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.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s02e16 – At the Mountains of Madness

I got really hopeful when I saw the title, At the Mountains of Madness, because they mentioned the Mountains of Madness in a previous episode and it’s the Lovecraft story with monster dinosaurs and so… monster dinosaurs are probably going to be cool.

There are no monster dinosaurs in the episode. There are the Mountains of Madness but they’re pretty boring and during the worst part of the episode, when the action leaps ahead two weeks and we lose Kiernan Shipka as lead of her, you know, own show. She has to go the Mountains because she’s become a danger to herself and others, but mostly others. See, she tries to take on the last Eldritch Terror herself because she’s feeling guilty about bringing about the end of the universe.

Things do not go well.

It even messes up Shipka’s seventeenth birthday party, which should be a book end to the series but isn’t really important. Not much in the episode works out being important, including Michelle Gomez’s resolution with Luke Cook. Gomez—in her Earthly variation—narrates the episode from a pulpit, where it quickly becomes clear she’s narrating in the past tense, making some of her statements all the more ominous.

Trying to help Shipka, the witches get into shenanigans to piss off Cook and the rest of Hell, leading to an utterly disappointing big fight scene. More risible than disappointing, especially since Sam Corlett makes a big deal out of the soldiers he can muster for Cook’s cause and then they’re… well, no spoilers, but it’s a pretty weak army and seemingly only there to gin up some more angst for Shipka and the supporting cast.

The finale goes on way too long—with one heck of an epilogue—but some nice homage to the original comic series and a few resolves for the supporting cast. Not most of them. Ninety percent of the supporting cast get no closure in the final episode, though since the show hasn’t given any of them significant subplots for the season it doesn’t really matter. They’ve all just been hanging around waiting for the show to finish apparently. Episode writer—and show creator and original comic (Chilling Adventures comic not, you know, in sixties Archie Comics) creator—Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa really doesn’t come up much for the finale.

It’s not the worst, but the episode is rushed, wastes everyone—including Coyle, who gets an unexpected big role—and doesn’t even provide a good finish for the Eldritch Terror storyline. My impulse was to blame it on Netflix, like maybe they cut the season order (before cancelling the show all together) but maybe Aguirre-Sacasa really just didn’t have it.

Rest of the show’s pretty good if not better. And, I guess at least there’s not one of the bad musical numbers.

But it’s a definite miss.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s02e15 – The Endless

The Endless is the best episode of the season so far and one of the best showcases for Kiernan Shipka as an actor ever. She’s trapped in another alternate universe, only this one is where she’s an actor on a television show, seemingly “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” She quickly discovers this alternate universe doesn’t have any magic, which is going to make things a lot more difficult, and none of her new costars believe her.

Shipka’s playing the Hell version of Sabrina—Morningstar—which doesn’t matter once she’s in this alternate universe because Hell doesn’t exist since it’s television. Albeit a television show where everyone lives on set and then wakes up to a new script on their nightstand and act all day long. It’s a follow-up to the cliffhanger a couple episodes ago, where Shipka finds herself in a world where Beth Broderick and Caroline Rhea play her aunts. Broderick and Rhea played on the previous “Sabrina” show, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch.” The now Christian Nationalist star of that show, Melissa Joan Hart, does not cameo.

The episode gives the entire cast—save maybe Gavin Leatherwood, Jaz Sinclair, definitely Lachlan Watson, oh, and Michelle Gomez—well… okay. It gives Shipka, Ross Lynch, Miranda Otto, Lucy Davis, Chance Perdomo, and especially Sam Corlett some great scenes. Turns out they’d just given Corlett more comedy, he might’ve done better in the show in general and Shipka’s Hellish variation’s affection for him would make sense.

So Shipka has various mysteries to solve—what’s the green room (where you go after being fired), how’s the head writer on the show, and why are her new aunties Broderick and Rhea so low-key creepy at times—only she doesn’t feel capable because she’s not the regular Sabrina. There’s character development and gravitas and drama and action and lots of comedy. The show manages to maintain the combination of fun and ominous until the last act of the episode, when the reveals come very fast. It’s not so much a rush as an escape, but Shipka’s acting keeps it going. She’s absolutely fantastic this episode.

