Doom Patrol Season 1 Episode 14 Recap & Review

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1. So first things first, couldn’t disagree more about The Chief not being successfully established as a likeable character — but hey, I must be an empath — which requires intellectual-hardwork than the auto-neurotic ‘sympathy’. Quite a dwindling-breed, naturally.
   Given this episode’s revelation at the start and confession right at the very end: Suddenly Nobody is “not a villain”? That’s at least per an amateur-counterpart of critics, those keyboard-warriors “reviewing” on amazon®’s for-profit masscomm database.
   Like.. Man! He already used his power to play a fucking blackface right before that very end, so how any level-headed person can possibly think that is totally irrelevant?

   It was nice to see the “Previously On” being introduced by Rītā, given the drastic character-development in the preceding-episode — how, per the norm of US TV output: The jump-cuts in audio and ADR to patch some lines in limited-runtime of the sequence slightly came across as off-putting, especially Ms Guerrero non-enthusiastically saying “We have to find The Chief” — to point-out the most-glaring instance. Although, the double-editing team for this episode, none of which are ACE members** — ensured that at least “Mr” Nobody’s rambling from the preceding-episode set on to high-profile moments of the season[ hitherto] to serve as his pseudo-narration in part* and with the sequence ending at his very derivative, villainous snap-of-right-fingers, was something.

   And no, Mr Simmons: Nobody didn’t went straight to “taunting”, he originally tempted them but when they all essentially paraphrased The Chief’s line that “they are stronger than you think” — he then taunted them with point-by-point rebuttal as to how their “character-driven shlock” was anyhow worthy of disregard, as a counter to narcissistically sell them on his offer. Uh-oh! Makes sense why he was booted-out of the Brotherhood of Evil( TRIVIA: at least one fellow critic read that opening-scene as them “terrorising” Chicago, somehow) and inevitably dumped by his psychopath paramour Millie. Not a great sales-strategy, Eric.. I meant Nobody. No wonder when the Patrol taunted him back by refusing with pick a fight with him after “Dr” Harrison accurately psychoanalysed him as somebody with Godlike-superpowers and also with innate inferiority-complex ever since his separation from psychopath Millie, which led him to seek, lest we forget, fugitive Nāzī von Fuchs’ help in his private-settlement somewhere in RL country of Paraguay. *Also loved that other than The Chief, she is the only other character who has acknowledged his “fourth-wall breaking” ramblings since he has introduced himself as the narrator before, but never as precisely as he did by referring to the DC® Universe™ anchor-streamer [ragefully ]in front of everybody else[ including The Chief but excluding Cyborg, ‘course****] — and even then only she-&-she alone turned-out to process this newly-gained information adequately.

   Speaking of.. Lo-lo-loved that in line with preceding-episode, how Rītā engineered-it-all-in-motion by narrating in the White Space herself.
   And given the events in “Frances Patrol”, I was worried whether they [soft-]retconned Larry’s-college-BF-turned-GF-turned-wife by what the TVTropes® refers to as “Killed Off For Real” and thought whether any issues arising with the actress playing her, for any issue arising of part of either or both sides( classically-dubbed: “creative differences”) which led to the lone recent-episode credited entirely to the showrunner, to conveniently write her off with a single-line. That, given the fact that something righteous was done for a similarly faint-recurring character but properly onscreen on ‘DC®’s Supergirl®’ and at least one fellow critic insinuating that killing off Cliff’s wife, was in fact “fridging”*** — even though it made no logical-sense in the overall plot of the “Pilot”. So I conceded I was wrong as they changed Larry into “proper gay” by showing John and his one-&-only true love. Thankfully, I couldn’t be more wrong — and have no qualms to concede that I was right the first-time. In fact, my musings sound spot-on more than ever, that: (Rephrasing from my conspicuously-unapproved comment), ‘To use labels, Larry is a bisexual […] and even as somebody who does not believe in criminalisation/stigmatisation of “hypocrisy”, Nobody’s taunt to him in “Donkey Patrol”( S1E02), 2nd-part of the premiere — doesn’t fit as he could be bisexual and polyamorous, both. Granted, he would be rendered as having been born “way too ahead of his time”. But unlike Nobody’s [relatively-]archaic worldview, to consider it dispassionately: Larry would only be a hypocrite, in a thought-experiment — if either of Sheryl or John, or even better, both wanted to also have open-marriage with some 4th-5th party and Larry couldn’t get over his mononormative envy to remain just as loving towards either or both of them, as he was before learning that they want more than one soul-mate, as well. Need I spell-out how Larry not wanting to have both or either of them with as much agency as he enjoyed, spells-out double-standards in ALLCAPS?’

