Doom Patrol, Season 1 [2019]
[Originally reviewed as individual posts from October 2020 to December 2020]
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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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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 2: Donkey Patrol
Writer's Note: This was originally released early in 2020, but since I'm going to commit to finishing the season, I'm doing a bit of a redo on the first two reviews for Doom Patrol that I did.
After all the introductory stuff of the pilot about out main cast, this one introduces the more-well-known-to-the-general-public Cyborg, a character who's been receiving a lot of love from DC in the past half-decade, appearing in practically every single team-up project that DC has. This one mgiht be one of the ones that truly attempt to explore Cyborg's trauma in depth, and it even plays to the powers of our main villain, Mr. Nobody.
Episode 2 picks up right where we left off after the pilot, with a bizarre farting donkey and a gigantic portal that sucks in the city of Cloverton, including a random talking cockroach that is never mentioned again for the rest of the episode. It's weird, it's random, and yet it's sort of on-brand for the tone that this show is going for. And that tone? Is that all of the superheroes of the Doom Patrol are, well, sort of reject not-quite-heroes, and throughout the episode it's only Cliff Steele who tries to really get everyone to get their superhero game on, but Rita and Larry are more keen to just sit back and lounge around in their mansion because, hey, why bother when the Chief's probably going to solve everything without their help? And Crazy Jane's switching around like a half-dozen personalities and powers, so she isn't much help. These guys are certainly not the inherently heroic jump-into-the-fire-to-save-a-kitten Superman or the Flash, and there's a neat degree of relatability, with a combination of the Doom Patrol blaming themselves for not following Chief's orders of keeping themselves hidden leading to Mr. Nobody finding them.
But the thing is, the Doom Patrol are heroes, as unlikely as they are, and I really do appreciate the episode showing just how much they actually do doubt themselves. Cliff throws his whole screentime in trying to get Jane to basically help out and bring out some of her personalities who have the right powers to figure out what's going on, but the other two adult members of the Doom Patrol are more evasive. Rita hyper-fixates on her daily routine with the mantra that everything's going to work out. Larry, meanwhile, keeps trying to book a ticket out of town, but every time he attempts to leave, his alter-ego parasite thing keeps knocking him out -- that montage at the bus ticket booth is absolutely hilarious.
Cliff, meanwhile, isn't giving up. He's gone through the self-pity party in the pilot episode, and it's some pretty amazing acting even through the robot suit proxy as Robotman tries to bond with the many, many fractured Jane psyches as he tries his (robot) hand at making a sandwich. One of the nastier Jane personalities call out that Cliff is just trying to ease his own guilt or to find his own dead daughter in the closest available substitute, and that might be right... but at least Cliff's trying, y'know? Also, Diane Gurrero is amazing selling the various Jane personalities.
Enter Cyborg. I was genuinely baffled when the show announced that Cyborg was going to be part of this show instead of Titans, where it would make more sense, but the show uses Cyborg well. The fact that he's basically the same superhero concept with Robotman is brought up a lot of times, and while the specifics of the origin story is different, Cyborg is far more modern and high-tech with his machinery, still retains part of his humanity, and is a far more successful hero. Cyborg still has some daddy angst in this continuity, though, again, his problems feel far, far more manageable than the chronic mid-life-crisis emotional slump that the Doom Patrol has. Also, unlike the Doom Patrol, he's acquaintated with Chief Niles Caulder in a far more positive way than the rest of the Patrol.
The superheroing in this episode is a jarringly stark contrast to the more serious character drama. But what do you expect when the whole climax of the episode is the Doom Patrol attempting to access a dimension that can only be accessed from a smelly donkey with a magical wormhole within it, and their attempt to investigate basically amouts to "pour Rita into the donkey".
And then, of course, Mr. Nobody does his insane thing. Mr. Nobody is an interesting character, a fourth-wall-breaking sarcastic shit who narrates the episode as much as he participates in it, sort of like the whole character concept of Deadpool, but I kind of think that his obsession with 'stories' and manipulating them is part of his whole deal? I'm not that familiar with Mr. Nobody from the comics. But whether the hallucinations he shows our heroes are true or just there to press the most triggering emotional buttons, we're not sure. But now Cyborg has the little niggling doubt that his father Silas (who he already has a falling-out with) might have even altered and tampered with his memories to get rid of the more... brutal parts of his origin story. The gory dismemberment is a bit much, but that is kind of the point -- is Silas Stone that demented to turn his son into an abomination just to get on with that 'career superhero' thing? What little we see of the real Silas does make him feel like an overly-ambitious career helicopter parent, so even if this is Mr. Nobody exaggerating somthing that's there, it's a neat sentiment that Victor is probably feeling deep within.
Rita, meanwhile, gets shown an empty crib after being shown an idyllic 'what-could-have-been' life, and I'm curious to see what that's all about, with the implication that Rita's narcissism might have led her to... abandon her child? Or at least harm a baby in some way. Poor Rita. Larry goes through his worst day in his life, yelling and screaming at Nobody as he does so, as Nobody mocks the fact that the all-American-hero, military veteran and Air Force star, has to hide what he truly is -- someone who now doesn't even have agency over his own body.
A couple of short "fuck you, villain" speeches, and they manage to cause the donkey to explode and return the whole town of Cloverton... but Niles Caulder is still missing, and while they have a victory, the Doom Patrol has to contend with the emotional fallout from their encounter with Mr. Nobody's memories-n-doubts hallucinogenic ride.
Eventually, though, self-acceptance is the main part of this episode. In addition to the whole 'we can be heroes' bit, there is both Robotman and Cyborg being half-machine abominations to different degree, there's Rita touching her goopy Cronenberg face, and best of all is Larry (who is a man who spent most of his life hiding the fact that he's gay) finally unwrapping his mummy bandages to confront a part of himself, confronting the Negative Man within him and setting some ground rules. It's a pretty great episode, and while the large amount of... unique humour and pacing does make Doom Patrol a particularly hard series for me to review and talk about, but I definitely enjoy the show a fair bit.
After all the introductory stuff of the pilot about out main cast, this one introduces the more-well-known-to-the-general-public Cyborg, a character who's been receiving a lot of love from DC in the past half-decade, appearing in practically every single team-up project that DC has. This one mgiht be one of the ones that truly attempt to explore Cyborg's trauma in depth, and it even plays to the powers of our main villain, Mr. Nobody.
Episode 2 picks up right where we left off after the pilot, with a bizarre farting donkey and a gigantic portal that sucks in the city of Cloverton, including a random talking cockroach that is never mentioned again for the rest of the episode. It's weird, it's random, and yet it's sort of on-brand for the tone that this show is going for. And that tone? Is that all of the superheroes of the Doom Patrol are, well, sort of reject not-quite-heroes, and throughout the episode it's only Cliff Steele who tries to really get everyone to get their superhero game on, but Rita and Larry are more keen to just sit back and lounge around in their mansion because, hey, why bother when the Chief's probably going to solve everything without their help? And Crazy Jane's switching around like a half-dozen personalities and powers, so she isn't much help. These guys are certainly not the inherently heroic jump-into-the-fire-to-save-a-kitten Superman or the Flash, and there's a neat degree of relatability, with a combination of the Doom Patrol blaming themselves for not following Chief's orders of keeping themselves hidden leading to Mr. Nobody finding them.
But the thing is, the Doom Patrol are heroes, as unlikely as they are, and I really do appreciate the episode showing just how much they actually do doubt themselves. Cliff throws his whole screentime in trying to get Jane to basically help out and bring out some of her personalities who have the right powers to figure out what's going on, but the other two adult members of the Doom Patrol are more evasive. Rita hyper-fixates on her daily routine with the mantra that everything's going to work out. Larry, meanwhile, keeps trying to book a ticket out of town, but every time he attempts to leave, his alter-ego parasite thing keeps knocking him out -- that montage at the bus ticket booth is absolutely hilarious.
Cliff, meanwhile, isn't giving up. He's gone through the self-pity party in the pilot episode, and it's some pretty amazing acting even through the robot suit proxy as Robotman tries to bond with the many, many fractured Jane psyches as he tries his (robot) hand at making a sandwich. One of the nastier Jane personalities call out that Cliff is just trying to ease his own guilt or to find his own dead daughter in the closest available substitute, and that might be right... but at least Cliff's trying, y'know? Also, Diane Gurrero is amazing selling the various Jane personalities.
Enter Cyborg. I was genuinely baffled when the show announced that Cyborg was going to be part of this show instead of Titans, where it would make more sense, but the show uses Cyborg well. The fact that he's basically the same superhero concept with Robotman is brought up a lot of times, and while the specifics of the origin story is different, Cyborg is far more modern and high-tech with his machinery, still retains part of his humanity, and is a far more successful hero. Cyborg still has some daddy angst in this continuity, though, again, his problems feel far, far more manageable than the chronic mid-life-crisis emotional slump that the Doom Patrol has. Also, unlike the Doom Patrol, he's acquaintated with Chief Niles Caulder in a far more positive way than the rest of the Patrol.
The superheroing in this episode is a jarringly stark contrast to the more serious character drama. But what do you expect when the whole climax of the episode is the Doom Patrol attempting to access a dimension that can only be accessed from a smelly donkey with a magical wormhole within it, and their attempt to investigate basically amouts to "pour Rita into the donkey".
And then, of course, Mr. Nobody does his insane thing. Mr. Nobody is an interesting character, a fourth-wall-breaking sarcastic shit who narrates the episode as much as he participates in it, sort of like the whole character concept of Deadpool, but I kind of think that his obsession with 'stories' and manipulating them is part of his whole deal? I'm not that familiar with Mr. Nobody from the comics. But whether the hallucinations he shows our heroes are true or just there to press the most triggering emotional buttons, we're not sure. But now Cyborg has the little niggling doubt that his father Silas (who he already has a falling-out with) might have even altered and tampered with his memories to get rid of the more... brutal parts of his origin story. The gory dismemberment is a bit much, but that is kind of the point -- is Silas Stone that demented to turn his son into an abomination just to get on with that 'career superhero' thing? What little we see of the real Silas does make him feel like an overly-ambitious career helicopter parent, so even if this is Mr. Nobody exaggerating somthing that's there, it's a neat sentiment that Victor is probably feeling deep within.
Rita, meanwhile, gets shown an empty crib after being shown an idyllic 'what-could-have-been' life, and I'm curious to see what that's all about, with the implication that Rita's narcissism might have led her to... abandon her child? Or at least harm a baby in some way. Poor Rita. Larry goes through his worst day in his life, yelling and screaming at Nobody as he does so, as Nobody mocks the fact that the all-American-hero, military veteran and Air Force star, has to hide what he truly is -- someone who now doesn't even have agency over his own body.
A couple of short "fuck you, villain" speeches, and they manage to cause the donkey to explode and return the whole town of Cloverton... but Niles Caulder is still missing, and while they have a victory, the Doom Patrol has to contend with the emotional fallout from their encounter with Mr. Nobody's memories-n-doubts hallucinogenic ride.
Eventually, though, self-acceptance is the main part of this episode. In addition to the whole 'we can be heroes' bit, there is both Robotman and Cyborg being half-machine abominations to different degree, there's Rita touching her goopy Cronenberg face, and best of all is Larry (who is a man who spent most of his life hiding the fact that he's gay) finally unwrapping his mummy bandages to confront a part of himself, confronting the Negative Man within him and setting some ground rules. It's a pretty great episode, and while the large amount of... unique humour and pacing does make Doom Patrol a particularly hard series for me to review and talk about, but I definitely enjoy the show a fair bit.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- There's a lot of these, so we're going to be very brief. Any of y'all checking out a Doom Patrol episode review already know what half of these are so... we get references to the following: well-renowned DC writer Grant Morrison; Bruce Wayne the billionaire; The Flash; ARGUS; STAR Labs; all of whom we've covered multiple times before on this site.
- Also, Cyborg makes his debut but I'm pretty sure I've talked about Cyborg's origin story like five times over in this blog. This episode makes Victor's obsession with the Justice League kind of into a running gag; in post-New-52 comics, there is significant push for Cyborg to be a member of the JLA despite the character being most associated with the Teen Titans in the comics.
- Crazy Jane's personalities over these first two episodes. At least one of them seems to be able to crawl on walls, but it's not specified which one. All of these originate from the comics.
- "Crazy Jane", the primary personality that doesn't have any real powers.
- "Baby Doll", with twin pigtails and has a happy child-like personality.
- "Flaming Katy", who is a woman made out of flame.
- "Flit", who can teleport and her personality is... impatient?
- "Hammerhead", the one with super-strength and a skull tattoo on her chest.
- "Hangman's Beautiful Daughter", who likes to paint, and is mild-mannered.
- "Katy", the original personality that apparently hides in the Underground.
- "Lucy Fugue", who has somewhat bluish skin and can control electricity.
- "Penny-farthing", who has a stutter, a British accent and is all timid and stuff.
- "Silver Tongue", who has silver lipstick around her lower face, and can make metallic blades shaped like the words she speaks.
- "Sun Daddy", who is a size-shifting woman in a different dress with the head of a sun... and also on fire.
- "Spinning Jenny", who is always screaming and bashing her head into things.
- "Scarlet Harlot", whose personality is extremely flirty and sexual.
- "Sylvia", who is constantly terrifeid.
- Cyborg calls his system Grid, as he does in the New 52 comics.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 3: Puppet Patrol
.,..and finally, I'm back, sort of! Well, I rewatched the first two episodes of Doom Patrol, which I did like all the way back in 2019, and I guess I just got really intimidated by reviewing the show? Turns out that it's nowhere as heavy or as dark as the first two episodes are, which are more... mood-setters in a way, and end up being a bit more heavy on exposition. And compared to "Pilot" and "Donkey Patrol", the third episode, "Puppet Patrol" is... a bit lighter on exposition. And, sure, the show does exposition very, very well, integrating them into relevant flashbacks and dialogue well... but exposition is still exposition and new information. Still, it's at around this episode (and the next) that the show finally settles in.
