Doom Patrol (2019) s04e01 – Doom Patrol

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 premiere picks up about six months after the finale, which saw the Doom Patrol becoming superheroes under April Bowlby’s enthusiastic, if questionable, leadership. Bowlby’s still team leader, Robotman (Riley Shanahan walking, Brendan Frasier talking), is almost rebuilt, no longer Cyborg Jovian Wade and dad Phil Morris are doing that rebuilding as they try to bond, Diane Guerrero’s having a multiple personality crisis, Matt Bomer and Matthew Zuk (Bomer talking, Zuk wearing the hot costume) are bonding with their new electrical alien parasite, and Michelle Gomez is still trying to atone for her many sins as the latest team member.

Now, Gomez is in the opening credits as “special appearance by,” which isn’t a great sign for her longevity. I kept waiting for her to do a runner this episode, but the show seems sure she’ll be around for a while. Hope so; she and Bowlby are even more fun together hating each other. Or, Bowlby hates Gomez, while Gomez is trying to play nice but noticing the team leadership problems.

It’s a fine place to start the season, with Guerrero narrating. Her primary persona now is the psychiatrist, played in the Underground (where Guerrero interacts with the personalities) by Catherine Carlen. The narration is Guerrero’s psychological observations about the team, which is an excellent device.

However, things go wrong once they go on mission, finding themselves thrown into the future—which the audience has already seen in the episode prologue—and discovering most of their future selves dead, all because of some imminent mistake they’ll be making in the past. There’s a nice mix of action, deception, and character drama, with loads of good acting from the cast. The episode even gets in a great music montage (Clint Mansell and Kevin Kiner) where everyone’s moping around the mansion, realizing the new season’s started and shit’s getting real again.

There are a couple significant reveals in the third act, along with a cameo in an epilogue, lots of future angst, and contemporary drama—the season hook is solid. The episode might feature Guerrero’s best acting on the show, albeit doing a Carlen impression.

So glad “Doom Patrol”’s back. So glad.

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e10 – Amends Patrol

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 are open plot threads, with things primarily unresolved for about half the team, but nothing to ruin a binge or rewatch if they didn’t get a fourth season. Not like they did last time, though Rona played a part there.

The episode opens with a resolution to the previous episode’s cliffhanger and a return of the Sisterhood of Dada. Well, at least Wynn Everett, who’s got some strong words for April Bowlby while also working on her low-key seduction of Diane Guerrero (who can exist in Everett’s inter-dimensional fog separate from her host). Everett takes Bowlby to task for everything Bowlby needs to be taken to task about and sets up a resolution for that arc.

Bowlby gets her whole arc this season, ditto Matt Bomer and Matthew Zuk, ditto Michelle Gomez. Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan get some resolution, but there are also some open issues. Guerrero and Joivan Wade are similarly in the resolved enough camp. Good enough for a finale. It’s really Bowlby, Gomez, Bomer, and Fraser’s episode, with the show really leveraging Gomez and Bowlby. Gomez “wins” in terms of best performance, but it’s also because she’s got something of a softball compared to Bowlby, who’s still gazing into the abyss.

Especially after Bowlby confronts the villainous Brain, who’s assumed Fraser’s robot body, meaning Zuk gets to go wild with the physical performance this episode. The way the show’s been able to introduce the Brain and sidekick Monsieur Mallah into the main narrative and get them a complete arc in, what, three episodes, is incredibly impressive. It’s not as remarkable as the closure on the Bowlby and Gomez time-traveling stuff, but it’s still fantastic work. The time travel stuff and the layers upon layers of character development running through it are “Doom Patrol: Season Three”’s singular achievement. I didn’t think they’d ever be able to pull it off, and they do. Just right, scene after scene, beat after beat.

Guerrero’s got a reasonably good arc about placating bossy fellow persona Catherine Carlen before getting a nice tense, cliffhanger-ready plotline with Fraser. Wade’s entirely support this episode, starting with Bomer and Zuk, but it’s good support; Bomer’s got to make some big life decisions, which juxtapose nicely with Wade’s recent big life decisions. So while Wade doesn’t get his own thing here, he’s set to have an exciting arc next season.

“Doom Patrol”’s successes here are, obviously, hard to compare to anything else because “Doom Patrol”’s not really like anything else. Even as it plays with the same toys as other superhero media, its character development-driven stakes are entirely different. Not to mention the acting’s mostly spectacular and leagues beyond other franchises.

It’s an actually wonderful show, and I can’t wait for season four. I mean, I can because season three wraps up so nicely—the thing could jump every shark (impossible thanks to the cast, of course), and there’d still be a fantastic thirty-five-episode complete narrative. “Doom Patrol”’s such rare delight.

