Doom Patrol (2019) s01e12 – Cyborg Patrol

The episode opens with Cyborg (Joivan Wade) imprisoned by the U.S. government—led by Jon Briddell, who is still nowhere near good enough for his part and they also don’t explain how they went from him being missing two episodes ago to the main villain in this one—only Wade has turned off “Grid,” his cybernetics’ operating system so he’s powerless. Sort of? Eventually Wade gets to do the “try and escape from my obviously escape-proof cell, which has a lot of vents” thing but it’s after he does a whole whiney thing about not being a superhero anymore.

It’s awful in a few ways.

But once Wade meets next-door neighbor, a very amusing Devan Long, who apparently hasn’t shaved or cut his hair in sixty years, the episode gets on a little surer footing; Long sits around and watches soap operas; he tells Wade to chill.

Meanwhile, back at Doom Manor (yep), Diane Guerrero is mad because no one’s paying attention to her wanting to call her first team meeting. Eventually everyone gets there and they decide not to tell Wade’s dad, Phil Morris, about the kidnapping. They’re going to handle it on their own. It’s an interesting scene because Guerrero and April Bowlby have a lot more information about Wade’s current problems than Matt Bomer or Robotman (Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan). It seems like it might go somewhere.

It doesn’t because Morris shows up immediately, demanding to see Wade, and they immediately change their minds and tell him. Only then Morris decides he’s going to lead the mission himself and it takes some convincing to get the team to go along with him.

The episode’s that adventure, which has its ups and downs, what must be comic book guest cameo and what one only hopes can be (hashtag beware the butts), and a fairly effective—albeit obvious and predictable—conclusion. There’s some good acting from the regular cast in their action episode, plus great acting from Morris, who really isn’t going to get the credit for the dramatic he deserves; Alicia Ying’s a wonderful guest star.

Mac Wells is so bad you wish Guerrero would kill him to get their scene over with. And when it does finally turn into Guerrero’s scene… they kind of punt as far as having her execute it. “Doom Patrol”’s way too comfortable asking for a pass on Guerrero’s performance.

Good script—Robert Berens and Shoshana Sachi—good performances, not super-impressed sets.

The secret underground lab looks less impressive than the one in Return of Swamp Thing, complete with some Brazil homage. Still doesn’t look particularly good.

And Briddell’s a real drag.

But otherwise….

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e11 – Frances Patrol

I remember opining “Doom Patrol” might give Matt Bomer a great part, but it was the pilot (I think) and they managed to simultaneously ignore his character development while also doing the peculiar flashbacks to the 1950s and Bomer’s closeted affair with Kyle Clements. Then it got better a few episodes ago, then Bomer took the last two episodes off, now we get his episode, resolving most of the things with Clements.

There’s some weirdness to the whole “sixty years” thing—when Grant Morrison wrote the comic, it had been thirty years since the characters—Bomer and April Bowlby (who’s all support this episode but absolutely wonderful, save a single moment aside for herself)–were in their heydays. It just works better. When Bomer’s talking about sitting around doing nothing for sixty years, including any personal growth… though given his subplot has gone from being sensational about the closeted affair, this episode deepens it. Bomer’s stuff this episode is absolutely fantastic. Maybe not a new bar for the show to clear going forward, but definitely a high one.

The other plots have Bowlby going down to Florida with Robotman (voice of Brendan Fraser, body performance of Riley Shanahan; Shananhan’s profoundly good this episode, Fraser is… not) to crash his daughter’s memorial for her adoptive father. It could go better, it could go worse, it ends up being something of a shrug; more like the show itself, rather than writer April Fitzsimmons, decided just to give up on it for now and deal with it later. It’d be frustrating if it weren’t so predictable and if the Bomer story weren’t so good.

And the Joivan Wade and Diane Guerrero one so eh.