With all members of our Doom Patrol gathered, the mystery of Chief's disappearance set up and a bunch of strange, wacky powers also all set up, this episode of Doom Patrol finally gives us something that's more.... I don't want to say mundane, because "Puppet Patrol" is certainly not mundane, but it certainly feels a lot more episodic. The episode has our heroes go chase a lead on Chief, go and fight a lesser villain and deal with him, and there are some characterization done on our heroes' part. It's pretty standard as far as superhero TV shows go... but, of course, this is Doom Patrol, so everything is significantly more wacky and runs on absurdism.
The A-plot involves our heroes going off to investigate one of the leads they find by digging around the Chief's office. One donkey photo and a bunch of files later, and they head off on a funky van road trip to Paraguay because, well, Vic gets basically shut out by his dad throwing an emotionally manipulative tantrum. He can't take the jet! And while the road trip bit is just more or less just scene-setting and there to have a bunch of gags (ha ha, Rita drives like a grandma! Oh no, Crazy Jane is jumping out of the window! Ha ha, the Doom Patrol share a motel room!), the scripting is well-done enough and the gags -- particularly the world's constant attempts to make Justice League gags at the expense of Cyborg -- is fun enough to make this part not drag on. Again, I really do like the comedy in this episode, which I feel is significantly a step up from the first two episodes.
A lot of this episode's first act, I feel, is just devoted to this, because just as irreverently, Jane turns into her Flit personality and teleports herself (themselves?), Cliff and Larry to their destination... which turns to be Fuchtopia, some bizarre, wacky resort made by Cliff's old rival Heinrich von Fuchs. The show immediately makes the Fucktopia joke and I approve of it, and between the overly-excited tourist dude Steve that they meet on the way, and a hilariously over-the-top puppet show... that also ends up being an info-dump to both us and the characters about the origin story of their villain, Mr. Nobody. Chief apparently shot Fuchs and Eric Morden when they were doing crazy Nazi science superpower experiments, stealing their data in that oh-so-anti-heroic streak while also allowing Fuchs to explain Mr. Nobody's origin story and... his powers? Which is to access alternate dimensions or whatever?
Oh, and also, Fuchtopia is basically a place for people to sign up, show up and sign up for superpower-granting experiments, from mundane ones to full-out a replication of Morden's experiment. Fans of the Doom Patrol comics will especially get a kick out of the final scene. And it's run by a bunch of creepy Nazi secretaries dressed in... spa attendant outfits, I guess? And they're all, as we learn, controlled by Heinrich von Fuchs via a hive-mind mentality. The reversal of superpower concepts between Crazy Jane (one body, multiple minds) and Fuchs (one mind, multiple bodies) is neat... but the execution is hilarious considering just how goofy looking the extra Fuchs bodies are dressed, and how the real body is stuck in a weird, wacky iron lung that has to be manually cranked by one of his extra bodies.
Oh, and of course, the whole ridiculousness of the situation is contrasted with Robotman, at one point, absolutely losing control, flipping out and ripping people apart in the show's obligatory gore-fest segments. Unlike its sister show Titans, however, Doom Patrol's whole tone and how the gore is more comedic than an attempt to shock or scare audiences makes it work. The fact that this plays into Cliff's absolute shock and horror and the whole "oh man, I'm a fucking monster" theme of the episode works wonders, too. Cliff ends up throwing away his daughter's phone number at the end of the episode, and while Jane seems to have a better handle on her trauma than Cliff, Fuchs' talk about how none of Jane's achievements belong to her but rather to her alters clearly shook up the poor girl a fair bit.
But of course, Doom Patrol is a show that jumps back and forth between absurd superhero nonsense and depressing drama. And I feel that the show does it a lot better than the comparable Legends of Tomorrow because... the drama is actually a lot darker and the plotting is a lot tighter. I think we're also getting one major flashback per episode, too. We've gotten Cliff as the first episode, and both Rita and Vic end up sharing last episode. And, sure, Larry got his share of short flashbacks in the previous episodes too, but this episode is all about Larry. Throughout the funnier, wackier road trips and Nazi superpower-spa-resorts, we get an insight into Larry's mind.
Larry's flashbacks are certainly very interesting. We sort of already got the basics of Larry's backstory, but actually seeing it play out -- his arguments both with his boyfriend and his wife -- as well as how Larry basically devolved into a shambling monster after his accident and ends up having his wife and children leave him... and turns out that the Negative Man entity's first appearance was to drive away his boyfriend John. It's honestly pretty sad. There's also some kind of parallel, too, between how Larry once led a double life and now ends up as a man in bandages playing host to a mysterious energy being within him. The conversation with his wife also tells us that his wife clearly knows what's going on about those 'late beer nights', and that they apparently moved from town to town to deal with something that's not socially acceptable at that time.
And the episode starts off by making Larry's little Negative Man problems kind of funny. Ha ha, the boundaries conversation ends up with Negative Man bringing their shared body on the rafters of the building. And then it gets just a bit less ha-ha-funny when the Negative Man entity zaps their bus, or when Larry asks Jane how she keeps 'her guys' in control. And then, of course, as we continue on with Larry's pretty sad flashback and while Cliff and Jane rampage around Fuchtopia, Larry puts himself in the power-granting machine and gets a bit of a mental mind-world where he gets turned back from his scarred, radioactive body back into handsome ace pilot Larry Trainor again... only for the Negative Man entity to cackle, appear and block the way out. I'm not sure what the Negative Man entity wants from Larry, if it's trying to do something for its own agenda or if it's actually malicious... but it's going to be interesting to see.
Larry's whole story is that he's not in control -- not of his Negative Man entity, not of the choice to leave it behind, and most certainly not of his lovers back in the day. John threatens to leave the military and him behind; his wife wasn't happy with him going around behind her back and eventually leaves him; he's torn between the care he has for his family and his own nature as a gay man; he's trapped in a military facility; and even his relationship with John was ended seemingly by the Negative Man entity. Losing control, it seems, is something that the episode makes into its theme. Jane certainly admits that she doesn't have control over any of her alters, and Cliff straight-up goes into a berserker murder-robot mode at one point. And Rita has been struggling with control of her flesh-goop powers since day one.
Victor and Rita sit the episode out for the most part. Rita mostly does a repeat of her previous scenes (which I'm not complaining, April Bowlby is great to see ham it up), although also ends up being a nice person to bounce Vic off of. Victor Stone, meanwhile, gets a bit of a backseat... but also gets a fair bit of interesting characterization. Sure, Cliff and that one random dude harassing Victor about Justice League and butt-printers and toners and stuff are all funny and all, and having Silas be kind of a tit who refuses to lend Vic his jet to try and gaslight him into obeying his 'career superhero' wishes is interesting. But Victor is clearly having a whole lot of doubts. That whole maybe-real-maybe-fake brutal-Silas flashback from the previous episode is clearly not helping matters either. It's nothing particularly meaty (especially compared to what Larry and to a lesser extent Cliff and Jane went through) but it was pretty nice to see the two of them fight a bit and make up and bond over their respective insecurities.
Pretty solid episode nonetheless, and while it's not made super-explicit, I do really like that over the whole nonsense with Nazis in iron lungs, butt-printer toners and the always-cool visualization of Jane's Silver Tongue powers, there's the neat overarching tone of all members of the Doom Patrol losing control.
With all members of our Doom Patrol gathered, the mystery of Chief's disappearance set up and a bunch of strange, wacky powers also all set up, this episode of Doom Patrol finally gives us something that's more.... I don't want to say mundane, because "Puppet Patrol" is certainly not mundane, but it certainly feels a lot more episodic. The episode has our heroes go chase a lead on Chief, go and fight a lesser villain and deal with him, and there are some characterization done on our heroes' part. It's pretty standard as far as superhero TV shows go... but, of course, this is Doom Patrol, so everything is significantly more wacky and runs on absurdism.
The A-plot involves our heroes going off to investigate one of the leads they find by digging around the Chief's office. One donkey photo and a bunch of files later, and they head off on a funky van road trip to Paraguay because, well, Vic gets basically shut out by his dad throwing an emotionally manipulative tantrum. He can't take the jet! And while the road trip bit is just more or less just scene-setting and there to have a bunch of gags (ha ha, Rita drives like a grandma! Oh no, Crazy Jane is jumping out of the window! Ha ha, the Doom Patrol share a motel room!), the scripting is well-done enough and the gags -- particularly the world's constant attempts to make Justice League gags at the expense of Cyborg -- is fun enough to make this part not drag on. Again, I really do like the comedy in this episode, which I feel is significantly a step up from the first two episodes.
A lot of this episode's first act, I feel, is just devoted to this, because just as irreverently, Jane turns into her Flit personality and teleports herself (themselves?), Cliff and Larry to their destination... which turns to be Fuchtopia, some bizarre, wacky resort made by Cliff's old rival Heinrich von Fuchs. The show immediately makes the Fucktopia joke and I approve of it, and between the overly-excited tourist dude Steve that they meet on the way, and a hilariously over-the-top puppet show... that also ends up being an info-dump to both us and the characters about the origin story of their villain, Mr. Nobody. Chief apparently shot Fuchs and Eric Morden when they were doing crazy Nazi science superpower experiments, stealing their data in that oh-so-anti-heroic streak while also allowing Fuchs to explain Mr. Nobody's origin story and... his powers? Which is to access alternate dimensions or whatever?
Oh, and also, Fuchtopia is basically a place for people to sign up, show up and sign up for superpower-granting experiments, from mundane ones to full-out a replication of Morden's experiment. Fans of the Doom Patrol comics will especially get a kick out of the final scene. And it's run by a bunch of creepy Nazi secretaries dressed in... spa attendant outfits, I guess? And they're all, as we learn, controlled by Heinrich von Fuchs via a hive-mind mentality. The reversal of superpower concepts between Crazy Jane (one body, multiple minds) and Fuchs (one mind, multiple bodies) is neat... but the execution is hilarious considering just how goofy looking the extra Fuchs bodies are dressed, and how the real body is stuck in a weird, wacky iron lung that has to be manually cranked by one of his extra bodies.
Oh, and of course, the whole ridiculousness of the situation is contrasted with Robotman, at one point, absolutely losing control, flipping out and ripping people apart in the show's obligatory gore-fest segments. Unlike its sister show Titans, however, Doom Patrol's whole tone and how the gore is more comedic than an attempt to shock or scare audiences makes it work. The fact that this plays into Cliff's absolute shock and horror and the whole "oh man, I'm a fucking monster" theme of the episode works wonders, too. Cliff ends up throwing away his daughter's phone number at the end of the episode, and while Jane seems to have a better handle on her trauma than Cliff, Fuchs' talk about how none of Jane's achievements belong to her but rather to her alters clearly shook up the poor girl a fair bit.
But of course, Doom Patrol is a show that jumps back and forth between absurd superhero nonsense and depressing drama. And I feel that the show does it a lot better than the comparable Legends of Tomorrow because... the drama is actually a lot darker and the plotting is a lot tighter. I think we're also getting one major flashback per episode, too. We've gotten Cliff as the first episode, and both Rita and Vic end up sharing last episode. And, sure, Larry got his share of short flashbacks in the previous episodes too, but this episode is all about Larry. Throughout the funnier, wackier road trips and Nazi superpower-spa-resorts, we get an insight into Larry's mind.
Larry's flashbacks are certainly very interesting. We sort of already got the basics of Larry's backstory, but actually seeing it play out -- his arguments both with his boyfriend and his wife -- as well as how Larry basically devolved into a shambling monster after his accident and ends up having his wife and children leave him... and turns out that the Negative Man entity's first appearance was to drive away his boyfriend John. It's honestly pretty sad. There's also some kind of parallel, too, between how Larry once led a double life and now ends up as a man in bandages playing host to a mysterious energy being within him. The conversation with his wife also tells us that his wife clearly knows what's going on about those 'late beer nights', and that they apparently moved from town to town to deal with something that's not socially acceptable at that time.
And the episode starts off by making Larry's little Negative Man problems kind of funny. Ha ha, the boundaries conversation ends up with Negative Man bringing their shared body on the rafters of the building. And then it gets just a bit less ha-ha-funny when the Negative Man entity zaps their bus, or when Larry asks Jane how she keeps 'her guys' in control. And then, of course, as we continue on with Larry's pretty sad flashback and while Cliff and Jane rampage around Fuchtopia, Larry puts himself in the power-granting machine and gets a bit of a mental mind-world where he gets turned back from his scarred, radioactive body back into handsome ace pilot Larry Trainor again... only for the Negative Man entity to cackle, appear and block the way out. I'm not sure what the Negative Man entity wants from Larry, if it's trying to do something for its own agenda or if it's actually malicious... but it's going to be interesting to see.
Larry's whole story is that he's not in control -- not of his Negative Man entity, not of the choice to leave it behind, and most certainly not of his lovers back in the day. John threatens to leave the military and him behind; his wife wasn't happy with him going around behind her back and eventually leaves him; he's torn between the care he has for his family and his own nature as a gay man; he's trapped in a military facility; and even his relationship with John was ended seemingly by the Negative Man entity. Losing control, it seems, is something that the episode makes into its theme. Jane certainly admits that she doesn't have control over any of her alters, and Cliff straight-up goes into a berserker murder-robot mode at one point. And Rita has been struggling with control of her flesh-goop powers since day one.
Victor and Rita sit the episode out for the most part. Rita mostly does a repeat of her previous scenes (which I'm not complaining, April Bowlby is great to see ham it up), although also ends up being a nice person to bounce Vic off of. Victor Stone, meanwhile, gets a bit of a backseat... but also gets a fair bit of interesting characterization. Sure, Cliff and that one random dude harassing Victor about Justice League and butt-printers and toners and stuff are all funny and all, and having Silas be kind of a tit who refuses to lend Vic his jet to try and gaslight him into obeying his 'career superhero' wishes is interesting. But Victor is clearly having a whole lot of doubts. That whole maybe-real-maybe-fake brutal-Silas flashback from the previous episode is clearly not helping matters either. It's nothing particularly meaty (especially compared to what Larry and to a lesser extent Cliff and Jane went through) but it was pretty nice to see the two of them fight a bit and make up and bond over their respective insecurities.