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) s03e07 – Bird Patrol

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. It’s kind of great? It’s not dramatic at all; basically, she’s just going to be a betrayer, and we’ll get to watch that realization play out on people’s faces, but there’s only one related action set-piece, and it’s the cliffhanger. Otherwise, it’s all just watching Gomez hurt people. One after the other, as it becomes more and more evident, she’s lost her humanity to fear and hate.

Not sure how the show’s going to explain Gomez getting her memory back in the present as the audience learns about it through the flashbacks–well, linear flashbacks but April Bowlby’s ostensibly experiencing it in real-time though not as much this episode. Gomez is the star in the flashbacks, with Bowlby now just one of the Sisterhood of Dada.

The show’s actually getting through the Sisterhood of Dada stuff really fast. The subplots are all still dawdling—nicely dawdling, but still—and the Dada stuff is racing. Especially given this episode’s cliffhanger. We get one big reveal, then another, then another, then the cliffhanger.

The subplots have Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan back at daughter Bethany Anne Lind’s to babysit, even though it’s clear his malfunctions are continuing. Matt Bomer’s actually got a big early episode revelation with his giant zit subplot. And then Bomer’s the one in the present interacting with Gomez the most when she’s still cool. Diane Guerrero’s got more internal drama with Skye Roberts and company. It’s the most forced subplot, maybe because Guerrero doesn’t engage with anyone out in the world about it.

The most significant subplot is Joivan Wade, who’s going through with a synthetic skin treatment. Through either luck or contrivance, when dad Phil Morris (who doesn’t appear but Karen Obilom does have a lovely scene, albeit remotely) turned Wade into Cyborg, he made it easy to uninstall all the mechanicals and replace them with artificial skin. Okay, maybe not the biggest subplot, but the most dramatic. Wade losing his tech is more impactful (so far) than Fraser being inept at playing grandpa, Guerrero’s turmoil, and then Bomer’s thing.

Lots of good acting—Gomez, Bowlby, the flashback guest stars.

Though I did think the season had thirteen episodes, and it’s got ten, which means we’re heading into the wrap-up, and I didn’t realize it. Still, the show’s in excellent shape.

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e06 – 1917 Patrol

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.

But she gets to the past and pretty quickly finds herself in the custody of the Bureau of Normalcy, where she finds some answers to the questions Michelle Gomez is asking in the future. Only Bowlby can’t remember she knows Gomez in the future and isn’t trying to get back to the future, not when she finds good friends in everyone in the past and a love interest in Parker. Of course, Bowlby and her friends are meta-humans being exploited by the bigoted Bureau (not to mention held captive), but it could be a lot worse. Especially since her friends all have good escapism powers.

It seems like the show will eventually do an intricate time travel loop with the past informing the future informing the past. Wait, it already does. Add another couple of loops. The show’s having a good time with it, but also getting in some excellent character development. And it’s nice the guest star “villains” last episode, the Sisterhood of Dada (who Bowlby finds in the past), have a thoughtful backstory.

Meanwhile, in the present, Gomez is still trying to figure out what the Sisterhood wants with her, not to mention being pissed Bowlby stole her time machine. She can’t get any help from Robotman (Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan) because he’s busy being addicted to online pay-to-play gaming and cam girls as a way of avoiding problems. The episode places a hold on Fraser and Gomez this episode—Shanahan gets more than Fraser to do in the part this episode, which doesn’t often happen–while keeping the other team members’ arcs going.

So Diane Guerrero gets the B-plot. Little kid version Skye Roberts wants to drive the body and see the world for the first time in seventy years. Guerrero encourages her, the other personalities do not. It ends up being Guerrero doing a Roberts impression, and it works well enough. If only Guerrero were as compelling playing “herself” as when she’s playing other people controlling her body. The subplot is simultaneously rushed and truncated, but it keeps the arc going.

Similarly, Matt Bomer and Joivan Wade make some progress. Bomer with his estranged, old man son John Getz (who’s absolutely fantastic), Wade as he tries to work out his whole existence. On the sliding scale of episode investment, Wade comes in just above Fraser, but it’s really good stuff. “Doom Patrol”’s doing a great job making its characters the most compelling aspect.

Particularly great acting from Bowlby, Gomez, and Bomer.

Also, Omar Madha’s direction is excellent. It’s actually an uneven episode, but the peaks are so sky-high they easily compensate.

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e05 – Dada Patrol

“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 split-up one, where each member goes off on their own personal adventure. While they’re all separate, they’re all full of anger, danger, and sorrow. The split-up structure is familiar from comics when you’d have regular pairings of team members. So, for instance, Robotman and Jane go to save a nuclear power plant while Negative Man and Cyborg go to do something else. I never read Doom Patrol so I’m not sure how the split-up structure worked there, but in the show, instead of pairings, everyone’s on their own. Except for April Bowlby and Michelle Gomez, who sit around the mansion getting hammered on gin and making bad decisions.

