His makeup, mannerisms, and really his whole deal are straight out of a 1990s genre show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the way the show commits to not explaining why he’s at the resort is fantastic. Garguax is far and away the best part of the season thus far. That gives Doom Patrol the space to throw a boatload of spaghetti at the wall - and while some of its ideas don’t stick, the ones that do are great. In the vast spans between bursts of heroics, the characters are bickering, doing comedy bits, tinkering with steampunk machinery, or turning into zombies. Jane uses her super-strength to punch Cliff out of a neurologically induced paralysis, or Rita literally melts down in response to pressure. Most of the time, the outlandish supernatural moments - the “super” parts of the superhero show - are totally unrelated to any bigger mission or plot. There are perhaps five minutes of real “action” in a given episode of Doom Patrol. Cliff’s daughter-in-law Melissa is concerned, not because her wife’s father is a gigantic metal man, but because he’s simply too desperate to hang around and help out.Īnd when the gang runs into Garguax, an intergalactic conqueror living in a resort that’s set spiritually (though not literally) in the Catskills, everyone except Cyborg - a weak spot in this season precisely because he feels like he belongs more in the self-consciously “gritty,” serious Titans - just sort of shrugs their shoulders and deals with what’s in front of them, instead of questioning it. ![]() ![]() In one subplot of this season, Cliff Steele, aka Robotman, tries to make amends with his daughter, Clara, and be present in the life of her baby son. And the characters are as blasé about the strangeness of an offbeat superhero world as the characters are. Doom Patrol almost completely ignores any of the obvious “Wait, what?”-level questions anyone might have about the insane stuff happening. One thing they rightly know not to expect at this point, though: Superhero 101. Now that there’s an established pattern of success, there’s far more room to experiment with different tones, niches, and subgenres - and for audiences to expect lots of different things from superhero TV. Still, the show’s constant mutations and dedication to novelty are always a draw.ĭoom Patrol has a lot of competition in the field of “weird superhero shows.” Staying on top of every superhero TV show is a part-time job at this point, but the fact that we’re in an ecosystem that can support Legends of Tomorrow, WandaVision, The Boys, and Titans, not to mention animated options like Teen Titans GO!, proves the medium has reached a certain degree of maturity. Even the best additions to the show (especially Garguax) barely get a chance to establish themselves. This endless experimental quality, the feeling that Carver and his team are looking for shiny different things to try, makes Doom Patrol occasionally hit-or-miss. Madame Rouge, Garguax, the Dead Boy Detectives, and the Brotherhood of Dada join characters like Flex Mentallo as toys pulled from the deep DC backstory box, ready for whatever game the writers and producers want to play. She could be anyone, and go anywhere - the same way Doom Patrol can be anything and everything from episode to episode. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina’s Michelle Gomez enters the series as Madame Rouge, a time traveler who has forgotten who she is and what she’s supposed to be doing. The biggest addition to the cast is a literal stand-in for this approach to storytelling. And as with Supernatural, Carver’s Doom Patrol has created an environment that can easily accommodate new, goofy characters who can flit in and out of the action and still feel at home on the show, whether it’s alien conqueror Garguax, or Sandman’s Dead Boy Detective Agency. In the span of the new season’s first three episodes, Doom Patrol includes a 2001-style space enlightenment trip, a dilapidated East Coast resort, and a romp through the afterlife that wouldn’t be out of place on Supernatural, an earlier home for Doom Patrol showrunner Jeremy Carver. By the third season, now exclusively on HBO Max, the contrast between the characters’ origins and their halting attempts to rejoin the world has become a potent engine for both experimentation and distraction. Mastermind Niles Caulder plucked each member of the misfit superhero team from somewhere in the 20th century - a race-car driver presumed dead, an Air Force pilot possessed by a mysterious energy being, a 1950s actress exposed to a powerful gas - and protected/sequestered them in his mansion, where they remained in stasis until the action started, when the series launched on DC Universe in 2019. ![]() When one of the characters on HBO Max’s Doom Patrol mentions that it’s the year 2021, it feels wrong, given how unstuck in time the characters have always been.
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