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This week’s episode of Doom Patrol answered the question posed by Jane at the end of the previous episode: ‘What the fuck is Doom Patrol?’ And we also — finally — got a little more information about who Rita Farr is, or was, and she is tied very explicitly to the Doom Patrol … and perhaps these revelations give us a little more insight into why she is so against this new group that Niles has gathered becoming a team.
The recent events that summoned the Recreator and Decreator have left a mark on Rita, who finally took a stand to protect Elliott (the ‘Unwritten Book’) who was then blinked out of existence by the Decreator. And while it seems everyone else in Cloverton has returned, Elliott has not and that has put a real hurt on Rita’s heart. We also learn that after Rita’s accident, an attempt at scoring the lead in a new movie went nowhere as the producer, an old friend of hers, basically told her that she’s unemployable because she has a terrible reputation and no one goes to see her movies. But, he’s willing to give her a shot if she’s a little ‘friendly’ with him, aka joins him on the ‘casting couch’. Surprisingly she did, against her better judgment, and the revulsion of the act caused her to blob out, killing the producer. Luckily, the man’s secretary was wiling to cover up the death as a heart attack, showing sympathy for Rita when she had previously looked upon her with disdain. With nowhere else to go, she ended up becoming a permanent resident at ‘Doom Manor’.
And that is where in 1958 she met Steve Dayton, aka Mento, the leader of Caulder’s team called Doom Patrol. With Dayton’s ability to psychically connect with someone, Niles felt Steve would be the perfect choice to help Rita control her ability rather than just let it be set off under duress. The two grew close and a relationship began, both professional and romantic. It didn’t end well when Steve revealed he’d probed Rita’s mind without her consent.
Back in the present … there has been some speculation that one of Jane’s parts has the ability to time travel, and when she grabbed Rita and Larry to help her find the Doom Patrol, it seemed like that is exactly what they did — travel back to 1958 to the academy Niles had founded to train meta humans. There they met the other two members of the DP including Arani/Celcius. The second female character is never very well-defined. Rita reconnects with Steve, Jane learns she has a room at the academy (sort of DC’s spin on Professor Xavier’s School for Gifted Children), and Larry is given a tour where he discovers Arani is Chief’s wife. And then he notices some kind of weird electronic glitch in the scenery around him.
We then learn that the Doom Patrol actually fought Mr. Nobody, it was their last fight as a team. Nobody had attacked some kind of community event, delivering a butt-shaped balloon with a jukebox attached that played Perry Como’s ‘Hot Diggity’ over and over again, driving the assembled crowd mad. As the police arrived, Nobody turned them all into pinatas, and the crowd smashed them open and ate all the candy inside. Steve takes credit for the team stopping Nobody, but Arani tells Larry that Niles actually put an end to the siege. But who is telling the truth?
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While Steve is recounting the story to Rita, she tells him that Mr. Nobody is still alive. Steve is confused by this information and then the scene around Rita changes and suddenly a young woman named Mary Beth is there, obviously distraught, so much so that she slashes her arms and collapses to the floor. We don’t know who Mary Beth is just yet, but her suicide is apparently another piece of guilt Rita carries around with her, and was the source of the breakup with Steve after he uncovered this memory while probing Rita’s mind without permission, something he promised he’d never do.
But something else has changed here too — Steve is now an old man in a wheelchair, still wearing his helmet. Jane, in another part of the school, is overwhelmed by a flood of jigsaw puzzle pieces. Literal waves of puzzle pieces engulf her and from out of the wave an arm springs up while a voice is heard saying ‘Sweet, sweet baby, come join me.’ Larry now sees Arani as an old woman and he is nearly incinerated but his energy being emerges, finds Steve and removes his helmet. Everything they’ve witnessed has been a projection from Steve, and they are very firmly in the present. So no time traveling Jane this time.
The man they had met, Joshua, whom they believed was an administrator at the school with no powers turns out to actually be the caretaker of Steve and the others, and the ‘school’ is just a place Niles set up for them to live out the rest of their days because during their fight with Nobody, he turned them against each other and they lost their minds. Steve was just lashing out, and Arani was never married to Chief. They just ‘exist’ now, torturing themselves in their own minds. Rita finds it in her to forgive Steve for what he did to her and will face her past to keep Nobody from holding any power over her.
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As the three return to Doom Manor, they need to deal with all that’s been presented to them. Jane wants to know why there is a room for her at the facility. She’s never been treated by Niles as if she is broken, like the members of the Doom Patrol, so she must decide if this is real or if Nobody is playing with her mind, showing her a potential future. Larry goes to his room to reconcile with his ‘partner’, pulling an old patch out of a drawer with a key and a sword embroidered on it. What does this represent? And while the three were away, Vic got a system reboot from his father while Cliff watched over him, and then Vic helped Cliff set up a fake social media account so he could connect with his daughter Clara. Something tells me this is a bad idea on several levels.
All in all, this was a pretty terrific episode of Doom Patrol. It didn’t have some of the absurd humor of the past few episodes, but it was nice to show a bit of a different tone and give us a bit more of Rita’s story. But while we know a lot about Larry and Cliff, the information presented this week, particularly the introduction of Mary Beth, tells us we have a lot more to learn about Rita, especially considering she’s been at the manor for sixty years now.
Doom Patrol streams new episodes each Friday on DC Universe.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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