Pretty solid episode nonetheless, and while it's not made super-explicit, I do really like that over the whole nonsense with Nazis in iron lungs, butt-printer toners and the always-cool visualization of Jane's Silver Tongue powers, there's the neat overarching tone of all members of the Doom Patrol losing control.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Doom Patrol's traditional archenemy, the Brotherhood of Evil, is mentioned early on when discussing Mr. Nobody.
- Cyborg's association with the Justice League is mentioned a couple of times, and both Batman and Aquaman are name-dropped. "I bet Aquaman never loses his keys!"
- Whether it's an intentional name-drop to the DC supervillain or not, Jane calls Robotman "Cheetah" at one point when talking to Steve.
- Steve Larson becomes this show's take on the Animal Vegetable Mineral Man (a.k.a. Dr. Sven Larson in the comics), who first appeared in Doom Patrol's first run, and often agreed to be the Patrol's most silly and dumb-looking enemy. He actually looks doofier here, changing the 'vegetable' part from wooden branches into actual vegetables. In the comics, Sven Larson was a former assistant of Caulder who, after a fight with Niles, ends up being mutated after falling into a vat of amino acid.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 4: Cult Patrol
So I guess the episodes of Doom Patrol aren't going to be anywhere as serialized as I thought it was going to be, huh? Because as of this episode, it seems like we're in for a two-parter at the very least revolving around an adaptation of the Cult of the Unwritten Book storyline in the comics, and it's one that, even moreso than the previous episode's jaunt to Paraguay, one that feels more or less standalone, focusing more on the characters dealing with some weird superhero shit than actually furthering some far-reaching plot involving Chief and Mr Nobody. Which I'm totally down with, by the way, for the simple reason that distractions these may be, but they are entertaining as heck.
And a good chunk of why "Cult Patrol" (and the show itself, and the comic the show draws from) succeeds so well, I think, is how ridiculous everything is, and yet how the episode basically plays most of it straight. This episode features, in no particular order, faceless cult members made out of unsent letters that explode into papers when exploded; the singing ghost of a horse's head that gives prophecies; a child with tattoos of some ancient language that needs to be read; said child being raised by a fake family that proceed to kill each other; a cigarette-activated portal; prophetic chewing gum; a giant eye in the sky that may or may not be the shadow of god; and nun assassins that cut open gateways through dimensions.
So while the Doom Patrol is agonizing over their lack of progress in finding the Chief (while Cyborg and Rita take pot-shots at each other), they get literally thrust into this cult bullshit when an ally of Chief, one Willoughby Kipling, shows up on their doorstep seeking their help in preventing the Cult of the Unwritten Book from catching a boy that they raised as basically the Anti-christ, and reading from the demonic tattoos on his body would summon the Eye, the Decreator. It's like something out of an RPG session, honestly -- on paper, all of the trappings of the Cult of the Unwritten Book is unsettling and weird. And they are. But between our cast's utterly flippant attitude, as well as some scenes like the initial 'calmly walk into portal, then immediately run out clutching the hostage' mission ends up giving everything a sense of levity. And, again, it's this balance between absurd nonsense and playing our characters' reactions straight that works the best.
Kipling is a character I'm wholly unfamiliar with from the comics, and he's basically... John Constantine if the writing team doesn't have to sanitize him for more general consumption, and also ratcheted up his drunkenness and assholishness up to eleven. And while Kipling adds the whole 'Niles Caulder is actually kind of a dick' argument to the hero-worshiping Doom Patrol (particularly Cyborg), this time they also have the excuse that Kipling himself is kind of a drunk prick. That's a step up in credibility from experimental Nazi puppet show, admittedly, but while he is quick to go with the flow, Kipling was absolutely ready to kill the child of the prophecy to stop the end of the world, a call he's happy to make and, he claims, Chief would've made too.
And for the most part, the episode is pretty fun hijinks as Kipling teleports the Patrol members to try and stay one step in front of the Cult of the Unwritten Book. Between exposition and fighting against the Cult's very colourful minions, we get the bulk of the superhero action scenes. Sure, a lot of it tends to be punchy-punch stuff or simply offscreen, but there is a cool moment where Cyborg and Kipling do a sonic-cannon/magic-fire-sword combo against the Dry Bachelors. Ultimately, though, whether it be sonic cannons or magic prayer beads, the Cult manages to capture Elliot and summon the Decreator, creating a big blinking CGI eye in the sky while Cliff and Jane are essentially trapped in the bizarre minimalist town of Nurnheim, which may or may not be in a snowglobe.
Again, though, the characters themselves are what really make the episode interesting. Cyborg's storyline is perhaps the most basic and somewhat repetitive. He's the only real sane, lawful-good person in a gang of borderline-lunatics, trying to herd these cats into something resembling a superhero team, but being met with the near-hostile, extremely-cynical Kipling is just really draining on him. Particularly when, at one point, Kipling's badass back-to-back last stand with Cyborg ends with him shoving Cyborg into the hordes of book-men as a distraction. Rita's storyline isn't as much of a rehash, but it does follow some similar beats of Rita getting off her ass and deciding to help. Still pissed off about last episode's argument, Rita spends almost the entire episode basically being Cyborg's polar opposite. Unlike the rest, who run the gamut from yolo-superhero to begrudgingly helpful, Rita sits on her ass, and even gets ready to leave... until she sees Elliot about to jump off the building to end his life and Rita ends up talking him down and giving a neat speech about the 'beautiful yet horrible' world. Rita even protects the kid later on not just from the cult, but also from Kipling, and I do like the contrast between Cyborg and Rita's different brands of heroism.
The mystery surrounding Larry's Negative Man alter-ego also builds up, because whenever the Negative Man 'wakes up', he keeps making Larry wake up in front of a recording of a conversation between him and Caulder in a tape recording... something that we find out at the end of the episode isn't just the Negative Man breaking up Larry with his boyfriend, but also admitting to Caulder (or at least seemingly) that it feeds on 'torture' in a particularly chilling scene of the Negative entity entering Caulder's machine just to speak a single world. The Negative Man entity also, despite Cyborg's insistence that it's a 'hero', allows Elliot to basically escape. Again, I'm not convinced that Negative Man is completely malicious, but I'm definitely unconvinced that it's heroic either. We'll see.
Cliff and Jane, meanwhile, basically kinda-sorta deal with the fallout of the previous episode, but while Cliff tries (very clumsily, and like any dad out there) to talk to Jane, in-between fighting cultists and Jane's personalities fritzing around and leading with the very unhelpful Penny-Farthing, the two of them end up being trapped in the world of Nurnheim, where they are brought in front of the Archons -- the true forms (ascended forms?) of Elliot's parents, who are able to basically swap around perceptions of how Cliff and Jane see themselves. In addition to allowing actor Brendan Fraser to actually show up outside of flashbacks, this also lets Cliff see that, consciously or not, he's been seeing Jane as his own daughter. Also, the fact that Jane sees Cliff as the blood-soaked violent robot monster from the end of the previous episode. Also, that Cliff's "true" self, as he sees it, is a brain on the floor, while Jane's "true" self... is the scared, young Kay, the original and presently missing personality.
Ultimately, though, everything ends up on a bit of a cliffhanger. And sure, the Decreator and the Eye in the Sky does feel like it should be some sort of end-game threat for these sort of superhero shows... but this isn't just any superhero shows. It's Doom Patrol; a world-ending cult is kind of just Wednesday for them. A pretty solid episode, and, again, it's pretty neat that they made me far, far more invested in the characters like Cliff and Jane's relationship more than the actual doomsday cult storyline.
And a good chunk of why "Cult Patrol" (and the show itself, and the comic the show draws from) succeeds so well, I think, is how ridiculous everything is, and yet how the episode basically plays most of it straight. This episode features, in no particular order, faceless cult members made out of unsent letters that explode into papers when exploded; the singing ghost of a horse's head that gives prophecies; a child with tattoos of some ancient language that needs to be read; said child being raised by a fake family that proceed to kill each other; a cigarette-activated portal; prophetic chewing gum; a giant eye in the sky that may or may not be the shadow of god; and nun assassins that cut open gateways through dimensions.
So while the Doom Patrol is agonizing over their lack of progress in finding the Chief (while Cyborg and Rita take pot-shots at each other), they get literally thrust into this cult bullshit when an ally of Chief, one Willoughby Kipling, shows up on their doorstep seeking their help in preventing the Cult of the Unwritten Book from catching a boy that they raised as basically the Anti-christ, and reading from the demonic tattoos on his body would summon the Eye, the Decreator. It's like something out of an RPG session, honestly -- on paper, all of the trappings of the Cult of the Unwritten Book is unsettling and weird. And they are. But between our cast's utterly flippant attitude, as well as some scenes like the initial 'calmly walk into portal, then immediately run out clutching the hostage' mission ends up giving everything a sense of levity. And, again, it's this balance between absurd nonsense and playing our characters' reactions straight that works the best.
Kipling is a character I'm wholly unfamiliar with from the comics, and he's basically... John Constantine if the writing team doesn't have to sanitize him for more general consumption, and also ratcheted up his drunkenness and assholishness up to eleven. And while Kipling adds the whole 'Niles Caulder is actually kind of a dick' argument to the hero-worshiping Doom Patrol (particularly Cyborg), this time they also have the excuse that Kipling himself is kind of a drunk prick. That's a step up in credibility from experimental Nazi puppet show, admittedly, but while he is quick to go with the flow, Kipling was absolutely ready to kill the child of the prophecy to stop the end of the world, a call he's happy to make and, he claims, Chief would've made too.
And for the most part, the episode is pretty fun hijinks as Kipling teleports the Patrol members to try and stay one step in front of the Cult of the Unwritten Book. Between exposition and fighting against the Cult's very colourful minions, we get the bulk of the superhero action scenes. Sure, a lot of it tends to be punchy-punch stuff or simply offscreen, but there is a cool moment where Cyborg and Kipling do a sonic-cannon/magic-fire-sword combo against the Dry Bachelors. Ultimately, though, whether it be sonic cannons or magic prayer beads, the Cult manages to capture Elliot and summon the Decreator, creating a big blinking CGI eye in the sky while Cliff and Jane are essentially trapped in the bizarre minimalist town of Nurnheim, which may or may not be in a snowglobe.
Again, though, the characters themselves are what really make the episode interesting. Cyborg's storyline is perhaps the most basic and somewhat repetitive. He's the only real sane, lawful-good person in a gang of borderline-lunatics, trying to herd these cats into something resembling a superhero team, but being met with the near-hostile, extremely-cynical Kipling is just really draining on him. Particularly when, at one point, Kipling's badass back-to-back last stand with Cyborg ends with him shoving Cyborg into the hordes of book-men as a distraction. Rita's storyline isn't as much of a rehash, but it does follow some similar beats of Rita getting off her ass and deciding to help. Still pissed off about last episode's argument, Rita spends almost the entire episode basically being Cyborg's polar opposite. Unlike the rest, who run the gamut from yolo-superhero to begrudgingly helpful, Rita sits on her ass, and even gets ready to leave... until she sees Elliot about to jump off the building to end his life and Rita ends up talking him down and giving a neat speech about the 'beautiful yet horrible' world. Rita even protects the kid later on not just from the cult, but also from Kipling, and I do like the contrast between Cyborg and Rita's different brands of heroism.
The mystery surrounding Larry's Negative Man alter-ego also builds up, because whenever the Negative Man 'wakes up', he keeps making Larry wake up in front of a recording of a conversation between him and Caulder in a tape recording... something that we find out at the end of the episode isn't just the Negative Man breaking up Larry with his boyfriend, but also admitting to Caulder (or at least seemingly) that it feeds on 'torture' in a particularly chilling scene of the Negative entity entering Caulder's machine just to speak a single world. The Negative Man entity also, despite Cyborg's insistence that it's a 'hero', allows Elliot to basically escape. Again, I'm not convinced that Negative Man is completely malicious, but I'm definitely unconvinced that it's heroic either. We'll see.
Cliff and Jane, meanwhile, basically kinda-sorta deal with the fallout of the previous episode, but while Cliff tries (very clumsily, and like any dad out there) to talk to Jane, in-between fighting cultists and Jane's personalities fritzing around and leading with the very unhelpful Penny-Farthing, the two of them end up being trapped in the world of Nurnheim, where they are brought in front of the Archons -- the true forms (ascended forms?) of Elliot's parents, who are able to basically swap around perceptions of how Cliff and Jane see themselves. In addition to allowing actor Brendan Fraser to actually show up outside of flashbacks, this also lets Cliff see that, consciously or not, he's been seeing Jane as his own daughter. Also, the fact that Jane sees Cliff as the blood-soaked violent robot monster from the end of the previous episode. Also, that Cliff's "true" self, as he sees it, is a brain on the floor, while Jane's "true" self... is the scared, young Kay, the original and presently missing personality.
Ultimately, though, everything ends up on a bit of a cliffhanger. And sure, the Decreator and the Eye in the Sky does feel like it should be some sort of end-game threat for these sort of superhero shows... but this isn't just any superhero shows. It's Doom Patrol; a world-ending cult is kind of just Wednesday for them. A pretty solid episode, and, again, it's pretty neat that they made me far, far more invested in the characters like Cliff and Jane's relationship more than the actual doomsday cult storyline.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Cult of the Unwritten Book, as well as basically everything surrounding it in this episode (the town of Nurnheim; their worship of a being called the Decreator; a child with tattoos on his skin; the members including the Archons, the Ladies of the Razor, the Hoodmen, the Dry Bachelors) are taken from Doom Patrol, vol. 2 #31, and the subsequent issues.
