We’re back with Titans, and seriously, there are 4 more episodes to go. Rule of thumb, if a show wants to tell one continuous story, it should do so over no more than 6 (at a stretch 8) episodes. If it’s a mystery story, I’d drop that to 3 episodes. There are exceptions, of course, Daredevil seasons 1 and 3 managed to be riveting over 13 episodes and I’m excluding stories that tell smaller stories whilst weaving in a larger one, like Young Justice or the like. And Hell, Doctor Who Flux managed to be a confusing mess in 6 episodes and likely would’ve done better with more time. But enough preamble, let’s take a look at the next 2 episodes of Titans and see if something actually happens in them.
Fallen
We open with Dick in prison getting his photos taken as he’s
brought to the Kane County Correctional facility. His sentence was 7 years,
which feels excessive for a minor assault but whatever.
Cut to a car journey being undertaken by Mercy, her wife and
two kids they were about to arrange a game night but it’s interrupted as Mercy
is informed about Connor showing up on the radar. Connor thinks it might be for
the best for him and Krypto to split up, and allow Connor to take the fall for
his own actions.
Dick refuses to make a phone-call when given the chance and
the guards find out that he was once a detective and figure he was forced to
take the fall for something that went wrong. Unlike most occasions, no-one was
killed. He’s offered special treatment in exchange for keeping an eye on the
other prisoners and Dick refuses because he’s still punishing himself. Ex-cops
are hardly favourites of the other prisoners.
Gar is still in panic mode over what happened with Connor,
not helping matters is that Dick isn’t answering his calls. Though he gets some
reprieve as Krypto returns to the Tower. Donna is still in the city looking for
Rachel, also trying and failing to phone Dick.
Rachel is at a local homeless shelter getting charity and
finding someone just as lonely as her. She makes her smile with a quick joke.
Back at the prison Dick’s cellmates are playing dominos… Can
we get to the point where they try and kill him, already, we all know it’s
coming. Ah there it is, the cellmates get accosted by the lead bully of the
prisoners and told to keep their own necks they need to kill Dick. Co-incidentally, Dick is watching out of sight.
Gar and Krypto catch up with Connor but right now he doesn’t
want to drag them down. Gar kinda manages to talk him down but just he does the
CADMUS team arrive and they need to make a run for it.
Back with Rachel, she and the girl she’s talking to form
interesting conversations about parentage. Nothing really worthy of discussion,
but it takes a turn when her father tells her it’s time to go, it’s clear from
the get-go that she’s afraid of him. They walk past a church which I’m sure is
not meant to be symbolic at all and Raven shows off her atrocious CGI to get
him to stop, unfortunately it seems to have a mind its own and takes possession
of a gargoyle on the church roof, which flies after and likely kills the guy.
Dick could work out his cellmates were planning an escape
attempt but says their chances are pretty slim and they’d be better off killing
him and being done with the big bully. Problem is, they’re immigrants due to be
deported to Corto Maltez, and if that happens they may as well be dead, they’re
not adding murder to their conscience as well.
Gar brings Connor and Krypto back to the tower but CADMUS
easily follows them, trapping Krypto in Kryptonite net. Mercy thinks that Gar
may also be useful and he’s quickly tranquilised as Mercy comes in to talk
Connor down, saying she may be able to help calm his rage.
Rachel is brought to a little shelter, where Rachel is
introduced to whole group of runaways, though not be the official term of course,
because that’s trademarked to Marvel. Back at the prison, they’re talking about
a tribal religion of sorts, a bird that swoops down to save them in the middle
of the night, and a kinda familiar-looking symbol.
Mercy graves gets to have some one-on-one time with Gar and
her words might feel a little less hollow if she hadn’t just kidnapped him. Donna is
at the murder scene with whatshername’s father’s corpse, which is honestly more
detective work than I’ve seen previously. It’s not good news in Kane County prison for our
immigrant inmates as their number is brought down by one. The Bully has one of
them killed, the elder of the 3 for not killing Dick.
Further complicating matters is the fact the Warden has
ordered them locked down. Dick again tries to dissuade their escape attempt to
no avail. 6am comes and the 2 are about to be taken to the van to be deported,
and have chosen this as their moment to escape. One of them has a lockpick that
they got somehow smuggled in to unlock their handcuffs, still they’ve got guards
who have them outnumbered 4 to 2. They’re pretty much hosed until Dick comes in
to save them.
Dick manages to enable their escape before submitting
himself to beating by the guards and being placed in solitary. Donna returns to
the tower to find the end result of the CADMUS attack, Bruce didn’t spring for
the bulletproof glass, cheapskate.
