Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot
Writer's notes: This was originally written in late 2019, but I only watched the first two episodes of Doom Patrol and sort of never quite gotten into the rest of the show. Because I'm going to slowly do Doom Patrol's first season, I'm basically re-releasing this review since I'm rewatching it.
The first episode of Doom Patrol is... it's a far, far better and more coherent opening episode than its sister show Titans, due to the simple fact that we are quickly introduced to our main cast, and quickly focus on the dynamic of the main quartet, instead of being too focused on crafting a mythology. Doom Patrol does have a pretty interesting narrator, later revealed to be the season's main villain, Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk!), who narrates the episode in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. Between the opening line of this episode being "Ugh, more TV superheoes!" the episode doesn't quite get into being too deconstructive of the genre, thankfully, but definitely doesn't shy from the fact that Doom Patrol's original appeal in the comics is the fact that while being about superheroes, it's also pretty bleak and basically a very pessimistic version of X-Men.
And a good chunk of the episode goes back and forth from Cliff Steele/Robotman's story and character development while also seeing the origin story of most of the main characters, except for the still-enigmatic Chief. It opens first with Mr. Morden's transformation into Mr. Nobody through a mysterious Nazi body enhancements, before we jump into the 80's and start off Cliff's story.
And the opening happens pretty quickly, and we're led to believe that it's a simple, generic origin story of competitive racer Cliff being caught in a race car crash because he was distracted by his wife basically grabbing the dick of his mechanic in the middle of the race to spite him. And then... and then we get poor Cliff stuck in a robot body with fragmented memories, with some neat shots of how a Cliff that's unable to interact with the world get to see the Chief (recasted as Timothy Dalton), and the rest of the Patrol, before he finally manages to regain control of his body. By then, though, the Chief tells him that it's 1995, and the world thinks Cliff Steele died in 1988. While the Chief plans to break the news gently to Cliff, Rita "Elastigirl" Farr quickly pulls up a mirror, showing Cliff that he's a brain in a clunky robot body. And the episode doesn't shy away from the horrors of being trapped in a metal body that "can't eat, can't sleep, can't shit, can't fuck", things humans take for granted.
And a good chunk of this episode's theme, it seems, is that the simple origin story isn't the full story, as we would later learn as Cliff slowly learns throughout the events of this episode... unlike his fragmented memory, he didn't die in the car crash. He actually survived long enough to go off and fuck his mistress... and then goes back home to make up with his wife and daughter. But as he apologizes while driving them to get some breakfast, a pretty goddamn brutal accident involving a giant truck slices off the heads of everyone present. We learn this around the third act of the episode, and between us seeing Cliff's first flashback and the full version, we keep seeing Cliff trying to make his new robot body work, all the while thinking of his daughter (who Chief told him survived). The brutal way that Cliff ends up learning about this, and how poorly he takes it... Actor Brendan Fraser genuinely makes it work so god damn well, particularly with the fact that he's supposed to be emoting through a goofy looking robot body.
Likewise, Larry Trainor, the Negative Man, is a snarky, well-spoken man whose origin story is told to us very quickly. He flew airplanes, particularly the experimental jet called the X15, and it appears that the main part of his accident was caused by the thing that turned him into a superhuman. A stowaway, an energy being that latched onto the otherwise perfect flight, causing the crash. Of course, we peel back the layers a bit more about how Larry has always felt like a 'monster', because the world of the 60's could never accept him, since he's actually gay.
Rita, meanwhile, is the queen of the '50s cinema, and a gigantic stuck-up bitch who basically tells her director to fire one of the cameramen while shooting a movie in Africa because she doesn't like her. She falls into a river during shooting, and most of the crew (who liked the local cameraman) didn't bother to rescue her. By the time that one of the other actors drags her out of the river, she's been transformed by some weird green glow into a hideous fish glob monster. She seems pretty well-adjusted, but we later see that she definitely isn't.
The Chief, meanwhile, initially is shown as a pretty nice old professor dude in the vein of Professor X or a dozen other old-man-mentor tropes, but the way he selectively hides information from Cliff and him clearly hiding a lot of information from his team, telling them that it's for their own good... Chief has always been a character that interests me a lot in the comics, so I'm curious just how far down the rabbit hole of morality this version of the character will go. We get a recast from Titans, with this Chief being played by Timothy Dalton... who's a fantastic actor.
While Chief is out of the house for most of the episode, we're also introduced to a junior member, Crazy Jane, who has 64 personalities, and each of them has their own special power. We get to see a couple of her personalities, with Sylvia being a spooky personality that looks like a possessed girl, while Hammerhead is a Grade-A asshole who punches Robotman in the dick and basically mocks his life and the little model of the city that Robotman and his buddies make. Then we see Jane, who's just a sad girl who likes to paint.
Of course, Chief ends up leaving town for a while, telling them to not go out of the mansion. In typical fiction trope, Jane immediately wants to go to town, and... and the way Jane convinces Rita to go to town is utterly hilarious, with Rita jumping straight from being the mature woman in the situation to screaming for Larry to get into the buss. Of course, while it seems like a fun night out for them as they re-enter society, things go to shit. Robotman walking around with Jane into a toy store causes Jane to basically tell Robotman (not kindly too) that his daughter's dead and Chief has been lying.
