Young Justice: Outsiders S03E12 Review: DOOM PATROL GO

Young Justice: Outsiders, Season 3, Episode 12: Nightmare Monkeys

Oh man, this is a fucking weird episode, but I sincerely mean that in a good way. Jumping straight to the point is the fact that Beast Boy goes through a crazy, trippy dream sequence, and one of the most unexpected and hilarious one is a pastiche on Teen Titans Go called Doom Patrol Go, something that I genuinely found utterly hilarious. I'm not the biggest fan of Teen Titans Go, but the way that the show eschews the pretty toxic rivalry between its fans and TTG's fans and instead has this actually pretty loving and well-done parody is something I genuinely appreciate. It's... it's just insane, and the fact that it actually even ties into real DC comics Doom Patrol lore makes this even better. I love it.

Anyway, this episode focuses on Beast Boy, and he's retired from superheroing to focus on his acting career, and we get to see a clip from the pretty hammed-up episode of Space Trek where he fights a bunch of clam aliens. I'm sad that the Clamulons aren't actual villains in the show! There's a definitely nice, sad undertone to Garfield's bombastic actor role, noting that he knew how to do tears because he 'had practice'. Of course, things sort of take a turn for the darker side when we realize that Garfield doesn't just deal with his pretty dismissive prick of a caretaker, Steve "Mento" Dayton... the whole studio and show is being sponsored by none other than Granny Goodness.

Meanwhile, in the Conner/M'gann homestead, the Outsiders gather as they are introduced and caught up to Cyborg's origin story over the past two episodes, and I absolutely love how Cyborg is freaked out by the fact that no one is freaking out... and, y'know, as everyone notes, "you picked the right crowd". Of course, Forager has to be a funny guy and reveal his true four-armed bug form and completely freak Cyborg out. That's fun! We get confirmation that Halo's Boom Tube powers likely has something to do with the dissected Mother Box from the Baron Bedlam operation, while Artemis recalls the other hint to the Mother Box fusing with Halo from the brief encounter with Dr. Fate. But Halo basically rejects both the Mother Box and Gabrielle Dou identities, noting that she's now Violet Harper/Halo, and she's her own person. Good on you! It's a nice little recap to the ongoing Halo mystery, and I think unless we get some extra material to go with the specifics of the Mother Box, we're probably done with exploring her backstory.

It's Cyborg's turn in the spotlight, because the Sphere goes utterly berserk, transforms into the Super-Cycle, and tries to attack Cyborg -- who returns back into the purple-circuits mode and faces off against the Sphere. Of course, Halo defuses the situation, noting that, yes, the New Genesphere is also New Genesis technology, and the fact that Halo had been able to tell the Sphere's gender and 'talk' to the Sphere before isn't just a cute little detail, but an actual hint to Halo's true nature -- some great writing there!

Conner and M'gann might not have as much screentime as they had before, but that little date night/secret base moment, coupled with their frustrations at this 'needy and complicated never-ending thing' while also simultaneously knowing that, yes, they are good people that will take in strays, is done amazingly well too.

As this is going on, Gar prepares to go clubbing with his girlfriend, Queen Perdita of Vlatava, and I just find it to be pretty precious! The two characters work off each other well, up until Beast Boy puts on the Goode Goggles console. And as he plays a VR game, he gets injected with a small, tiny needle on the side of his head, and the game begins to creepily put in some sublinimal messages, telling him to go to a certain place. We later learn that this is how the metahuman trafficking ring has been getting its prey, by getting people who test positive for the meta-gene to go straight to the closest 'collection' station while quasi-brainwashed.

Of course, with Beast Boy, this takes a... bizarre turn. He finds himself on the set of the Not-Enterprise in Space Trek, where he is confronted by the 'ghosts' of the dead members of the team, particularly Wally West. And this whole trippy mind-fuck sequence is just a way to basically get Beast Boy to admit to himself that the whole acting thing is just him trying to deny all of the grief he's actually struggling with, and it's just kind of a distraction. We get Gar then talking to the ghostly vision of his childhood pet monkey (also voiced by Jason Spisak in the Wally West voice)....

And then DOOM PATROL GO! I am frankly amazed at the quick change in cadence that Greg Cripes has, turning from the less-exaggerated tones of Young Justice's Beast Boy to the far more caricatured version of the character from Teen Titans Go. This, of course, is a nice nod to Beast Boy's original comic book team, the Doom Patrol, but associating Chief with that of TT's Robin, Robotman to Cyborg, Elasti-Girl to Starfire, and, of course, Negative Woman as Raven (ha!) is a genuinely fun moment. This parody quickly takes a dark turn as the Doom Patrol chant about "we have to go on a mission and die". But damn, it's not just a random half-assed parody of having the Teen Titans Go voice actors voice a parody, but they actually do a reasonable job at matching the characters to voice actors that would actually make sense for them. It's a well thought-out parody... and I'm not sure if the Doom Patrol actually exists in the Young Justice universe and that they are among the many people in Gar's life that died (Rita Farr and Mento certainly do exist, and Rita presumably 'left' Gar in some way... but I'm not sure if the Doom Patrol exists as a superhero team) or if it's just Gar's acid trip. Either way, it's well done.