- Willoughby Kipling is a crass magic-wielding member of the Knights Templar that occassionally aids the Doom Patrol in the comics. He first debuted in the same issues that introduced the Cult of the Unwritten Book.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 5: Paw Patrol
=So the second part of this odd two-parter involving this bizarre world-ending, vaguely SCP-esque Cult of the Unwritten Book ends up being resolved in a way that's... interesting? I'll withhold judgment about how I feel about Mr. Nobody until we see more of him, because at this point I'm really not entirely sure about him. Alan Tudyk is a fantastic actor and the scripting is, of course, top-notch, but I've never really liked characters who have these supposed god-like abilities to interfere with events in the past or alter the timeline and whatnot and somehow still has to be a relatable antagonist. I dunno. At the moment, the Decreator feels like 'big enough' of a threat for Mr. Nobody to directly intervene so that it doesn't fuck up his plans for the Doom Patrol, and it seems like he basically set up a stable time loop utilizing Crazy Jane's multiple personalities, but... I dunno. It kinda feels like it fits the vibe of the general weirdness surrounding this particular superhero team, but at the same time it also feels like it's going to be something that the show's going to have to deal with sooner or later. So far, the meta, fourth-wall breaking jokes work. For now.
There's the typical weirdness of everything going on, of course. A giant eye in the sky vaporizing people on the ground, that random talking cockroach showing up for another cameo as he argues of cheese production in a world without humans with a rat, and the utterly convoluted way that the Dr. Harrison persona and her cult of mental asylum patients end up modifying Mr. Nobody's otherwise-simple but crazy plan to insert a change in history that'll be kinda unnoticeable for the rest of the world, but will defeat the Decreator..
So Nobody goes to the past in order to create the cult of the Recreator, implanting the cult in the mind of one of Jane's personalities, Dr. Harrison. The eventual steps, of course, end up involving a dog, Chief showing up in the present day while vomiting all the time he hears Mr. Nobody's name; the ghostly horse deity from the previous episode flirting with Chief; and a second giant godly eye that leads to a staring contest. Also, one of her mental patients helps Cliff and Jane beat up weird supernatural cultists in a snow globe. It's that sort of storyline. The cult-apocalypse stuff and the time travel stuff is... it just sort of happened. I don't really have a whole ton to complain about it, but at the same time I'm not in a hurry to praise it either. It is ridiculous and dr. Harrison revealing herself to be as hammy and loony as any given Crazy Jane personality gets a thumbs-up for me.
The flashback sequences of this episode now focuses mostly on Crazy Jane's time in the asylum and how she was continually tormented and beaten up by the asylum's staff until, well, Chief shows up and smuggles her out of the asylum, kindly-Professor-X style. It shows that for all of the spooky suspicions that the audience and the Doom Patrol members have been asked to consider about the Chief in the past couple of episodes, at the very least some of his attempts to help out these troubled super-powered beings are genuine. You do believe that Chief's calming words to Jane in the past is genuine; there's a degree of sadness when he has to tell Victor that he can't stick in this superhero business and see the world in black-and-white, regretting that he had to be the one to pop that bubble. Hell, even at the end of the episode when Mr. Nobody comes to interrupt a tender farewell and rip Chief back into the weird empty space they hang out in, you believe his grief. I guess that's where we're going with Chief. He's a kind, nice mentor who's trying to give these rejects of society a home. He's also a manipulative bastard that is using them for his own gain.
The other characters, as usual, get to work through their own issues. Vic is still mostly continuing more of his storyline from the previous episodes, angsting about not wanting to be a mere 'cyborg', a weapon and a fascination for his father to work on, and holding out hope for Chief only for Chief to essentially tell him what everyone else has been telling him -- that the world isn't black and white -- is well done. Rita trying to make friends and at least let that tattooed cult kid Elliot have one good day that isn't a lie in his life, only to have the kid be vaporized by the spooky eye god, is heart-breaking and amazingly acted. Cliff and Jane (well, Hammerhead) sort of kind of work through their issues, with Jane telling Cliff that she doesn't want to be reduced to being a cheap substitute for Cliff's missing daughter. And Larry, of course, continues to torture himself and/or be tortured by the Negative Man entity.
Ultimately, of course, the Decreator is defeated and the cult is banished and/or killed. They were really more of a parody of a threat, more of a plot device to further the Chief/Nobody/Doom Patrol storyline. Kipling sort of tips his hat and buggers off after his guest star bit is done and, of course, Mr. Nobody re-abducts Chief to restore the status quo and Cyborg's hand blows up after Mr. Nobody's little time-slowing bit. The episode was definitely very choppy, and it feels like it's just trying to ramp up the weird parts while not really playing into taking the cult anywhere as narratively straight as the previous episode. It was absolutely delightful to see Dalton and Tudyk play off each other since they're fantastic, and I still enjoyed the episode. I just really do hope that they keep this momentum and Mr. Nobody doesn't evolve into Mr. Plot Hole by the time the season is over.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Another one of Crazy Jane's personalities -- Dr. Harrison, with blue eyes and a skunk stripe in her hair, whose powers appear to be some sort of mind manipulation.
- The Recreator comes from the same comic book arc that involved the Cult of the Unwritten Book.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 6: Doom Patrol Patrol
Okay, this episode was a bit less apocalyptic cult-y, and a lot more concerned about the Doom Patrol's history. Or, rather, that in this show our main characters isn't even the first superhero group called the Doom Patrol. Apparently, as our heroes figure out, they were Superhero Team Number Two, and Caulder's first effort, the Doom Patrol, exists. And I do really like that, again, they explore the ambiguity of the truth that Caulder may have been telling his charges. There are a couple of neat jukes going around, and the audience (as well as the main characters) are kept guessing just what is going on. Is it some manipulation by Mr. Nobody? Is it part of an altered history due to Mr. Nobody's interference with the past last episode? Or is it, as the episode seems to present, that Caulder has created a far more nice-looking, viewer-friendly Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters X-Men style school for metahumans? Turns out that, as always in Doom Patrol, things are not quite what they seem.
I do really love the concept, though. Caulder hasn't been perfect as the Chief for our group (what do I even call them? New Doom Patrol? Doom Patrol II? Victor Stone's Attempt At Herding Cats?) and sure, their conditions hasn't been ideal... but it's the best they could possibly get in this world, right? Well, what if Chief is telling them that to fool them, to gaslight them into helping out? After all, this is a world with the Justice League running around. It's not too far-fetched to think that they would also have superhero Hogwarts as well. And Caulder has been known to hide a lot of things from his charges -- as this episode emphasizes, the fact that Cliff's daughter is alive or that Caulder's made a fair amount of headway communicating with Larry's Negative Man parasite-buddy. At that point, the fact that Chief apparently has another superhero facility -- a far more well-maintained one with superheroes that are far more mentally stable and traditionally human-looking -- isn't far fetched. Hell, our heroes even recover very quickly from the idea that Chief has a secret wife he hasn't told anyone against. It's Chief, he hides things. That's what he does.
And the original Doom Patrol? Led by the dashing Mento, and comprised of Lodestone and Celsius, they were... pretty marketable for the public. They were handsome, normal looking people who look good in red-and-white spandex, very Golden/Silver-Age classic superheroics appropriate, and pose around with hands on their hips like they're Superman and Wonder Woman. In contrast, 'our' Doom Patrol has a clanking robot, a scarred man wrapped up in bandages, a crazy schizophrenic girl and a pretty lady who's struggling to keep herself from dissolving into John Carpenter's The Thing.
Rita Farr, to my delight, gets to be the focus character of this episode. I keep forgetting how creepily ageless a lot of the characters are, and as the other members of New Doom Patrol try and figure out what this odd, C-list superhero team from the '50's are... turns out that Rita Farr knew its leader, Steve "Mento" Dayton, the fifth richest man in the world and Rita's one-time paramour. We get to see a bit more of their relationship in the past, where Mento helped Rita to essentially overcome her goop-flesh problem with his calming psychic powers after a particularly unfortunate (but not undeserved) incident where Rita goops out and kills a perverted movie director. As these things are wont to, it ended up in a romance... that fell apart because both Dayton and Rita are kind of horrible people. We don't quite see the extent of Dayton's horribleness in the past and it's mostly his present-day self that's causing the most problems, and we don't quite get the full story of what Dayton finds out about her (who is Mary-Beth, why did she commit suicide, and what's that baby crying?)... but we can infer.
Rita gets a particularly great monologue, too, and I don't think it would've worked quite as well if we didn't get her little 'defrosting apathetic bitch' routing in the past two or three episodes. She tries to wave this off with her charm, but Mento's Shining-parody house is one that brings up the past. And so Rita forces herself to confront the biggest part of her character -- after becoming a metahuman, she cannot ever return to being old Rita Farr, Hollywood starlet, and she's spent the past 50+ years trying to reignite a golden age of her life that'll never come back. It's well-acted, and Rita forcing Dayton to come to terms that, no, he's not a young, strapping lad with a psychic helmet but rather a sad, bitter old man in a wheelchair whose powers sometimes get overwhelmed when he feels emotional is an awakening call for herself as much as it is for her ex.
For the most part, the Shining parody is pretty neat even as it drops easter eggs left and right about the Doom Patrol's comic book counterparts, as well as what seems to be important lore. And then the background starts to glitch, our heroes start to slowly figure this out and we get a pretty creepy scene of Larry and Jane separately having to deal with their own personal demons. Jane's trickle (and later giant wave) of puzzle pieces is a great and appropriate visual for our poor multi-personality lady, and the haunting voice of her abusive dad is pretty damn creepy. Our heroes eventually learn that O.G. Doom Patrol fought Mr. Nobody and utterly lost, their minds broken and they're basically placed in what's essentially a retirement home where they can live the rest of their lives in some semblance of peace -- Arani and Rhea are trapped in their own personal hells, and Mento's psychic delusion, as fake as it is, ends up being basically the only solace of these old heroes. It's poignant and pretty sad... and, hey, sure, Niles Caulder doesn't keep a competent superhero team a secret from his current Doom Patrol. Sure, he doesn't like utterly discard them and makes sure that caretaker Joshua Clay keeps them comfortable and alive. But that doesn't change the fact that Caulder essentially abandoned this original team in favour for a new one -- with the heavy implication being that Caulder seems to be planning to do the same with Crazy Jane eventually. This made Mr. Nobody's subtle message to dr. Harrison to investigate this feel even more cruel, serving to discredit Chief in front of New Doom Patrol.
And then, of course, there's the sheer bizarre 'WTF, we had a serious scene just five minutes ago' of anything related to Mr. Nobody. The show, if nothing else, is the master of mood whiplash, going from the creepy Shining parody and the heavy Rita Farr stuff to the revelation that Mr. Nobody's grand plan that took out the OG Doom Patrol... involved a giant balloon shaped like a butt. And turning police officers into pinatas that get ripped apart by a crowd riled to madness -- it's kinda horrifying, but since the policemen were, y'know, pinatas and a silly ditty called 'Hot Diggity' is playing in the background, it becomes surreal and hilarious. Somehow, I feel like this wacky scene felt a lot more disturbing than the you-tried-too-hard look-at-this-exposed-viscera-and-blood scenes from Doom Patrol's sister show, Titans.
There's a B-plot, of course, with the team's two metal men hanging out at home. After Cliff forcibly pressed the button that put Victor in 'safe mode' and summoned his asshole dad Silas to the Doom-Mansion, Victor begged and pleaded for Cliff to keep an eye out for his dad. Silas Stone in this show is an enigma, but I really do love the idea of these sort of "well, child, I am only doing what's best for you, what do you mean I'm controlling?" Marvel's Jessica Jones did this wonderfully with Dorothy Walker, and Silas is basically a far more murky character. I don't trust him, and Vic clearly didn't. And there are a lot of shifty things Silas could've done while Victor was offline and being rebooted... but at the same time we're not entirely sure if Cliff's argument about being a good dad actually did get through to Silas, or if he's just being shifty and he's just pretending to give Victor a semblance of freedom to get him to drop his guard. Neat parallels to Chief, again.
Speaking of whom... yeah, Cliff's daughter being alive isn't the only betrayal Chief did to poor Cliff Steele. Sure, for the most part Cliff ends up spending the episode basically being a sitcom archnemesis to Cyborg, trying to figure out what a 'Facebook' is and trying to get Vic to hack into his daughter's Facebook (leading to a heartbreaking scene when he realizes that his daughter's new dad is Buck, who I assumed adopted her after the accident). But as loaded as Silas's statements were, I absolutely believe him when he tells Cliff that Caulder stubbornly used his outdated Robotman technology to build Cliff when he could've borrowed Silas's designs and get a far superior design comparable to Cyborg.
A pretty amazing episode, honestly. Doom Patrol might take a while to really get going, but when it does? I really like what we're getting here. Most of all I find myself truly invested in these characters. In Rita, in Cliff, in Victor, in Jane, in Chief, in Larry. That's the best part of this show, and that's what I hope the show will keep impressing me with as we continue through the season.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The original Doom Patrol in the TV show are all, of course, based on members of the comic-books' version of the Doom Patrol. Out of the four, Mento is traditionally counted among the 'main' characters of the Patrol alongside Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man and Chief.
- Mento, a.k.a. Steve Dayton, is the world's 5th richest man and has mental capabilities that he enhances with his helmet. In the comics he joined the Doom Patrol mainly to impress Rita Farr, and would be Garfield "Beast Boy" Logan's estranged adoptive father. Later on, Mento would develop an addiction to his mental-enhancing helmet, something that's adapted loosely here.
- Lodestone, a.k.a. Rhea Jones, is a woman with powers over the electromagnetic spectrum after exposure to a nuclear explosion that activated her dormant meta-gene.
