Home, the eighth episode of Titans is here, and with it comes some screen time for Tim Drake.
Liz Large: Hi Matt! I’m excited to have you here to talk about the latest episode of Titans— I know you’ve been waiting to talk about a certain character.
Matt Lazorwitz: Oh, yes I have. If you, dear reader, have read any of my numerous reflections on the Batman family or listened to any episode of my co-hosted podcast WMQ&A, you know that, aside from Batman himself, my favorite character in comics is Tim Drake. And so I’m sitting here in my Red Robin t-shirt, all primed to write about my man Tim.
Liz: Tim has been pretty neglected this season—we’ve barely seen him until this week—but even with a limited amount of screen time, he made an impression. He’s a good kid!
Matt: He’s a great kid! While his family situation is different than in his comics’ origin, he is at his core the same kid: smart, clever and the biggest Bat fanboy there is. This puts him at odds with the generally more cynical characters who populate the landscape of Titans, and especially with Jason Todd.
Liz: Speaking of Jason, I guess we should get into the episode.
Give Me A Sign
Liz: Last week’s episode left off with Beast Boy showing up at Molly’s apartment to try and find anything he can do to help Jason. They both care about him and want to help, but their lack of useful information means that they’re stuck getting Molly to text him and just hoping he’ll respond. It’s not the worst plan someone’s had on this show, so I guess it’s a good plan?
Matt: By the standards of last season’s numerous plans to take out Deathstroke that invariably led to Deathstroke handing the Titans’ their collective butts? This is practically a Batman level plan.
Gar is another good boy; I do my best to divorce my comic knowledge of these characters from the show, since we are in a brave new world here, but I am so used to the comics Beast Boy who never quite escaped his 80s persona as awkward attempted lothario, it always surprises me when he doesn’t hit on anyone female identifying and with a pulse. But that’s not this Gar. He cares about Jason, and is the only one looking to bring him back in from the cold at this point. Unfortunately, nothing seems to come of it at this point, because Jason is in a bad way elsewhere.
Liz: Jason is finally sobering up from whatever Crane gave him last week, and while it’s clear he didn’t enjoy being a zombie, he’s still trying to use that inhaler to get just a little bit more. He looks terrible! Crane isn’t unsympathetic, but Jason’s on his own, since the only drugs available are too concentrated to use without being diluted.
Has everyone seen Batman Begins? Can I spoil that? Because that’s what’s about to be happening here.
Matt: Oh, yes, I had the same note. Scarecrow loves to poison water supplies. He also tried to pull this in one of his episode of Batman: The Animated Series, “Dreams in Darkness.”
You are absolutely right, Jason is looking rough. And Scarecrow is so hung up on his own plan, he hasn’t given Jason any of his “Never Fear” drug. He also calls Jason “J-Dawg,” which just jumped out at me. This is a very different, and very fun take on Scarecrow. Between dancing to “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” to his stoner discussions with Dick, he seems much more mellow than the usually high strung and intense Scarecrow. That is, until he isn’t. But we’ll get there later in the episode.
Liz: This episode did a decent job building some suspense and tension, even though it’s extremely clear what’s going to happen. We repeatedly see Barbara in her office, dealing with water dripping from a pipe above her desk, and every time it escalates the worry that it’s going to be full of fear juice.
Tim Time
Liz: On the Barbara front, her and Dick seem to be a couple now, as they’re planning on attending a fancy gala together. He’s going to pick her up, but before he can get out of the house there’s a problem. There’s a nice young man at the door of Wayne Manor, who’s insisting on talking to Dick, and who says he knows that Dick is Nightwing.
Matt: Yes! And here he is, folx! Tim Drake making his first extended appearance since the season premiere. Tim has arrived at Wayne Manor to tell Dick that he knows pretty much all the Bat family’s secrets, and how does he know? He figured them out based on his own deductions.
This is straight out of the comics. Tim’s origin is exactly this: he was there in the audience the night the Flying Graysons were killed, and based on an acrobatic move Dick used there, he figured out Dick was Robin, and thus that Bruce was Batman. It’s one of the things I really love about Tim; he is the smartest kid in the room, and now? Now he wants to be Robin. Which Dick will have none of, as he denies Tim’s deductions and offers to drive him home.
Liz: Tim holds his own pretty well with Dick—he’s clearly unconvinced by his defenses, and Tim lays on the guilt about how his dad was only shot because Batman wasn’t around. He admits to Dick that he’s just wondering about one thing: who the second Robin was, the one who died. Tim had assumed it was Jason, but then he saw Jason alive the other night, so it can’t be him. But Tim can’t shake the idea, since he’s so familiar with how they (Robin and Jason) moved. This kid is the only good detective on this show and he is a CHILD and has been in like three episodes. Amazing.
