TV Review: Titans Season 2 Episode 6

Titans Season 2 Episode 6 “Conner”

Director: Alex Kalymnios

Starring: Brenton Thwaites, Teagan Croft, Anna Diop, Ryan Potter, Curran Walters, Conor Leslie, Minka Kelly, Alan Ritchson, Chelsea Zhang, Esai Morales, Joshua Orpin

Rating: TV-MA

Runtime: 42 minutes

The end of Titans season one gave us a pretty cool post-credits scene. There’s a lab, and this mysterious dude walking around naked attacking scientists and saving a dog named Krypto. I was excited when I saw that, to say the least. Cutting to now, the previous episode of Titans, “Deathstroke” ends on a pretty big cliffhanger. It makes perfect sense that we should explore this new-ish character following that.

“Conner” is about Conner Kent, obviously. We pick up where that post-credits scene from season one left us. Conner breaks out of a Cadmus lab, bringing Krypto the dog with him. Of course, Cadmus isn’t happy about this, and Mercy Graves sends a team to capture Conner. Overseeing the program that created him, Eve Watson, tags along with Conner and Krypto, explaining where Conner came from.

I freaking love this episode. I wouldn’t say it’s the best episode, but there’s a lot of fun stuff in this one. Firstly, the way they’re portraying Conner Kent is as this guy with these dangerous powers, but the mind of a child. In how they set him up, Joshua Orpin is fantastic. There are moments where he’s serious and angry, unable to control his emotions. And there are others where he’s got this childlike naivete to him. Early on he stops a mugging in an alley, but when he finds out the lady has money he asks if he can have it. I couldn’t help but laugh hard at the scene (as intended) because it’s just so good.

The other main characters in this episode are Dr. Eve Watson and Mercy Graves, played by Genevieve Angelson and Natalie Gumede respectively. Mercy Graves isn’t so much a main character, but she’s a security specialist for Lex Luthor and is the one hunting Conner. She’s basically what you’d expect, straight to the point, no-nonsense, kind of a “B-word”. Eve Watson, while not a comic book character, acts as a guide for Conner. Giving him his own backstory and trying to make sense of things for him, like good and bad and how people can be either or both. We see much more of Eve Watson, but I don’t have any complaints about either performance.

The story in this episode is pretty straightforward. Anyone familiar with Superboy/Conner Kent won’t find anything too surprising. He’s a clone of Lex Luthor and Superman, which they do explain in the episode. He’s got memories from both floating in his head, but he’s only a day old and doesn’t know anything about the world. I like this background on him, and a full episode dedicated to Conner gets us pretty familiar with him, so when he joins the Titans, we know what his deal is. But with that, this episode is a “road trip” that early on you can see where they’re heading. It didn’t surprise me that the Cadmus lab they are heading towards is in San Francisco. It is what it is, and I did still enjoy the episode though.

Krypto is hands down the best TV dog ever. He’s cute, he’s loyal. He’s a gosh darn good boy, end of sentence. I mean he’s got superpowers! But that’s where my problems with this episode (and this show) appear. At one point Conner is found and attacked by a heavily armed security force, sent by Mercy Graves. Conner gets to use his powers to stop them. The effects are bad. The use of the powers and what they are I enjoy, but it takes me out of the episode in the scene seeing the effects for them. And the good boy known as Krypto gets it worse.

The dog jumps in the air, catches an RPG and throws it back out the window. The CGI dog is awful. Just awful. It’s mostly that one scene, but the effects on this show have never been the best. But I think if you can get past that (and if you’ve been watching this show this long, you probably can) this is still a good episode. I mean, it’s freaking Superboy and Krypto! This is definitely one worth watching. 

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