Category: Doom Patrol
-
As usual with “Doom Patrol,” I wasn’t expecting that turn of events. I knew “Patrol” had planned something conclusive for this season, but Done Patrol is a last episode, not a season finale before a refresh. They knew and didn’t play chicken with renewal, which is exemplary these days. The team—Diane Guerrero, Joivan Wade, Michelle…
-
As penultimate episodes go, Portal Patrol is a doozy. The team has found themselves stranded in the time stream, so it’s good Joivan Wade got his Cyborg upgrades because he has to make them a little pod to survive. The current stakes are saving the world and April Bowlby (who doesn’t appear this episode), so…
-
How do you follow up an episode where your season villain, an omnipotent time deity played by Charity Cervantes, changed the entire world into a musical? If you’re “Doom Patrol,” with an almost limitless well of human despair. The main cast—April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, Matt Bomer, and Brendan Fraser—are all rapidly aging to their deaths.…
-
Immortimas Patrol gives away some of the bit during the opening titles when the “Doom Patrol” theme gets an acapella cover version. Last episode ended with big bad Charity Cervantes getting pissed off. The town was celebrating the Doom Patrol for rescuing her, not her for being rescued, and she did something. This episode, we…
-
And this, ladies, germs, zombie butts, is what is called an hour of television. Or, well, forty-two minutes of television. “Doom Patrol” once again knocks it out of the park, but then the ball ricochets and pings around the ballpark, going out of the park and then pinging back in and out until the cliffhanger.…
-
Aka Thank Goodness Patrol. Sorry, just need to acknowledge how everyone was pretty sure MAX was going to delete the rest of “Doom Patrol” off the hard drive without dropping them. Things pick back up where we left off–the team is in over their heads (again), and the end of the world is neigh (again),…
-
This episode picks up some hours after last episode’s “all the characters are probably babies now” cliffhanger. While fixing up a car (with some great Riley Shanahan bodywork), Brendan Fraser explains to Diane Guerrero he’s had an epiphany, and they’re all about to die, so they better get their houses in order. Guerrero wanted to…
-
Wow, it’s so good. Even for “Doom Patrol,” it’s so good. It’s a very “Doom Patrol” episode, too; the team has a mission, then something happens, and they have to go on a side mission. Given guest star Mark Sheppard finally reveals there’s a narrative reason for the main cast to remain young, it’s not…
-
“Doom Patrol” has been having a fine season to this point; fine enough, one hopes they’re prepared for a non-renewal, but the series hasn’t been sublime. Every so often, “Doom Patrol” has a way of being sublime, where the story’s quirkiness, the characters’ humanity, and the Kevin Kiner and Clint Mansell music is just right,…
-
This episode leaves the butts behind—had to—and gets going with the other big bad of the season. The season premiere had special cameo guest star Mark Sheppard explaining he and the other wizards knew the Doom Patrol would have to fight the butts this season, but they’ve also got to fight someone or something called…
-
I’m hesitant to call anything “Doom Patrolling,” a la “Westworlding,” but this episode comes close. The team is recovering from their trip to the future and discovering they bring about the “Butt-pocalypse;” one of the zombie butts from last season has survived to destroy the world. April Bowlby’s all set to lead the team to…
-
Last season, “Doom Patrol” had to recover from a Covid-19-induced shortened second season, then get the show into a decent spot for HBO Max to cancel them. Thankfully, HBO Max did not cancel them, and now the show gets to do, presumably, at least this fourth season. You never know with HBO Max, however. Anyway.…
-
This season finale of “Doom Patrol” is not perfect because it realizes all my hopes for the season; it’s perfect and just happens to realize all my hopes for the season. First and foremost, it doesn’t play chicken with the network (or, in this case, streaming service) as far as renewal. We get closure. There…
-
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…
-
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,…
-
Wow, late forties Communist paranoia doesn’t age well. It’s okay for a plot point, but showcasing how Michelle Gomez goes down the rabbit hole does an incredible job setting up her villain arc. It’s the big reveal on her; she’s just an American numbskull. Though the character’s Scottish, so she’s a Scot affecting American idiocy.…