Guerrero and Wade acting opposite each other—at the beginning of the episode, it seems for like three minutes Guerrero has magically improved; spoiler, she hasn’t. Anyway, they’re not good together and putting them on mission… doesn’t work. Also all of a sudden Marc Pattavina’s editing is bad on some of their talking heads stuff—Wade’s got news about the future of his cybernetics (they’re increasing whether he likes it or not) and the scene where he talks about it to Guerrero….

Should be good.

Isn’t.

Guerrero.

But also Wade a little (not much) and the editing. Is the editing bad because there wasn’t enough coverage or was the scene really bad as shot. Based on Gurrero and Wade’s driftwood chemistry and director Wayne Yip’s otherwise competent direction, I’m thinking the latter. The cutting room floor on Guerrero’s performance has got to be something.

It’s incredible the show can overcome her, yet it does. Even with a perplexing—as in, am I watching “Doom Patrol” out of order—cliffhanger reveal.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e10 – Hair Patrol

Does Matt Bomer get an episode with the electric demon next or what, because he’s really left out of this one, which is the secret origin of Timothy Dalton—including explaining, or at least implying, why he looks so good for one hundred and fifty plus years old. No explanation for Diane Guerrero still but doesn’t matter, she’s not really in the episode.

The bad acting this episode is instead courtesy—oh, I knew it was him: Max Martini. He’s Dalton’s evil White guy pal back in 1913 when they’re out hunting oddities to bring them back and look at because it’s pre-WWI and they’re not killing everything yet. Curious colonial. They’re in the Arctic looking for some kind of monster. What they find is something entirely different and will change Dalton’s life forever. It’s initially not great, then gets pretty darn great.

The ending of that subplot—the flashbacks—is a bit of a flop but what can you do… it’s Max Martini. And it’s flashbacks to colonial daydreams, even if Dalton ends up a lot more twentieth century woke than almost any other cishet White guy in existence for the time. Presumably. While it’s a nice story and an interesting cliffhanger setup, it’s also not really character development for Dalton. We get to see him bickering with Alan Tudyk a bit… but it’s all obvious red herring stuff.

But what’s almost as memorable is villain of the week Tommy Snider. He’s “The Beard Hunter.” He eats mens’ beard follicles and taps into a quantum realm of information from it, including being able to turn Cyborg (Joivan Wade) lethal, which probably ought to freak April Bowlby out a little more but her being forcefully level-headed is too charming for it to matter.

The stuff with Snider has its ups and downs—the new shadow villains, the Bureau of Normalcy, aren’t anywhere near as intriguing as they might have been in a monthly comic in 1989, which was pre-“X-Files” for goodness sake.

But Snider’s hilariously gross. And I’m still soft-shipping Wade and Bowlby.

The episode tries a little too hard to surprise—especially in its explanations—but it’s definitely successful. Martini aside, obviously.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e09 – Jane Patrol

Holy shit, they didn’t get a female writer for this episode. Holy shit. Marcus Dalzine. Holy shit. I thought it was….

Wow.

Okay.

So this episode is about Brendan Fraser—guest starring in person and turning out to not be anywhere near as occasionally amusing in person as when he’s voicing and they’re filtering his voice—but it’s about Fraser going into Diane Guerrero’s mind to help her. The sequence where they go into the mind is good. Like, there are good moments in the episode, and it truly doesn’t seem aware of how cringe-y the whole “Guerrero overcomes a history of profound sexual abuse because she’s got a new father figure in Fraser” thing plays.

Though when they turn in into Guerrero and Fraser fighting a figurative Jurassic Park T. rex… I mean, they had to know. But they were too enraptured with being able to pull of a figurative Jurassic Park T. rex with their geek streaming service CGI.