- Celsius, a.k.a. Arani Desai, was Niles Caulder's wife, injected with an immortality serum and left behind while Caulder fought the Brotherhood of Evil. That same serum would give her the ability to control temperature and project fire and ice.
- Tempest, a.k.a. Joshua Clay, is a mutant born with the ability to generate energy blasts from his hands, and is a soldier who went into hiding after killing a superior officer that slaughtered civilians during the Vietnamese war.
- The Brotherhood of Evil's nominal leader, the Brain, called by his other alias "Ultimax" by Mento, is seen. Well, mostly his mechanical carapace with a carved skull that housed him, at any rate.
- The Justice League of America is once again noted.
- Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man, last seen three episodes ago, gets referred to by his comic-book cryptonym.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 7: Therapy Patrol
An interesting episode. One of the biggest comments of a cast of fucked-up people like the Doom Patrol is always 'man, they need to go to therapy', except... well, in most given fiction-worlds, they just never really have the time to do so. Except Doom Patrol just took an entire episode as Cliff tries (perhaps a bit too hard, although there's a reason for that) to get everyone to sit down and open up on their own personal problems. And the episode itself doesn't really have anything that progresses the 'main plot', except one could easily make the argument that the main plot is, in fact, the characters living in this weird mansino trying to make do with their unwanted superpowers and their bizarre life of buttocks-shaped balloons and extradimensional snowglobe cities.
And for the most part, this is kind of an episode where we basically devote most of our screen time dealing with the fallout of Cliff Steele finding out that his daughter's still alive, and also is adopted by Buck, and goes a bit crazy. Again, there's a reason for his over-the-top craziness, but it's hilariously easy to accept this honestly kind of out-of-character moment as Cliff Steele simply... snapping from the pressures of being Robotman or finding about his situation as a dad. Again, a great kudo to Brendan Fraser for really delivering something that, in retrospect, is a pretty clear sign that Cliff isn't in his right mind but also feels like it's either the product of the overwhelmed emotions Cliff is feeling or simple inconsistent writing.
And that said, Brendan Fraser gives some amazing voicework as he alternates between utter rage at Buck and just lashing out at the bookcases, the desperation of someone who just wants to find other people that can relate to him and realize how fucked-up they all are, and we even get him worrying about how shit of a father he is (Cliff's dad is also shit). And sure, the end of the episode gives us the huge revelation that Cliff's not completely himself in this episode, with a rat (more on that later) apparently fucking with Cliff's brain throughout the episode... but what's to say that all the pain, desperation and anger didn't come from someplace real? That screaming about how Cliff is angry about why the fuck he's the one that is alive and not his wife is amazingly delivered.
The things that our characters share towards each other is... interesting. Rita's story is perhaps not the most exciting revelation, but after the heavy Rita focus in the previous episode it's very much welcome to see more of this. We learn that Rita Farr has basically been groomed into becoming a superstar by her overbearing parents. And after the events and character development of the previous episode, Rita has been thinking a lot. It's basically kind of an existential crisis and my attempts at summarizing this will probably fall short from just telling you to boot up the episode itself. It's a very, very interesting question as Rita Farr's whole "I will not live in the past, the old Rita Farr is gone" leads to her realizing that... she has no fucking clue who she is without the Rita Farr superstar persona. How much of it is a mask, how much of it is just makeup? And for a woman who has to explicitly concentrate just to get herself into holding a humanoid shape and not turn into a blob of turd, it's a lot of interesting emotional baggage for Rita to sort through. And we haven't even gotten to whatever the hell that baby is.
Larry, meanwhile, continues to be tormented over and over by the Negative Man entity. And as a comic book reader, I do know that the Negative being isn't like secretly a villain or anything, but it sure does feel mean-spirited as it spends most of the episode forcing Larry to relive a memory of his long-lost boyfriend over and over again. Is it tormenting Larry? Reminding him of the self-loathing? Or is the Negative entity attempting what Cliff is attempting, albeit with the barrier of language -- a form of tough-love therapy? I don't think we get any real new developments about Larry and Negative Man's relationship that we didn't see before, but giving the audience (and Larry) the screentime to adequately process it is certainly one that's much welcome. Cliff's absolutely hilariously insensitive "you're gay, hooray!" remark when Larry is trying to give a serious sharing moment is kind of funny, not going to lie. And while it's kind of expected, it's still nice that literally no one in the room batted an eye at that.
That doesn't make any of Larry's heartbreak as he wrestles and gives that gigantic speech to the Negative entity about trying to come to terms with being gay in a world that despises them any less heartbreaking, though. We also briefly get to see young Larry hiding and listening to his parents arguing about how little child Larry 'playing doctor' with another boy would absolutely devastate their standing in society and church, something that certainly factors a lot into Larry's massive repression.
Cyborg's an interesting one. He tries his best to emulate the Chief, and to whip this into some semblance of a superhero team... but it's clear that all his own emotional baggage with his dad is weighing down on him. Vic confesses that he thinks he's responsible for his mother's death from some memories, but at the same time also distrusts his own memories due to the revelation from much earlier this season that Silas might've fucked with his memories. Victor's brief attempt at trying to embrace how cool being a superhero is and trying to use a dating app just to be a young man... yeah, sure, there are a lot of Cyborg fangirls out there, but thanks to a perhaps non-ethical hacking of real-time cameras by Grid, all it ended up happening is dealing a more severe blow to poor Vic's self-esteem.
Jane, by design, is the character that doesn't want to share at all, and doesn't want to play nice with others. We learn the pretty unfortunate revelation that Jane's fractured personality is born out of an abusive (and heavily implied to be pedophilic) father, something we can sort of infer from Jane's hallucinations last episode. When the angry Cliff ends up confronting Jane for just being more and more abrasive and insulting Vic by showing the picture of 'Cyborg kills his friends' from the second episode, we get a genuinely emotional moment between Jane and Cliff -- Jane telling Cliff that he'll never be a father cause he isn't even a man; and Cliff telling Jane that he only likes 1/64th of her.
And as Jane buggers off and Cliff fritzes and hallucinates fighting cultists or whatever, we get the absolutely out-of-nowhere and bizarre revelation that... all this while, there's another player. A rat that's been fucking with Cliff's mind and causing him to go utterly ballistic when he didn't entirely mean to. It's just a plotline that's so utterly random, and because Doom Patrol is Doom Patrol, we also learn that apparently 'Admiral Whiskers' was the son of a rat that Cliff Steele ran over randomly earlier in the season, swore vengeance Bruce Wayne style... and the narrating voice of Mr. Nobody is the one that manipulated Admiral Whiskers into setting off the interpersonal conflicts of this episode. That's such an utterly batshit-loony twist, and yet... it works. Somehow it works for the show.
And that's really one of the biggest appealing parts of this show, how you can have an episode filled with just our characters trying a terrible attempt at therapy, and a random mouse wandering into Cliff's brain being the cause of a lot of the grief our characters went through. That's actually a twist that somehow works well, and doubling down by making the mouse a goddamn agent of Mr. Nobody is just the icing on the cake. An amazing episode.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Cyborg apparently has "booyah" as his catchphrase in this universe as well. The 'booyah' catchphrase for Cyborg was originated in the 2003 Teen Titans cartoon.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 8: Danny Patrol
"Danny the Street" is one of the more bizarre parts in the Doom Patrol comics that felt like it came in from a completely different genre. Something like the SCP foundation, perhaps. And yet it originated in the comics (one that, unlike most of this season of Doom Patrol's inspirations, I've actually read), and to see it adapted pretty dang faithfully into the TV show certainly earns me a thumbs-up. The idea of Danny the Street is a pretty bizarre, surreal one. It's a teleporting sentient street that communicates with the people who enter it with little banners, screens, letters and whatnot, and that alone would've made for a pretty fun character! The fact that it's fighting a Men-in-Black style organization called the Bureau of Normalcy, and it also basically plays a role as a shelter for people who doesn't fit in regular society? Oh, and Danny is gender-queer, and a good chunk of the vibe of Danny's episode does include Danny, the ex-agent drag queen Lee Karupt (a great 'face' for Danny because this still has to work on a TV screen), and Larry trying to figure out how to embrace their true self.
A good chunk of this episode has the Doom Patrol once more split up into two groups. Victor and Larry go off to investigate the enigmatic Danny the Street, who's also looking for Chief. After the initial weirdness of a sentient street has gone over their heads, Cyborg's chronic hero syndrome plays up and he basically wants to protect Danny and their inhabitants from the Bureau of Normalcy (the name!). It's utterly bizarre and yet so surreal and heartwarming. Larry himself is still struggling about his own identity as a gay man and the sheer amount of self-loathing that Danny tries to get Larry to open up to does lead to a very beautiful singing, self-acceptance moment... that only the audience gets to witness. The stark contrast from the sheer energetic Glee-esque joy that imaginary-Larry has dancing around and the stark depressing scene as he lamely rejects the chance to karaoke and express himself? A pretty dang amazing scene. The episode doesn't even try to use superpowers as a stand-in for non-binary-sexuality anymore and as far as Danny and Larry are concerned they sort of go hand-in-hand... but Larry sure does need some one (or some place) to show him that, hey, embracing your true nature as a so-called 'freak' is actually normal.
The actual plot against the Bureau of Normalcy is honestly not that tense. The team, led by Darren Jones, gets beaten up by the ex-agent Maura Lee Karupt. And that's a pretty solid, self-contained storyline... but far more interestingly is that the Bureau of Normalcy was the people who captured Larry Trainor after his accident, and experimented a lot on him and the Negative Man. The fact that the Bureau of Normalcy is basically the stand in for homophobia where Larry, Danny and Lee Karupt are concerned is honestly one that ends up seamlessly working into the episode. Very cool, and even if the episode is stand-alone I really did enjoy this little outing.
The B-plot, on the other hand, gets more of a shrug from me. Don't get me wrong, Cliff, Rita and Jane are fun characters that are dear to my heart. And Jane's 64 personalities do admittedly lend themselves well to an episode-of-the-week format. But after Rat-Cliff was mean to Jane last episode, one of the more dangerous personalities, Karen, ends up taking over and she's a completely loony 'aaaa I want to get married' saccharine romantic-head. The problem is, she's also got mind-control powers and it's up to poor Rita and Cliff to try and stop Karen from completely ruining some poor dude's life. For the most part, I feel like this story is more set up as a contrast to Larry's huge moment dealing with Danny the Street -- Rita's made a lot of progress in forgiving some of her past sins, and Cliff gets to befriend a random kid in a robot costume.
Ultimately Karen gets shunted off in a little internal fight with the other Jane alters, which is the cliffhanger for the next episode.... but, again, other than the Crazy Jane centric episode setup for the next episode on my DC Universe list of episodes, the Karen stuff feels a bit more throwaway.
A very fun episode that truly embraces the weirdness of the genre .
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Danny the Street debuted in the comics in Doom Patrol #35, a living and sentient street that can magically and seamlessly place themself in any urban landscape, and can interact with any other being through visual printing within their body. Danny spends most of his time travelling the globe and acting as a shelter for the outcasts of society. Danny's flamboyance and penchant for cross-dressing would later be retooled into him being a gender-queer street.
- Darren Jones in the comics is the leader of the Men from NOWHERE, an organization somewhat equivalent to the Bureau of Normalcy.
- We get yet another Crazy Jane personality, Karen, who can cast 'love spells' and is obsessed with a dude named Doug.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 9: Jane Patrol
As much as I'm not a big fan of fiction that over-dramatize and exoticize mental illness, I am still a massive, massive fan of any 'mindfuckery' style book or TV episode. Especially when it's been hinted at throughout the past eight episodes! Sure, not all of Crazy Jane's personalities have had their day in the limelight. Like, Lucy Fugue, Flit or Silver Tongue basically only shows up to demonstrate Jane's "different personality, different powers" gimmick, and for the most part the only real major personalities we've seen from Jane is, well, Jane herself and the uber-abrasive protector alter Hammerhead.
But this episode takes part mostly in Jane's mind as Jane, the 'primary' personality whose job is to deal with the outer world, starts having second thoughts about whether she really wants to be the primary anymore. And I do like how the dozen or so personalities we meet in the Underground all have unique looks and faces (instead of 'how can we doll up Diane Guerrero's hair this time')... and most importantly, roles. I'm not sure what the chain-wielding Nun is supposed to represent, but we get to see some of them with interesting roles. Hammerhead, as we've consistently seen, is the abrasive 'protector' alter that fucks shit up when things need to be fucked up. The Secretary helps to keep order in a logical way. Driver 8 helps to ferry personalities back and forth. Even the creepy, horror-movie-monster Black Annis seems to be a personality that protects the dark, deep fear that Jane has.
And, of course, this allows for some pretty wacky visuals, too. The idea of a tram that goes back and forth from the Underground to the surface; the jail cell with Jack Straw the scarecrow doll (who's apparently an alter); the three-headed prophetic Sisters; the giant puzzle-storm that takes the form of Kay Challis's abusive father... I could go on and on, but suffice to say that I really enjoyed this episode and all the visuals here.
Of course, it's not just Jane running around talking with her other personalities either. In the real world, Rita and Cliff have gotten Jane back to the Doom Mansion, and thanks to some interesting choice of words and a fun reference to the Magic School Bus, the Negative Man entity decide to zip out, and allow Robotman's psyche to enter the Underground. Other than allowing an external factor to basically, well, be the literal embodiment of therapy and accepting help from others who care for you, but also a clever way to get Brendan Fraser to do a whole episode of acting with his own face. It's, quite literally, letting someone in to talk about your problems with.
People who are already familiar with these sort of stories can easily figure out the source of young Kay Challis's trauma before she fragmented into 64 personalities. It's her sexually-abusive piece of shit father, who briefly cameo'd in Mento's Shining mansion as a wave of puzzle pieces. But Cliff (and I think, Jane) has to figure this out on their own.
