Doom Patrol (2019) s03e09 – Evil Patrol

The episode opens with a flashback to 1917, when April Bowlby is still new to the past, and before Michelle Gomez has killed her boyfriend and turned all of her friends into unwilling weapons. It provides some more context for Bowlby and Gomez in the present, ready to duke it out, only Bowlby isn't prepared for Gomez to run instead of fight. The juxtaposing of Bowlby and Gomez, two recovered time travelers now floundering, is one of the episode's more subtle moves. They'll both have big moments—eventually—but they start from an exhausted quiet.

The rest of the world is recovering from last episode's Eternal Flagellation, which didn't just affect the show's cast, but everyone on the planet. Including Phil Morris, who's just discovered son Joivan Wade has had his super-power enabling cybernetics replaced with regular-looking (albeit technologically based) skin. Morris bares his soul to Wade, and it's too little too late, making for a devastating scene. Unfortunately, it's also the only time director Rebecca Rodriguez doesn't do a good job—were Morris and Wade even on the same set—which makes it a little less effective, but it's still devastating stuff.

Meanwhile, Matt Bomer and Matthew Zuk are having nightmares about trying fatherhood again, Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan are on the outs with daughter Bethany Anne Lind, and Diane Guerrero is trying to figure out what's going on with her and Skye Roberts. Everyone's got a lot going on, but it seems they're in slightly better shape than before having their externalized emotional meltdowns last episode.

It leads Bowlby, who's been away from her friends for thirty years but is willing to let them think she's still the same person as before she left, to believe they are ready for a mission to take on Gomez. Bowlby figures Gomez has regrouped with the Brotherhood of Evil, specifically the Brain and Mallah, who have retired to comic effect in Boca Raton. Bowlby's right about the villain team-up; she's just wrong about the team being ready for a mission, especially since Gomez is very much prepared to prove her evil self.

There's a great action scene, a great dramatic scene, a great cliffhanger. Also, an impressive physical sequence from Shanahan. Lots and lots of great… although it does take the episode a while to get going. The episode rushes the post-Eternal Flagellation stuff for the team as a whole; they've got their own stuff going on, so they don't have to bond for a while, but their own stuff just gets teased. For example, Roberts and Guerrero are in unknown, internal danger, but Bowlby berates Guerrero for wanting to deal with it instead of going on a team mission, delaying the reveal.

Though there's a great twist with it, which kicks off the aforementioned great cliffhanger. It's a chain reaction setup to the cliffhanger, with pieces established throughout the episode.

If that early scene with Morris and Wade had been better directed, it'd probably be a standout "Doom Patrol," even with the sluggish first act. It's still fantastic; it's just not the most fantastic "Doom Patrol"'s been. Especially after last episode, which is a singular hour of television.

Some outstanding acting throughout, particularly Bowlby, Gomez, Bomer, and Fraser. Guerrero and Wade just don't end up with as much to do.

The episode's also impressive in how much new plot it works in, establishing Gomez as a villain in the present just two episodes after she was–if not one of the good guys, good guy adjacent. But it also makes the Brain and Mallah into active villains when they've just been cameos before. It's real good.

And that cliffhanger's just mean, especially for the penultimate episode of the season. It's "big" enough it could've been the season finale cliffhanger; somehow, having to wait a week is worse than waiting for the next season.

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e08 – Subconscious Patrol

On rare occasion, a show will do an episode where they realize all the things I’ve been waiting for it to do, good or bad. But nothing has ever quite come along and repudiated my concerns like this episode of “Doom Patrol.” Subconscious Patrol, directed by Rebecca Rodriguez, with a script credited to Tanya Steele, is an almost inconceivable success. The show takes all the things it’s been working on this season and finally brings them together, both tonally and physically, and hashes it all out.

If it weren’t for one of the cliffhangers interrupting a mega-action beat, it’d be a perfect season finale. The season’s laborious character development pays off, with the episode managing to bake a bunch more in at the last minute.

I’m now also wondering if Matthew Zuk plays Matt Bomer’s character in the trench coat and gauze wrap… ugh. Yep, a quick Google later, and it’s Zuk on set. Whoops. I’ve been crediting it wrong the whole time. Major props to Zuk, of course.

Anyway. The episode.