Back at CADMUS Mercy tells them to let Garfield go, saying
she thinks its an excellent idea, oh and she’s officially head of CADMUS now.
We should all be very afraid.
It’s an acceptable level of quality. The scene with Mercy
and her family should have been cut, and the prison scenes were a little slow
but the pacing isn’t too bad. Still not rolling with the Dick Grayson pity
train, the sooner he gets out of this funk, the better.
Rating 7/10
E.L._.O.
What is up with this title?
We see that Garfield is having surgery done on his brain. He
seems to be awake, though hardly conscious throughout the entire thing. Dick is
now in solitary and suffering with a bit of a fever, and what would that bring
about but the return of Ghost Bruce. This time he has a bit more an interesting
purpose, awaking Dick’s detective side and picking apart the conversation he
had woith Joseph’s mother.
Rachel is having a dream, she’s at the funeral for Dick
Grayson. At said funeral she talks to… Dick Grayson, who tells her not to give
up before he’s stabbed by Deathstroke. Donna troy receives a phone call from
her but the call is distorted and just gives the name of a diner. Meanwhile
with no way to get home, Kory has resorted to getting drunk at an arcade
Dawn is heading off on her own and hears an add on the radio
for Elko’s diner. DC really like “You don’t own me” She prepares to ditch the last of
Hank’s stuff but actually can’t bring herself to do it, at least keeping a photo
of the 4 of them. Rachel and her runaway friends are playing tarot cards. Her
future prediction is of a great sacrifice or loss. At this point they find out
about her friend’s father’s death.
She’s pretty happy about it, which kinda scares Rachel and
in the next scene she’s taking a buss to Elko, she saw the diner in a vision.
Meanwhile Kory is doing all the things she shouldn’t be doing as she’s in a
depressive spiral. But she chose the wrong plaything, or possibly the right one
as he gets psychological with her and finally gets her to open up. Still, he’s
sent packing after that so maybe he regrets it. The TV in the hotel is
distorted and shows an ad for Elko’s diner.
Dawn gets a call for help from Rachel through her radio,
suddenly her engine warning light comes up, a mile outside of Elko. Dick’s hallucination
may be more plot relevant but is far less funny this time around. Dick ends up
fighting off the guards and gets another beatdown.
Time to check in with Jason, him and Rose have apparently broken into
a house and are slumming it there. They’ve also been beating up drug dealers at
night. Rose wants Jason to let her in and after some coaxing he agrees. Rachel
has another nightmare, this time being unable to save Dick from Deathstroke,
she wakes up, right next to diner and asks to be let off.
Kory is already in the diner but contrary to the ad she saw,
they don’t sell donuts and she’s rather pissed off about that. Rachel comes in
and we see that Dawn was in the bathroom and Donna enters soon after, Rachel
claims to have no idea about the phone-call. And then Bruce Wayne enters. Time
to get everyone up to speed on the situation with Gar and Connor, who
incidentally Bruce has never heard of.
Bruce is there to inspire them to come back together and
then he just leaves in his sportscar. They then hear about Dick being in prison
and decide to leave him there to deal with the other situation. Except Rachel
then reveals to them about her dreams, which changes nothing. I mean, there are
4 of you, you can split up and Kory’s being oddly silent before agreeing to do
it.
Dick’s fever continues, and now he’s calling out for ghost
Bruce to help him. Jason takes Rose to a High School, he used to live in the
rafters, watching the theatre kids and kinda aspiring to be like them. Still,
Rose opening up is another matter as we close in on the big twist of this
episode that I’ve been hinting at for a while.
Dick lays on the floor to lower his body temperature and
stop the fever, bringing ghost Bruce Back. Time for them to fight, in the
theatre Jason was at I think… If it weren’t for the fever and the fact that
ghost Bruce is a manifestation of Dick’s self-loathing or something… Anyway,
the fight concludes in stalemate and we see that when Dick was conversing with
Slade, he was signing something, this leads Dick to conclude that Jericho is in
fact alive.
Time for that big reveal, Rose calls daddy Slade to tell him
she’s done being his tool to manipulate the Titans. Rachel fights her way
through the prison with Kory but by the time they get to Dick’s cell he’s
already gone, leaving behind a message that Jericho is alive. At CADMUS Labs,
Gar thinks he’s with Rachel back at Titans tower, as Mercy tests a device that
allows her to control Beast Boy’s transformations.
The stakes are rising, but with 2 problems approaching their
climax I hope it doesn’t flounder at the finish line. This is a strong episode
despite the weirdness of the Bruce Plotline they never quite get to make sense.
Rating 7/10
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