Titans - The Complete First Season

Surprisingly, DC Universe's Titans isn't the dumpster fire that it appeared to be from the show's initial trailer. In the show's First Season, recently orphaned teenager Rachel Roth (Teagan Croft) brings together brooding police detective and former vigilante sidekick Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites), amnesiac alien Koriand'r (Anna Diop), and shape-shifting teen Gar Logan (Ryan Potter). Over the course of the season the show will also introduce a few of Dick's crime-fighting buddies such as Donna Troy (Conor Leslie), and Hawk (Alan Ritchson) and Dove (Minka Kelly).

Delivering a Robin who didn't get out from Batman's shadow before a bit too much of his mentor's world view rubbed off on him is a questionable one, but also helps frame Dick as every bit as lost as the young girl with bizarre powers who he tries to help. Dick's questionable choices are explored in several episodes, and the arrival of Jason Todd (Curran Walters) on the scene as the new Robin creates even more.

The season isn't without some blemishes. "Asylum," in which the characters are all separately tortured by members of a secret organization wanting to reuinte Rachel with her father, gets too dark for its own good. And a pair of episodes ("Hank and Dawn" and the season finale "Dick Grayson") also get too far offtrack from the main storyline. The final arrival of a very human-looking Trigon (Seamus Dever) in the season's penultimate episodes, a plot point which isn't furthered in the finale, is also something of a letdown.

Even with these issues, Titans works fairly well. The core four characters have good chemistry on screen, and the choice of additional supporting characters hints at a possible larger main cast in the show's Second Season. Available on Blu-ray and DVD, extras are limited to short featurettes introducing the various characters.

[Warner Bros., Blu-ray $29.98 / DVD $24.98]