The reason why Rachel can't sense Dick was lying when he said he wouldn't leave her is that he wasn't lying. He planned to leave her with Hank and Dove for a few weeks tops to sort things out and then he was gonna come back for her, but now Rachel thinks her powers do not work on him and doesn't trust him anymore.
I'll probably gonna get stoned to death considering on how well received the episode seemed to be, but I really didn't like it, and I think it was a really weak follow up to a very nice pilot.
Spoilers ahead
I’ll try to keep it short, so;
I didn’t like how Dawn was unnecessary killed off for the sake of progressing the development of a romantically uninvolved and emotionally stunted Dick Grayson. Is especially annoying that Dick did get his chance to exchange some words with her before her death, while Hanks (you know, her boyfriend who actually loves her) was completely ignored by the writers. which brings me to-
Hank and Dawn relationship revolving around Dick for the entire episode. Between Dawn not making any real effort to hide that she still has feelings for Dick and Hank being (understandably) jealous, the “Hawk & Dove” pair felt kinda undermined to me. I wasn’t really gushing over them, but at least their relationship at beginning of the episode looked like a genuine and believable love story, until we got to Dawn’s flashback; after that there really wasn’t a single moment where I thought that Dawn would genuinely stay with Hank if Dick told her that he still wants her. Heck, Hank felt like a background character in his own storyline and a third wheel in his own relationship, and tbh, the fact that he acted like an overly possessive, jealous asshole for most of the episode didn’t really help me to find a reason to genuinely root for him.
Overall, I just don’t like how Hank was sidelined for Dick’s sake.
They killed off Dawn way too soon for me to feel any real emotional connection to her death. Is way too early in the series for the death of any major character to have any real impaction on anything, and Dawn was not developed enough as a character within the story for anyone who doesn’t know her from the comics, or knows her but still doesn’t particularly care, to really feel something other than “That’s sucks :(” for her death.
Wasted potential with Dove’s death, but that deserves another post altogether.
Maybe the writers did it on purpose and really wanted to somewhat undermine Dove and Hawk’s relationship for the sake of drama, and maybe Dawn is really not death and things gonna resolve as the episodes go on; I may revisit this post if that’s the case, but now as it is, this are my opinions about that.
I do believe that the storyline would have worked if handled better; it spanning and developing throughout different episodes, Hank not being sidelined and the authors actually knowing what to do with Dawn’s feeling for Dick. This entire episode felt flat and unrefined because everything was cramped in the span of 45 minute.
I don’t want to end on a bad note tho, so here a list of things that I actually liked from the episode;
Dick getting called out for his unnecessary abuse of violence. It really bothered me how he gratuitously slaughtered those criminals, I’m pretty sure some of them actually died. I’m happy that behaviour is actually not considered acceptable and is actually part of the storyline for Dick’s development.
The robotic, murderous family. I know they are part of the comics but I can’t remember who they are exactly, but I really love their concept.
