DC Universe’s Titans season 1, episode 2 recap: Hawk and Dove

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Dick reveals to Dawn that he intends to leave Rachel here. The money is to tide the three of them over till Dick comes back. He keeps reiterating how she doesn’t ‘know what I’ve become’ and how he’s ‘no good with family’. I can’t help but wonder why he decided to take Rachel under his wing in the first place if he was just going to off-load her onto the first woman friend he could remember.

The presumption on his part that other people’s lives can be manipulated to fit his needs is so aggravating. This is not the Dick Grayson we know and love.

Hank walks in to find Dawn’s hand on Dick’s and immediately jumps to the conclusion that Dick is taking ‘his girl now’. As if the writing so far hasn’t been atrocious enough, it reaches a nadir with Dick and Hank fighting over Dawn, only to be stopped by Rachel’s soul-self.

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Yet another female character is reduced to being little more than a trophy to be fought over in a love triangle. If memory serves, Dick and Dawn never got together in the comics, so this entire romantic sub-plot is an archaic attempt at creating conflict.

Hank, being the chicken he is, sends Dawn to apologize to Rachel on his behalf. When Dawn leaves with Hank to steal the gunrunners’ money, Rachel tries to convince Dick to help her, because that’s what he does.

A despondent Dick sits down and explains that was what he thought he was best at, but he soon realized that the more he helped one group of people, he’d have to hurt another. Rachel throws his own line back at him. ‘You’re just scared; sometimes, there’s no time to be scared’.

In a better show I would applaud her inspiring move, but in Titans sending Robin to fight bad guys is a bad idea. Hawk and Dove take out the criminals quickly, but they don’t account for the many more who appear out of nowhere and shoot Hank in the shoulder.

The thug who had escaped Dove’s earlier attack is back and he still wants to castrate Hawk (I think the dude has a disturbing fetish), but Robin attacks from behind and turns the shears on the thug. Any other show would have left this action to the viewer’s imagination, but not Titans which takes an extra five seconds to show the shears stuck in the man’s nether regions.

Robin takes out the rest of the goons – there’s plenty of fake/CGI blood flying around and some of the physics of the fight don’t make sense. One thing I have to commend the show creators for is the use of the Robin logo. In Robin’s suit, the logo houses his R-shaped shuriken and it’s ingenious!

Photo Credit: DC Universe

Dawn rips into a blood-soaked Dick for being so brutal. This coming from the woman who was gouging people’s faces off in the first scene. Rachel has found the money Dick had left for Dawn and Hank, along with a letter we didn’t know existed. Hiding up on the roof, she is distraught to learn that Dick was going to leave her behind, while Hank is rightly furious.

While the four birds are arguing they don’t notice the Nuclear Family arrive. I guess they got the information they needed from Amy. Somehow, two of them easily dispatch Dick.

He hangs from the side of the building for the rest of the fight, while Hank gets beaten up and Dawn is thrown off the roof. With no one standing in their way, Rachel is kidnapped… again. Two episodes into Titans and all we see is a 14-year-old girl in constant peril. It’s really disturbing to watch.

In the comics, Dick would easily have parkoured out of this sticky situation, but from the looks of it, Thwaites wasn’t given any parkour training to look remotely like an acrobat for this role. Dick climbs back to the roof and runs down the fire exit to find Dawn dying on the ground. For some reason, she apologizes, but I don’t know why.

Dick flashbacks to his dead parents while Dawn lies there bleeding to death because fridging women characters for the development of male ones is still the only way to write in 2018. I can’t tell if Dawn is going to die in this episode, because Minka Kelly has been a huge part of the Titans promotional tour, but how does the character come back from a fall like that?

Next. DC Universe renews Titans for second season. dark

The episode ends with a very CGI Raven appearing on the roof portending something. If it’s doom and gloom, then someone should tell director Brad Anderson that we already got the message.

I also can’t help but wonder why Starfire (Anna Diop) and Beast Boy (Ryan Potter) didn’t show up in this episode at all. This show is called Titans, right?

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