2x07 Once Burned

[7.2/10] This one didn’t make a lot of sense to me. It was exciting to see Terry and Melanie have to interact again (not to mention Batman and Ten), but both are in a different place than the last time we saw them. That makes picking up where they left off feel strange.

While the show has always played Terry and Dana’s relationship as slightly nebulous, his interludes with Melanie here definitely feel like him cheating on her, which makes it hard to like him even as he tosses her note in the trash. By the same token, the whole “burned” element and melodrama between the Terry and Melanie feels like unengaging Dawson’s Creek stuff. I found the superhero/supervillain dichotomy between them interesting on the first go-round, but they play it for such over the top intensity, which neither the performances nor the writing can really sustain.

There’s also the array of fine but unspectacular plot twists. First we think that she’s just stealing the pot from “The Derby” out of sheer criminal greed. Then we learn it’s because the Jokerz are demanding it as ransom money to release her family. Then we (or at least I) were led to believe that was a ruse and she was really trying to deliver Batman to them. Then it’s revealed that she was telling the truth (or at least the truth as she knew it), but the whole thing was a setup from her parents to make her prove her loyalty.

That’s an exhausting array of recontextualizing the central conflict of the episode, all while Terry and Melanie moon over one another, while Batman and Ten scrap on the rooftops. Most of it is fine, and there’s some excitement when the pair try to infiltrate the Jokerz hideout. But a lot of this had trouble holding my attention, especially during some undifferentiated action sequences.

Overall, it’s all plenty watchable, but it’s not the best mining of the interesting relationship between Terry and Melanie in their private and professional lives.