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Well, they can’t all be gems. There was one of the fifteen first season episodes that wasn’t my favorite, and out of this season’s seven episodes thus far this week’s ‘Dumb Patrol’ is that one episode. Not that it was terrible, by any means, it just didn’t carry that same Doom Patrol spirit I expect. But … that’s not to say that there weren’t good things in the episodes because there definitely were.
Picking up from the end of the previous episode, we learn that Niles did not eject Cliff into space for a nefarious reason, he just didn’t want to take Cliff to his destination. Instead, Cliff rocketed back to Earth (crashing through a billboard for a book by the Denise part of AnimalVegetableMineral Man), and spent almost the entire episode walking back to Doom Manor with an expletive filled tired directed at Niles Caulder … and the bird that shit on Cliff. But Cliff’s body is starting to break down and he gets stuck in an industrial parking lot where some Millennial comes upon him, thinking Cliff is a talking statue. Cliff asks to use his phone, but is reduced to doing some ridiculous shout outs to the guy’s friends in exchange for a call. In his rage, Cliff calls his daughter and leaves her a message about blowing her chance to have him in her life, but as the time on his message runs out he realizes he directed his anger toward the wrong person. With his legs working again, Cliff makes it back to the manor only to discover a very pregnant Clara waiting for him, VHS tape in hand labeled Caulder’s Confessions, the tape Cliff made with Niles talking about everything he’d done to him.
Meanwhile, Rita has chosen this day to shadow the Cloverton Beekeeper as research for her role in the play ‘Our Town’ (Cloverton, not the one written about by Thornton Wilder) that ended up being day drinking and soul searching. The Beekeeper’s behavior towards her ‘dumb as shit’ daughter really triggered Rita, but the Beekeeper said that didn’t mean she didn’t love her daughter. As for Rita’s mother, maybe Rita needs to see that her mother boffing a producer to get her a job was just her way of showing Rita some love. But since Rita can’t let go of the idea that her mother did it because she didn’t think Rita was talented enough on her own to get a job, the Beekeeper suggests that Rita go yell at the bees as a cathartic release. Rita gives it a shot, but finds the effort futile. Walking through the town on her way home, Rita comes upon a mugging in an alley. Suddenly the mugger’s face meets Rita’s elongated arm and fist as she retorts, ‘Did that sting?’ while striking a classic superhero pose in her beekeeper outfit. Rita seems to finally have control over her powers so will she become Cloverton’s new protector?
The meat of the episode centered around the morose Larry, Vic and his girlfriend Roni, and new primary Miranda who is doing all she can to fit in with the group, fawning over Rita and making pancakes for Dorothy (who isn’t there). When a crate arrives marked DO NOT OPEN in caps and underlined on the front, back and sides, of course they open it. But that action seems to have been brought on by a pink mist that seeped through an opening between the boards of the crate. Inside they found the painting that contained Mr. Nobody and Beardhunter … except they were both gone.
Willoughby Kipling arrives and chastises them for opening the crate marked DO NOT OPEN and then sets them down for a slide show explaining what’s going on — Scants, microscopic creatures that infect a host, making them think all of their bad ideas are good ones … including the opening of the crate. But while Larry and Vic are now more giddy than usual, Miranda seems to not be affected and tries to talk them both out of some truly terrible ideas — Vic taking it upon himself to operate on Roni (and as she’s infected as well is all for it) and Larry going to visit his grandson in the hospital, requesting Miranda send Flit up from the Underground to transport him to Florida. Flit, it seems, is affected by the Scants and giddily helps Larry but the second they arrive a team from the Bureau of Normalcy shows up and the pair transport to a supply closet where Larry gets another terrible idea — don lab coats and pose as doctors. Same results as the first time so Flit brings them back home.
