts the first Hawk (Hank Hall) and the second Dove (Dawn Granger), both of whom were partnered together for a relatively long time after the death of the first Dove, Hank's brother Don. Most incarnations of the Hawk-and-Dove teams have often had an on-and-off association with the Teen Titans. 
• The Nuclear Family is a group of supervillains that fought the Outsiders in the comics, a group of super-powerful nuclear-powered androids that, when not doing sinister deeds, are programmed to go through the lifestyle of an old-school family. They were also more recently featured in the Justice League Action cartoon. 
• Alfred Pennyworth is, of course the Wayne family's faithful and ever-competent butler! Definitely a man that doesn't need an introduction. 
• Dove wears a faded Superman shirt at one point, implying, perhaps, that while they might not appear, the Titans show does take place within a broader DC universe. 
• Hawk briefly calls Dick "Boy Wonder", one of Robin's more common nicknames. 
• Among Dick's contacts are Bruce Wayne, Lucius Fox, Dawn Granger, Hank Hall and Donna Troy. All of the other names in the contacts are apparently people who worked on either the show or on the various Titans comics. Lucius Fox is the business manager of Wayner Enterprises, and a longtime supporting character of Batman comics. Donna Troy is the civilian identity of the first Wonder Girl, and one of the founding members of the Teen Titans.