   As for the return of “guest stars”: Welp.. It weren’t just “guest stars” from the “Pilot” minus John but plenty of “Co-Stars” — as well. There’s Giselle, the nanny whom Cliff misogynistically has never mentioned by her name. And then, the legally-minor performers playing Larry’s offsprings, unfortunately uncredited and with no speaking-lines ever — same as the “Pilot”.( Speaking of, which one is younger and which one is elder between Paul and his hitherto-unnamed brother — anyways?) And last but not the least, is hitherto-unnamed “Charles” who was actually credited with his job-title in the premiere, as simply “First Assistant Director”. ***Obviously, while it would be convenient to chalk-it-up to “budgetary reasons”, the fact that Cliff’s pocket-dimension memory had no sign of Kate whatsoever confirms beyond reasonable-doubt that by the time of accident — she had turned into a complete-stranger to him and it was her status only-&-only as Clara’s birth-mother, which was serving as tether to his memory. Otherwise..
   And yes, far too many uncredited extras — as well. Hope AFTRA ensured they got paid well enough.
   And no critic but one commenter dubbed it “lazy writing” that the wonderful Danny the Street knew where The Chief was all along and yet.. Chose to not tell either of Larry or Vic. Because what even that commenter missed is that far from being lazy-writing, this clever little-development adds a shade-of-grey to Danny, as well — they knew that given where he was held captive, he couldn’t possibly help them even if he wanted to. Still.. They sent that cake-post to Doom Manor and playing the charade by seeking help “from Niles”. I hope this development is suffice to all of “reddit® trolls with DC® subscription” who bemoaned “Danny Patrol”( S1E08) as way-too-saccharine of a plot, and even advocated for “balance” between Danny as being not-so-good being, vis-à-vis the totalitarian Bureau of Normalcy[ under the Department of Defense of U.S. Federal Government]. At least one even lambasted that episode pejoratively as “CW writing”, a trope which must be like “uNiQuElY eViL Disney” — I guess. Since in spite of onerous FCC restrictions, one possibly cannot find as least politically-censorious network on US TV as The CW®. My findings corroborate it’s not even the case for basic-cable regularly, especially on newscasting. And fuck, even the grossly-overrated semi-sibling in HBO®( Home Box Office®) which tends to rarely be censorious in political subject-matter, in spite of its manufactured-repute. Back to the pejorative, they even found that since the writer’s name on said for-profit database only shows all of their work for shows first-run on The CW® prior to this one — it was a total-vindication of S1E08 being “the worst”[ till the time].(
   To wit, another concurring “reddit® troll” suggested Danny didn’t need any outside-help whatsoever since they could simply drop the Bureau’s personnel, and I direct-quote: “Into the volcano”.)
   Moving on.. I didn’t notice the shot of any flag lowering to half-mast. Thanks to fellow identitarian critic, I rewatched the scene of Flex “hugging Danny” and did notice that sweet-moment, the flag, which said for-profit database tells me as “TRIVIA” is for non-gender binary folks — is all the more socially-conscious choice on part of art-director of this episode. The fact that I didn’t notice it could be construed as either forward-thinking/progressive or bad/problematic, dependent upon one’s vantage-point.

