"E.L._.O." – Titans S02E11 Review

Oh, look, more Dick. Lots of Dick. Dick as far as the eye can see.

In case you haven't gathered from the above and my previous reviews of Titans, enough Dick!! I don't care how chiseled Brenton Thwaites' manly good looks are. (Although they are. A lot.) We have met Dick. And he is us. Or... something like that.

Iain Glen as Bruce Wayne has slowly grown on me, too. They gave him some actual fisticuffs to engage in this episode. Yes, Glen is 59 years old, so they didn't turn him into the lean, mean Batman fighting machine. But between the hallucinatory Bruce taunting Dick, reminding Dick of his upbringing, and dropping hints as to who Slade really is, Glen does adequately.

But why isn't Slade who he appears to be? Glad you asked. "E.L._.O." stands in for Elko, the small town in Nevada which is the focus of four different characters for no reason that is ever explained. Starting with the title: why not just call it "Elko?" There's no significance to using the abbreviation over the actual name. There is one brief bit where a clerk is filling in a crossword puzzle and the answer is "Elko", but she doesn't say she has E, L, and O. I suppose she could be missing the K. But who knows? And why is the scene significant enough to title the episode? Again, it's never explained.

Donna gets a cryptic phone call from Rachel saying she should go to Elko. Dawn is driving from Wyoming to San Francisco, and as she passes through Nevada her radio blurts out Elko. Kory is preparing to have sex with a psychiatrist in Las Vegas, and when his inexplicably chatty character fails to psycho analyze her, Kory's hotel TV comes on with an ad for Joe's Diner in... Elko.

Rachel is hanging out with her new buddies in San Francisco, and having dreams of Deathstroke killing Dick at Dick's funeral. Her friend Dani then does a Tarot card reading for her, and when Dani learns her father Caleb is dead, she says she's glad. Rachel looks shocked, and later is summoned to Elko as well.

The four female Titans arrive there and are surprised to see each other. Then Bruce Wayne strolls in. It's not clear if this is some weird magical/hallucinatory Bruce made solid, or the real Bruce, or what. Rachel denies summoning the others, but it could all be some kind of subconscious use of her powers. Bruce acts as weird and vague as the hallucinatory Bruce that appears to Dick, and delivers a lot of very un-Bruce Wayne lines about how family is strength, and the Titans are a family, and they should help each other because no one else will. Which sounds very much unlike the loner Batman of the comics. This is the guy who amassed secret files on his fellow Justice League members and set up a global network of spy satellites to watch them. On Young Justice Batman ran a secret cabal of superheroes and forgot to tell the rest of the Justice League. But I've lost track of which Batman we're seeing in Titans, and apparently so has the creative team.

The second main plot focuses on Rose and Jason. Jason has apparently fallen in love with Rose despite her being a generally unlovable character, because teen soap opera. Jason opens up to her about how he lived in a high school theater's rafters when growing up. He then confronts Rose about her shifty ways, and the two of them kiss.

Later, Rose calls Slade and tells him she's done acting as his mole within the Titans. I guess because she's fallen in wuv with Jason. And… what has she done as a mole? Eat cereal, and that's about it. I suppose she could have been the one pranking the original Titans a few episodes ago, her already being inside the Tower and all. They don’t mention that here. But it's not so much shocking, as just clumsy and untelegraphed. There's been nothing to suggest Rose is a secret Slade operative, because she hasn't done much of anything, good, bad, heroic, or villainous. At least Conner had something to do this season, what with the introduction of Cadmus. Rose was introduced, we got some verbiage about how she was on the run from Slade early on, and that's been it.

But why would she turn against the man she thinks is her father? Even if she's in wuv with Jason, her attitude toward the other Titans hasn't changed. And Jason has left the Titans. I suppose she could be refusing to work with Slade because there are no Titans left to infiltrate, but that's not made at all clear. Rose seems to have come from a storyline where the Titans are still together, and Jason is still with them. And that's not what's going on.