This episode’s mission involves Gomez’s newly discovered old gang (from the 1920s, the Sisterhood of Dada—some great jokes about Dada throughout) trying to bring about the end of the world. Maybe. The team—minus Bowlby—goes out to see if they can get some answers, only to discover the Sisterhood’s got the upper hand. One thing about the season I’m underwhelmed about—through future streamers aren’t going to care—is how it’s a sequel to the first season, not the second. The Sisterhood were some of the prisoners the team freed at the end of season one. They just haven’t been mentioned until now, a season and a few episodes later.

It’s a slight peeve and doesn’t affect the episode’s quality. Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan have the most physically and comedically involved adventure because Robotman gets super-high, leading to hilarious dialogue for Fraser and some excellent bodywork from Shanahan. It’s Shanahan’s most impressive episode this season. But the writing is also just fantastic (Shoshana Sachi gets the credit). Not just when they’re on mission or when Fraser’s tripping balls, but also when Fraser’s playing on the internet. It’s all great.

Diane Guerrero’s adventure involves her and little girl inside her Skye Roberts interacting with the outside world again. Or at least outside elements, which leverages Guerrero’s effectiveness as protector. She’s funny when she’s bantering with Fraser; she’s sincere with trying to protect Roberts. Here, Guerrero and Roberts both find themselves seduced—appropriately, I’m just flexing on the vocabulary—by guest star Wynn Everett. Guerrero and Roberts’s arc this season is by far the most affecting, even though Guerrero’s the least capable regular cast member.

Jovian Wade’s got a Black man in America arc with a little dad issues with Phil Morris thrown in. It’s good. Morris only appears in a FaceTime call where no one thought about how he was sitting in relation to the camera, but Rona, right? While all of the arcs feel interrupted, only Wade’s feels like it won’t get explored later, which is too bad. I’m probably wrong, though. “Doom Patrol” consistently pleasantly surprises.

Matt Bomer’s got the smallest arc, involving his missing extraterrestrial symbiote, old man son John Getz, and a giant, moving zit. It’s good but set up.

Meanwhile, Bowlby and Gomez are back at the mansion talking about time travel, revealing all their secrets—which is incredible—and, again, making some bad and predictably drunk decisions.

It’s nice having someone opposite Bowlby who’s always making an excellent acting move. Gomez can keep up with Bowlby, something no one else really can, not when Bowlby lets loose.

“Doom Patrol” is, as ever, fantastic.

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e04 – Undead Patrol

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.

Briddell’s back with another scheme to destroy the Doom Patrol, with the team not in the best shape to deal with the threat. They’re recovering from their trip to the afterlife and coping with an unexpected and unknown houseguest. Ostensibly time-traveling Michelle Gomez has finally arrived in the mansion—she’s been on her way there since the season premiere end credits scene—and the team has questions for her. Gomez, however, doesn’t have any answers. Time travel gives you amnesia it turns out (something ever-welcome guest star Phil Morris confirms). All she remembers is she wants to talk to Timothy Dalton.

Too bad he’s dead.

So April Bowlby keeps an eye on Gomez—Bowlby’s pretty sure they’ve met even if Gomez is cagey about it—and they try to figure out what around the mansion might give Gomez some clues into her identity. Gomez doesn’t appreciate the help, which leads to Bowlby bitching to a surprisingly unsympathetic Matt Bomer. They hash out that hostility in an absolutely fantastic scene, juxtaposed against Diane Guerrero getting life advice from Brendan Fraser (and Riley Shanahan). Mostly it’s just Fraser (and Shanahan) bullshitting, but it’s an outstanding conversation performance. Shanahan doesn’t have an action sequence, just a fantastic “talk with his hands” sequence.

The team’s got Joivan Wade fiddling with the time machine, which is where Morris shows up for an impromptu argument. Wade confronts him with the things he learned from his dead mother last episode, and Morris has a volatile reaction. The show does just shoehorn Morris in—how does he get to the mansion so fast; he’s got to have a STAR Labs transporter—but it’s a great little scene thanks to Morris’s phenomenal performance.

However, all of this angst is just the beginning because Mark Sheppard needs the team’s help. And in return, Gomez might get the chance to talk to obviously dead Dalton, who Sheppard reveals is dead but not comic book TV show dead. The show hinted at Sheppard’s return at season premiere end credits cutscene along with Gomez’s, but it didn’t seem like he’d be back so soon. It ends up being a very good outing for Sheppard, as unexpected events foul up everyone’s plans.

There are a lot of laughs and a lot of gross-out gags in those unexpected events, with the show ending up with three profoundly, delightfully disgusting moments. The grossest might not even be the most visually icky. It’s an absolutely inspired episode, with great performances from the main cast. Even Guerrero, in part thanks to the plot.

