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Spoilers Doom Patrol - DC Universe Series

2.5 Finger Patrol

Holy crap! I should've known something was up because I was thinking to myself how low key this episode had been and then they dropped that at the end and brought the stakes up to 100. Dorothy makes her way to the underground and nothing will be the same again. Abigail Shapiro is quite a gifted (not too mention tiny) actress. April Bowlby had that '40s actress thing going on hard.

In addition we get more tragic Larry who just can't win with his family, guess you can never go back home. Even Cliff with best intentions can't make his Steel and Stone hero a reality. At least Rita and Vic score a bit of a victory though Larry may not feel the same about being encouraged to reconnect. That ending though!
 
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I finally caught up on Doom Patrol, which I really like. (No show has ever made me care so much for the well-being of a brick.) I just watched the season finale, which ended on a really frustrating and worrisome cliffhanger. I wasn't expecting that, given that season 1 had proper closure. Did the season get cut short by COVID?
 
Yes, by one episode. They knew a shutdown was imminent so some adjustments were made to episode 9 to work as a season finale.
 
Ohh, so frustrating.

If anything, it almost seems as if episode 9 was rewritten with social distancing in mind, since the actors split up and spend most of the episode separated from each other. Although, err, not so much the party scene in the flashbacks...
 
Since I've gotten caught up on some of the other stuff I've been watching, so I went back to Season 1 today.
I watched episode 7 and 8, and loved them both.
Episode 7 was a nice followup to their encounter with the original Doom Patrol, and an interesting deep dive into everyone's psyches. They all seem convinced that Jane's painting means Vic killed everyone, but I'm wondering if maybe he'll actually be the last one standing in a fight against someone else. Do these guys ever actually start calling themselves the Doom Patrol?
The whole Admiral Whiskers thing was a hilarious twist. Poor little guy.
Episode 8 was great, Danny the Street is awesome, and Karen is kinda terrifying.
 
JD said:
Do these guys ever actually start calling themselves the Doom Patrol?
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Not really. Not yet, anyway. It took, what, four seasons for Oliver Queen to start calling himself the Green Arrow?


Incidentally, I watched Titans before watching Doom Patrol, and I'm struck by the differences between the two versions (Earth-9 and Earth-21, respectively, per Crisis). The Earth-9/Titans versions of Cliff, Larry, and Rita were much happier. They had this Addams Family vibe going on where they were this happy little family of well-adjusted weirdos enjoying each other's company. But the Earth-21 version are just so dysfunctional and angsty and uneasy with each other. True, they have an arc of coming more to terms with themselves and bonding more as a family of sorts, but it's very turbulent and full of setbacks.

In fact, that's one thing that bugs me about the premise. If Rita, Larry, Jane, and Cliff have been under the Chief's wing for decades, why have they had so little character growth in all that time, yet suddenly start going through extensive and life-changing character growth as soon as Mr. Nobody starts messing with them?

While Gar is my favorite character on Titans, I find it weird that he had to be left out of Doom Patrol, that he's in a separate universe altogether from Steve Dayton/Mento, who's so important to his comics backstory. But then, I got a bit of the same sense watching Swamp Thing, where they used the Phantom Stranger as a sort of John Constantine surrogate. Given that Mark Verheiden was a producer on both Constantine and Swamp Thing, I found myself lamenting that ST's story couldn't have been, say, a second- or third-season arc in a longer-running Constantine series.
 
Christopher said:
Incidentally, I watched Titans before watching Doom Patrol, and I'm struck by the differences between the two versions (Earth-9 and Earth-21, respectively, per Crisis). The Earth-9/Titans versions of Cliff, Larry, and Rita were much happier. They had this Addams Family vibe going on where they were this happy little family of well-adjusted weirdos enjoying each other's company. But the Earth-21 version are just so dysfunctional and angsty and uneasy with each other. True, they have an arc of coming more to terms with themselves and bonding more as a family of sorts, but it's very turbulent and full of setbacks.

In fact, that's one thing that bugs me about the premise. If Rita, Larry, Jane, and Cliff have been under the Chief's wing for decades, why have they had so little character growth in all that time, yet suddenly start going through extensive and life-changing character growth as soon as Mr. Nobody starts messing with them?
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Yeah, I can see what you mean. I had totally forgotten that the characters had all been around for decades until I saw the dates in all the flashbacks in episode 7. I had been thinking that they had all just been brought together just before the series started, it really does feel like they're all just getting to know each other, rather than having been together for decades at this point.
 
