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This week’s Doom Patrol went into the realm of the absurd … well, that’s nothing new … with the appearance of the Pioneers of the Uncharted, a team of ageless astronauts Niles sent into space in 1955. Putting that silliness of the plot aside, this is a very notable episode for being the first this season to only have one writer, Neil Reynolds, and he brings a surprising amount of depth to the characters. Last time, everyone was basically paired off and this week we’ve got almost everyone searching for their place in this world, looking deep into their own character.
For Rita, the idea of returning to the stage, even if it is just community theatre, seems to finally give her a place in the world, one she lost after her ‘accident’ that made her who and what she is today. Even though her audition at the garden center went terribly wrong, Rita was cast in the play Our Town when someone else became unavailable. But she was a bit dismayed to find out that they weren’t performing the classic Thorton Wilder play, but a play about ‘out town’ … Cloverton, and the time it was sucked into another dimension. Rita, finding an excited young ingenue to befriend and perhaps coach, is also dismayed to find out her ingenue is playing … The Blob Lady. She’s given hope when the young woman explains how she’s developed an entire backstory for the character, including her bad relationship with her father (and Rita absent-mindedly blurts out ‘mother’ which helps the actress ‘make sense’ of the backstory she’d already constructed), but just as it seemed she really had a bead on Rita, without knowing she was talking to the real-life character, all of the sympathy of her story stopped short of going really deeply into the character’s psyche and instead painted The Blob Lady as just another angry monster out to destroy the town. You could feel Rita’s heart breaking through the wonderful performance of April Bowlby, and Rita’s last line, ‘Well, I have found my nemesis’, leaves room for interpretation. Is she referring to the actress … or herself?
Vic’s trying to take his relationship with Roni a bit deeper but she’s still holding on to a lot of secrets, one of which is revealed — her connection to S.T.A.R. Labs. And the tech that she was given and then had taken away came from his father’s company, or rather Caulder Robotics. But Silas advised Vic to not rush into things he should not be getting involved with top secret government projects because of a girl.
Larry is still dealing with his son’s betrayal by trying to have him sent back to the Bureau of Normalcy, and getting his grandson shot in the process, so he’s really not in any mood to deal with this week’s special guests, the Pioneers of the Uncharted, another of Niles’ experiments into immortality. Niles assumed they were all dead, so he was surprised when they landed in the front yard but he had bigger fish to fry at that moment so he told Larry to keep them entertained. The astronauts were a team of three: two men, ‘Zip’ and ‘Specs’, and a woman, ‘Moscow’ aka Valentina Vostok. While the two guys run around the manor like hyperactive children, Larry finds some truly astounding information when he greets Valentina with a handshake — she also has a Negative Spirit within. But … she does not have to wear the head-to-toe bandages. She reveals that removing the bandages won’t melt everyone as Larry has feared all these years, he just has to accept the being within him so that the two coexist as one. Once she accepted the Negative Spirit, she was able to contain the radiation without the need for the bandages. This is some heavy information considering what Larry has just been through but it spurs him to try and reconnect again with his son. If he can make peace with the suicide of one son and the betrayal of another, maybe Larry can finally make peace with the being inside of him and finally remove the bandages … but will he look like Matt Bomer? Valentina tells him that it took her five years to finally accept the Negative Spirit so Larry still has a long road ahead of him.
As for ‘Specs’ and ‘Zip’ … they’ve been long dead, the bodies now are just husks housing some alien being. Valentina thought that by bringing her fellow astronauts home would kill whatever is inside of them and they could finally be laid to rest. Her plan worked because the two were beginning to show signs of cognitive breakdown and the final shot of the two men laying in a grave as their lives slowly faded away was heartbreaking. Valentina did warn Larry that if any fruit grew on that spot to not eat it.
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Jane is still in the Underground. As Cliff and Chief search for the missing Dorothy, Cliff finds Jane’s body in the basement, her head covered in wax. But she’s still alive. The same can’t be said for Baby Doll and one other of Kay’s parts, but Jane finds herself confronted with her failure as the primary and the rest of the group voting to dispose of the two bodies in the well where Miranda committed suicide. But Jane isn’t sure that the two are really dead because none of them knows how any of this stuff in the Underground works. They are the construction of a little girl, so death may not be a real concept to a bunch of ‘people’ who are just various manifestations of Kay’s personality. They aren’t flash and blood so can they really die? Hammerhead isn’t listening and the group form a procession to the well to dispose of the bodies. Jane, however, goes to Kay to ask her what to do. We don’t see their conversation but Jane runs to the well to try to stop the ‘burial’. And suddenly Miranda rises from the well telling the group that the two will be reborn just as she has been. They drop Baby Doll and the fire being in the well and Jane wakes up in the manor crying. But in the Underground Miranda tells her to step aside as primary … and she does. Now it looks like Miranda is taking over, but is this reborn Miranda the same as the one who ‘died’?
Dorothy knows she’s done something terrible by making that wish that killed Baby Doll, so she runs away … in the spaceship that just landed on the front lawn. Luckily Niles has a second one in the garage that he abandoned after he thought the first one had been lost. And he presses Cliff into action to help him bring Dorothy home because what she did at home was merely a taste of the power she has. Niles tells Cliff that she could cleave the Earth in two if she wanted to, so that kind of power should not be running around loose in the universe. Niles’ spaceship also has a unique propulsion system — a goat’s head. A living goat’s head. All it needs is an apple for fuel.
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Cliff isn’t too keen on going into outer space, but they are able to track Dorothy to … a planet, or maybe the moon but the odd crystal-like formations suggest something not of this Earth or Moon. Donning a spacesuit that conveniently fit her, Dorothy walks away from the capsule and begins stacking rocks. Cliff, not needing a spacesuit, follows her tracks in the dust and the two have a very sweet conversation. Cliff has always told anyone who would listen that he was a great father and his demeanor with Dorothy in this situation actually proves that to be true, showing us a completely different side of Cliff that we’ve ever seen before — gentle, caring, understanding. When Dorothy says she’s going to stay there so she doesn’t hurt anyone ever again, Cliff tells her that’s not how oxygen works and he convinces her to return to the ship with him.
Niles is overjoyed that Cliff was able to bring her back, and Cliff may have finally found what he’s been looking for, a way to be a father. He bluntly tells Niles what we all know, that Niles will not be around forever (or will he?) and when he’s gone Dorothy is going to need a father. Cliff is ready to be that father. Niles seems relieved and deeply touched to hear Cliff say those words and thanks him for that. Cliff is anxious to get home but Niles tells him they aren’t going home … and then shoots Cliff out the airlock into space. What. The. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuudge?!?!
This was a rare episode with very little comedy, but it really gave us some deep dives into the characters and provided the actors another opportunity to deliver some great performances. Abigail Shapiro has been knocking it out of the park as Dorothy, and time after time Diane Guerrero and April Bowlby prove they are exemplary actors. Timothy Dalton also brings a lot of complexity to Niles, the benevolent father and malicious ‘mad scientist’ who puts his own needs above everyone else’s. Matthew Zuk and Riley Shanahan also do great body acting as Larry and Cliff while Matt Bomer and Brendan Fraser bring the characters further to life with their voice acting. This week in particular gave Fraser his time to shine as we saw and heard a softer side of Cliff. Everything from writing to directing to all aspects of production are top notch and it’s a real crime that the people who hand out Emmy Awards don’t take a show like this seriously. I can only hope that the DC Universe subscribers are still tuning in every week, and that the show has found a new audience through HBO Max so that we can get more great storytelling from the people behind Doom Patrol.
Doom Patrol streams new episodes each Thursday on DC Universe and HBO Max.
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