There are also some other interesting creative choices in the episode, which may or may not be better or worse; it’s impossible to know because Guerrero’s such a bad actor. See, inside Guerrero’s mind is a bleak, vaguely City of Lost Children but the trailer world where all her sixty-four personalities co-exist. Guerrero plays some of them, but not all of them. We finally “meet” tough personality Hammerhead (Stephanie Czajkowski) and, well, okay, they don’t credit the Baby Doll one because it’s non-speaking just weird objectifying—but the thing is not giving Guerrero the chance to play all these parts, sort of appropriately CGI-ed, the show misses the chance with the character. If Jane isn’t about her performer playing her personalities, inside and out, what the hell is the character for? Except to give Fraser something to do.

Also, stereotypical nineteenth century British street urchin Anna Lore shouldn’t be able to act circles around Guerrero (and Fraser) by literally laying a bit. Yet, Lore does.

Maybe Matthew Lillard as Cliff?

There are technical strengths to the episode and it doesn’t seem to realize its tone—which seems like it’d be from a Grant Morrison comic in the nineties, which were a long time ago when it comes to female characterization (not to mention multiple personality tropes)—but holy shit, how did they not think they should have a woman’s name credited on this one? Like. Wow.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e08 – Danny Patrol

I just ran a find on this episode’s cast list because I couldn’t remember who did the voice of the new character, Danny the Street. Only to remember Danny only ever talks in text messages. Not, like, SMS messages, but text they’re able to arrange on the… well, not on the street because they’re the Street. But like marquees and store windows and, I don’t know, leaves in the breeze. Danny the Street’s clearly able to communicate because it really hadn’t occurred to me they didn’t speak.

Though maybe there’s some personified speaking in a daydream sequence.

Hopefully that paragraph will make more sense in a bit.

So Danny the Street is a sentient, gender-queer, teleporting street—like city street—and they’re in trouble. Jon Briddell’s a government agent—with the Bureau of Normalcy, which turns out to have some history with Matt Bomer and his alien ghost spirit laser electricity thing—and he’ll stop at nothing to destroy the street. Even though he doesn’t know what he’s trying to destroy—or who—including his former partner, Alan Mingo Jr. (sorry, in 2020 watching the old White cop, Black cop best buddies thing just seems forced and fake as opposed to admirably working class). Mingo had some significant self-discovery thanks to Danny the Street and gets to embody some of the tension. The obscurity is about the spoilers. Director Dermott Downs and writer Tom Farrell do some really neat things with Mingo’s character development and they’d cooler to see unfold, if only to appreciate the craft.

Bomer and Joivan Wade pair off to investigate the Danny the Street thing while April Bowlby and Robotman (voiced by Brendan Fraser and performed by Riley Shanahan, who apparently doesn’t have any dance training, which comes as surprise after this episode) have to try to save Diane Guerrero from one of her personalities who wants to live in the perfect nineties romantic comedy and turns out to be able to do it. Some good comic material for Bowlby, the aforementioned great dancing from Shanahan, and Guerrero’s at least supposed to be annoying this persona.

That subplot’s got nothing on the Danny the Street one—which gets Bomer closer to standout acting than I thought possible and again elevates the show’s potential; it’s an excellent episode.

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.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e06 – Doom Patrol Patrol

I failed to appreciate how nice it was to have Diane Guerrero not playing her regular character, Jane. Or Hammerhead. Hammerhead is the tough one. Guerrero’s not good at either of them. She’s also not good as the Babydoll one. She’s good as the blue-eyed one, nothing else.

Especially not when everyone else in “Doom Patrol” is starting to settle nicely into their roles. Though Brendan Frasier’s “performance” hinges on his ability to swear with the right inflection, but his audio gets processed anyway so… it’s like the Matt Bomer in the Invisible Man mask. Is he really doing it?

Riley Shanahan’s good in the physical Robotman performance this episode. Phil Morris shows up to run some upgrades on son Cyborg (Joivan Wade) and he ends up talking to Robotman about his bad design. Again, excellent performance from Morris, which sort of elevates the whole thing. Wade’s got a better handle on this material too. All the males awkwardly bond and well. Good character development.

