Warner Bros. Television
I could not stop raving about the first episode of DC Universe’s Doom Patrol because of its heart, humor, great performances and beautiful production design and cinematography. I did worry that DC may have shot their budget on the pilot which would result in subsequent episodes having just a slightly lower quality to them. But so far that fear is unfounded with the second episode of the series.
I have to say that when a new episode of a series starts with the ‘Previously on’ recap, those things can be a lackluster collection of clips that try to cram the previous episode, or scenes from other episodes that relate to something in the new episode, into a 15-30 clip job. The Episode 1 recap was terrific, basically giving each character’s origin story and most of the plot in a montage cleverly narrated by Alan Tudyk’s Mr. Nobody. If you missed the first episode, you could very easily have gotten the gist of it from the ‘Previously on’ segment (not that you’d want to miss the pilot!).
And if Episode 1 was epic in scope due to its time-spanning introductions to the characters, Episode 2 was epic because they went and destroyed an entire town, leaving nothing but a barren wasteland … and a gassy albino donkey. You don’t see that on TV every day. And in addition to that, the show introduced the newest member of the ‘family’, Vic Stone aka Cyborg, the Detroit teen with a lot of swagger and a connection to Dr. Caulder. Which also gave us another brief origin story of Vic’s accident that killed his mother and maimed him so badly that his father Silas (Phil Morris) of STAR Labs’ Detroit division (love the little bit of crossover with The CW’s Arrowverse here with the same STAR Labs logo) is forced to rebuild his son, now half human, half cyborg. With Vic from Detroit and positioning himself as the city’s superhero in residence, one has to wonder if he may bump into Dick Grayson at some point. From the flashbacks, we know that Caulder was instrumental in Vic’s transformation so the two have a connection.
And that connection comes into play when Vic sees news footage of Cloverton’s destruction and decides to go rogue (his father is always tracking him) to help find Caulder. When he gets there, all he finds is Cliff chasing a donkey through the debris of the town, with Rita and Larry deciding they’ve done enough damage for one day, especially after Jane decided to jump into the vortex, into which Morden flung himself and Caulder, to try and save Chief herself. Cliff is certain the donkey is the key to finding Chief but he has no idea how any of this works.
That is until the donkey heaves Jane out onto the lawn back at the house. Unfortunately, the experience has left her quickly cycling through many of her 62 personalities but all they can get from her is that Cloverton is inside the donkey. And with a little help from Vic, they discover the donkey isn’t exactly a key but a doorway, with a keyhole. Now they need someone who can get into the keyhole and unlock the door, or at least get in far enough to see if Caulder is there. And there’s only one person who can do that — Rita, who definitely does not want to get involved but if it means saving the Chief, she will agree to blob herself … as long as no one watches.
Demonstrating some of the show’s bizarre humor, Rita is fed into the donkey’s mouth through a funnel, almost like icing from a pastry bag, The plan was to get her in far enough to see but she, Vic and Larry (who tried to leave town but the electrical being inside of him refused to let him get on any bus) all got sucked into the donkey where they were confronted with their pasts, narrated by Morden. Literally because they could all hear him narrating their stories. But Morden’s plan is to torture them with their pasts, hoping to make Vic accept the blame for his mother’s death. In one instance, he makes Larry appear to be whole again, back in the rocket plane that nearly killed him, confronting not only his wife, but his lover as well. Larry knows none of this is real but Morden eggs him on to take control of the plane again to save the life of his male lover but the energy being intervenes and all of them end up being kicked back out of the donkey, as does the entire town of Cloverton. Sans Caulder and Morden. And then the donkey explodes.
Warner Bros. Television
While the others were inside the donkey, Cliff was doing his best to get Jane to cycle back to herself, attempting to clumsily make her a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (‘Robot hands’), scaring the youngest of Jane’s personalities, Baby Doll, ultimately despondent at not knowing how to fix any of this but trying to be a better person now than he ever was before his accident. The episode ended with Larry stripping off his bandages after leaving a Post-It Note on the mirror, revealing his burned and disfigured face. Laying on the bed, the energy being emerged and went to the mirror to look at the note: ‘We need some ground rules’, set to David Bowie’s ‘Lazarus’.
I said after the first episode that I didn’t need the magic three episode mark to know if I’d like this show. It’s really firing on all cyliders, reveling in its absolute weirdness, combining pathos and humor in just the right amounts, not afraid to be wacky (a farting donkey) or gross (an exploding donkey) when it needs to be. The on-screen cast is fantastic, and the voice acting by Matt Bomer and Brendan Fraser is excellent, aided superbly by the show’s sound department making Cliff appropriately robotic sounding and Larry just muffled enough through his bandages and in perfect sync with the actor under the bandages who is speaking the lines on set). And it’s all held together beautifully by Alan Tudyk’s brilliant narration.
The show is also unafraid to drop in references to other DC properties with Vic name-dropping The Flash (‘He’s not that fast’), and references to him actually in training to join the Justice League in five years. In addition to STAR Labs, there were references to ARGUS and a painting that seemed to reference ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’. It will be interesting to see how the addition of Cybog into the mix stirs things up with the team, especially with Rita and Larry who live in a ‘it’s better we don’t get involved, Chief can handle himself’ universe. I can’t wait to see how this all unfolds.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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