Titans: Season 1 (Review)

Titans (Season 1) (2018)

After watching the premiere episode of Titans, I was pleasantly surprised. As the flagship series of DC Comics's new streaming platform, DC Universe, Titans establishes a compelling story with a strong redemptive theme at its core, a story that isn't afraid to bend and even break established tropes of superhero lore. Even if DC Universe had failed (and it most certainly has not), the first season of Titans would still stand as a wildly imaginative experiment in reinventing a popular cartoon for an older audience. The show's themes are mature, the violence is sometimes alarmingly brutal, and the language can be unexpectedly crass. But unlike most shows that try for the edgier approach, Titans does not seem to make these drastic tonal changes for the sake of shock value alone, but intentionally employs these devices to deepen character development and further the show's themes.

What stood out to me in the first episode was the good casting and quality of the acting, in particular the performances of Teagan Croft and Anna Diop as tormented teen Rachel Roth and deadly amnesiac Kory Anders, respectively. Rather than perpetuate the punky stereotype that Rachel's character sort of embodies, or exploit Kory's character as ditzy eye-candy, both women imbue their characters with a gravitas that makes us take them seriously. Positioning Rachel as the driving force of the narrative is a brilliant strategy by the show's writers. The mystery of her backstory lies at the very heart of things, and watching Kory uncover her own past as it connects to Rachel's provides some of the most interesting and shocking plot developments throughout the season. The two of them are easily the most mature characters on the show, and provide perfect counterbalances to Ryan Potter's self-conscious Garfield Logan and Brenton Thwaites's standoffish Dick Grayson.

It would've been too easy to make the show a "grown up" version of the Teen Titans cartoon. Instead, the writer's give these characters scars and depth. Everyone is recovering from something, and that something usually has to do with some kind of familial dysfunction. In the premiere episode, Rachel learns that her mother isn't really her mother, mere moments before that woman is killed and Rachel is forced to flee from a mysterious organization. Garfield is a social outcast living with a bizarro family. Kory has no idea who she is or where she's from, and Dick Grayson has recently left his surrogate father, Bruce Wayne. The four main cast members are all orphans in their own way, outcasts and social freaks. They find ways to connect with each other through their own pain, and the way the characters balance the spectrum provides the show with a surprisingly strong emotional core.

All of them bring a particular trauma to the table, and the way each character confronts their own unresolved emotions supplies them with a strong narrative arc that ensures no character in the ensemble feels wasted or underutilized. Dick becomes the surrogate father to the fatherless Rachel because he sees himself in her. Rachel accepts him in this role because she is haunted by the revelation that her true parents are a mystery to her. Kory becomes a kind of surrogate mother because Rachel provides the only clue to her own hidden past, and acts as a true emotional and sexual connection for Dick, who himself is closed off to the world after spending years living in the shadow of his own mentor and father figure. Gar completes the picture of this dysfunctional little family by providing Rachel with a trusting relationship akin to that of a close friend or sibling, and Dick and Kory accept him and his unique abilities despite his own reservations about himself. Titans is a fascinating study in family dynamics that, on paper, probably shouldn't work. I myself had written the show off as a cheap train wreck after that first trailer. But with the right actors and intelligent writing, the characters spark and the emotional tension is always fluctuating, making each episode an electrifying hour of viewing.

What the writers realized is that the show works best when it deals with family. That is really at the heart of what Titans is about. Rachel's journey to discover her true parents, Dick's attempt to get out from under the long shadow cast by his surrogate father, while simultaneously becoming a surrogate father to Rachel himself, are the two most prominent storylines here. The show seems bent on demolishing sentimental notions of what families should look like, even going so far as to position this demented nuclear family—the "perfect" or "ideal" family, consisting of a father, mother, son, and daughter—as formidable villains hunting down Rachel early in the season. It's not that the show rejects the notion of family altogether, but dares to poke holes in the more sentimental ideas that say family should be singularly about mild-mannered conformity and happy bliss.

Yet for all the solid writing for the ensemble cast, perhaps the most compelling characters only appear in two episodes throughout the entire season, showing up in an early episode and then a later one. Hank Hall (Alan Ritchson) and Dawn Granger (Minka Kelly) are vigilante lovers known as Hawk and Dove. They've spent years in the crime-fighting business and have very little to show for it other than some broken bones. Hank is an old bruiser type, a hulk of a man who favors the direct approach, and it's clearly cost him. His body's covered in scars, and the toll the beatings have taken on him is beginning to bleed over into his relationship with Dawn. She spends more and more time having to nurse him back to health after every encounter; he's beginning to feel like more of a burden than a boyfriend.

Dawn, on the other hand, is a consummate caregiver and partner. She's patient with Hank, encouraging, and above all, she's understanding. Kelly imbues her with a with a surprising balance of gravitas and whimsy, making her an immensely likable and sympathetic character. She's quieter and more reserved than her partner, but it's clear that she's the glue holding this relationship together. Hank would be self-destructive without her, and she sees something in Hank that helps him rise above his more brutish nature. It's actually a very compelling relationship, thanks in no small part to the high caliber of acting from both Ritchson and Kelly. To put it simply, I was more invested in these two characters than the protagonists despite spending a far shorter amount of time with them. Ritchson and Kelly generate a surprising amount of pathos as this hard-knocks couple who seem to be the only thing in each other's lives that keeps the other going. Few shows invest in their side characters the way Titans pretty much dedicates the entirety of the two episodes in which they appear to Hank and Dawn. I honestly wouldn't mind seeing an entire season dedicated singularly to them, they're just that good together.