Rita, meanwhile, goes into a bar and it seems that things are going on well for her when the bartender is apparently a woman who grew up with all of her movies... and then she gets utterly shocked when the bartender reveals that her life is now filled with rumours and scandals, causing her to lose control of her power and quite literally transform into a giant glob. Things go a bit wild as Larry's Negative Man powers inadvertently activate as well, while Jane's Hammerhead persona antagonizes a bunch of cops and threatens to beat them up. Of course, as Rita, who can't control herself, blobs down the main street, Robotman does the superhero thing, lifting a chunk of the pavement to calm Rita down. It's... it's pretty neat, even if it's kind of an obvious superhero thing.
This superhero team coming together ends up being the start of the events of the series, though, with the Chief telling them that they've given themselves away to Chief's many, many enemies. Robotman doesn't want the Chief to decide what's best for him, and decides to stay and protect the town from any incoming enemies, unlike Chief's intention to abandon the town entirely. Jane, meanwhile, doesn't give a fuck and remains with Robotman, which ends up causing Rita to finally change her mind (and Larry's just best buddies with Rita).
Of course, despite this heartwarming 'let's come together' moment, suddenly a gigantic vortex appears in the center of the town and starts sucking everything in, while Mr. Nobody manifests inside the bus, talking about how "the mind is the limit", and how he wants to do something different. There's also a farting donkey.
Overall, the episode was... the episode was certainly well-told, from a storytelling perspective. It gets very intro-dumpy, but using Cliff's story to be the main anchor for a cohesive narrative, while also dropping hints of the other characters here and there, is definitely a great choice. I do really like how the show makes great usage of common superhero tropes and playing some straight while subverting others. It's... it's definitely an interesting take on the superhero genre, and while it's not a show that I'm going to binge watch (it's a heavy series, and I've been historically bad at watching those in a timely fashion), I'm definitely excited to see this particular series.
The first episode of Doom Patrol is... it's a far, far better and more coherent opening episode than its sister show Titans, due to the simple fact that we are quickly introduced to our main cast, and quickly focus on the dynamic of the main quartet, instead of being too focused on crafting a mythology. Doom Patrol does have a pretty interesting narrator, later revealed to be the season's main villain, Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk!), who narrates the episode in a very tongue-in-cheek manner. Between the opening line of this episode being "Ugh, more TV superheoes!" the episode doesn't quite get into being too deconstructive of the genre, thankfully, but definitely doesn't shy from the fact that Doom Patrol's original appeal in the comics is the fact that while being about superheroes, it's also pretty bleak and basically a very pessimistic version of X-Men.And a good chunk of the episode goes back and forth from Cliff Steele/Robotman's story and character development while also seeing the origin story of most of the main characters, except for the still-enigmatic Chief. It opens first with Mr. Morden's transformation into Mr. Nobody through a mysterious Nazi body enhancements, before we jump into the 80's and start off Cliff's story.
And the opening happens pretty quickly, and we're led to believe that it's a simple, generic origin story of competitive racer Cliff being caught in a race car crash because he was distracted by his wife basically grabbing the dick of his mechanic in the middle of the race to spite him. And then... and then we get poor Cliff stuck in a robot body with fragmented memories, with some neat shots of how a Cliff that's unable to interact with the world get to see the Chief (recasted as Timothy Dalton), and the rest of the Patrol, before he finally manages to regain control of his body. By then, though, the Chief tells him that it's 1995, and the world thinks Cliff Steele died in 1988. While the Chief plans to break the news gently to Cliff, Rita "Elastigirl" Farr quickly pulls up a mirror, showing Cliff that he's a brain in a clunky robot body. And the episode doesn't shy away from the horrors of being trapped in a metal body that "can't eat, can't sleep, can't shit, can't fuck", things humans take for granted.
And a good chunk of this episode's theme, it seems, is that the simple origin story isn't the full story, as we would later learn as Cliff slowly learns throughout the events of this episode... unlike his fragmented memory, he didn't die in the car crash. He actually survived long enough to go off and fuck his mistress... and then goes back home to make up with his wife and daughter. But as he apologizes while driving them to get some breakfast, a pretty goddamn brutal accident involving a giant truck slices off the heads of everyone present. We learn this around the third act of the episode, and between us seeing Cliff's first flashback and the full version, we keep seeing Cliff trying to make his new robot body work, all the while thinking of his daughter (who Chief told him survived). The brutal way that Cliff ends up learning about this, and how poorly he takes it... Actor Brendan Fraser genuinely makes it work so god damn well, particularly with the fact that he's supposed to be emoting through a goofy looking robot body.Likewise, Larry Trainor, the Negative Man, is a snarky, well-spoken man whose origin story is told to us very quickly. He flew airplanes, particularly the experimental jet called the X15, and it appears that the main part of his accident was caused by the thing that turned him into a superhuman. A stowaway, an energy being that latched onto the otherwise perfect flight, causing the crash. Of course, we peel back the layers a bit more about how Larry has always felt like a 'monster', because the world of the 60's could never accept him, since he's actually gay.