   Last but not the least..
   While I dunno what was so great about Mr Wade’s acting — since nothing struck me out-of-the-ordinary Vic/Cyborg save for the sinister grin once the actual one appeared followed by manic laughter, and that’s somehow a threshold for “great acting”, now?
   Hmmm.. I’ve mixed-feelings over the ending. While this episode did well to establish that without “Dr” Niles Caulder, there would be no Doom Patrol, and by extension, in Nobody’s style, this very show. On the other hand, the circumstances in which Cliff was incapacitated render it less-than-forgivable, as at least one fellow critic reviewing the “Pilot” pointed-out — if Cliff “died” the very same way as he did in the comics, i.e. on the race-track which was triggered by Kate most-likely anachronistic sexually-assaulting Bump Weathers to distract Cliff and the racecar ahead crashing and rolling-over to Cliff’s — thereby giving Kate’s whispered curse to Cliff with their marriage got reduced to a just-another sham-marriage, which he loudly responded as “love you, too” for paparazzi, a stature of: Prophecy. But, then.. We know what Cliff did to his BFF-&-teammate immediately after winning the cup/trophy. Worse, he remains guilt-free, don’t even remotely come near to thinking he’s remorseful. And then.. There are “but, but.. think of her Daddy!” Hammerhead & Silver Tongue. So no, given how out of conventional-morality these characters behave — anybody with a remotest of liking for even 1 of these characters: Lost the moral-high ground to judge “Dr” Niles, since innumerable eons ago. I’m certain there can be plenty of good reasons to explain what he did and why — in the realm we, the audiences, have gotten used to: Machiavellian morality. And this has nothing to do with folks crediting yet-another white-blondie Ms Kellyanne “Kelly” Clarkson for 🎤People Like Us🎤 when it was originally written, composed and performed by a one-woman army of a WOC, Ms Margaret “Meghan” Kabīr.

   And last but not the least.. At least first-mentioned fellow critic is right that the episode switching between prolonged oh-so-funny metaphysical mass-rape scene( not their oh-so-ingenious understanding) and Silās’ heart-to-heart with Vic doesn’t make sense — but only ‘cus one of my fellow commenters’ complaint elsewhere for “Jane Patrol”( S1E09) actually qualifies more for this episode. To spell-out: The shortest-ever episode[ hitherto].
   So yes, if only they placed the odd subplot with nothing to connect but far the sake of hair-splitting, “Daddy issues” — this could have been easily-managed in “Flex Patrol”, but then. Flex’s one-&-only origin-story episode would’ve suffered. So what could they have done? Welp.. No better way than to trimmed the fat of Negative Spirit’s getting-far-too-frequent sequences with Larry connected somehow in this past when in stead of wasting so much precious time in learning once a-gain the number of ways the Bureau tortured Larry, the plot could’ve simply shrunken-down to tortured Larry and Flex interacting with “Sparky” but getting interrupted over-&-over till the Bureau got hold of Dolōres and abducted her, followed by the end of Larry realising how had he interacted with Flex all along. So they could have had the confirmation by Silās towards the end, followed by Vic leaving from his bedside. But then, the whole jump-cuts, trope addled Groundhog Day sequence set to what another fellow critic dubbed as Nobody’s “murder ballad”, I counted at least 20 loops — both with[out] the music, and yet-another fellow critic echoed Nobody in criticising The Chief in not-realising it sooner[, even though he started getting suspicious since the 4th one]: Wouldn’t have worked, as Cyborg/Vic would have gone with the team together, even though it could have involved Nobody’s lure of enticing Vic with getting rid of Cyborg powered by Grid and getting his mother back, in lieu.
   So what’s the resolve, then?
   I would say trim the Larry’s yet-another flashback fat to a scene or 2 in the preceding-episode, no too much of moping from Vic about Silās, thereby shortening the rest of the episode — which would be saving on budget. And if need be, trim even “Frances Patrol”( S1E11) — so that this 2-parter season finale could at least be 10-11 minutes longer, if not 13 mins[ at the very least]. So have both of the moping from Vic followed by Silās’ confession, and a far-more breathable Groundhog Day sequence, in this episode — after all.

   Seems like the last-ever moment of 🎤It’s All In Your Head🎤 for OSPs. The one for this episode was the last, for better or worse.