By the time the credits rolled on the final episode, I was somewhat shocked by how invested I felt in these characters. As all comic book stories and their adaptations go, the storyline sometimes goes in hokey and even outlandish directions. That's part of this storytelling landscape, something that must be accepted in order to get into what the story is actually doing. But intelligent, smartly-written characters keep the show grounded and resonate. It's worth pointing out that the show's most stable characters are the women. Rachel, Kory, and Dawn are all three well-written and formidable women, and the fact that critics have not latched onto these particular characters in the current cultural climate is a travesty in its own right. It's probably something to do with the fact that Titans is far less interested in using its characters as mouthpieces for any one political agenda, and much more interested in telling a darn good story with complex, intelligent characters.

The first season ends on a doozy of a cliffhanger, and I'm eagerly waiting to see how some of these plot threads wrap up in the next season. When I first signed up for DC Universe, I was a bit worried I was wasting my money. Having seen what the streaming service offers, I consider my investment well worth it. The show seems to have caught all the right attention, as a second season has been announced, along with a plethora of other shows for DC Universe, an indication that Titans may very well be one of the most compelling and well-made shows streaming on any service right now.

Titans: "Titans" (Review)

Titans (2018)

So I fully embraced my millennial status the other week and decided to drop $7.99 per month on DC Universe, DC Entertainment's new video on demand service. My decision to do so was made primarily out of nostalgia, as the service offers on demand streaming of some of the cartoons of my childhood, like the groundbreaking Batman: The Animated Series, as well as Teen Titans, Batman Beyond, and Justice League. I knew that DC Universe was going to feature its own live action shows, à la Netflix, and the first of these shows, Titans, recently launched. I had an hour to kill the other day and decided to give the first episode (also titled 'Titans" because reasons) a shot.

I had no real expectations going into the episode. The most I'd heard about Titans was some bad press in the months leading up to its release, hearing most frequently that the previews just made the show seem "too dark." I don't understand this logic when it comes to comic books and their adaptations. Comics deal with some of the darkest content I've ever read. So those initial reactions to the trailers weren't enough to deter me from viewing. Having viewed the episode, though, I have to admit that the show is surprisingly dark. Perhaps it's because I grew up with the cartoon versions of these characters that I think this, but some of the content is quite adult in nature.

This isn't a criticism, to be sure. It could become one, depending on how much the show indulges in violence and sexual content. In the first episode, at least, the fine line between too much and thematically appropriate is walked admirably. There is blood spray when someone is punched or shot that isn't exactly common in most primetime television shows. In Titans, this isn't excessive, but it does serve as a reminder that heroes don't necessarily enjoy punching bad guys, because it requires them to get their hands dirty. It's one thing to watch a hero beat up the bad men, deliver a quip, and then fly away. It's a wholly other thing to watch the hero have to go home and clean the blood from his suit, and this is the course that Titans charts very early on.

Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) was trained to be Robin by Batman. But, at some point in the past, Dick didn't like what he was becoming while in Batman's shadow, so he left his mentor behind to carve out a life of his own as a detective in Detroit. While in Detroit, he comes across a girl named Rachel Roth (Teagan Croft), who is on the run and has some kind of dark entity inhabiting her body. Rachel has seen Dick in her dreams, and when she recognizes him she becomes convinced that they were meant to find each other. On the other side of the world, in Austria, a woman named Kory Anders (Anna Diop) awakens in a crashed car with no memory of who she is. She's got the European mob on her tail, and as she begins piecing things back together, she learns that she, too, is hunting Rachel Roth, for reasons unknown.

Titans really is an ensemble show, with no one clear cut main character. Anyone familiar with the Teen Titans comics or cartoons understands that these three characters are central players on the titular superhero team. Dick is Robin, Rachel is the empath called Raven, and Kory Anders is actually the alien known as Starfire. A fourth character, Beast Boy (Ryan Potter), is only glimpsed in the episode's closing moments. One can reasonably assume that all these characters will eventually come together as a group to combat the mysterious villains of the series. But, for now, the characters are scattered across the world, and the story unfurls as a mystery that raises more questions than it supplies answers.

To be completely fair, the show's darker tone is actually appropriate, given the story that the writers have chosen to tackle. Rachel is clearly being set up as the driving narrative force. Everyone seems to want her for their own reasons. In a shocking moment early in the episode, Rachel learns that the woman she's always believed to be her mother actually isn't—a split second before that woman is killed in front of her. On the run, Rachel is confused, hurt, and alone. To go from this kind of darkness (a darkness which is present in the character even in the comics, mind you) to puns and quips would be tonally uneven. Instead, the writers choose to double down on the dark and mysterious, and the end result is a compelling hour of viewing, tinged with elements of horror, that manages to reinvent these characters in new and interesting ways, which is the secret ingredient to any adaptation.

The thing that surprised me most was the acting. It is simply top notch. These are younger actors and actresses carrying the narrative weight of a really mature show. Teagan Croft and Anna Diop deliver breakout performances as the desperate Rachel and stunning-but-deadly Kory, respectively. Brenton Thwaites turns Dick Grayson into a haunted, devastated figure trying to recover from the trauma of having lived in the shadow of the Bat. It's too early to tell where things are going to go from here. But for someone like me, who has been accustomed to these characters for years, the unpredictability is intriguing, wholly unexpected, and very much welcome.

I haven't dipped into their world since 2003's Teen Titans cartoon. Now, over a decade later, I find the characters all grown up and trying to deal with personal issues that someone should have flagged for them years ago. In a way, it's as if they have grown up alongside me, and now we're starting to reconnect, all older and probably a bit more jaded than we'd like to admit, trying to make sense of personal traumas and failed relationships, looking for ways forward that allow us to avoid punching as many people in the face as we did in the past.