On the run with Rachel, Dick decides the best possible thing to do is drop in on old friends Hank ‘Hawk’ Hall and Dawn ‘Dove’ Granger, fellow crimefighters. A mysterious family of agents are activated to find Rachel.

Okay.

So here’s what works this time: amazingly, Hawk and Dove. Alan Ritchson (still the best non-Momoa Aquaman) and Minka Kelly are actually pretty great as the surprisingly hard travelling heroes. They’re working alone, taking down an arms dealer and once he’s done, they’re retiring so Hawk can heal. There’s a film noirish feel to them and a genuine sweetness to their scenes that both Kelly and Ritchson nail. Kelly is a nicely balanced combination of gentle and tough, Ritchson brings a cautious, almost frightened sweetness to the moments he’s allowed to, y’know, act.

Then the episode carries on and, well… yeah.

Hawk and Dove are fun. Hawk and Dove’s plot plays like something the original Kick-Ass creative team rejected for being too trite. It’s One Big Score, it’s I’ll Always Love You and worst of all, it’s fridging.

This is fridging.

Fridging was invented in 1999 in response, in part, to something DC were doing. That memo is presumably almost at the end of its 20 year journey to the Titans production office Oh and just for giggles, the show also goes out of its way to objectify Dove into a sex object for Hank and Dick to growl over. Because apparently, it’s always 1999 on the DC Network.

Elsewhere, a couple of things happen. Kory doesn’t get to giggle about incinerating people this week so there’s that. But mostly this feels like an attempted re-launch instead of the catastrophic failure of the previous episode.

Verdict: Parts of it are good. Those aren’t the parts you’ll remember I promise. 2/10

Alasdair Stuart