And, well, it's just a really fun ride. While Hammerhead is a very welcome and familiar face, I do really like the addition of other alters... and the neat sense of history. Apparently, the previous 'primary', Miranda, freaked out, is now gone, and her old station turned into some horror-show. Honestly, it raises the very real possibility of the current Jane primary dying or being lost in confronting her/their greatest fear and opening a way for Penny-Farthing or Hammerhead to take over.
Penny, by the way, is low-key the MVP of the show. While Driver Eight was willing to allow Jane the time she needs to find her own answers, the rest of the Jane personalities are extremely hostile towards Cliff. Even Hammerhead! (Or maybe I should say, unsurprisingly, Hammerhead) Penny's the only one who tries to talk to Jane about the mysterious, peaceful lake-side memory the had, and while constantly talking about what a coward she is, she is also more than just 'the non-confrontational British farmgirl'. Despite being, well, overly polite and shy and kind of cowardly, Penny is far more than willing to break Cliff out of the mental jail (with help from Jack Straw) and the two of them retrace Jane's steps into the darker parts of their psyche.
My guess is that Penny-Farthing also represents the parts of Jane's personality that wants to reach out to someone for help. And the fact that the second-episode meeting where Cliff gave Jane hope is a memory that Jane's mind have shoved deep into the subconscious because it gave Jane hope clearly shows that despite Jane's brusque attitude towards Cliff, a lot of his good-intentioned bits of trying to befriend Jane certainly worked.
Which, by the way, is an interesting bit... the entire Underground is utterly dark. The subway station, the darkened town square that we see the personalities show up in, the lairs of the Weird Sisters and Black Annis, Miranda's old office... really, the only bright parts of this episode is the mysterious field memory, as well as actual memories that Penny and Cliff work their way through. Ultimately, of course, Jane ends up confronting the giant puzzle-monster buried deep, deep within Jane's psyche, as this massive, hellish personification of her fear and trauma... and I do like that ultimately it is Jane that ends up talking puzzle-dad down. Sure, Cliff tries to give a pep talk but the scripting makes it clear that while Cliff tries his best, it's not a case where someone comes in to just give a pep talk and everything is okay (although Cliff forcibly admitting that he's a robot to get past Annis is certainly a powerful scene). No, Cliff's real function there is to get beaten up and eaten by puzzle-dad, causing Jane to realize how much she cares for Cliff.
Ultimately, Jane manages to defeat 'Daddy' to save Cliff, and this eventually causes Jane to become the primary personality again. And... and I do love that the show (and Jane herself) acknowledges that this isn't done. Because, as ugly as it is, traumas don't just get resolved in a single sitting of... let's call it 'therapy'. But it's a start, and if nothing else, it's a nice little moment for Jane and Cliff. Next episode seems to be an exploration of what wacky hijinks Victor and Rita got up to while Cliff, Jane and Larry were unconscious.
Easily hands-down my favourite episode of this season for sure.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
But this episode takes part mostly in Jane's mind as Jane, the 'primary' personality whose job is to deal with the outer world, starts having second thoughts about whether she really wants to be the primary anymore. And I do like how the dozen or so personalities we meet in the Underground all have unique looks and faces (instead of 'how can we doll up Diane Guerrero's hair this time')... and most importantly, roles. I'm not sure what the chain-wielding Nun is supposed to represent, but we get to see some of them with interesting roles. Hammerhead, as we've consistently seen, is the abrasive 'protector' alter that fucks shit up when things need to be fucked up. The Secretary helps to keep order in a logical way. Driver 8 helps to ferry personalities back and forth. Even the creepy, horror-movie-monster Black Annis seems to be a personality that protects the dark, deep fear that Jane has.
And, of course, this allows for some pretty wacky visuals, too. The idea of a tram that goes back and forth from the Underground to the surface; the jail cell with Jack Straw the scarecrow doll (who's apparently an alter); the three-headed prophetic Sisters; the giant puzzle-storm that takes the form of Kay Challis's abusive father... I could go on and on, but suffice to say that I really enjoyed this episode and all the visuals here.
Of course, it's not just Jane running around talking with her other personalities either. In the real world, Rita and Cliff have gotten Jane back to the Doom Mansion, and thanks to some interesting choice of words and a fun reference to the Magic School Bus, the Negative Man entity decide to zip out, and allow Robotman's psyche to enter the Underground. Other than allowing an external factor to basically, well, be the literal embodiment of therapy and accepting help from others who care for you, but also a clever way to get Brendan Fraser to do a whole episode of acting with his own face. It's, quite literally, letting someone in to talk about your problems with.
People who are already familiar with these sort of stories can easily figure out the source of young Kay Challis's trauma before she fragmented into 64 personalities. It's her sexually-abusive piece of shit father, who briefly cameo'd in Mento's Shining mansion as a wave of puzzle pieces. But Cliff (and I think, Jane) has to figure this out on their own.
And, well, it's just a really fun ride. While Hammerhead is a very welcome and familiar face, I do really like the addition of other alters... and the neat sense of history. Apparently, the previous 'primary', Miranda, freaked out, is now gone, and her old station turned into some horror-show. Honestly, it raises the very real possibility of the current Jane primary dying or being lost in confronting her/their greatest fear and opening a way for Penny-Farthing or Hammerhead to take over.
Penny, by the way, is low-key the MVP of the show. While Driver Eight was willing to allow Jane the time she needs to find her own answers, the rest of the Jane personalities are extremely hostile towards Cliff. Even Hammerhead! (Or maybe I should say, unsurprisingly, Hammerhead) Penny's the only one who tries to talk to Jane about the mysterious, peaceful lake-side memory the had, and while constantly talking about what a coward she is, she is also more than just 'the non-confrontational British farmgirl'. Despite being, well, overly polite and shy and kind of cowardly, Penny is far more than willing to break Cliff out of the mental jail (with help from Jack Straw) and the two of them retrace Jane's steps into the darker parts of their psyche.
My guess is that Penny-Farthing also represents the parts of Jane's personality that wants to reach out to someone for help. And the fact that the second-episode meeting where Cliff gave Jane hope is a memory that Jane's mind have shoved deep into the subconscious because it gave Jane hope clearly shows that despite Jane's brusque attitude towards Cliff, a lot of his good-intentioned bits of trying to befriend Jane certainly worked.
Which, by the way, is an interesting bit... the entire Underground is utterly dark. The subway station, the darkened town square that we see the personalities show up in, the lairs of the Weird Sisters and Black Annis, Miranda's old office... really, the only bright parts of this episode is the mysterious field memory, as well as actual memories that Penny and Cliff work their way through. Ultimately, of course, Jane ends up confronting the giant puzzle-monster buried deep, deep within Jane's psyche, as this massive, hellish personification of her fear and trauma... and I do like that ultimately it is Jane that ends up talking puzzle-dad down. Sure, Cliff tries to give a pep talk but the scripting makes it clear that while Cliff tries his best, it's not a case where someone comes in to just give a pep talk and everything is okay (although Cliff forcibly admitting that he's a robot to get past Annis is certainly a powerful scene). No, Cliff's real function there is to get beaten up and eaten by puzzle-dad, causing Jane to realize how much she cares for Cliff.
Ultimately, Jane manages to defeat 'Daddy' to save Cliff, and this eventually causes Jane to become the primary personality again. And... and I do love that the show (and Jane herself) acknowledges that this isn't done. Because, as ugly as it is, traumas don't just get resolved in a single sitting of... let's call it 'therapy'. But it's a start, and if nothing else, it's a nice little moment for Jane and Cliff. Next episode seems to be an exploration of what wacky hijinks Victor and Rita got up to while Cliff, Jane and Larry were unconscious.
Easily hands-down my favourite episode of this season for sure.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The Crazy Jane personality watch, which are all, surprisingly, taken from the comics! So far we've got the 'original', Kay Challis, and the 'primary', Jane; and this episode features, in order, Karen, Hammerhead, Kit w' the Canstick, Scarlet Harlot, Lucy Fugue, Silver Tongue, Jill-in-Irons, Mama Pentecost, the Nun, Pretty Polly, Flit, Baby Doll, the Secretary, Driver 8, Penny-Farthing, Driller Bill, The Weird Sisters, Jack Straw, Miranda (not seen), Black Annis and 'Daddy' might be a personality as well. Some of the specific appearances and powers have been altered, but for the most part they're pretty faithful to the comics I've read about Jane.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 10: Hair Patrol
Apparently what Rita and Victor are up to while we were dealing with the very fantastic Crazy Jane Underground episode... is a lot less exciting than I thought. And I know, it's not quite fair. "Danny Patrol" and "Jane Patrol" are easily two of the strongest episodes in the season, and before those was the backstory-heavy "Doom Patrol Patrol" and the very cathartic "Therapy Patrol". This episode just feels... weird. And gross. But mostly weird and exposition-heavy, and not fun exposition like previous episodes but just one that's just kind of there.
On one hand, it's nice to have Timothy Dalton get some significant screentime instead of what amounts to cameos or third-act saviour scenes like what we had during the book cult two-parter. I am a huge, huge fan of Dalton from Penny Dreadful and this is certainly welcome for me. On the other hand... I dunno, I'm just not entirely invested in Chief's backstory here. It's certainly well-acted, but it's also kind of long-winded and at the end of the episode I'm still not entirely certain what it wants to tell us about the Chief.
So basically, in 1913, Niles Caulder was an agent for the Bureau of Oddities -- the Bureau of Normalcy's original iteration, where they collect and preserve strange things; before their mission was corrupted into something else. Ultimately, Caulder got lost in some bizarre snowy mountains, gets to meet the enigmatic Oyewah (who's like, a primitive humanoid from an ancient tribe?) and Caulder suffers and goes from a wounded, raving angry captive into someone who gets to respect and even fall in love with his mostly-silent companion. Oyewah is part of some mysterious tribe that also has some skull-headed spirit-like creature, and a couple years later when other Bureau agents show up, Caulder lies to his old partner Alistair, tricks him into drowning and dying to protect his lover from being killed... and subsequently lies to the Bureau of Normalcy.
I mean, that's nice, right? Sure, he does the nasty murder, but he's still protecting his lover, right? The younger Caulder junks his notes on Oyewah to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, kills a man, and tricks the Bureau into leaving the area alone. It shows a dark but arguably heroic side of Caulder... and I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop considering how Mr. Nobody keeps talking about how he wants to expose Caulder's hypocrisy. Turns out that the 1913-1916 bit is Mr. Nobody forcing Caulder to relive his backstory, and... I dunno. It sure is a nice story, but unlike the previous character-heavy bits of Doom Patrol, I'm not entirely sure what this is meant to tell us.
It does, I suppose, answer the question of the Chief's super-long age. Perhaps my comic-book knowledge does help out a bit, but it is heavily implied that Caulder's seemingly immortal age stems from this probably-magical meeting with Oyewah and her mysterious spirit friend. It's... interesting, but I'm not sure where it's going.
In the present day, Cyborg and Elasti-Girl have to deal with one of the most ridiculous comic book characters that I'm even more surprised is based on a real Doom Patrol villain -- the Beard Hunter! Kind of a loser, he gets contacted by the Bureau for his supernatural powers to learn 'everything that is to know about anyone' by consuming facial hair. Beard Hunter goes into the Doom Manor and we get the absolutely nasty scene of him digging around the Chief's drain to nom nom a hair glob, something that the show absolutely plays up to eleven. Later on, the completely weak-in-fisticuffs Beard Hunter gets strapped to a chair, but after snorting a single beard hair from Cyborg that falls to the ground, apparently means that Beard Hunter can Matrix-fu his way through a fight with Cyborg. Okay? Sure.
A combination of Grid seemingly being somewhat out of control and activating Cyborg's arm cannon involuntarily and Beard Hunter dodging all of Cyborg's shots causes the explosion we see in the previous episode, and Victor trying to shut down his own arm cannon causes Beard Hunter to be free. I'm not sure why Rita doesn't do anything, even without her blobbification/elastic powers I'm sure Rita Farr is more than a match for Beard Hunter but I guess it's just Rule of Plot. Beard Hunter buggers off... only to get seemingly killed by the mysterious horned creature from Chief's backstory. Oh, and also, we sort of get the clue from the comic from Danny the street that some dude called Flex Mentallo is the key to finding Chief.
Kind of weird, sure, and still an enjoyable watch, but once you get past the ridiculousness (and grossness) of Beard Hunter and seeing Timothy Dalton act, this is kind of an underwhelming episode. Maybe I would've liked it better if it was a bit shorter? I dunno.
On one hand, it's nice to have Timothy Dalton get some significant screentime instead of what amounts to cameos or third-act saviour scenes like what we had during the book cult two-parter. I am a huge, huge fan of Dalton from Penny Dreadful and this is certainly welcome for me. On the other hand... I dunno, I'm just not entirely invested in Chief's backstory here. It's certainly well-acted, but it's also kind of long-winded and at the end of the episode I'm still not entirely certain what it wants to tell us about the Chief.
So basically, in 1913, Niles Caulder was an agent for the Bureau of Oddities -- the Bureau of Normalcy's original iteration, where they collect and preserve strange things; before their mission was corrupted into something else. Ultimately, Caulder got lost in some bizarre snowy mountains, gets to meet the enigmatic Oyewah (who's like, a primitive humanoid from an ancient tribe?) and Caulder suffers and goes from a wounded, raving angry captive into someone who gets to respect and even fall in love with his mostly-silent companion. Oyewah is part of some mysterious tribe that also has some skull-headed spirit-like creature, and a couple years later when other Bureau agents show up, Caulder lies to his old partner Alistair, tricks him into drowning and dying to protect his lover from being killed... and subsequently lies to the Bureau of Normalcy.
I mean, that's nice, right? Sure, he does the nasty murder, but he's still protecting his lover, right? The younger Caulder junks his notes on Oyewah to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands, kills a man, and tricks the Bureau into leaving the area alone. It shows a dark but arguably heroic side of Caulder... and I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop considering how Mr. Nobody keeps talking about how he wants to expose Caulder's hypocrisy. Turns out that the 1913-1916 bit is Mr. Nobody forcing Caulder to relive his backstory, and... I dunno. It sure is a nice story, but unlike the previous character-heavy bits of Doom Patrol, I'm not entirely sure what this is meant to tell us.
