Warner Bros. Television
Okay, they all can’t be gems, right? I mean, so far Doom Patrol has been one of the most surprisingly perfect new series of the season, nicely balancing the absurd with the human drama, and with a terrific cast. I’ve loved everything about the season thus far so we had to expect at some point there’d come along an episode that had its moments but just didn’t live up to the high standards set so far. This was that week with the latest episode, ‘Hair Patrol’ which took time out from our main story to introduce a new meta human and give us some surprising new information about Chief.
As we’ve seen since he disappeared — or rather was abducted by Mr. Nobody — Chief is a wanted man, and for a variety of reasons. The team needs him to steer their lives, Danny the Street needed him to help thwart the Bureau of Normalcy, and now the Bureau itself is sending a sort of bounty hunter to find him for a very specific reason. And the person the Bureau chose is Ernest Franklin, aka The Beard Hunter (Tommy Snider). The Beard Hunter is a character from the comic books who apparently hunts men with beards to take their beards so they’ll be as baby smooth as he is because of a hormone imbalance, and in the comics he wants Niles Caulder’s beard as a trophy. The character has been given a bit of a makeover for TV. Now he’s activated by the Bureau because of his particular specialty, a unique way he has of finding men. We learn of that specialty in one of the most cringeworthy moments ever put on television when Beard Hunter breaks into the manor and … eats a glob of Niles beard scum from his bathroom sink drain. It’s not something you want to see twice, trust me.
Somehow, ingesting the beard hair gives him a psychic connection to his target. Unfortunately, the sensation of that connection sends BH into some kind of euphoric stupor making him suseptible to capture. And that’s just what happens when Rita and Vic hear the thud when he hits the floor, giving them a chance to restrain him to find out who he is and what he’s doing there. One part of this episode that was interesting was that this was all happening concurrently with the events of the previous episode. Remember when Cliff and Jane were ‘back’ from the Underground and Cliff saw broken glass in the lab? Now we know what happened. Beard Hunter managed to catch a piece of Vic’s beard hair, freed himself, revealed that Vic had a secret he’s not yet told anyone, and then apparently got into Vic’s system to mess with his arm cannon, which went off in the lab, causing the damage Cliff saw. Beard Hunter got away but not before Vic was able to place a tracking device on him, so if it works, BH may lead them to Niles. But it probably won’t be that easy.
Warner Bros. Television
The rest of the episode really centered around Niles in 1913. Yes, that’s not a typo. Niles was under the employ of the Bureau of Oddities, sort of an anthropologist investigating unusual … things. He’s concerned about his partner who carries a gun, reminding him that they are not hunters but an attack by wolves (or werewolves?) leaves the partner presumed dead while Niles hightails it to safety. Except he rolls his ankle and breaks his leg (the bone jutting from his thigh) and passes out, waking up in a cave with his leg bandaged. There he sees some sort of cavewoman. He tries to communicate and get closer to the fire but she seems to assume he’s being threatening so so puts out the fire and leaves. Niles assumed he was going to freeze to death.
After Niles is able to walk again, he forms a tentative friendship with the woman, but also discovers the bodies of other men from the Bureau in a snowpile outside the cave. Fearing this would also be his fate, he managed to impart that these men at least deserved a proper burial … and she seemed to understand. Putting the bodies on a pyre and setting them alight, the woman conjured up some kind of spirit — which Niles had seen when he was running from the wolves — to help send the spirits on their way. The whole ceremony touched Niles and his relationship with the woman, Oyewah (Pisay Pao), deepened into a romance. And with that romantic involvement, Niles was perfectly happy to stay with her. They had both nursed each other through sickness, they had fallen in love, so he had no reason to leave.
Until his presumed dead partner returned, not so dead after all and with a mission: to bring back Niles’ ‘hairy little friend.’ Yes, the Bureau seems to know all about Oyewah but Niles isn’t about to let anyone find her. Leading his partner back to the cave, or so he thinks, there is a cracking sound and the guy realizes too late that he’s walking on thin ice … literally … and plunges through into the freezing waters. Assuming again that he’s dead, Niles also tosses his journal into the water. But …
All is not as it seems as we learn this has all been Mr. Nobody tapping into Niles’ memories. And Nobody wants to know where Oyewah is. Interestingly, the question never comes up as to how or why Niles looks exactly the same in 2019 as he did in 1913 but we can assume if he’s now well over 100 years old, Oyewah is still kicking it too, perhaps awaiting Niles’s return. But, things take a bit of a shocking turn when Nobody threatens the current and past members of the Doom Patrol unless Niles tells him where Oyewah is. Niles refuses even when Nobody threatens to torture every member of the team. It’s a shock that he’s willing to sell everyone down the river for love, but that’s not the only reason. He simply does not want to give Nobody the satisfaction of knowing he broke Niles. He’s now putting his ego above anything else. So while his ‘children’ are doing everything they can to find him, he’s willing to allow their destruction which flips that whole notion of him being a fatherly figure to everyone on its head. But … is Chief really that much of a bastard, or is he trying to play mind games with Nobody?
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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