Matt: I could go on more about how much I love Tim, but I’ll resist the urge to not just squee and keep talking about what happens.
So, Dick gets in touch with Barbara, and they use the intel they got from Tim to begin hunting Jason. And Dick is so close! He sees Jason, he tears after him on his motorcycle… and gets hit by a van because he didn’t look both ways before driving out into traffic. This is Driving Safety 101, Grayson! We’ll get back to Dick shortly, but the other Titans have a bunch of stuff going on too, and we should probably talk about that too, huh?
Liz: IT IS HAPPENING! Superboy and Blackfire are hooking up! I am so interested in this pairing? It shouldn’t work, but they actually seem like they’re great for each other. As they cuddle, Blackfire shows him Krypton and Tamaran on a star map and it’s just a really sweet moment.
I loved the sweet moments, but I was also delighted by their reactions when a sleepwalking Starfire walks in. Superboy uses every trace of his super speed to vacate the room and it’s perfect.
Matt: I want this to be sweet. I want this to be a redemptive thing for Blackfire and for Conner to have a good relationship. But I still don’t entirely trust Blackfire. I think she’s playing some angle or another. She still hasn’t told everyone that she is actually in the body of some poor Earthwoman after all. And I think that particular bird is coming home to roost, if I’m reading Starfire’s visions properly. Because despite Blackfire being free, Starfire is still having these episodes and Blackfire tells her sister that she didn’t send them to her to begin with. How are you reading this, Liz?
Liz: Oh yeah, something is definitely brewing in the background. In the interest of figuring out what’s going on, Starfire decides to get back in the isolation chamber and see what happens. Last time, she ended up punching Beast Boy and stuffing him in the trunk while she drove to Blackfire’s prison. This time, she physically ends up in front of a random store with a crown on the sign. Mentally, though, she’s on a completely different trip.
Her vision takes place in an empty theater, as she waits for a play to begin. I was expecting something along the lines of Hamlet (siblings killing for the crown, an unsubtle play within a play), but instead we see a baby carriage lowered to the stage, with a baby who looks a lot like her. It’s creepy, and I think we’re going to see more of whatever is behind this.
Matt: I’m thinking this is Blackfire’s host bleeding through the psychic link, looking for her children, who Blackfire abandoned when she co-opted her body at the end of last season. But we’ll see.
And while our heroes are going through all of this, our villains are on a couple of very different journeys to deal with their own personal demons.
Therapist Recommendations
Liz: Crane doesn’t have things as well planned as he thought, and that (plus the lack of drugs) manages to get through to Jason. He is absolutely done with Crane, and wants to get back to the Titans. He leaves an unconscious Crane at the water treatment plant and heads to, well, let’s call it an untraditional therapy situation.
Basically, he asks the employees at a peep show to role play as Hank and Dawn and just talk to him. They’re fine with this, until Jason apologizes to “Hank” for killing him. (I also would get the fuck out if someone talked about how they killed the person they asked me to portray!) “Dawn” on the other hand, extends some hope and forgiveness to Jason. She guesses that Hank had it coming (I mean…), and that drugs can make you do fucked up things. But there’s one place that will forgive you: Home.
Matt: When this scene started, I was really bracing myself for something uncomfortable and cringey. But it actually winds up playing out as… not sweet, but thoughtful. “Dawn” is topless for the entire scene, and that gives an air of vulnerability that could have been exploitative very easily, but when she starts to talk to Jason, she covers up and the male gaze-ness of it is lessened, and because of her own path, she empathizes with Jason, which we haven’t seen many people try to do during the events of the season. And as the shutter to the peep show closes, it seems Jason has made up his mind.
Scarecrow, on the other hand, reacts differently when offered a kindness. A Gotham City Inspector finds him unconscious at the pumping station, and offers to help him up and gives him a yogurt that he was saving for later, but when the worker finds the drum of fear toxin, well Scarecrow just snaps his neck. Still, he looks at the yogurt, and it seems to actually have touched him, this single small act of kindness.
Liz: I was really hoping for the best there! Unfortunately, I am a terrible judge. Crane does get one piece of useful intel, in addition to the yogurt—his attempt at drilling into the water supply would never work, because it’s ten feet of steel and would require a torch with the strength of the sun to get through. Before he can use it, though, he wants to get his head on straight. And what better for that but a trip to see his psychologist mother?
I’m sorry, but do we really need to add mommy issues onto this train wreck of a man. This scene was just too much.
