Doom Patrol (2019) s01e07 – Therapy Patrol

For “Doom Patrol,” there’s before Therapy Patrol and after Therapy Patrol. It doesn’t just have an exceptional reveal at the end, which informs the entire episode–Therapy is fragmented, following each character as they prepare for a morning’s team briefing—and the reveal doesn’t just explain the whole thing, director Rob Hardy and writer Neil Reynolds manage to package it in just the right way for optimum success.

But the episode’s also got great April Bowlby, who gets this awesome combination of comedic, dramatic, and special effects sequence. And Matt Bomer’s character is finally, finally, finally paying off. It’s episode seven, so it’s a tad delayed, but the show finally addresses all of the awkward flashbacks to Bomer’s past—a closeted Air Force flier trying to prove he’s got the right stuff—and turns out to be an amazing resolution. Or development. Especially once you start realizing what’s going on and the show just keeps at it until it’s the right moment.

The rest of the episode is pretty much the same way. Great Robotman stuff from Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan, great Joivan Wade stuff.

Wade’s performance is a little looser than it could be—especially given how great Bowlby and Bomer get—but it’s an exceptionally affecting subplot, which has Wade getting back onto social media for the first time since his accident four years before.

Meanwhile, Robotman is fixating on his former mechanic (I think) who was sleeping with his dead wife (who Robotman killed in a car accident) adopting his daughter. The showdown with the mechanic, played by Alan Heckner, figures into a couple of the other character threads. Including the big finish.

Diane Guerrero has some stuff too, which I’d been dreading, but it’s nowhere near as bad as I feared. It’s quick, in fact. They hurry through Guerrero’s stuff because there still needs to be time for the team to try talk therapy. So after doing all this great character subplots, the episode brings it all together and lets them talk amongst themselves….

Which might not be a great idea given their temperaments.

It’s a fantastic hour of television. Like I said… before Therapy Patrol, after Therapy Patrol. My expectations for the show have gone way up.

Evil (2019) s01e12 – Justice x 2

There’s a lot going on in this episode of “Evil” but the only important thing—the only truly important thing—is it guest stars Gbenga Akinnagbe. It utterly wastes him in a “let’s not examine this too hard” plot about him being a radio comic in nineties Rwanda who encouraged the genocide. Emayatzy Corinealdi plays a Tutsi woman who tracks him down twenty-five years later to exact her revenge. It wouldn’t be so weird if the show didn’t turn it into a commentary on 2019 America, with phrases like “punching up” thrown around. There are optics to it. And to the way the episode does exposition about the Rwandan genocide. It’s not even a lukewarm take because the show’s not actually controversial (just manipulative) and it wastes Akinnagbe and Corinealdi in what ought to be an easy to do, albeit exploitative, tense talking heads standoff. She’s got him taped to a chair in a basement, after all; it’s not like there aren’t movies to guide the writers.

The show’s big addition? Mike Colter tied up in the room too; he went to see Corinealdi because she called the Catholic Church to report… her walls telling her to avenge herself upon Akinnagbe. It’s not a good main plot, but the episode doesn’t really have strong subplots either. Katja Herbers is standing off with Michael Emerson in court, with the bad guy from the pilot back. We get some big reveals on Emerson, but then the show’s got its biggest “reveal” at the end when—spoiler but because one must—Emerson’s having his therapy session with Baphomet. Not a bad Baphomet as far as network TV goes. But if Baphomet’s imaginary, it’s just stupid and if Baphomet’s not imaginary, it’s going to have to get stupider in a different way. Just because Baphomet can look good on TV in 2020 doesn’t mean he should.

Though Emerson fits the sad old posturing incel a lot better than the seventies Bond villain with kinks for religious symbolism and too many sweaters. Will he get less tiresome? Will the family get less tiresome as dad Patrick Brammall, now getting subplots instead of Aasif Mandvi, goes away for a bit then comes back, having now been the real parent when the sick kid needs an emergency procedure to add some child in danger drama and working mom Herbers isn’t taking the call. No. No, they’ll be even more tiresome.

Then there’s Brammall’s whole Buddhist subplot where the show equates him meditating to Herbers getting back with the child rapists at the Church. Religious pluralism, big shrug. He gets some ominous foreshadowing this episode too. Not just with the possibly dying child and Herbers not having told him any information about the possible medical procedures because she’s too hot for Colter to remember.

Also a religious judges are going to be the literal death of us all moment.

It’s amazing with all the stuff “Evil” has got and has had going on they’ve never actually delivered. I’m surprised they wasted Gbenga Akinnagbe, but I really shouldn’t have been.