Great episode. More than makes up for the previous one’s messiness.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s02e14 – The Returned

I’ve really liked co-writer Oanh Ly’s episodes in the past, so The Returned being such a mess is a bummer. Even if it weren’t for the problematic resolve to Miranda Otto’s love affair with visiting witch Skye P. Marshall—who gets a big spotlight this episode to have it torn away twice—or how Lachlan Watson’s Romeo and Romeo star-crossed thing with Jonathan Whitesell gets shrugged off after a single episode because the show can’t figure out anything to do with Watson who’s been a regular since episode one, there’s so many narrative backtracks it’s hard to keep track. Not to mention the whole point of the episode is to bring back dead characters in order to give living cast members performatively cathartic outbursts.

Not to mention poor Michelle Gomez; turns out the writers have no surprises for her, just more obvious, wrenching tragedy. It’s a complete waste of Gomez (whose Earthly version is background for already background Richard Coyle) and seems like unnecessary filler. I wonder at what point “Sabrina” knew they weren’t getting another season from Netflix because I was under the impression these episodes were long in the can before Netflix officially canceled them. It might explain some of the mess. I hope it explains some of the mess.

So the episode opens with Kiernan Shipka trying to adjust to her latest new normal—including rekindled beau Gavin Leatherwood—and supporting her human friends as they get ready for a “Battle of the Bands” at the high school. Someone directly asks Shipka if she’ll be participating and she says no, which is important later because apparently she just didn’t want to play with those friends and because “Sabrina” needed to have a three song “Battle of the Bands” scene. One of the bands is back from the dead—which turns out to be Marshall’s plot, playing a board game against Eldritch Terror Oliver Rice—and has history with Ross Lynch’s dad, Christopher Rosamond.

But this band isn’t the only resurrected, there’s also previous series regular Abigail Cowen, back to give some closure to Tati Gabrielle and Adeline Rudolph, but also Christine Willes as Alessandro Juliani’s mother who has it in for Lucy Davis because she’s married to her little boy, not to mention the profoundly pointless Georgie Daburas as Shipka’s long dead dad. It’s a nothing finish for a character arc I think Shipka started the series with.

The episode’s so cheap it falls back on dogs being cute to get it through. It’s a rather desperate outing, with every one of its plots failing to resolve adequately, not to utterly wasting the cast’s time.

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s02e13 – Deus Ex Machina

Four episodes until the finish and “Chilling Adventures” is still bringing in new worlds—in this case, the Parliament of Worlds in Celestial Realm, where Metatron (Pollyanna McIntosh is fine but would you really recast Hans Gruber) is witnessing a crisis unfolding. Hell and Earth are having dimension-quakes because of Kiernan Shipka splitting into two, one for Hell, one for Earth. Also somehow involved is the latest Eldritch Terror, the Cosmic, which is creating duplicate realities on a collision course for the already on a collision course Earth and Hell (and Heaven).

It’s such a big bad event, Shipka’s willing to tell aunts Lucy Davis and Miranda Otto how she created a time duplicate of herself and they’ve been coexisting all season. Some solid Parent Trap jokes, some not so solid Parent Trap jokes. But everything’s incredibly dramatic because McIntosh seems Heaven-bent on killing one of the Sabrinas to save reality even though it might not really save reality.

Meanwhile, Lachlan Watson gets a really bad subplot—undercooked and wrong ingredients and so on—with boyfriend Jonathan Whitesell. Whitesell’s fellow hobgoblin, Natalie Grace, has come to Earth to bring Whitesell back into the Fairie Realm in order to save him from the ends of the worlds except… it’s unclear why the Fairie Realm would survive.

Far more effective and harrowing is Michelle Gomez’s subplot about baby daddy Lucifer (Luke Cook) tracking her down in order to figure out what’s going on with his newborn son. Gomez earlier told Davis she was planning on hiding in the witch academy until the kid turned sixteen—Gomez and Davis are so good together—but it doesn’t seem like Cook’s going to agree.

The episode’s got one good arc for two Sabrinas, which adds up to Shipka’s best acting in a while on the show… alongside some of her more rote acting as her Earthy variation finds herself rekindling a romance with Gavin Leatherwood with only a few hours before the ends of the worlds. Shipka has a lot more fun as the Hell variant and that Sabrina gets a far better arc throughout.

But it’s a strong episode. Good performances from Cook–he’s a lot better this season, with the show treating him as a somewhat docile sardonic relief—Otto, Chance Perdomo obviously.

And the cliffhanger’s excellent.