Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 13: Flex Patrol
Three episodes left to go, and I am actually kind of curious where to go from here. I guess with the big Cyborg moment in the previous episode, we're ready to go ahead with the Mr. Nobody themed finale of the season. The last episode wrapped up the Bureau of Normalcy storyline, too, and they serve as both a thematic and appropriate antagonist mainly for Larry and Victor. But while I'm going to assume that they got ripped apart by the butts that are loose, we do have a bit of a dangling plot thread to wrap up... namely, the Man of Muscle Mystery, Flex Mentallo.
Honestly, I don't quite know enough of Flex Mentallo -- I don't think I reached the parts of him that were prominent in the batch of Doom Patrol comics I read -- to really care for him. Once this episode basically establishes him as an over-the-top, almost Tick-esque parody of superheroes more than anything, though, I'm all for it. Doom Patrol as a show never really took itself all that seriously, but Flex Mentallo has to take the cake. With the honest-to-goodness ridiculous ability of being able to alter reality by flexing different muscles, having a saccharine-sweet love interest and cat-rescuing modus operandi in his backstory, and being dressed like a pin-up model, seeing Flex Mentallo's backstory told to us from the very eye-rolling moment of his prime to how he was tortured, offered a glimpse of freedom when he retained his sanity and was willing to work together with Larry's Negative Spirit (except Larry was completely out of it and wallowing in depression and self-pity)... and now he's a broken, disheveled shell of what he used to be.
It's interesting that this already character-heavy show would ask us to really be invested in Mr. Plot Device three episodes right as the season is about to end... but the fact that Flex Mentallo is honestly more of a caricature than a character works in the writers' favour, actually. And makes it easier for me to buy into his more... basic and less soul-searching story.
I feel that this is more of a little stopgap to build up tension before the final two episodes of the season. Sure, the Flex Mentallo stuff is... interesting, giving us some measure of 'plot progression' as we go through the episode. But ultimately it's just kind of there, to get us used to Flex Mentallo and to have some Cliff/Jane bonding moment and a couple of laughs. A couple of laughs that turn into an 'aww, man' moment when you realize that Larry could've helped Flex and saved him a lifetime of grief so many years ago, and then it turns into 'awww, maaaaaaan' when they figure out that they need to bring Flex's wife Dolores (a.k.a. elbow cannon lady from two episodes ago) and then she disintegrates in Flex's arms due to some technology that the Bureau installed in her -- which somehow the Bureau has access to -- and it's all Uncle Ben/Wayne parents level of sadness... which then gets immediately whiplashed back to ridiculous hamminess because Flex Mentallo flexes his abs in anguish and rage to shatter windows. This is that kind of show.
Cliff and Jane, as mentioned, are in a lot of a better place. Neither admit it, but seeing the two spend most of the scene together on a quest to bring Flex Mentallo back is pretty heartwarming, and their little journey-to-the-mind certainly ends up being better for them both. Larry, meanwhile, goes through a bit of an existential crisis, realizing that thanks to their brief separation with Bureau tech last episode, the Negative Spirit is no longer bound to him... but Larry owes his essential immortality to having the Negative Spirit inside of him, so that's going to raise a couple of fun new wrinkles, nevermind the fact that he might get another rush of guilt from the whole 'didn't free Flex when he had the chance' thing.
Vic turns out to not have killed Silas, 'merely' hospitalizing and putting him in a coma. I guess the show's going to give him an episode to mope and process all of this. At least he doesn't kill Silas, but the fact that he screwed up, beat his father nearly to death and got played like a puppet on a string by Mr. Nobody and his vague reality warping powers of vague limitations is going to stay with him for a while.
Rita Farr, on the other hand, is the star of the show. Rita is honestly easily my favourite character in the show, I have to say, and it's an interesting choice to basically keep her in the sidelines in major plotlines most of the times while also keeping her very prominent as a character as well. Rita's development is probably the most gradual and feels the most organic out of the group with only Larry really being the only one that gives Rita any sort of competition. I really love the middle parts of the season where Rita tries to be better, but it doesn't immediately cause her to expunge herself of her vanity and cattiness. While hanging around Cyborg in the hospital and trying her best to be supportive, it's interesting just how much her dynamic with Cyborg has developed, considering that the two of them have alternated between butting heads and being the token sane-person in any given scene.
We also get the big revelation about the ominous baby crying and carriage, which simultaneously manages to be completely different than I thought it would be. I guess the easy (and eye-rollingly obvious) way would be to have Rita bear the guilt of having aborted or abandoned a child. And Doom Patrol certainly has gone for the obvious way -- like with Jane's pedophile dad -- but I'm glad they don't do it for this one. Which, while exactly the sort of thing comic books have tried and failed to tackle well, is also something that I wouldn't think fits Rita's story thematically. So as Rita ends up talking to a random old man that she helped out in the hospital, Rita confesses and pours out the story to her.
Turns out that Rita has been setting up promising young starlets into meetings with that asshole producer from her backstory, and that's the only way that an aging actress like her has always managed to keep her name in the industry. And through it all, Rita keeps convincing herself that it's a win-win, that she's not actually evil, and that's the only way to move forward in the industry. Until one of the young starlets, Marybeth, ended up pregnant from the producer and is implied to have taken her own life in the process. And Rita doesn't even know what happened to the baby... something that's simultaneously darker and less dark than what I expected it to be. Just like Larry in his 1950's encounter with Flex, Rita's crime is one of inaction. As she puts it, 'looking the other way should be so much harder than it actually is'. And as a character whose big character moments is to decide to give a shit about all the things going on around her, it's a great story. And one that wouldn't hit home so hard if April Bowlby hasn't been so god-damned fantastic in her role.
And then, well, comes Mr. Nobody's big plan. He shows up, ominously declaring how his master plan of making a grand battle between good and evil and how the events of the past dozen episodes have been all building up so our protagonists become a superhero team. Which, okay, I totally kind of buy that, but at the same time... I dunno? Mr. Nobody's been kind of such a background character throughout this season. Sure, he's a presence, and being played by the very entertaining Alan Tudyk and his gimmick of breaking the fourth wall and prancing around with his tablet with his fanboy shirt and poster is interesting, but I kind of hope he's more of a character than a gimmick.
With most of the Doom Patrol's main characters (other than Cyborg) having their personal storylines more or less resolved circa this episode, apparently what he wants them to do is for them to truly become a superhero team, a standard superhero team, to make for a clash between good and evil. Because Mr. Nobody is apparently sort of like a bizarre, meta-warping little genie that wants them to achieve their character developments... all the while sitting around in a weird white space, while decked out in Doom Patrol kitsch. Interesting, but so far... I honestly am not feeling Mr. Nobody at all. Sure, Alan Tudyk is a great actor. Sure, I'm confident enough in the writing team that they could definitely pull off a landing for the show. But the handling of Mr. Nobody as an antagonist still kind of feels like he's sort of under-utilized, like he really could've had a bigger presence in the show. Oh well.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Dolores is also Flex Mentallo's wife from the comics, and just like Dolores here, she doesn't really get a happy ending out of it, where she also met her end because her body was programmed to self-destruct upon meeting Flex.
- Doctor Saucer, name-dropped by Flex and Mentallo, is an enemy that Flex Mentallo fought once in the comics. He has a saucer for a head.
- Cliff and Jane name-drop Wally Sage as an advertisement artist. In the comics, Wally Sage is a child with reality-warping powers that brought Flex Mentallo to life.
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