Matt: Yeah, I am right with you on this one. But I feel like it had to come, because this is the perfect storm. Most main characters in Titans have some form of family issues, and Vincent Kartheiser has never played a main character without family issues, although it’s usually daddy issues (see Mad Men and Angel). I don’t think it was really necessary, though. I don’t need any reason for Scarecrow to be a villainous bastard other than he’s a villainous bastard. And it doesn’t really move the plot forward, except that we see Scarecrow kill one more person, and he might have a little more motivation to act, but it’s not like he was lacking in that before.
Liz: He’s being given a great opportunity, unfortunately. Jason decides to take Molly up on her offer to facilitate a meeting with Dick, and it goes better than expected. He just wants to come home, and he’ll turn on Crane to make it happen. Unfortunately, as they make the arrangements, Crane is hiding just out of sight, because he’s had a tracker in Jason this whole time. Because nothing can go well for these kids.
Adding to the trouble, the other Titans are split on Dick’s arrangement. Superboy and Starfire are suspicious, and point out that Jason literally just killed Hank. I really liked Beast Boy here. All season he’s been pushing to give Jason a chance, and find out the reasons behind what he’s done. Here he explicitly references his past experiences being used to kill people by Cadmus, and how the team welcomed him back anyway, because they’re family. I’ve been waiting for someone to make this point— superheroes get manipulating into accidentally hurting each other all the time! Surely they can work through this.
Matt: Blackfire is also on the give Jason another chance side, which doesn’t really help that much, but she wants everyone to know. Dick goes to prep for meeting Jason in the old bootlegger tunnels under Gotham, and has some visions that are probably a result of, y’know, getting hit by a van, and in all fairness it wouldn’t be a season of Titans without Dick hallucinating, but he can’t think about that much because Tim is there too. He followed Jason, and swore that he would take down Scarecrow and Red Hood to prove he’s Robin material. I’m sorry to say, but from this point, Dick, this one’s kind of on you. This kid is clearly smart and determined, and he made it clear what he’s going to do. If you don’t take it seriously and just keep brushing him off, bad stuff is going to happen.
Liz: Dick literally spends all of his time dealing with impulsive young(ish) superheroes and the fallout of their stupid actions and yet it never occurs to him to get out ahead of the disaster. This is why we need Tim on the team! One person needs to be able to make plans.
Unfortunately, this plan will be as disastrous as everything the Titans do, and Tim is going to be one who deals with the consequences.
Matt: Yup, because as everyone preps for the big confrontation with Scarecrow, Tim again follows Jason, only this time, Scarecrow finds him. And when Tim tries to run away? Yeah, Scarecrow shoots him. It’s a bad scene. Jason goes to him, and after Tim tells Jason he wants to be Robin, the Titans arrive and Jason flees. I can’t really blame him: would they believe he didn’t do it? Probably not. If only Dick had included Tim…
While Beast Boy calls an ambulance and stays with Tim, the Titans follow Jason and Scarecrow into the pump station. And here we get the episode’s endgame. And because these are the Titans once again charging in half cocked, things actually find a way to get worse!
Liz: Crane hypes himself up, muttering about his mom (normal and fine, probably!), and then does what the closed captioning can only describe as “banshee screaming” as he runs across the pump station. Logically, Starfire fires her powers at him! Unfortunately, this means her powers break through the pipes and send the fear toxin directly into the city water supply.
And we cut to the GCPD, where Chekhov’s pipe that burst onto Barbara’s desk is being cleaned up. Ominously, the Titan Signal glows red in the Gotham sky. We have five episodes left in this season, and so much time for horrible things to happen!
Matt: That burst pipe and red Titan Signal is the kind of heavy symbolism that Titans LOVES, and while yes, it’s heavy handed, it works so well with this show’s over the top nature. I am excited to see where all of these threads go, and to see more of Tim! Because I think I mentioned it, but just in case I didn’t, I love this take on Tim Drake and can’t wait for more.
Final Thoughts
- If you can’t get enough Titans, this week saw the debut of Titans United in print. Set in some universe not quite the DCU and not quite the Titans-verse, it features all the characters from this show in a big widescreen comic adventure. Plus? There’s Kite-Man (Hell, yeah!).
- I mentioned the New Batman Adventures episode “Never Fear” earlier, That is inspired by Detective Comics #571, “Fear For Sale,” which is one of the last Pre-Crisis Jason Todd stories, and one of the first where he has to rebel against Batman, although there it’s for a much better reason…
- The trick Tim uses to identify Dick as Robin/Nightwing is a “one-handed meat hook” and I kind of wish they had made up a weird name so we could just imagine increasingly ridiculous feats of acrobatics.
Liz Large is a copywriter with a lot of opinions on mutants.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