It’s one heck of an episode.

Too bad he’s dead.

It’s one heck of an episode.

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e03 – Dead Patrol

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 interest in a B or C-list superhero in hopes of spinning them off on their own (someday).

But “Doom Patrol” quickly surpasses that inherent edge here. Half the episode is about most of the team in purgatory, half the episode is about Matt Bomer and Abi Monterey enlisting the aid of The Dead Boy Detectives to get their friends back. There are two ghost detectives—Ty Tennant and Sebastian Croft—and their psychic human partner Madalyn Horcher, and they solve crimes. They’re from the Sandman comics originally, and since the “Sandman” adaptation isn’t HBO Max, it’ll be interesting to see how they address shared characters if they go to series.

It rarely feels like a backdoor pilot because everything in the narrative serves the “Doom Patrol” plot. Even when Horcher is dumping exposition on Monterey as they bond over tragedies, it’s about Monterey finally having another teenage girl for a friend. While Tennant and Croft are very dry comic relief—they’re all British, after all—Bomer also has a great bonding moment with Tennant. It’s superbly done, and fingers crossed the real pilot goes well.

Meanwhile, Brendan Fraser (and, correspondingly, Riley Shanahan), April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, and Joivan Wade are all on their way towards the literal light, with some surprises along the way. Actually, not Bowlby, who for some reason doesn’t pass out when she gets across the River Styx. She ends up with the shortest arc, while Fraser, Guerrero, and Wade get much more salient ones. Especially Guerrero—who’s in the afterlife with little kid version Skye Roberts. It’s Guerrero’s best acting on the show. Or at least the best I can remember. Not sure if it’s because she’s speaking Spanish or because she’s not flexing hostile to everyone she’s acting with.

Fraser’s arc offers some quick character development—though, significant trauma, dying and all, so it works—while Wade just discovers he still doesn’t have all the answers to his own superhero origin story. But Guerrero’s section is the most affecting. And Roberts is excellent. The show really lucked out she’s so good when speaking (her part started non-verbal).

There’s some dark humor and bizarre scenes, some more mysteries for later on, and an excellent performance from Fraser. It’s another outstanding “Patrol.”

Doom Patrol (2019) s03e02 – Vacay Patrol

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 mostly liquid form. She’s in a large bag, tied together, on the chair. So Bowlby’s just voice acting. She’s great.

Guerrero’s not great in that particular “Doom Patrol” way where I try to will her acting to be better. It never works, but it felt good to have that sensation back again.

The episode opens in a flashback to the forties, very nonchalantly introducing the Brain and Monsieur Mallah. No CGI required for the Brain, just a trashcan and some lights, but Monsieur Mallah (a French ape) looks excellent. They’re plotting against Dalton, and their plan involves having alien mercenary Stephen Murphy assassinate a target at a resort. He’s just supposed to go there and wait for the target to arrive.

The target’s Bowlby, and she doesn’t arrive for decades. Not until she’s stressed out from Dalton giving her added responsibilities and then the disaster of the town play. But it also takes Joivan Wade getting in trouble with dad Phil Morris for giving his girlfriend another chance instead of having her arrested for terrorism; Morris has shut down most of Wade’s superpowers. So he’s bored and willing to take Bowlby on the trip.

Guerrero only goes because her little kid version (Skye Roberts) wants her to relax and thinks a trip would do her good. It’s a very interesting scene, with lots of foreshadowing for the character development. Roberts is better than Guerrero, which is actually surprising because Roberts’s part has been really nonverbal until now on the show. And Roberts gets emphasis later on, for a particularly affecting third act sequence.

They can’t bring Matt Bomer along because he’s out in space on a field trip with his alien symbiote. Last episode, it seemed like Bomer might be leaving the show or at least taking a timeout to keep the acting budget down, but he’s got a whole subplot.

But they can convince Brendan Fraser & Riley Shanahan’s Robotman to come along. Fraser’s been visiting his daughter (Bethany Anne Lind), her wife (Walnette Marie Santiago), and their new baby. He’s very amusingly annoying the hell out of them as the doting grandad. So they’re happy to send him off on a trip.

When they get to the resort, which is desolate and apparently only still in business because Murphy’s never checked out, they quickly start bickering and arguing. Wade’s trying to overcompensate, Fraser’s pissed, Guerrero’s confused, and Bowlby’s jello. It makes for a good “Doom Patrol” with a great cliffhanger.

Murphy’s a good guest war, with Billy Boyd stealing most of the scenes as his lackey. It’s a strong episode for Fraser in particular; he’s got a lot of different kinds of scenes. And, of course, Shanahan. Lots of good movement work from Shanahan.

This show’s a treasure.