Doom Patrol S01E12 Review: 61% Cyborg (Also, the Butts, Which Are Loose)

Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 12: Cyborg Patrol

I love this show mostly for the heavy character work. But sometimes you have to take two steps back and just appreciate a fun, wacky comic-book trappings that the episodes take place in. Whether it is the bizarre Cult of the Decreator and its colourful minions, or the spooky Underground, or, in this episode, the mysterious SCP-foundation-esque over-the-top government prison for metahumans, the Ant Farm... sometimes that's just kind of enough to be an evening's worth of entertainment.

And this episode's an interesting one. Cyborg's story has been somewhat stretched out over the entire season, and I've always had the feeling that while Cyborg's not entirely ignored by the writers, he also consistently has the least actual revelations about his past. Jane, Cliff, Rita and Larry have all been through pretty significant character development over the past 11 episodes, and all four have fought against their past sins and inner demons in some way or form.

Victor, on the other hand, has had his biggest problem be something that feels a bit more... mundane? Simple? It requires less therapy, in any case. An evil dad that might be manipulating his life, and his A.I., Grid, going somewhat haywire and maybe turning him from being 40% Cyborg to 61% Cyborg. Terrible, sure, but unlike the self-loathing and identity angst that the rest of the team has, it feels so much simpler. There's a bad guy to blow up or punch, right?

And for the most part, the episode works well as this wacky heist sequence. With Cyborg captured, helpless and struggling with the seemingly out-of-control Grid, he's stuck in the Ant Farm where Darren Jones and the other members of the Bureau of Normalcy decide to exploit him and basically be a true extremist group that doesn't need to find themselves tied to STAR Labs or Silas Stone anymore. Grid going haywire and seemingly either changing Cyborg to be a full robot and tormenting Cyborg with showcases of Silas being untrustworthy or Victor killing his mother is just kicking Vic in the metaphorical balls.

The Doom Patrol contacts Silas for help, but even Silas's connections can't get Cyborg back if the Bureau of Normalcy denies even having Cyborg in the first place. So we get a fun little heist scene. Silas, Robotman, Crazy Jane and Negative Man go into the Bureau's hilariously well-disguised entrance (it's a grubby parking lot!) and then after going through the creepy sci-fi facility staff and its weird plastic automaton operators, Silas betrays the Doom Patrol and hands them over to Jones in exchange for Victor! What an evil man, that Silas, a manipulative, selfish prick and Victor is clearly right in mistrusting his dad, right? Except turns out that Silas's betrayal is part of the plan. Elasti-Girl has turned herself into a flesh-goop, hidden herself inside Cliff's body, and we get a fun scene of them breaking out.

There's the fun black comedy of Rita using the magnet to drop Cliff's angry metal body on the sassy Bureau staff that compares Cliff to a toaster, and there is Jane mocking her would-be torturer for trying too hard to copy Reservoir Dogs, before Karen gets fed up and uses her mind-control smoochy powers to take control of the torturer's mind. Even Larry's separation from the Negative Entity ends up being kind of a temporary situation as they quickly recover Larry and his energy buddy. Darren Jones' attempt to stop them ends with the Doom Patrol unleashing the rest of the Ant Farm's prisoners... including the butts, which are loose. And, yes, it's just a bunch of butts with fangs that consume Jones and apparently terrifies the Bureau's head so much that one of the recurring generals commits suicide.

Silas goes off to free Victor... but Victor has snapped. He's utterly convinced that Silas has been manipulating him all along, changing his memories, and that scene between Victor and Silas is truly hard to watch. Sure, Silas is a prick, but he is honest when he says he's doing what's best for Victor. And while the dialogue is intentionally ambiguous (which allows Victor to jump to the wrong conclusion) it also doesn't sound unnatural at all. Ultimately Victor, who's driven a bit angry at what he sees to be his treacherous, manipulative dad (something that's probably a holdover from when his dad didn't care for his athlete background) ends up beating Silas half to death in that corridor. And scene!

And it's a pretty amazing scene, honestly. Cyborg is a character that DC as a whole has been trying to push to us really hard. Between the live-action movies, the New 52 and Rebirth lineups forcing Cyborg into the Justice League; as well as his prominent roles in other cartoons like Young Justice's latest season... we've had a lot of Cyborg interpretations over the recent five years or so. And it's something that doesn't surprise me at all that this interpretation of Cyborg that focuses more on his own identity issues that ends up being easily by far the most compelling one. (Not being reduced to a 'he's a living motherbox' plot device helps, too) A very great scene and a very great acting scene for Joivan Wade.

Granted, the revelation that the mostly hands-off Mr. Nobody being the one to cause Grid to go haywire and suddenly appear with a 'ha ha game over toot-doo-doo' interface screw is kind of odd, since for the past 11 episodes Mr. Nobody has been kind of off-screen... but I guess it's honestly just a matter of time before Mr. Nobody and his intentionally-ambiguous reality warping powers come into play, huh?

Ultimately, while I'm not the biggest fan of the weird Nobody revelation, it's still a great, great episode to see poor Victor breaking down from the most optimistic member of the Doom Patrol into a paranoid, angry man. I'm not sure if the show would go through with having one of its main characters get tricked into killing his own father, but even if Silas isn't dead from this, the memory is definitely going to destroy poor Victor's self-esteem as a superhero.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• STAR Labs is mentioned several times, and apparently they sponsor Cyborg and Silas. STAR Labs, of course, is one of the biggest scientific organization in DC comics, originally most associated with Superman.
• Flex Mentallo was originally introduced in the Doom Patrol comics as a shaggy, bearded amnesiac.
• The show that Flex was watching in this episode, 'Secret Hearts', is the title of a romance anthology comics published by DC comics.  
• Grid is the name of a sentient virus within Cyborg's system that went evil in the New 52 continuity and eventually created a body of its own and battled Cyborg as part of the Crime Syndicate.
• Darren Jones' anecdote about stabbing his wife's eyes out with a fork for a minor transgression is actually taken from his backstory in the comics, where it was shown. 
• The Butts, which are loose, are original to the show, unfortunately. They are loose.