Warner Bros. Television
From it’s launch fifteen weeks ago, Doom Patrol has proven itself to be one of the finest new shows of the year. I had some concerns about it after the first season of Titans which had a lot of ups and downs as far as its storytelling, and it just felt … inexpensive. Not a surprise really, being the first original series coming from a newly launched streaming service. I could forgive some of that, but the season went off on too many tangents that killed the momentum of the main story. Arguably the best episode of that first season was the fourth, the Doom Patrol episode which had nothing to do with Titans overall — except give them a reason to shift Beast Boy from the Doom Patrol to the Titans team. But that episode was actually a refreshing break from the darker tone of Titans and it intrigued me enough to have some interest in the series when it launched.
And if you go back to my review of the first episode you’ll see how impressive that launch was, from the breathtakingly cinematic quality of the production to the impeccable casting (including replacing Bruno Bichir with Timothy Dalton as Chief … a very good move indeed). The pilot perfectly set up each member of the group — Larry, Cliff, Rita, Jane — and their relationship with Chief, whom they regarded as a father figure (well, Cliff not so much) and whom he regarded as his children. And when he was snatched away from them by the evil Mr. Nobody, we wanted them to join forces to find him. It wasn’t an easy task, especially with Rita and Larry — who have their own special bond — constantly of the mind of ‘we’re not a team.’ But the absence of Chief was more important and they did reluctantly work together to find him.
Along the way we encountered bizarre and odd beings — from a donkey that was a portal to another dimension to a mobile, genderqueer street and a man who ate beard hair — but this world was so perfectly constructed that none of it ever seemed that outlandish. And as the season progressed, we learned more and more about our reluctant heroes, bonding us closer to them and feeling the same heartbreak they felt when they finally located Niles Caulder in Mr. Nobody’s White Space and learned that everything that caused them to be who they are now was by his hands. It’s a real blow to learn that someone you’ve looked up to, someone who has protected you from the world is actually responsible for the ‘accidents’ that changed your life forever.
And that is where the season finale picks up, or rather six months later as Larry and Rita are living together, Jane is holed up in the bus, Cliff is watching her from a distance, and Vic is back home doing his own thing. Larry has been attempting to allow the Negative Spirit within him to fly free for short periods of time while Rita has become a drama teacher who, unfortunately, is verbally bullied by her students who only took the class for an easy A. Jane has gone back to the facility where they met the original Doom Patrol to find out about some drug Niles was working on that would quiet the voices in her head. But instead of settling into a controlled program, she just takes the whole vial and shoots it up, possibly hoping the quiet the voices forever. (And the scene of her in her head in a sunny field surrounded by all of her parts lying in the grass around her was very moving.) Meanwhile, Cliff is bringing her food but she has no idea it’s from him. Vic is back working on his own superhero stuff, but when they all begin to hear a karaoke version of Chumbawamba’s ‘Tubthumping’ that lures them all back to Doom Manor, things get a little more complicated.
The music is coming from a painting in which Nobody has trapped Danny the Street, and Niles needs help rescue them. None of the group want anything to do with Niles at this point, but they know Danny is an innocent caught in the crossfire. There’s also one other little twist — Niles’ daughter Dorothy Spinner is also being held captive in the Doll Store on Danny Street. How can they allow two innocents to pay for Niles’ crimes? None of them want to help Niles, but they agree to go into the painting to help Danny and Dorothy.
We also get a little more information about Niles’ insidiousness. When he reveals to the group that he has a daughter, he finally breaks down and tells them that everything he did to them wasn’t for him, but for Dorothy. He was looking for a way towards immortality for himself so he could live just one day longer than her so he’d always be around to protect her. We learned it took ten years for the Buearu of Normalcy to locate a young girl with the specific traits that Jane has. We learned that Niles admitted to Vic’s mother that Cliff’s accident was supposed to happen on the race track and that no one else was supposed to die. It seems though that with that confession, Niles sealed her fate. Was he responsible for the explosion that eventually took her life? From the conversation Niles had with Silas Stone after the operation to save Victor with the cybernetic implants, it seems that he was and Silas knew it. But he let Niles know flat out that he wasn’t about to turn his son over to the man who irrevocably changed their lives. It was a very powerful moment.