-
The A-plot this episode is April Bowlby in the past. We get to see her trip in the time machine, which explains how time travelers lose their memories—it’s an intense, affecting sequence with narration from Matt Bomer (I think). Or maybe guest star Micah Joe Parker. Or neither of them. Either would also make sense.…
-
“Doom Patrol” has a standard plot structure for most episodes. With another show, I’d call it concerning, but with “Doom Patrol,” the show’s able to utilize and achieve with that structure, so it’s a have-at-it situation. Especially since they’re constantly reminding each other they’re not a team; why expect team dynamics. The structure is a…
-
It took me a second to realize returning guest star Jon Briddell is not Robert Carradine. It took another second to remember the last time Briddell was on the show—they quickly remind the audience, but it was still the first season; it’s been a while. The keyword there being but. Or butt, as it were.…
-
Let’s see how well I can couch and caveat the following statement: comics-based superhero shows have an advantage doing backdoor pilots. Superheroes have been guest-starring in each others’ comics since 1940; the guest spot has been baked into the medium, whether to bolster a series’s sales with Batman, Wolverine, or Spider-Man or to gin up…
-
In this episode, there’s a scene where Diane Guerrero and April Bowlby are sitting in some lounge chairs on a pretty lake and talking about how they’re coping with the revelations of the traumas Timothy Dalton put them through. They’re at the pretty lake because Bowlby has an extended panic attack and has reverted into…
-
I’m very jealous of the folks who are going to marathon “Doom Patrol” without a break between seasons two and three. This episode is last season’s finale, only delayed because of Rona. It took me a while to catch back up. I didn’t forget the big things, but I did forget the community theater production…
-
So “Doom Patrol” didn’t just have to cut an episode off season two because of the Covid-19 and wrap it up here, they also don’t have their season three renewal in yet… so essentially Wax Patrol is playing chicken with the network. Going to be a bummer if they don’t get renewed. The episode, which…
-
It’s another packed, season-relevant big plots (though even the season’s B plots have big moments too) episode, with unlikely pairings—Matt Bomer and Diane Guerrero go on a mission together for maybe the first time ever solo while Robotman (Brendan Fraser voicing a truly magnificent physical performance from Riley Shanahan) shows daughter Bethany Anne Lind around…
-
And now here’s where “Doom Patrol” asks for permission to be silly. It’s kind of been goofy before, but this episode—where the heroes find themselves trying to give in to their worst ideas at all times—gets silly. Even stranger is how effectively the “new” Diane Guerrero works as straight woman to the crew. Last episode…
-
I thought last episode was good, this episode’s even better. In fact, it might fully realize translating comics to film, with Dorothy (Abi Monterey) running as far away from dad Timothy Dalton as she can. Keep in mind dad Dalton has various space ships sitting around the property, which surprises the other characters a little…
-
I’m not great at tracking the “Doom Patrol” creatives but I remembered Chris Dingess was working out and Shoshana Sachi was one of the good writers, so I had good feeling going into Finger Patrol and it does not disappoint. Maybe the most surprising part is how well things work out for Joivan Wade and…
-
At some point someone working on “Doom Patrol” decided they weren’t messing around and gave Alan Mingo Jr. a truly devastating speech about transgender people’s humanity—to Joivan Wade—and it’s a wow aside in the episode. Sex Patrol goes all the way from hilarious to terrifying to, well, titillating but when Mingo delivers that monologue… everything…
-
Samira Radsi directs a positively unnerving episode here, doing both social awkwardness in the extremes and then, you know, traditional inter-dimensional evil who was Jack the Ripper—is Red Jack (Roger Floyd, who looks like a cross-between Hellraiser and Stanley Kubrick’s Phantom of the Opera) a Redjac from “Star Trek” reference? Cute. The most likable thing…
-
Tyme Patrol is packed; writers April Fitzsimmons and Neil Reynolds make the subplots seem just as big as the main one, which has the team trying to steal some time travel goo from an infamous time traveller (the titular Tyme, voiced by Dan Martin while Brandon Perea handles the, um, roller-disco). He ends up having…
The Stop Button 