Speaking of Cadmus, Cadmus scientists are operating on Gar's brain. In the opening scene it involves cutting open his skull and probing his brain to trigger his memories, induce hallucinations, and activate his shapeshifting abilities. Maybe they'll chop up a puppy net week. At the end of the episode, Gar has a hallucination of meeting Rachel at the Tower. "Rachel" is actually a scientist Gar is hallucinating is Rachel, under Mercy's watchful eye. Apparently by playing music, Mercy triggers Gar to shapeshift into a tiger and rip the scientist apart.

What about Dick? The third main storyline is about Dick, because of course it is. Dick is in a solitary cell after his stunt freeing the two prisoners last week. The guards beat him briefly, but most of it is Dick shivering with a fever he picked up from a rat. Hallucination-Bruce shows up to both to tell him to put together why Slade didn't kill him at Adeline's house a couple of episodes ago, and to tell Dick he's stronger and faster, and to finally lose in a fight on a stage that looks a lot like the one Jason lives above. Although there's no reason the two should be related, so I'm assuming it isn't the same stage.

Dick eventually remembers that during his confrontation with Slade at Adeline's house, "Slade" did the sign language for "J". Except that's not how the sign language for "J" works. You don't just stick out your index finger and wave it around. You make a little fishhook J motion with the little finger. That's how it worked in the comics, too, when Jericho would possess someone's body he'd sign a "J" to show he was still in the body he could control.

When Bruce signs the same thing, Dick works out it's Jericho in Slade's body. Kory and Rachel decide to rescue Dick while Dawn and Donna go to San Francisco to rescue Gar. When Rachel and Kory break into Dick's cell, they discover he's gone but has left "Jericho is alive" on the wall. And I've lost track of whether this means anything to Kory and Rachel, because they're new Titans and never knew Jericho. I figure someone told them about Jericho, but you wonder why Dick left a message on his cell wall. Was he expecting his Titan teammates to come? Or was he hoping any passing guards would be astonished Jericho was alive? Overall, it seems like a, *ahem*, dick move.

Also, Kory is having trouble with her powers. I don't know why, it hasn't been mentioned before this episode.

That's it for "E.L._.O.". We've got two episodes left, no sign of Hank (although next week's "Faux-Hawk" title suggests he might show up. The photo suggests Dawn is taking the roles of Hawk and Dove), and the Titans are still going in at least five different directions. Gar is having non-elective brain surgery; Dick is about to become Nightwing judging by Hallucination-Bruce calling him a "bird of prey" and wings appearing on Dick's shadow for no reason; Connor is in "suspension" at Cadmus and I don't think any of the other non-Titans except Gar know about him or care; Donna and Dawn are coming to rescue Gar but not Conner; and Kory and Rachel are standing in a prison cell in Nevada with no sign of the man they've come to rescue, looking at a cryptic message telling them someone they've never met is alive.

Jericho could be in Slade's body. Having him return would be fine, as the character was a welcome presence both because he was an interesting character, and because he had a superpower he actually seemed to enjoy using. As opposed to Donna, who still remains criminally underused and someone tuning in could be excused for thinking she doesn't have any superpowers. Kory, whose power is now acting up. And Rachel, who admittedly gets a cool scene where she uses a darkness tendril to choke a guard and then pin him.

Jericho could have hopped into Slade's body at the moment five years ago when he was skewered through the chest. But that means Jericho has been in there for years, concealed his "real" identity from Rose and used her to infiltrate the Titans, and has maintained contact with Wintergreen. Why? I can see Jericho wanting revenge against the Titans for his "death". But why hang out in Slade's body for five years and not do anything against them except have Rose prank them and make some vague threats against Dick?

The creative team has two more episodes to explain, and to tie it all together, it seems like more than they have time to handle. The Titans have to get together to rescue Gar, and deal with Cadmus, and deal with Jericho/Slade. Even if they hold off on the Blackfire storyline until next season, and Titans has been renewed for a third season, that's a lot to tie up in two episodes. Although it's hard to imagine the relatively low-budget series doing a trip to an alien planet and portraying it at all convincingly. Krypton only occasionally pulled it off, and it had a lot bigger budget. But we'll see.

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