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Then Vic, Larry and Roni decide to confront the Scants in the attempt to kill their queen by going into the painting. Miranda has no choice but to follow and hope to be the voice of reason. There they encounter Beardhunter (in Beast Boy Teen Titans GO undies) who has come up with the ingenious plan of painting the front of his body white so the Scants can’t see him (as long as they are only coming towards him from the front). The episode begins to get a little meta here as Beardhunter also mentions that Nobody skipped out a long time ago for another gig (referencing Alan Tudyk taking on the voice role of Joker and Clayface in DC Universe’s Harley Quinn cartoon). But as some Scants approach he tells everyone to get behind him and it almost works but they are still infected and Vic gets the bad idea to confront the Scants and ask them if they can follow them to their queen so they can kill her. It works, but not quite as planned as the Scants drag them all away — except the still disguised Beardhunter — to the queen.
In her chamber, where she’s reading a magazine called ‘Fivbes’ with Robotman on the cover and story about a second season of Doom Patrol titled ‘Why???’, the queen explains to them that the Scants are mining their brains for truly bad ideas called ‘Idyats’ — like Vic and Roni dating, Larry insisting on reuniting with his family, and the Negative Spirit remaining with the too human Larry, she’s curious about Miranda not being affected although she seems to sense her other parts are — which will then be harvested from their ears into delicious Uma jelly for the queen’s consumption. The Scants even manage to capture Kipling, although we don’t know how, and the queen mentions his love for horse head Baphomet as another truly bad idea … she has no body but he says you can be just a head and still have a heart. But the queen’s curiosity about Miranda is her downfall as she brings Silver Tongue and one other part to the top, puncturing the queen’s waterbed and then electrocuting her and her Scants, turning them into a pile of pink goo.
Back at the manor, Vic wants Roni to know that he doesn’t care if the Scant queen thinks they are a bad idea. He’s ready to see where this goes (it should also be noted his father Silas also told him to not get involved with her), telling her he really likes her. Roni says that just a little while ago he said he loved her and he stumbles over the explanation that he was under the influence of the Scants … and then she starts laughing at him falling for her joke. So they decide to see this thing out but while Roni is leaving she reveals to us that she has a jar of the Uma jelly. But for what purpose? And Larry again decides to visit his grandson but by the time he gets to the hospital, presumably without the help of Flit, he’s already been released. All of this, however, leaves us with questions about Miranda and her agenda, because she most certainly has one. In the Underground, Pretty Polly asks Jane if she’s seen Scarlet Harlot, who didn’t show up for book club (they were reading that new dinosaur biography by Denise). Jane goes to look for her and discovers the Scarlet Harlot station is closed. But why? Baby Doll’s and Flaming Katy’s stations were closed because they were ‘killed’ by the Candlemaker, but why is Scarlet Harlot’s closed? And what does this have to do with Miranda?
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The darkest part of the episode, however, revolved around Niles and Dorothy. While Dorothy sleeps (did Niles drug her because she seems to have slept through a lot), Niles lands the spaceship in the Yukon where he hopes to find Dorothy’s mother Slava to try and decide what to do about their daughter. What he finds is himself transported to perhaps another dimension where he encounters the Candlemaker who tells him he was created by Slava’s ancestors. This realization (and we don’t know if this is true yet) sends Niles back to the middle of the forest where he calls upon Kipling who asks him if this is ‘the call’. It is, Niles tells him, explaining that he once thought he had to protect Dorothy from the world but now he sees he needs to protect the world from Dorothy. Kipling says he will take care of it, just let him know when and where.
Overall, I guess it was still a decent episode that raised a lot of questions to carry us into the final two episodes of the season. One thing I found interesting about this episode is that it seems this is the first time we’ve seen outsiders actually have reactions to Larry and Cliff. Usually no one blinks an eye at a man dressed as a mummy and a mobile, profanity-spewing robot but this time people did notice. Which almost makes one wonder if everything that happened this week wasn’t all a bit of manipulation courtesy of Mr. Nobody.
Doom Patrol streams new episodes each Thursday on DC Universe and HBO Max.
What did you think of this episode? Sound off in the comments below!
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