The Eternal Flagellation is underway, and it’s time for the Doom Patrol to figure themselves out, thanks to art and April Bowlby. It’s still unclear how Bowlby got together with the Sisterhood of Dada once she got back to the future, but there’s a flashback explaining how the time travel memories thing works. While Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan, Joivan Wade, Diane Guerrero and Skye Roberts, and Bomer and Zuk, all get to hash themselves out on screen, in front of one another and themselves, Bowlby’s character development happens in the past. She has a final face-off with Michelle Gomez in the past, which seems like it’s going to be the episode’s impossibly high acting point, but then almost everyone’s going to get one. I’m not even sure Bowlby wins by the end of the episode.

Because it’s also time for Fraser to confront himself about what a shitty person he’s committed to being and how it’s threatening everything, particularly his relationship with daughter Bethany Anne Lind. Great acting from Fraser—who appears onscreen as a personification of the character’s subconscious—and Shanahan. Their scene opposite each other is phenomenal.

But is it better than Zuk and Bomer’s scene? Maybe, maybe not. Absolutely fantastic acting from Bomer (onscreen) and then Zuk and Bomer doing the costumed stuff. Fraser’s backstory is about being a shitty human being; Bomer’s is about forcing himself into the closet. They’re both intense and tragic, but they also have some agency to them. We find out Wade’s backstory is all about the time dad Phil Morris told him to start acting respectable so racist white people wouldn’t try to get him killed by cops. It’s devastating stuff, with Wade’s subconscious alter ego coming in the form of Richard Gant as a (Black) army toy.

But then Guerrero and Roberts’s hashing out is about something entirely different, which makes sense since last season was about working through their backstory. Some of their subplot involves a felt puppet talk show. It’s wild and amazing and wonderful and gut-wrenching. Guerrero gets to play the part straight for a while—with Roberts possibly doing the voice of the adult Guerrero as she interacts with the other avatars of her teammates—and it really works out.

The episode just gets better and better, starting like another splintering of the cast but then bringing them all together and doing the impossibly hard work. It’s beautiful work.

Gomez’s also great, but she’s support to Bowlby—outside her fabulous first meeting with the Brotherhood of Evil.

Subconscious Patrol is a perfectly executed, truly exceptional hour of television. It’s going to be so great to get to when someday marathoning the show.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e14 – Penultimate Patrol

It’s a superb episode. Lots and lots of content—including some surprising devices to extend the narrative, which seems iffy at first but ends up working out great. Although you see the budget when it comes to a Groundhog Day-esque montage and the exact same footage keeps getting reused. “Doom Patrol” is even more impressive when you take them being on the cheap into account.

This episode indeed does have more Devan Long, but nowhere near as much as I was expecting. It’s fine, the episode’s so good they didn’t “need” him like they do when, you know, Diane Guerrero’s supposed to be holding her own. And while I missed him, they do die him a great scene.

Also surprising is Joivan Wade’s participation in the episode; they’d given him permission to skip “Doom Patrol Duty” to hang out with Phil Morris. Turns out even though that bonding time goes somewhat awry thanks to some real talk—Morris is so good, just so devastatingly good; his performance ought to be taught—Wade’s not really with the team by choice. Because it’s time for a big reveal.

And not one of the many reveals we’ve been promised—okay, there are maybe two outstanding mega-reveals (though this episode does raise some questions when it flashes back to everyone right before they become, quite unfortunately, “super”)—it’s an out of nowhere reveal. There’s some foreshadowing for a reveal of some kind, a truth divulgence and so on, but the stakes aren’t really established. And the show’s able to kick-off an entirely different take thanks to it. Penultimate Patrol doesn’t feel like an abridged two-partner so much as a “giant-size” episode, even though it’s only one of the forty-four minute ones.

Possibly because of the great script, courtesy Chris Dingess—who wrote the comic “Manifest Destiny,” which I read for a while—great script, great direction from Rebecca Rodriguez; I don’t blame anyone for the montage editing except Warner for not giving the show more money. Though with more money you probably wouldn’t have the same cast and, Penultimate confirms, everyone else makes up for Guerrero. I mean, Brendan Fraser’s voice acting is along far enough, Bowlby delivers greatness every episode, Bomer’s working out, Timothy Dalton….

I mean, Alan Tudyk isn’t doing what they seem to think he’s doing but he’s a lot closer than Guerrero, who actually gets some sympathy here when she’s just so incapable of doing the part. It’s almost mean they made her.

Great music—I thought for sure it’d be some Clint Mansell, but Kevin Kiner’s solo on this episode. Mansell and Kiner have done some great scoring this season.

The cliffhanger’s just right too.