Rita, meanwhile, is the queen of the '50s cinema, and a gigantic stuck-up bitch who basically tells her director to fire one of the cameramen while shooting a movie in Africa because she doesn't like her. She falls into a river during shooting, and most of the crew (who liked the local cameraman) didn't bother to rescue her. By the time that one of the other actors drags her out of the river, she's been transformed by some weird green glow into a hideous fish glob monster. She seems pretty well-adjusted, but we later see that she definitely isn't.The Chief, meanwhile, initially is shown as a pretty nice old professor dude in the vein of Professor X or a dozen other old-man-mentor tropes, but the way he selectively hides information from Cliff and him clearly hiding a lot of information from his team, telling them that it's for their own good... Chief has always been a character that interests me a lot in the comics, so I'm curious just how far down the rabbit hole of morality this version of the character will go. We get a recast from Titans, with this Chief being played by Timothy Dalton... who's a fantastic actor.
While Chief is out of the house for most of the episode, we're also introduced to a junior member, Crazy Jane, who has 64 personalities, and each of them has their own special power. We get to see a couple of her personalities, with Sylvia being a spooky personality that looks like a possessed girl, while Hammerhead is a Grade-A asshole who punches Robotman in the dick and basically mocks his life and the little model of the city that Robotman and his buddies make. Then we see Jane, who's just a sad girl who likes to paint.
Of course, Chief ends up leaving town for a while, telling them to not go out of the mansion. In typical fiction trope, Jane immediately wants to go to town, and... and the way Jane convinces Rita to go to town is utterly hilarious, with Rita jumping straight from being the mature woman in the situation to screaming for Larry to get into the buss. Of course, while it seems like a fun night out for them as they re-enter society, things go to shit. Robotman walking around with Jane into a toy store causes Jane to basically tell Robotman (not kindly too) that his daughter's dead and Chief has been lying.
Rita, meanwhile, goes into a bar and it seems that things are going on well for her when the bartender is apparently a woman who grew up with all of her movies... and then she gets utterly shocked when the bartender reveals that her life is now filled with rumours and scandals, causing her to lose control of her power and quite literally transform into a giant glob. Things go a bit wild as Larry's Negative Man powers inadvertently activate as well, while Jane's Hammerhead persona antagonizes a bunch of cops and threatens to beat them up. Of course, as Rita, who can't control herself, blobs down the main street, Robotman does the superhero thing, lifting a chunk of the pavement to calm Rita down. It's... it's pretty neat, even if it's kind of an obvious superhero thing.
This superhero team coming together ends up being the start of the events of the series, though, with the Chief telling them that they've given themselves away to Chief's many, many enemies. Robotman doesn't want the Chief to decide what's best for him, and decides to stay and protect the town from any incoming enemies, unlike Chief's intention to abandon the town entirely. Jane, meanwhile, doesn't give a fuck and remains with Robotman, which ends up causing Rita to finally change her mind (and Larry's just best buddies with Rita).Of course, despite this heartwarming 'let's come together' moment, suddenly a gigantic vortex appears in the center of the town and starts sucking everything in, while Mr. Nobody manifests inside the bus, talking about how "the mind is the limit", and how he wants to do something different. There's also a farting donkey.
Overall, the episode was... the episode was certainly well-told, from a storytelling perspective. It gets very intro-dumpy, but using Cliff's story to be the main anchor for a cohesive narrative, while also dropping hints of the other characters here and there, is definitely a great choice. I do really like how the show makes great usage of common superhero tropes and playing some straight while subverting others. It's... it's definitely an interesting take on the superhero genre, and while it's not a show that I'm going to binge watch (it's a heavy series, and I've been historically bad at watching those in a timely fashion), I'm definitely excited to see this particular series.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- We already did full origin story coverage for the Doom Patrol during their stealth pilot in Titans, so I won't be repeating too much of it here.
- While the actors are mostly the same and the two shows certainly were set up with Titans pre-empting the Doom Patrol show in a crossover, CW's Crisis on Infinite Earths seem to assign the two shows to different Earths in the multiverse. Unless there's something specifically irreconcilable, however, I'm still going to be treating Titans and Doom Patrol as being sister shows until there is an in-universe explicit note stating otherwise.
- Mr. Nobody, a.k.a. Eric Morden, was initially introduced as a minor villain and a member of the Brotherhood of Evil in the first run of Doom Patrol, but is prominently featured in Grant Morrison's reboot. Mostly remembered for his unique appearance as a two-dimensional artistic shadow, Mr. Nobody has the ability to drain sanity from human beings, and ends up setting up the 'Brotherhood of Dada'.
- Crazy Jane, a.k.a. Jane Morris, a.k.a. Kay Challis, is one of the members of the rebooted Doom Patrol, and, as the show tells us, has 64 alternate personalities, and each of them has a different superpower. This was because of a Dominator (an alien race) gene bomb in the comics.
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