"Faux Hawk" – Titans S02E12 Review

Another week, another shotgun approach to Titans plotting.

It's not that "Faux Hawk" was bad. But the creative team is still taking a "throw stuff at the wall and see what sticks" approach to the show. Which feels like an odd direction to go in for the season's penultimate episode. There's some feeling everything is coming to a head in what are the big climaxes of season 2: Dick taking on the mantle of Nightwing, and the Titans versus Deathstroke.

But there's relatively little of that in "Faux Hawk". Instead we get subplots about Kory's power loss. And Hank dealing with the loss of Dawn by turning to drugs and violence. And the Gar-Conner-Cadmus plot, which apparently doesn't have anything to do with the Deathstroke-Titans conflict. Dick is rescuing Jericho, Dawn and Donna are rescuing Gar and Conner, Rose is dealing with the price of betraying the Titans and telling the truth to Jason.

And Rachel, who doesn't do anything except argue with Kory and then apologize. Remember those teenage squatters Rachel was hanging with for the last two episodes. If you don't, don't worry: neither does the creative team. As I predicted, they had nothing to do with anything, and would quickly disappear. This episode they're gone down the memory hole as Rachel gets back with her "real" family, the Titans. Except, she's only with Kory, since Donna and Dawn took off last week.

So how does the episode establish all of these subplots? Hank (Alan Ritchson) is fighting in an underground fight club arena... somewhere. He's dressed as Hawk, and picking up groupies. In an unseen sequence, he sells his suit to a teenager (Drew Scheid). The unnamed teenager is a big Hawk fan, puts on the costume, and robs a laundromat which he claims is a front for a meth-manufacturing lab. Hank somehow tracks him down from a video the dork posted on Instagram, punches him in the face, and takes his costume back. Back at his motel room, Hank stares at his cocaine and tries not to take it.

Also, Hank has a dream of fighting Dawn in the arena, and her kicking his butt. Because issues.

There's no sign of Conner. On the Gar front, Mercy "tests" him in the field by sending him into the local coffee shop, and then doing whatever she does (play music in his head?) to get him to go berserk, turn into a tiger, and kill everyone there. At the end, we see people setting up a street carnival and Gar laying in a van nearby, asleep but dreaming of the coffee shop massacre.

Dawn and Dove interrogate Walter (Raoul Bhaneja) using Donna's lasso of truth. They find out Gar and Conner are at Garfield, but Walter doesn't have high enough clearance to know what Mercy is doing with them. Mercy identifies the two heroines from surveillance footage.

Kory is unable to get her powers to work, but doesn't tell Rachel. When Kory decides to give up on finding Dick and go back to San Francisco, Rachel snaps at her and Kory calls the teenager a "space witch". Which seems odd because Rachel has nothing to do with space. They soon apologize to each other, and Rachel agrees to go to San Francisco because finding Dick is a lost cause.

Dick has somehow escaped prison last week, because he's just that good we don't even have to see the escape. First, he visits Adeline, who tells him to get Jericho back from where he's tucked away in Slade's mind. After that, Dick goes to San Francisco to get a new superhero suit at "Stu's Handmade Shoe". Stu (HITG Currie Graham) is an Edna Mode-ish superhero suit maker who is none too happy Dick burned his previous Robin suit that Stu made. However, they soon make up, and Stu shows Dick the new suit Bruce had Stu make for Dick.

The episode starts off with Jericho trapped in Slade's mind, and the two of them talking. Then there's a brief bit of Jericho trying to force Slade to walk in front of a speeding tanker truck. And I have to wonder: how does Dick "rescue" Jericho? Jericho's body is dead: he has nowhere for his mind to go. If he were somehow released from Slade's mind, he'd either dissipate or have to jump into either one body or keep jumping from body to body. Which is kind of what he does in the comics. But I'd miss Chella Man, although I suppose they could still have him appear as a ghost or psychic image or something. It just seems a waste to have a bunch of actors "playing" Jericho.

Finally, there's the big Rose subplot. We get her telling Jason (via flashback) how she became Ravager. So we find out she was a relatively normal, if accident-prone, child. Fortunately, her body kept regenerating Wolverine-style every time she got hurt. Eventually, she figures out something is going on and confronts Adeline. Who, we discover, has left Slade and remarried. But Wintergreen has brought Rose to Slade, and Rose eventually decides to stay with Slade to get some info on her backstory.

Slade gives Rose a Ravager suit and trains her how to fight while beating her mercilessly. He then sends her to infiltrate the Titans. Rose gets all weepy with Jason, who gets all mad at her because she told him the truth. I don't know how it goes in real life, but telling loved ones the truth in TV shows never seems to work out well. It also seems rather silly because Rose didn't do anything while she was infiltrating the Titans. Presumably, she "pranked" Hank, Dawn, and Donna., but that doesn't seem to have resulted in anything. I suppose it helped fracture the Titans, but we never see the reminders of their pasts that bothered them or drove them further apart.

In the end, Jason is furious with Rose and leaves her. Then Slade calls Rose and tells her the Titans are getting back together so they should as well. So it'll be... Deathstroke and a reluctant Ravager versus nine Titans? Except Gar is under Cadmus' control, and so, presumably, is Conner. So it's seven Titans versus Deathstroke and Ravager, and also Cadmus with Gar and Conner under their thumb?

But there's a lot of moving pieces to get to those two points, and next week is the season finale. Jason is... somewhere with no interest in rejoining the Titans. Hank is wherever he is, fighting drug addiction. Kory and Rachel are heading to San Fran, and I suppose they can join up with Dawn and Donna. And Dick can show up. So that really puts Kory (powerless), Rachel, Dawn, Donna, and Dick in position to fight villain groups A and B. And tell us what Hank is doing. And tell us with Jason is doing.

Plus, the creative team presumably has to get Gar and Conner free of Cadmus' mind control. And have Rose get out from under Slade's thumb. And free Jericho. That's a lot to do in one episode, even if it runs a little long for a season finale. And that's not including the Kory/Blackfire/Tamaran subplot (next season), and doing something interesting with Rachel, and having Gar deal with the trauma of ripping people apart.

And answering who was that strange guy last week with the name Bruce Wayne, who didn't act like the Bruce Wayne we know from the comics and most media. The Titans Bruce Wayne can send out magical and technological signals directing people to a diner, and talks about family, when the Batman we've seen elsewhere is a reluctant and stern father figure at best, and a sneaky SOB who betrays his teammates for the good of humanity and/or "the mission" at worst. I like Iain Glen as the character "Bruce Wayne", but can anyone imagine the 58-year-old Glen swinging around Gotham and putting the smackdown on bad guys like Solomon Grundy and Blockbuster? He makes Old Bruce Wayne on Batman Beyond look like a spring chicken by comparison.

So I'll be curious to see what the creative team pulls out of their hat to pull it together for next week's "Nightwing". Which judging from the title promises to focus a lot on... Dick Grayson. Again. *sigh*

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?