"Puppet Patrol" - Doom Patrol S01E03

And so with "Puppet Patrol" we have another episode with the exploits of the wackiest team of wannabe superheroes (and don't wannabe superheroes) anywhere. While "Puppet Patrol" isn't as weird as last week's "Donkey Patrol", it has its share of strangeness as well as laugh-out-loud humor.

One reason for the lack of wackiness is the relatively lack of Mr. Nobody. Alan Tudyk appears in flashbacks, but he isn't present as the omniscient narrator/supervillain from last week. Without his providing metahumor, the episode isn't as funny or strange. It's like having a cast full of Deadpool characters rather than one fourth-wall-breaking character. The Doom Patrol members don't quite break the fourth-wall, but they dance along the edge of it. Like when Jane and Cliff end up fighting Nazis. They don't act like it's a trope for superheroes to beat up Nazis.

But there's a casual, "Of course we're fighting Nazis" attitude toward the battles, both on the parts of the two characters and on the writing team of Tamara Becher and Tom Farrell.

But why are Jane and Cliff fighting Nazis? Glad you asked. Larry wakes up in the rafters after the negative being leaves him there. Which raises the question of how it got him there. But no time for questions: Vic calls a team meeting to disseminate what little information they've discovered about Niles' whereabouts. And Cliff starts poking fun at Vic's attempts to organize the group into a superhero team.

The team has found a photo of the donkey in Paraguay. Somehow Vic determines it's in Paraguay, but the conversation centers mostly on how he printed a copy of the photo. Apparently out of his butt. Silas, proving what a magnificent bastard he is, refuses to loan Vic the STAR Labs jet so Vic finds a bus and it's time for a road trip!

The road trip deteriorates into a montage of the team driving along and arguing, while we get an Indiana Jones-style "traveling across a map" sequence. After the negative creature burns out the engine, the team stop at a motel. We then get the central theme of the episode, that Larry was a troubled jerk even when he was just Larry. We get flashbacks to 1961 and Larry's lover John (Kyle Russell Clements) complaining Larry insists on hiding their gay relationship and maintaining his macho All-American Fighter Pilot image. And Larry dealing with the fact his relationship with his wife Sheryl is on the rocks. Whether Larry is homosexual (with Sheryl as his beard) or bisexual isn't clear.

Meanwhile, one of Jane's personas Flit gets bored with the road trip and uses her teleport power to take herself, Cliff, and Larry to Paraguay. They meet a tourist, Steve (Alec Mapa), who informs them Fuchs (Julian Richings) runs a nearby metahuman endowment clinic. The episode then goes from silly to weird as the trio go there and go through an interminable puppet show describing how Fuchs was a scientist, worked for Hitler, came to Paraguay, turned Morden into Mr. Nobody, got shot by Niles, and had Niles take something valuable to him.

The trio infiltrate the compound by pretending to want superpowers. They can't pay, so Jane offers some of her DNA in return for a meeting with Fuchs. Turns out he's in a hand-pumped iron lung and a lot older than we saw him in the first episode's flashbacks. He reveals he's spread his consciousness into all of the Youth. They attack Jane, she kills them all, and then kills Fuchs.

Larry has wandered off for some reason. Cliff follows a Youth greeter and fights and kills more of the Youth when they attack him for being a friend of Niles. He cheerfully rips off their arms and legs and beats them to death with them, then wonders what he's done.

After finding himself in a transformation pod, Larry reverts to his pre-irradiated self. Or maybe he hallucinates it. Larry confronts the independent negative being, which refuses to let him leave. Cliff and Jane get him out, and Jane destroys the facility. Throughout this, we get Larry's flashbacks to after the accident when his irradiated body killed the doctors and nurses around him. He was eventually locked in a lead-lined room, Sheryl left him, and John promised to stay with him but Larry told him to go.

Vic and Rita spend a little bit of time bonding and then Silas relents and gives Vic a jet. They fly down to Paraguay and pick up Cliff, Larry, and Jane.

At the end, Steve emerges from another transformation pod turned into the Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. Which is one of the comic book Doom Patrol's stranger pre-Morrison enemies.

Overall, "Puppet Patrol" slows down the pace a bit to focus on Larry. The team still hasn't become "the Doom Patrol" despite Vic's best efforts. Rita isn't interested in being a superhero, Larry has no control over the energy being, and Cliff suffers from a combination of wanting to be a superhero, being unqualified to be a superhero, and having to deal with Vic who really wants to be a superhero.

Another theme running through the episode is control, or the lack, of it. Rita can't control her body, Larry can't control the negative being, Vic can't control the team and suspects he can't control his memories because Silas has been tampering with him. Jane can't control her personas and apparently doesn't want to. Cliff is the only one in control, but he's a NASCAR driver and a brain inside of a robot body. Neither of which qualify him to be a superhero. Which means more often than not he reverts to a sarcastic everyman who can't believe what's happening to them.

And that's what Cliff was in the Morrison era of the Doom Patrol, too. He was the "normal guy", or at least as normal as you could get when you're a brain in a robot body. Most of the team is likable: Larry is trapped by his sexuality, Vic is trapped by his father, Rita is trapped by her own body. A character being trapped almost always engenders sympathy from the audience.

The reason some of them aren't that likable is you sometimes wish they'd stop prevaricating and just do something. They don't have to be superheroes, and Larry can't be a super-type as long as he can't control the energy being. But Rita being brittle and frail and not wanting to be a superhero has lasted long enough. I don't expect her to step up and start throwing elastic punches. But her disinterest in the proceedings and reluctant involvement are making it hard to be interested in the show when she's on-screen. If one of the characters doesn't want to be there, why should I?

Oddly, that makes Vic a bit unlikable. Maybe it's because they haven't built up his liking for Niles enough to justify his search for him. It's not clear if he's doing it because he really cares about Niles, or to do something on his own without Silas looking over his shoulder.

That makes Jane and Cliff the most relatable characters. They owe Niles gratitude for helping them out of their current situations, they've come to look for him. You wouldn't think a woman with 64 alternate personalities could be a relatable character, but congrats to actress Diane Guerrero for pulling it off. It helps she actually has some useful superpowers. Yes, Cliff has super-strength and can tear Nazis apart. But Rita blobs out, Larry releases an uncontrollable negative being, and Vic hasn't had a chance to strut his self except to create an energy shield and punch out a robber.

The other problem with the episode is, as I mentioned earlier, the lack of Mr. Nobody. Alan Tudyk's wacky narration aside, the proto-Doom Patrol doesn't seem to be up against anything or anyone. They're looking for Niles, and Nobody has Niles. Even in the Morrison comics, the Doom Patrol went up against opponents. Weird, unknowable, often-babbling opponents like the Men From N.O.W.H.E.R.E. (real or fake), but opponents none the less. In the Doom Patrol series so far, not so much. But we still have 12 more episodes, so let's see what we get.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?