Well, at this point I've watched almost everything I want to see on DC Universe, save only Batman Ninja and the rest of my current Shazam! rewatch. I was planning to cancel soon anyway, so I can free up a few bucks per month and reup with Netflix.

Still, it has been nice to have so many comics available to read there (though the reader software has its limitations), and I've seen that cited as one of the site's best features. I can live without it, but it would be a shame if the people who value it had to lose it.
 
I'm curious if they're going to move the old stuff, like the DCAU shows, or the old Flash or Superboy shows, over to HBOMax. They're all set for streaming, so I can't see it being that hard to move them over, especially since they've moved most of the originals over there already.
 
JD said:
I'm curious if they're going to move the old stuff, like the DCAU shows, or the old Flash or Superboy shows, over to HBOMax. They're all set for streaming, so I can't see it being that hard to move them over, especially since they've moved most of the originals over there already.
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I certainly hope so. Those are both shows that deserve to be available. Well, the first two seasons of Superboy are a mess, often incredibly terrible, but the latter two seasons are probably the best live-action DC superhero show we had until early Smallville, and I say that as a fan of the 1990 Flash and the first season or two of Lois & Clark.
 
Christopher said:
I finally caught up on Doom Patrol, which I really like. (No show has ever made me care so much for the well-being of a brick.) I just watched the season finale, which ended on a really frustrating and worrisome cliffhanger. I wasn't expecting that, given that season 1 had proper closure. Did the season get cut short by COVID?
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Decided to give it a spin, after all? Yeah, you could really feel that the season got cut short. From what I read it was quite the effort to salvage what they did for the last episode.

I liked the scope of season one, season two was more insular which feels a little claustrophobic given the already introspective nature of the characters. Though that did give a sense of immediacy to Dorothy's story. I think Diane Guerrero and Abigail Shapiro should get kudos as Jane(and company) and Dorothy. Oh, I almost forgot Phil Morris and his amazing Dr. Cowboy persona. :lol:

A friend pointed out the use of Gordon Lightfoot's If You Could Read My Mind that it has lyrics meaningful to Jane's situation:
Just like an old time movie
About a ghost from a wishing well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I'm a ghost you can see
 
Yeah, Guerrero's almost as good as Tatiana Maslany at distinguishing her different personalities through nuance of performance. It was pretty easy to tell which personality was in charge by her voice and manner, even aside from the hairstyle changes, tattoos, etc.

The one thing that bugs me about Jane, though, is that because she's a Grant Morrison character, a number of the proper names associated with her are British-influenced -- the Underground, Penny Farthing, etc. -- which would make more sense if they'd cast English actors as Kay and her father.
 
Christopher said:
If Rita, Larry, Jane, and Cliff have been under the Chief's wing for decades, why have they had so little character growth in all that time, yet suddenly start going through extensive and life-changing character growth as soon as Mr. Nobody starts messing with them?
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For the same reason both Spock and Data, two super intelligent beings, both of whom had been in Starfleet and around humans for well over a decade each, had to have basic human stuff explained to them and showed growth only after each respective show started.
 
Episode 9: Jane Patrol - Wow, this was a really good episode for Jane. It was interesting getting inside her head, literally, and getting to learn more of her backstory.
Episode 10: Hair Patrol - Just when you think the show can't any crazier we get Beard Hunter, and Caulder having sex with a Neaderthal.
So was whatever his girlfriend did to cure him what made Caulder immortal?
So Mr. Nobody kidnapped Caulder because he wants to find her? I definitely did not see that coming, even after they introduced her.
 
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^ I'm trying to remember what was happening at that point but I think Nobody is just trying to figure Caulder's secrets and how to break him and to reveal his hypocrisy and selfishness. He doesn't care so much for his own interests but for how he can use it against Caulder.
 
He made a comment about wanting to know the secret to his immortality after they revealed he was watching Caulder's memories.
 
It's funny how what does and does not bother you. I've been watching The Witcher, and I have no problem with people getting their heads blown up, and the guts ripped out, but I could barely handle Beard Hunter eating the gunk from Caulder's sink. It took everything I had not to look away or close my eyes when I realized what he was doing.
 
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