While Morris is upgrading Wade, Guerrero has taken Bomer and April Bowlby to track down the “Doom Patrol,” who turn out to be a fifties or sixties superhero group with some connection to Timothy Dalton. They find now retired heroes Will Kemp, Jasmine Kaur, and maybe Lesa Wilson (it’s like they budgeted the episode and said only two of them get to talk) teaching school at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

Kidding! Grant Morrison wouldn’t be that obvious. It’s not like Alan Moore ever wrote X-Men.

Alimi Ballard—who’s always been flat in the guest spots I’ve seen since “Numbers”—turns in a really nice performance as the school’s headmaster and Dalton’s man on the ground. Only things aren’t what they seem with the mutants… sorry, sorry, metahumans… or their professors.

Some eventually excellent material for Bowlby even if she does get some absurd dialogue about the sixty years she’s spent as a literal hermit. Ditto Bomer but it doesn’t matter for Bomer. It gets in the way of Bowlby, which is a mistake.

Also is a mistake is playing her off Kemp, who’s exceptionally flat.

There’s some iffy stuff in the end song montage–Just a Perfect Day, I forgot to mention the Bowie and Bolan in previous ones; the music’s mostly great.

But the content’s iffy. Especially Guerrero’s should be hard but is instead quizzically soft cliffhanger. She’s got a lot of character reveals to work through but the whole point of her character is not to do actual character development.

Otherwise, solid episode.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e05 – Paw Patrol

Is Diane Guerrero’s core identity—“Doctor Harrison,” who’s got ice-blue eyes like she’s from the “Star Trek: TOS” Shatner pilot or maybe someone in X-Men—supposed to be the far and away best performance Guerrero gives on the show or is it unintentional? But also the best character for her to play? Because Dr. Harrison doesn’t play well with the rest of the cast—there’s also no explanation for the lack of aging between the present and the late seventies because no on in “Doom Patrol” ages.

I wonder if there’s a note about that decision. “Doom Patrol” makes a lot of little (and big) decisions and it’d be interesting to know how they reached them. In a good way. Because “Doom Patrol” never feels over-produced. There’s a particularly nice fluidity to this episode, which concludes a two-parter about the end of the world—an all-seeing eye is going to wink everything out of existence with a resolution–if comics accurate—is either Grant Morrison trying to make fun of Alan Moore or so desperately try to rip him off Alan Moore has to say his name or think about him or something.

And if it’s just the show… I mean, it’s from Swamp Thing Annual. Like. Come on.

Back to the compliments. The show just brings Alan Tudyk and Timothy Dalton back without any fanfare—Shoshana Sachi is probably the best writer the show’s got—and beautifully integrates them into the already running plot. See, Tudyk and Dalton can’t just let the world end if they’re going to destroy the world in their rivalry to… be rivals.

Dalton’s really good. He’s not as good with Joivan Wade as one would hope—did they not audition Wade from this episode, they should have—but having him back, as literally shoehorned as it may be, is just what the show needs to kick the character development into gear.

Much better performance from Mark Sheppard but it’s only because Sachi doesn’t goof around with the stupid magic stuff they did last episode. It helps immensely.

Brendan Fraser’s getting a little too one note. Especially with the constant cameos. It’s hard to miss him when he won’t go.

And it’s a bummer we’re not going to get Guerrero’s best performance full-time. The end of the episode even double-downs on what we’re in for.

Finally, nice work on April Bowlby. She’s had iffy material for a while, she’s getting better grounding here.

Like I said, “Doom Patrol” is going to be bumpy. This episode’s a bump up.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e04 – Cult Patrol

No way, Willoughby Kipling (Mark Sheppard) is a real comic book “Doom Patrol” character. Is he a desperate Constantine rip-off in the comic or just in the show? I seriously thought they had to really quick come up with a character when they couldn’t make the Constantine cameo work. Like I thought it was seriously they couldn’t decide whether to let Matt Ryan be on the show.