Warner Bros. Television
When the group enters the painting, it all goes sideways. Finding Nobody in the cabaret, they learn that he’s just as much a prisoner here now as Danny and Dorothy are. He’d recruited two allies, the rat Admiral Whiskers (the one that was rattling around inside Cliff seeking revenge for the murder of his mother) and Ezekial, the religious fanatic cockroach we’ve seen a couple of times this season. The three team up to form The Brotherhood of Vicious Animals and go about their kidnapping plan. But things get out of hand when the rat and the roach grow to ginormous proportions … controlled by Dorothy. Now Nobody is helpless to stop them, and Whiskers has already eaten Cliff. In one of the episode’s really nice moments, Rita actually has a chat with Nobody and convinces him that he does still have the power to alter the course of events with his narration, a device that has been employed throughout the season as a way for Nobody to control the narrative.
He realizes she’s right … but doesn’t see that she’s pushed him into helping them with a plan to get Danny, Dorothy and themselves out of the painting. But Nobody picks up the mic and starts his story which includes Niles, Vic, Rita and Jane being eaten by Ezekial. Larry is going to use his and the Negative Spirit’s radioactive power to blow a hole in things to get them all back home, but Cliff also has to make his way from Whiskers to Ezekial … and here it just gets plain loopy as Nobody forges a story where the two creatures suddenly discover their desire for each other. During a cringe-inducing make out session, Cliff is able to climb up the rat’s esophagus and across his tongue into the roach’s mouth to join the others. It’s then that Nobody realizes that while everyone is using a cockroach to survive a nuclear blast, he’s pretty vulnerable. Oops.
The blast releases everyone from the painting, Ezekail is back to his normal size and has survived but … Vic cuts him open from the inside, killing Ezekail in the process, and everyone exits. The group is introduced to Dorothy but there’s just one problem … everyone who was inside Ezekial, including Danny the Street which is basically a single brick now, are smaller than Ezekial. So the season ends with a normal sized Larry taking his miniature friends into Doom Manor, their fates now at the hands of the folks at Warner Brothers Television, DC Universe and WarnerMedia.
DC Universe wasted no time in greenlighting a second season of Titans before the first even premiered, so what’s the hold up with Doom Patrol? The first season has been universally hailed as one of the finest new shows of the season, so why the delay in a renewal? Could the show have only been planned as a ‘one and done’ thing? Is the delay due to the impending WarnerMedia streaming service which could possibly fold DC Universe into the package, therefore they don’t want to spend the money on a second season just yet? Doom Patrol is arguably more expensive than Titans, with a cast that includes Timothy Dalton, Alan Tudyk, Matt Bomer and Brendan Fraser, so perhaps salaries are an issue moving forward. Let’s hope that’s not the case. Doom Patrol is certainly an Emmy-worthy series in all of the technical categories from cinematography to production design to original music. The writing has been impeccable even with all the weirdness because they’ve kept the core characters’ humanity. On screen, April Bowlby, Diane Guerrero, Alan Tudyk and Timothy Dalton have all delivered outstanding performances, and both Matt Bomer and Brendan Fraser have also delivered in their voice acting of Larry and Cliff, and have also given lovely performances in flashbacks as their human counterparts. I’m honestly not ready to leave this wonderfully crazy world the folks behind Doom Patrol have created.
But if this is the end, then we have at least gotten some kind of closure while dangling enough loose ends to give us a second season where the group realizes they do work better together than apart … just like the first season of Titans which was a set up for a second season of actual teamwork. Let’s hope the powers that be see how admired Doom Patrol has become in these fifteen weeks and announce a second season sooner rather than later.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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