Titans – The Call is Coming From Inside the House review S3 E11

Titans continues its painfully slow limp to the finish line to end this increasingly awful season with more of the same foolishness.

Crane decides now is the time to finally shave as he happily sings along to Waterfalls by TLC. He stops to pause at his Scarecrow mask in the Batcave and makes a bold proclamation to Jason that the time for masks is done. Maybe this would have any kind of impact if Crane wore the Scarecrow mask even once this season…

Emboldened by his victory over the sorry Titans who can’t even stop a non-powered nut job, Crane rallies Jason to go out and cause some mayhem. As Red Hood, Jason speaks to Gotham from the Batcave.

Tim is casually walking on the street in an empty Gotham — as if there was another kind in this show — and watching this message on Gotham building TV. We’ve seen nothing to indicate Gotham was this technologically savvy. Metropolis? Sure, but not this incarnation of Gotham, which seems to only have 40 people in the entire city. 

He spots Donna and they finally catch up after their shared life after death experience. It’s felt like a long time since that episode while it would have been far more sensible for them to immediately be in the same space together upon emerging from The Transition Place. Not to be confused with The Good Place… 

Of course if that were the case how would Donna have been able to save the suicidal Bruce Wayne? Also, Donna stopped him that one time. What exactly is stopping Bruce from falling back into the same despair seeing his city in shambles and his sidekick public enemy #1. Well, if this were actually Batman/Bruce Wayne and not some ridiculous caricature, he’d actually go to Gotham and stop Scarecrow, but what do I know?

Tim and Donna go to his parents’ restaurant. Wait, didn’t Tim’s dad get shot earlier this season too? Now he’s standing around like it was just a bad case of heartburn. With dad and Tim getting shot, Tim’s mom better watch out. Apparently Tim has been using his tip money to create his own Tim cave. And he’s already sharing information at a better rate with Donna, who’s not even his teammate, than Dick.

It is kinda wild that Tim’s computer network was still fully operational while his parents were out of power. Gee, maybe they could whip up some food if it wasn’t for Tim streaming to all of his fellow Bat followers?

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Dick does what Dick normally does and tells Superboy to sit out. This makes sense as Superboy is a member of Dick’s team that Dick never wants to be a part of unless it’s for a random mission solely depending on the full Titans team helpfully triggering Crane’s booby trap. This show has consistently been stupid as if none of the writers bothered to question any of the character choices.

And it’s not like knowing Red Hood and Crane are at Wayne Manor would make it tough for Superboy to track down and stop. This really felt like Dick having discovered his superpower of a super ego as if he has to be the one to stop them. That raises the question of why he hadn’t already done that since it’s literally just Crane, who’s easily stopped with a (wait for it) gasmask and Red Hood, who Nightwing has constantly beaten down this season. 

But no, Dick actually works harder to stop his teammate securing some Kryptonite dust from one of Bruce’s hideouts so he can knock out Conner and Krypto. Maybe it should have been Dick that got killed instead of Hawk? At least we know Hawk would have wrapped this goofy plot up by now. 

Now it’s time for the big showdown of Nightwing vs. Red Hood. A ‘crowd’ of Red Hood supporters are cheering him on for reasons that still don’t make sense. Why would Gotham suddenly hate the Titans? They’ve never seen anything the Titans have done to cast doubt on them actually being heroes. Just because Crane and Red Hood said so? And why wouldn’t Dick just use the same goofy tactic and hijack Gotham TV/radio/podcasts and say ‘no, Crane and Red Hood are evil?’ 

The logic on Titans is like Neo in Matrix prime dodging anything remotely involving sense. 

And like the other times, Dick goes Tyson Fury on Jason and beats him down. This is not a contest at this point. Jason is 0-fer against Nightwing. Good thing an impressionable teenager decides to shoot Nightwing. Gee, if only Nightwing had a bulletproof teammate watching his back. At this point, Nightwing probably should get killed off for being so consistently stupid and an awful teammate. 

Meanwhile, Crane tortures a pizza delivery man. This is a reminder that Crane is crazy and sadistic. If the writers still have to do this kind of cheap bad guy credibility scenes at episode 11 of a 13-episode season, that means they’ve made a crappy villain. 

Kory spots the baby she’s been seeing in her hallucinations with her mother in a pharmacy that kinda hints that Gotham is in shambles. For all the supposed chaos in this city, it really doesn’t feel that devastated or chaotic. 

The mother is in trouble with a guy named Max, presumably as he loaned her money to care for her sick daughter. Max doesn’t want to waste time with Kory and shoots her.

This triggers an extended gaze into her birth where her parents decided to give her the birthright to be queen despite not possessing the flame. Komand’r does have it and her parents forcibly shift it from Blackfire to Starfire. 

So Blackfire didn’t actually steal her sister’s powers so much as taking back what was hers. Great. All the Titans are crappy heroes.

Raven and Gar are busy tracking down the Lazarus Pit for some reason, but she gets interrupted via her connection to Dick..Nightwing. She knows he’s in pain and her dark force starts to lash out in search of her friend/big brother. Too bad she didn’t have any connection to Hank, huh?

Alright we’re almost done with this lousy season, but episodes like this one hardly make the home stretch enjoyable. Thankfully, there’s only two more episodes left. 

Rating: 3 out of 10

Photo Credit: HBO Max

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