It does, I suppose, answer the question of the Chief's super-long age. Perhaps my comic-book knowledge does help out a bit, but it is heavily implied that Caulder's seemingly immortal age stems from this probably-magical meeting with Oyewah and her mysterious spirit friend. It's... interesting, but I'm not sure where it's going.
In the present day, Cyborg and Elasti-Girl have to deal with one of the most ridiculous comic book characters that I'm even more surprised is based on a real Doom Patrol villain -- the Beard Hunter! Kind of a loser, he gets contacted by the Bureau for his supernatural powers to learn 'everything that is to know about anyone' by consuming facial hair. Beard Hunter goes into the Doom Manor and we get the absolutely nasty scene of him digging around the Chief's drain to nom nom a hair glob, something that the show absolutely plays up to eleven. Later on, the completely weak-in-fisticuffs Beard Hunter gets strapped to a chair, but after snorting a single beard hair from Cyborg that falls to the ground, apparently means that Beard Hunter can Matrix-fu his way through a fight with Cyborg. Okay? Sure.
A combination of Grid seemingly being somewhat out of control and activating Cyborg's arm cannon involuntarily and Beard Hunter dodging all of Cyborg's shots causes the explosion we see in the previous episode, and Victor trying to shut down his own arm cannon causes Beard Hunter to be free. I'm not sure why Rita doesn't do anything, even without her blobbification/elastic powers I'm sure Rita Farr is more than a match for Beard Hunter but I guess it's just Rule of Plot. Beard Hunter buggers off... only to get seemingly killed by the mysterious horned creature from Chief's backstory. Oh, and also, we sort of get the clue from the comic from Danny the street that some dude called Flex Mentallo is the key to finding Chief.
Kind of weird, sure, and still an enjoyable watch, but once you get past the ridiculousness (and grossness) of Beard Hunter and seeing Timothy Dalton act, this is kind of an underwhelming episode. Maybe I would've liked it better if it was a bit shorter? I dunno.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Beard Hunter, a.k.a. Ernest Franklin, is an actual Doom Patrol enemy in the comics. In the comics he's even more ridiculous, waging a one-man crusade against facial hair due to being unable to grow one himself due to hormone deficiency, and goes around with his beard-trophies on his belt. His beard-tracking superpowers are original to the show.
- "Mentall-o's" is, of course, a reference to Doom Patrol member Flex Mentallo from the comics. Flex Mentallo himself is conceptualized in the original comics as being visually inspired by Charles Atlas style ads in the comics at that time.
- The Bureau of Normalcy/Bureau of Oddities are actually original to the show, but are heavily based on the Men of NOWHERE (a.k.a. the Agency) from the comics.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 11: Frances Patrol
Hmmm. This is kind of a strange one. The titular 'Frances' in Frances Patrol is, honestly, the B-plot of the episode. Instead, this episode focuses a lot on one of the longer-running character threads... Larry Trainor, his relationship with the mysterious Negative Spirit within him, his relationship with the fact that he's a gay man with self-loathing issues, and the question of whatever happened between him and ex John.
Both of the Cliff and Larry storylines, by the way, also have the very important theme of showing to us that the members of the Doom Patrol... are kind of time abyss immortals. We've seen the Chief running around in 1910, making him at the very least 110 years old. We've seen Rita basically remain the same since the '50's thanks to her blob flesh-moulding powers, and we've seen Rita meet the aging, geriatric Mento even though she stays the same. (Jane and Victor are a bit of an exception since they're newer recruits) And this episode really hammers home just how long Robotman and Negative Man have been around as well. Intellectually, we know that Larry's accident and transformation happened a long time ago in a much less tolerant world, but there is a completely different impact when we see Larry interacting with the old and dying John. And while we've seen Cliff ranting about his daughter being raised up by Buck... turns out that Clara Steele isn't just gone up to become a teenager, but she's a straight-up adult. Cliff didn't just miss five or ten years, he's missed nearly the entirety of his child's life.
And that, I think, is the lesson that the Negative Spirit (and Danny) has been trying to teach Larry. Self-acceptance, and to let go of what Larry thinks he is 'supposed' to be. It's an interesting story in that this isn't just a gay man trying to find his place in the world -- because between Danny's community and the Doom Patrol themselves, they're all ready to accept Larry. But first Larry has to accept himself. Sure, the Negative Spirit keeps bringing Larry to see different illusions. Sometimes it's a memory of a diner where Larry and John shared happy moments. Sometimes it's a completely different fantasy that's a 'what-if' dream if the two of them had a happy ending. But ultimately, what Larry realizes is that it's not just the period and the then-current social climate that prevented Larry and John from having a relationship... it's Larry himself who prevents himself from finding real love, putting it away and wrestling with it for 60 years. (This is contrasted beautifully in the episode by jumping to a scene of Cliff's daughter Clara giving a speech about carpe diem and seizing life.)
Ultimately, Larry goes and seeks out John, finding him an old man, six decades after when Larry and John were young. John had moved on, and while it's not explicitly said, is living with a woman that is implied to be his wife. And yet John still holds up a torch for Larry, is absolutely overjoyed when he sees his ex, and, in true dramatic storytelling fashion, finally passes on after that one last meeting with Larry. If nothing else, it's a reconnection, reconciliation and closure, allowing Larry to at least say what needs to be said with John before it's too late. It's a nice, bittersweet ending, with the subtle implication (that I missed during my first viewing) that the Negative Spirit has been channeling John's dreams and showing them to Larry.
Meanwhile, someone else who's trying to reconnect is Cliff. Dragged by Rita to Florida, Cliff is still coming to terms with the fact that Bump (who his wife cheated on) is raising Clara. It's obvious to Rita and the audience that Bump's honestly probably a good surrogate dad considering what little we saw of Clara's life from Cliff's cyber-stalking attempts, she seems to have a pretty good life.
In typical Doom Patrol fashion... Bump is fucking dead in this episode while Cliff was wishy-washy-ing about seeing his daughter. Killed by a fucking alligator of all things. And sure, I know people die from gator attacks in real life, but there's still a moment of comedy in the very somber speech talking about Bump's death at the hands of Frances the gator. And Cliff's attempt to meet with Clara and reconnect keeps causing him to go one step forwards, three gigantic leaps back. Cliff talks a big game, but the real thing is that he's still utterly immature and unwilling to process what's going on with him. As he says here, he doesn't think he's fit to be Clara's dad, at least not without some huge, big gesture to make up for the fact that Cliff's been absent from Clara's entire life.
Which is why Cliff heads off to the swamp to beat up Frances the gator and get Bump's precious golden watch out from the gator's gullet. It's a huge gesture, an almost fairy-tale or video-game like 'do this to earn the side character's loyalty'. And while Rita urges for something less overdramatic like talking to Clara (two thumbs up to Rita for braving the swamp via rowboat to talk to her bullheaded friend), ultimately Cliff does fight a gator, get the watch... and chickens out, leaving the watch behind on a table for Clara to find without introducing himself. And I guess it's a form of maturity as well as Cliff decides that the best thing he can do is to walk away from Clara -- kind of the opposite to what Larry did in his journey, but a poignant one nonetheless.
The 'main plot', such as it is, gets pushed forwards. Jane, with a bit more clarity after "Jane Patrol", goes off with Victor since they don't have any real angst to work through. They hunt down Flex Mentallo's wife Dolores, only to find out that she's a robot with an elbow cannon! And the Bureau of Normalcy employs robots with elbow cannons, because those are so normal! This leads to Vic being zapped and abducted and experimented by the evil Bureau of Normalcy. Dun dun dunn, I guess. (Also, I guess Animal Vegetable Mineral Man and his struggles in court after his arrest is going to be a fun running background gag. I appreciate that.)
Ultimately, while the Vic/Jane/Mentallo stuff is kind of just whatever setup, I really do appreciate the character work that goes into Cliff and Larry. Honestly, the character stuff is what I'm here for.
Both of the Cliff and Larry storylines, by the way, also have the very important theme of showing to us that the members of the Doom Patrol... are kind of time abyss immortals. We've seen the Chief running around in 1910, making him at the very least 110 years old. We've seen Rita basically remain the same since the '50's thanks to her blob flesh-moulding powers, and we've seen Rita meet the aging, geriatric Mento even though she stays the same. (Jane and Victor are a bit of an exception since they're newer recruits) And this episode really hammers home just how long Robotman and Negative Man have been around as well. Intellectually, we know that Larry's accident and transformation happened a long time ago in a much less tolerant world, but there is a completely different impact when we see Larry interacting with the old and dying John. And while we've seen Cliff ranting about his daughter being raised up by Buck... turns out that Clara Steele isn't just gone up to become a teenager, but she's a straight-up adult. Cliff didn't just miss five or ten years, he's missed nearly the entirety of his child's life.
And that, I think, is the lesson that the Negative Spirit (and Danny) has been trying to teach Larry. Self-acceptance, and to let go of what Larry thinks he is 'supposed' to be. It's an interesting story in that this isn't just a gay man trying to find his place in the world -- because between Danny's community and the Doom Patrol themselves, they're all ready to accept Larry. But first Larry has to accept himself. Sure, the Negative Spirit keeps bringing Larry to see different illusions. Sometimes it's a memory of a diner where Larry and John shared happy moments. Sometimes it's a completely different fantasy that's a 'what-if' dream if the two of them had a happy ending. But ultimately, what Larry realizes is that it's not just the period and the then-current social climate that prevented Larry and John from having a relationship... it's Larry himself who prevents himself from finding real love, putting it away and wrestling with it for 60 years. (This is contrasted beautifully in the episode by jumping to a scene of Cliff's daughter Clara giving a speech about carpe diem and seizing life.)
Ultimately, Larry goes and seeks out John, finding him an old man, six decades after when Larry and John were young. John had moved on, and while it's not explicitly said, is living with a woman that is implied to be his wife. And yet John still holds up a torch for Larry, is absolutely overjoyed when he sees his ex, and, in true dramatic storytelling fashion, finally passes on after that one last meeting with Larry. If nothing else, it's a reconnection, reconciliation and closure, allowing Larry to at least say what needs to be said with John before it's too late. It's a nice, bittersweet ending, with the subtle implication (that I missed during my first viewing) that the Negative Spirit has been channeling John's dreams and showing them to Larry.
Meanwhile, someone else who's trying to reconnect is Cliff. Dragged by Rita to Florida, Cliff is still coming to terms with the fact that Bump (who his wife cheated on) is raising Clara. It's obvious to Rita and the audience that Bump's honestly probably a good surrogate dad considering what little we saw of Clara's life from Cliff's cyber-stalking attempts, she seems to have a pretty good life.
In typical Doom Patrol fashion... Bump is fucking dead in this episode while Cliff was wishy-washy-ing about seeing his daughter. Killed by a fucking alligator of all things. And sure, I know people die from gator attacks in real life, but there's still a moment of comedy in the very somber speech talking about Bump's death at the hands of Frances the gator. And Cliff's attempt to meet with Clara and reconnect keeps causing him to go one step forwards, three gigantic leaps back. Cliff talks a big game, but the real thing is that he's still utterly immature and unwilling to process what's going on with him. As he says here, he doesn't think he's fit to be Clara's dad, at least not without some huge, big gesture to make up for the fact that Cliff's been absent from Clara's entire life.
Which is why Cliff heads off to the swamp to beat up Frances the gator and get Bump's precious golden watch out from the gator's gullet. It's a huge gesture, an almost fairy-tale or video-game like 'do this to earn the side character's loyalty'. And while Rita urges for something less overdramatic like talking to Clara (two thumbs up to Rita for braving the swamp via rowboat to talk to her bullheaded friend), ultimately Cliff does fight a gator, get the watch... and chickens out, leaving the watch behind on a table for Clara to find without introducing himself. And I guess it's a form of maturity as well as Cliff decides that the best thing he can do is to walk away from Clara -- kind of the opposite to what Larry did in his journey, but a poignant one nonetheless.
The 'main plot', such as it is, gets pushed forwards. Jane, with a bit more clarity after "Jane Patrol", goes off with Victor since they don't have any real angst to work through. They hunt down Flex Mentallo's wife Dolores, only to find out that she's a robot with an elbow cannon! And the Bureau of Normalcy employs robots with elbow cannons, because those are so normal! This leads to Vic being zapped and abducted and experimented by the evil Bureau of Normalcy. Dun dun dunn, I guess. (Also, I guess Animal Vegetable Mineral Man and his struggles in court after his arrest is going to be a fun running background gag. I appreciate that.)
Ultimately, while the Vic/Jane/Mentallo stuff is kind of just whatever setup, I really do appreciate the character work that goes into Cliff and Larry. Honestly, the character stuff is what I'm here for.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Flex Mentallo is a character and a member of the Doom Patrol in the comics, explicitly created to parody Charles Atlas advertisements that are commonplace in comics at the time. In the comics, the Man of Muscle Mystery shows up within Danny the Street as an amnesiac, and after going through a mysterious body-building regime, Flex found out that flexing specific muscles would allow him to alter reality in different ways. Later on it's revealed that Flex Mentallo was accidentally brought to life from a psychic child's drawings.
- Crazy Jane was assaulted by people who want to look at their elbows in Doom Patrol #36, except instead of having robotic cannons, those elbow-guys had some sort of bizarre meta-physical tear that can trap Jane.
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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.
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.
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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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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 14: Penultimate Patrol
So... kind of an interesting penultimate episode, huh? In both the previous episode and this one, Alan Tudyk's Mr. Nobody promises a more 'conventional' superhero show. An epic battle between good and evil, a group of misfits who banded together and overcame their internal trauma to become superheroes. Behold, the Justice League! The Teen Titans, the Justice Society, the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four!
