DC's Titans Season 1 Premiere: 3 Ups & 2 Downs From Episode 1

Downs...

2. Structural Issues

It's every premiere's job to set up a story that viewers want to see unfold, and in order to do that, it needs to introduce us to all of its characters. With an ensemble cast of four main characters that had yet to meet, Titans' season premiere had its work cut out for it, and it really tried to pull it off. However, the structure of the episode let it down.

Obviously the heart of the story was in Detroit, so it made sense that the show devoted the first part of the episode to Robin and Raven. However, just when we had gotten hooked, it suddenly switched gears and randomly took us all the way to Austria to introduce us to Starfire. It was jarring but forgivable. That is, until the exact same thing would happen again - taking us away from Starfire and back to Detroit, before doing it all again (and vice versa).

The problem here is that they weren't quick cuts to keep things flowing, they were long drawn-out acts focusing on a single character. While this approach isn't unheard of for streaming service shows, it really hurt the pacing because we didn't have another episode to quickly jump into after this one finished. Thus, this clunky and perhaps indulgent episode was all that we got.

This left little time for Beast Boy who was randomly thrown in during the episode's closing moments. Yes, we know he can shape-shift, that's not a cliffhanger.