A combination of these various acid trips basically has Beast Boy realizing that M'gann is his real family and his real sister, while Dayton/Mento is just exploiting Garfield's powers to make him rich while not actually caring for hi as a person. It's an interesting dynamic that perhaps over-simplifies Mento's comic-book counterpart, but I love it.

Speaking of said sister, in addition to calling medics (she is a smart girl), Perdita has also called M'gann and Conner, and I absolutely love how M'gann introduces herself as "the green kid's brother" while reverting to her green martian form. M'gann tries to delve into Garfield's mind just as the hallucinations transform into the Hello Megan show while it fritzes out while Marie Logan seemingly 'abandons' Beast Boy... and then hallucinatory Queen Bee shows up, before the scene changes into an extended version of the engineered accident that claims Marie Logan's life. It's... it's genuinely heartbreaking to see the energetic Beast Boy basically break down at the sight of this old trauma, and I myself am just kind of impressed that they're going back and revisiting an origin story that was sort of just brushed aside after a short panning shot.

Beast Boy's Wally-Monkey mystical companion goes on a bit of a tangent on how he might just be a figment of Gar's imagination or something bigger (implied to be the reason Gar can transform into animals because Gar's powers defy the conservation of mass), but whatever the case, the Monkey spirit notes that he's the reason the Goode VR powers doesn't work on Beast Boy, and that while the Monkey (whether it be a mystical spirit, Wally's ghost or just a personification of BB's powers) made him Beast Boy, he had made himself a hero. Gar admits to himself that being on TV was just a way to try and get closer to be like his mother as a coping mechanism, but all he's doing is running away from everyone else, from his true family and his responsibilities, eventually causing him to be able to be broken out of the funk by M'gann.

We get a dual kiss between Gar and Perdita, as well as Conner and M'gann... and, wow, what a trippy episode, huh? I'm definitely pleased that we're getting a Beast Boy focus, because I've always felt that he was under-utilized. The first season built him up reasonably well, but the second season mostly just utilizes Beast Boy as just another member of the team. This reinvigoration of the character as he realizes that he should stop running from his problems and actually return to being a hero is a genuinely well-written episode (wacky hallucinations notwithstanding). I'm not the biggest fan of hallucination episodes, but this one is actually done in a pretty charming way. Oh, and it also helps to further the whole metahuman kidnapping and Granny Goodness storyline. I knew those VR goggles  were prominently featured in this season for a reason! Easily one of the best and most emotional episodes this season, and that's before factoring in the zaniness of the Easter Eggs in this episode.

Roll Call:

• Heroes: Beast Boy, Mento, Tigress, Geo-Force, Nightwing, Wolf, Superboy, Miss Martian, Halo, Black Lightning, Forager, Cyborg, Dr. Fate (flashback), Sphere
• Villains: Granny Goodness
• Civilians/Others: Paul Sloane, Dr. Helga Jace, Queen Perdita
• In Hallucination: Kid Flash I, Blue Beetle II, Aquagirl, Robin II, Monkey, Elasti-Girl, Chief, Robotman, Negative Woman, Marie Logan, Queen Bee

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Hooo boy. Where to begin? The whole "DOOM PATROL GO!" segment is done in the style of the Teen Titans Go cartoon -- including the couch set, the art style, and even the dancing scenes. Most importantly, they had the Teen Titans Go cast voice the members of the Doom Patrol in the exact same voice that their Teen Titans/Teen Titans Go characters use, while assigning them to members of the Doom Patrol team.
• I did a bit about listing the origin stories for the Doom Patrol members in a Titans episode review recently. Since they're all just easter eggs and not actual characters other than Mento, I won't repeat myself. 
• The notable ones I didn't cover is the change from Negative Man to Negative Woman (Valentina Vostok), Negative Man's successor; as well as Mento (Steve Dayton), a telepathic member of the Doom Patrol that was Rita Farr's lover and had a somewhat difficult relationship with his adopted son Beast Boy. 
• The whole bit about the Doom Patrol going off and dying is a reference to the actual fate of the original team in the comics. 
• Beast Boy having implied to have a mystical connection to his animal shapeshifting powers (as opposed to either the mixture of a virus/monkey blood transfusion in the comics; or the martian blood one in this show) is a nod to the New 52 rebooted continuity where Beast Boy draws his power from 'the Red', a force of primal animal energy that fellow heroes like Animal Man, B'wanna Beast and Vixen tap into. 
• Prior to the Doom Patrol Go hallucination, we get to see Beast Boy leading a 'Space Trek' crew of a ship made up of all the members of the Team that had died in season two, among them Wally West (Kid Flash), Blue Beetle II, Robin II and Aquagirl. The death of everyone other than Wally happened off-screen, although we've seen the shrine to the dead before. 

• Wally repeating the whole "he's dead, Tom" line is a reference to the memetic Star Trek line "he's dead, Jim".  
• In an amazing note of continuity, Rita Farr and Paul Sloane as Marie Logan's co-stars in the Hello Megan show were easter eggs from all the way back in season one's episode "Image".
• They've shown up a whole lot this season, but I don't think I've mentioned the fun joke of the Goode Worlds logo being a homage to the Warner Bros' logo.