Hell, this episode even opens up (after Mr. Nobody hijacking the recap, of course) with what you'd associate with a lot of these superhero shows, a last-minute supervillain flashback to explain their Freudian excuse for what Mr. Nobody is doing. If it works for The Flash, right? And we get to see piss-poor loser Eric Morden be rejected, not just by the Brotherhood of Evil (he got passed over for Monsieur Mallah!) but also by his girlfriend, who keeps calling him a 'nobody'. It's patently ridiculous, but just like Flex Mentallo's dramatic power showcase last episode, it's also something that works in the context of the show because it's played straight.
With Flex's help, our heroes return to the very welcome Danny the Street, and we sort of... tie a bunch of loose ends together? Sort of? There is Flex and Danny, of course, but also Beard Hunter, who apparently wasn't killed by the mysterious maybe-wendigo creature. Turns out that Danny knows where Mr. Nobody and Chief have been all this time, and it's in 'White Space', the space between the panels of the comic. Which... while theoretically I enjoy the idea, it's also something that's utterly abstract since the medium of this show is a TV show and considering how gleeful Mr. Nobody has been in actually painting the medium with acknowledging things like streaming services and whatnot... I dunno. I follow the storyline, sure, but I kinda feel like it ends up with sort of a shrug from me.
And then, of course, Flex flexes the wrong muscle and causes everyone on Danny (including Danny himself) to come. That's a hilariously long sequence, including some of the expected gags from Danny's own funny balloons and fire hydrants, and Cliff faking an orgasm just to not feel left out is hilarious. Honestly, probably one of the most juvenile gags in the show and also one of its funniest.
Whatever the case, when Flex succeeds in sending the Doom Patrol into White Space, they all end up in the past. Or, well, at least in scenes that resemble the past. Again, the show never really has any sort of hard rules with Mr. Nobody's powers, but he's placed Rita, Larry, Cliff and Jane and places them in periods in their lives before they meet Niles Caulder. Before the crazy accidents that turned them into Elasti-Girl, Robotman, Negative Man and Crazy Jane. The psychological warfare is obvious, and even our characters find it obvious, but seeing just how fucked up their lives have been throughout the series, and with Mr. Nobody's narration really hammering it home just how much they could've avoided all the emotional trauma? Okay, that's actually very well written.
I honestly already see myself not really liking how Mr. Nobody is handled... but, again, selecting an actor as fun and likable as Alan Tudyk does make it a lot easier to... well, handwave some of the plotting inconsistencies here. After all, Mr. Nobody is a emotionally-manipulative reality warper.
And, just like what you expect, all four of our heroes decide to not take the deal. Larry, Cliff and Rita have realized that they've evolved and developed way more than to simply accept their old life. Throughout some very great scenes (particularly Rita realizing what an asshole she was in her life and Cliff fucking the babysitter) we get a great showcase of the three older members recognizing not only their character growth, closure and their self-acceptance, but also acknowledging that they've already ruined their lives before their respective tragedies anyway. Jane, on the other hand, gets a pretty great moment where some of the personalities actually consider staying in the padded asylum. One of the personalities (I'm not sure who? Is it Penny?) says it's better for them to not ever become Crazy Jane since it'd save the rest of the world from the volatile superpowered girl, but Hammerhead takes over and with a very emotional delivery, roars that she doesn't give a fuck about regular people since they're supposed to 'protect the girl', meaning Kay, meaning Jane, meaning themselves/herself. Good show.
Early in the episode we also get Victor apologizing to Silas and getting a pep talk from him, but I honestly felt that it would probably feel a bit more poignant if we don't jump back and forth between Vic and Silas's scenes to a massive orgasm scene that also includes a sentient street. Eventually, as the rest of the Patrol goes through their huge character developments, we get Silas and Vic's talk. And the revelation that Silas did sort of alter Vic's memory, but only because he doesn't want his son to grow up with the guilt knowing that Silas sacrificed his wife to save his son -- not entirely out of parental love, but because he knew that that's the only choice Elinore would ever allow him to make. 100% would've worked better shunted into the previous episode, really.
Again, I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about Mr. Nobody's weird power. My guess is that, again, it'd work a lot better in the comic medium where we have these narration boxes where the impact would feel more poignant than Rita just narrating. But apparently you can just narrate things like a story in White Space and you can reunite the heroes? We then get Jane, as Dr. Harrison, psycho-analyzing what an utter tryhard Mr. Nobody's 'nobody' moniker and his spooky fragmented shadow-self is and Larry quickly noting how 'basic' and 'sad' Mr. Nobody is... it all kind of seems to build up to a case of the heroes breaking Mr. Nobody by pointing out how his backstory's, well, kind of basic and pitiable, and he can learn and grow just like the rest of the Doom Patrol.
And then Cyborg seems to show up, blow up Mr. Nobody, and then they get trapped in what seemed to be an ideal epilogue where the Doom Patrol is now a good ol' Avengers-style superhero team, living in a mansion and fighting giant robots... only to realize that this is Chief's personal hell, trapped in a Groundhog Day loop... only for that entire bit to be an illusion, and the arrival of the real Cyborg dispels it? Okay? Turns out Mr. Nobody's completely unbeatable, he can warp reality and he isn't affected by psychoanalysis? I guess that's where they are going, that all the 'oh no, stop, you are realizing my true intentions' bit is just an act and Mr. Nobody's just a huge ham? Do I even care, since Alan Tudyk's performance is so fun to watch?
And then, of course, after the groundhog day loop, we get our heroes back in White Space, where Mr. Nobody tells the team of his real REAL plan... which is to get Chief to admit the truth. All our heroes, of course, think they're ready for whatever mind games that Mr. Nobody is going to tell them. I mean, sure, Chief keeps secrets, hides weird things and old superhero teams from the Doom Patrol, and is manipulative all along, but the Doom Patrol learned to trust each other and deal with their personal, emotional problems throughout the season, right? Well, the revelation Chief has is one big whopper, and one that is definitely from the comics.... that Niles Caulder, the Chief, was responsible for engineering all of their origin stories, that none of the accidents that befell them were accidents.
And... scene! How's that for a cliffhanger? That's the exact sort of thing that would certainly break the character development our heroes have been through, or, if nothing else, in their faith of Niles. And while the motivations of Mr. Nobody and the actual limitations of his powers remain murky as ever, this episode really did give us a huge bomb of a cliffhanger, and a real subversion of what seems to be 'we've been through a lot, we can take whatever illusions you throw at us' moment... not that the Cliff/Rita/Larry/Jane moment in the middle part of the episode isn't powerful in and of itself.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- Chief actually causing the accidents and being revealed to actually have a very selfish and manipulative reason for doing so is one of the most famous twists from the Grant Morrison run and one that I'm acutely aware of thanks to a lot of the newer Doom Patrol comic material.
- The Brain gets name-dropped as the leader of the Brotherhood of Evil by Mr. Nobody. Apparently, Mr. Nobody's been replaced by a French talking gorilla. It might sound kind of weird, but Monsieur Mallah is an actual comic book supervillain, and has even made appearances in animated media like Young Justice and Brave and the Bold.
- Mr. Nobody's robot is called Rog, who was also a giant robot piloted by Eric Morden in the comics.
- The 'White Space' stuff doesn't come from Doom Patrol, surprisingly... but rather from a different Grant Morrison penned DC superhero storyline, namely Animal Man.
- Hawkman gets name-dropped among the other more common, more adapted-into-movies JLA members.
- While it's not a one-for-one resemblance, Rita does get her comic-book counterpart's Elasti-Girl costume.
- Flex teleports our heroes into Mystery in Space #30, which is a DC comics title active during the Silver Age and had, as the title promises, wacky space mysteries.
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Doom Patrol, Season 1, Episode 15: Chief Patrol
Mmmm, not the biggest fan of the finale, no. Don't get me wrong, it's still utterly enjoyable and I certainly wouldn't use the sort of language that whatever reviewer Mr. Nobody read about this show -- this season finale is many things, but certainly not boring or un-entertaining. Interesting, weird, and more than a little bit gross, but it's certainly an enjoyable one.
Of course, the thing is that Doom Patrol as a show has always been one that prioritized characterization (and weirdness) over plot. So yeah, Mr. Nobody's plan really doesn't make sense because as we learn here, his main goal is to break the heroes. To make Chief suffer and become a nobody. Which is why despite his reality-warping, fourth-wall-breaking powers, all Mr. Nobody did was to literally just fuck around with the Doom Patrol's lives and watch as they work through emotional problems, only to break these emotionally-stable people down by revealing Niles' huge secret towards them.
And after a bit of an acknowledgement and a scene with Caulder talking to Joshua Clay prior to Larry's accident (designed to 'intercept' the Negative Entity), we flash-forward six months. Everyone's sort of living on their own, but it feels sort of... hollow? Larry and Rita are roomies, with Larry being buddies with the Negative Spirit and letting him fly out. Rita's actually living a great life as a drama teacher, but her students are cunts that bully her. And as the two that have stuck with Caulder the longest, we get to see them show up in other flashbacks... like the night before Caulder went off to 'collect' Jane, where the Bureau has continued to go along with Caulder's Immortus Project, a way to create immortals (that's the theme between all our Doom Patrol members, huh)? Of course, as time went on, Caulder began to develop a bond with his charges, actually became the mentor he paraded himself as. But at the same time he also, as Joshua pointed out, someone who caused all these accidents and certainly didn't stop Jane from being turned into Crazy Jane.
And then we get to see him working on Cliff's brain, clearly guilt-wracked about what he's doing (and he's also buddies with Elinore Stone) but also someone who still caused the accident in the first place. Or, at the very least, profiteering from them. The conversation between Caulder and Silas Stone was also very well-acted. As a character that's been built up as an unfeeling, manipulative dad all season long, turns out that Silas is just someone who's bad at expressing himself when Caulder's the huge hypocrite. Again, like the rest of his team, Niles Caulder grew. He grew to accept he's a shitbag human being, too. He did cause a lot of harm and came to regret it.
The rest of the team in the present day aren't enjoying a life that's as fulfilling as Larry and Rita (sans student bullying, of course). Vic hides out in an apartment, dodging his dad's calls and pretends to be doing something. Jane goes off to Joshua to beg for a cure, and gets a metahuman suppressor that she takes and ends up knocking herself out... and we're treated to that creepy scene with all the Janes laying down in the peaceful field. Cliff, meanwhile, is obsessed with looking after Jane, just slipping her pizzas and giving her space.
And Mr. Nobody? After his huge plan of 'winning'... ends up with him reading the Forbes review of the Doom Patrol show while on the shitter, gets angry, rants about cable, and then gets into an argument with Ezekiel the talking religious cockroach and Admiral Whiskers, the rat that fucked Cliff's mind in that one episode... and Mr. Nobody has nothing better to do since he has completed his grand plan, which is to ruin Niles Caulder's life. Okay? After the Brotherhood of Dangerous Animals is formed, Mr. Nobody goes off to remember one hanging plot thread, which is Niles' mountain-dwelling immortal girlfriend. Oh yeah. That.
Again, it's not that things like Oyewah, Admiral Whiskers or Ezekiel are random plot developments... but they kind of get re-introduced so randomly and it sort of fits with Doom Patrol's style while at the same time kind of feel random. Speaking of random, via a song that plays in everyone's head and gathers the group at Doom Manor (we do get a touching Jane/Cliff reunion) and the revelation that Mr. Nobody has trapped Danny the Street in a painting because... uh... okay? Sure?
And there we have the final 21 minutes of the show, where after a bit of an apology, the non-Chief heroes ranting about how shit Chief is and how they ruined their lives, the Doom Patrol enter the painting. Apparently Chief has a daughter, the daughter has been stashed with Danny all along (that's why Beard Hunter went there, okay, that's a plot thread tied up) and Mr. Nobody's got them both. And... because of one thing or another, Mr. Nobody's drunk in a bar, Beard Hunter's running around, and also both Ezekiel and Whiskers are kaiju-sized CGI monsters rampaging around the city.
And the ending sure plays the 'weird' factor up to hilt. Rita manages to convince Mr. Nobody to narrate again so that they can get out of the painting world (while also counting on Nobody's hubris to forget to leave an escape clause). Beard Hunter gets killed by the horned creature because apparently Chief's daughter also inherited her mother's power. And, most memorably and disgustingly, Ezekiel and Whiskers get a huge make-out session complete with French-kissing just so that all members of the Doom Patrol can get together inside Ezekiel's cockroach stomach, so that they can survive the Negative Spirit detonating its energy so that they can all escape the painting. Also they are all shrunken becuase of Ezekiel.
It's bizarre, it's pretty damn gross, and... eh?
While I do appreciate the huge twist in the previous episode, and the massive amount of dressing-down Chief got in this one... and, sure, Alan Tudyk is entertaining as all hell and the giant CGI creatures rampaging was sure something, this episode is just so damn weirdly paced. I would've liked more exploration of how the Patrol dealt with Caulder's betrayal, more buildup to Caulder's daughter (and it's not like she's much beyond a plot device in this episode) and more resolution for Mr. Nobody beyond "he won, he got bored, he got drunk, now he's trapped". On the other hand, I guess such an atypical conclusion is appropriate for Doom Patrol? I did enjoy this madcap journey, if nothing else.
DC Easter Eggs Corner:
- The "Immortus Project", presumably, is tied or a reference to General Immortus, yet another member from the Brotherhood of Evil, who is, well, an immortal man who can't die. General Immortus is actually the antagonist of the very first Doom Patrol story to be published.
- The Chief in the comics also engineered the accidents that created the original Doom Patrol members, but is a lot less repentant than the Chief here.
- The bit with the paintings is a reference to how in the comics, Mr. Nobody was associated with paintings and had trapped entire cities in paintings.
- In the comics, after being destroyed, Danny the Street did spend some time as Danny the Brick.
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