Titans (2018 TV series)

Titans is an American superhero television series created by Akiva Goldsman, Geoff Johns, and Greg Berlanti. Based on the DC Comics superhero team the Teen Titans, the series depicts a group of young heroes who join forces in their fight against evil.

Plot
In the live-action telling of the "Teen Titans" comics, Dick Grayson (Brenton Thwaites) forms a superhero team with Raven Roth (Teagan Croft), Kori Anders/Starfire (Anna Diop), and Garfield Logan/Beast Boy (Ryan Potter).

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The "Teen Titans" take a "dark and edgy" turn to make themselves "Riverdale's answer to the Teen Titans".
 * 2) The show purposely incorporates way too much violence, sexual scenes and swearing in order to give itself a TV-MA rating. One notorious example is Dick Grayson stabbing a guy in the balls with a pair of garden shears in the pilot episode.
 * 3) Several characters become even more flanderized than how they would be compared to Teen Titans Go!.
 * 4) *Even though Dick Grayson/Robin is the leader of the Teen Titans, the live-action depiction of him constantly deserts his team. He even spends once every season fighting his inner demons and it's embarrassingly painful to watch.
 * 5) *Kori Anders/Starfire was originally depicted as a redhead. Here, she is a victim of the "blackwashing the redhead" trope where she is now an African American.
 * 6) *Rachel Roth/Raven is supposed to be the more mature woman just like her previous incarnations. In here, she is a shy and timid kid, who then ends up acting like a self-righteous brat. She is also mean to Garfield Logan, even though he has not done anything bad to her.
 * 7) *Conner Kent/Superboy goes on a killing spree the moment he escapes his creation pod in season 2.
 * 8) *Hank Hall/Hawk comes off as as complete hot-head who goes from calm to anger faster than a hero defeating a single villain.
 * 9) *Dawn Granger/Dove gives a holier-than-thou attitude only to backtrack when things don't go right.
 * 10) Dick Grayson's infamous line from Episode 1: "F**k Batman", pretty much summons up the show's edginess all into a single line. This was something people have pointed out and have a problem with when the very first trailer premiered.
 * 11) The acting is considered bland, cringeworthy and uninteresting.
 * 12) The show, for some reason, does not include Victor Stone/Cyborg as a member of the team, even though Cyborg was a member of the Teen Titans and the Justice League in the original comics.
 * 13) Many of the villains, minus Deathstroke, are forgettable and forgotten as series progresses.
 * 14) *Trigon, Raven's father, is forgotten about and never appears again after the first episode of season 2.
 * 15) *CADMUS, and their leader Mercy Graves (Lex Luthor's bodyguard, personal assistant and anything else Luthor has her be), didn't appear until Superboy's introductory episode halfway through Season 2, and they usurp the role as the final boss from Deathstroke with little buildup.
 * 16) *Scarecrow, the big bad of Season 3, is basically a crime lord wannabe who tries to be more than what Batman believes him to be, no longer wears his iconic mask and only gets as far as he did because the Titans were a self-destructive mess of a team.
 * 17) The writing and storytelling is messy, contradictory and inconsistent. Basically anything set up from the last episode can be awkwardly dropped in the next, the Titans can escape consequences for their immoral and petty actions and more and more flashbacks and backstories contradict each other.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The Titans in the show are not as bad as their 2013 counterparts.
 * 2) Many characters have slightly improved in season 3.
 * 3) The diversity within the cast could be interesting. For example, Brenton Thwaites (Robin), Teagan Croft (Raven) and Joshua Orpin (Superboy) are Australian; Ryan Potter (Beast Boy) is Caucasian; and Anna Diop (Starfire) is African American.
 * 4) The action scenes are pretty amazing and fun to watch.
 * 5) Doom Patrol, while not the same version we saw from this series, is a overall improvement in terms of acting, storytelling and characterization.
 * 6) Jericho is by far the only likable character on the show.

Critical Response
Titans scored a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes on their first season, while they got an 81% and 100% in the following two seasons, respectively. Overall, their average tomatometer is 86%, while the average audience score is 67%. On IMDb, they scored a 7.6/10. Despite this, the show has mixed reviews, ranging from good to mediocre. For instance, Vinnie Mancuso from Collider described the show as "dark". Mancuso also pointed out that Titans has "aesthetic rangers from unappealing to shockingly cheap".

In August 2022, Erielle Sudario of We Got This Covered explains why "Titans" is an inferior show. Among the reasons include the show's "writing quality" and the fact that "[Titans] was trying to target Riverdale's audience". Many of the episode plots for "Titans" were considered "baffling".