Same they didn’t push for it.

Sheppard’s a disappointment. He’s not all-bad, he’s just lackluster. The character is buffoonish. So if it’s accurate, it’s “Doom Patrol” writer and character creator Grant Morrison having a piss at Alan Moore and managing to cover himself in his own stream like usual, and if it’s inaccurate, writers Marcus Dalzine and Chris Dingess are just doing a bad job.

Doesn’t really matter because the episode’s still pretty effective and walks back last episode’s walk back of April Bowlby’s agency. She spends this episode disinterested in helping Sheppard stop the apocalypse—involving teen sacrifice Ted Sutherland, who’s pretty good in a role where it doesn’t matter but Sutherland is good, which helps Bowlby because he’s what inspires her to become a hero. She’s got a pretty cool hero moment; it comes with a lot less asterisks than the rest of the team’s heroic displays. Joivan Wade gets a fairly big set piece where he bonds with Sheppard in a fight against a bunch of inter-dimensional cultists trying to get to Sutherland.

It’s appropriately amusing. The show’s hitting a lot of solid character development moments, it’s just also still got some liabilities.

Matt Bomer’s around trying to get his electric spirit under control enough to help with Diane Guerrero and Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan as Robotman go into the alternate dimension. There they face off with these live action Muppet types. Maybe not Muppets, but if Henson Company made a fantasy TV series with live action actors in it in the late eighties. However you’d accurately describe it, it’s a delight.

Fraser and Guerrero are in a funk because Fraser killed a bunch of Nazis last episode and doesn’t feel bad about it. It’s eh. Neither of them are really good enough for it to matter and their cliffhanger is awesome so it’s fine. Better than last episode, not as good as the one before, but better than the pilot for sure. “Doom Patrol”’s rocky.

Glad it’s got a solid effects budget.

Doom Patrol (2019) s01e03 – Puppet Patrol

Try as it might, this episode doesn’t lose all the second episode gains over the pilot. It does seemingly revolt against them—facing off team mom April Bowlby with serious superhero Joivan Wade but have it be all about how she’s just too negative and, like, needs to get with the team spirit stuff. Maybe do some cheers. And it’s all they’ve got, Wade and Bowlby, who are pretty much the only reliable actors “Patrol”’s got. Especially after this episode.

They’re stranded in a motel where they can argue and ostensibly character develop—if they’re trying to play up some kind of romantic thing, there are going to be numerous hurdles but it’d be a big swing if they try it (last episode didn’t exactly imply it but there was some passive energy in that department). The rest of the team—Diane Guerrero, Matt Bomer, and Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan as Robotman—is in Paraguay looking for Alan Tudyk, who was last seen there eighty years earlier or so. We saw Tudyk arrive there in flashback—speaking of Tudyk, he’s not narrating this episode; Wade does the opening recap but the narration only made it two episodes.

Wonder what that note from the focus group says.

Anyway.

Robotman and company—Robotman predated Hellboy, right, has there ever been any discussion of their similar personality types—infiltrate Nazi scientist Julian Richings’s superpowers clinic (amusing but not good enough bit part for Alec Mapa as a guy who’s been saving up for some powers and now it’s finally time). There’s some character revelations, some wanton destruction, and a really convenient Dr. Manhattan chamber for Bomer to play around in as he tries to get rid of the electrical being living inside him….

It’s Bomer’s episode. He gets all the flashbacks, covering him being terrible to both lover (Kyle Clements) and suffering wife (Julie McNiven). Bomer’s not good. The material’s not good, but Bomer’s also not good. He exceeds the range required for muffled Invisible Man guy. Not so with the dramatic. It’s not well-written, it’s not well-directed, but Bomer also can’t do it.

The character—not taking the more asshole moves in the flashback into account—gets empathy, but Bomer’s performance doesn’t get the requisite sympathy. He’s just not good enough.

If you’re good with Nazi jokes… there’s a great puppet show?