"Pilot" - Doom Patrol S01E01 Review

And the second new show on the DC Universe Channel arrives. First there was Titans, now there's Doom Patrol. For those keeping score at home, the Doom Patrol got a preview of sorts in the fourth episode of Titans. Beast Boy takes Raven home, to what we find out is called "Doom Manor". We meet Niles Caulder, "the Chief" (Bruno Bichir) and the three individuals that he's taken in: Robotman (voice of Brendan Fraser, body of Jake Michaels), Negative Man (voice of Matt Bomer, body of Dwain Murphy), and Elasti-Woman (April Bowlby). The Chief is tending to a fourth person with powers, and wants to "cure" Raven. Raven doesn't want it and neither does Beast Boy, and the two of them finally leave.

The episode, "Doom Patrol", wasn't exactly a backdoor pilot since a Doom Patrol series was already in the works. It was more of an introduction to the characters that would appear on their own show, albeit with a few recastings. Timothy Dalton is the "new" Niles, Riley Shanahan replaces Jake Michaels as Cliff Steele's robotic body, Matthew Zuk replaces Dwain Murphy, and Diane Guerrero, Alan Tudyk, and (eventually) Joivan Wade are brought in as new characters Crazy Jane, Mr. Nobody, and Victor Stone/Cyborg, respectively.

In the comics, the Doom Patrol first appeared in My Greatest Adventure #80 in June 1963. They were a knockoff of sorts of the Fantastic Four over at Marvel: The super-smart Chief = Mr. Fantastic, super-strong inhuman Robotman = the Thing, flying energy being = Human Torch, female member Elasti-Girl = female member Invisible Woman. Then Marvel came up with the X-Men, which may or may not have been a knockoff of the Doom Patrol, since both teams had super-smart leaders in wheelchairs and the members were considered "freaks". And so it goes.

The Doom Patrol was "hip" in that way DC Comics tried to do in the 60s when white guys in their 50s were calling the shots. The final issue ended with the heroes sacrificing their lives to save the residents of a small fishing village in Maine. Since then, there have been a number of attempts to restart the Doom Patrol. Robotman survived the sacrifice, being a human brain in a robot body, and eventually the rest of the team showed up in different versions due to retcons and rewrites and the usual comic book shenanigans.

Grant Morrison took over a revived Doom Patrol in the late 80s and early 90s, introduced Crazy Jane (a woman suffering from multiple-personality disorder with each personality having its own superpower), Danny the Street (a teleporting, sentient, cross-dressing street), Flex Mentallo, and villains like the Scissormen, Red Jack, Mr. Nobody and his Brotherhood of Dada, and the Candlemaker. Negative Man also ended up merged with both male and female bodies, becoming Rebis. It's also revealed the Chief engineered all of the accidents that caused the team members to gain their powers.

It's the Morrison era the new Doom Patrol series borrows heavily from. Crazy Jane is a member, Negative Man looks a lot like Rebis, Robotman looks like his Morrison-era counterpart (with "heavy metal" shirts and a leather jacket"), the Chief is mildly villainous, and Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk) is apparently the primary villain. And that brings us to the new series itself.

We start in 1948 Paraguay, where Eric Morden (Alan Tudyk) visits a Nazi scientist, Von Fuchs (Julian Richings). Morden pays Von Fuchs a lot of money to undergo metahuman enhancements, recites "The mind is the limit" a lot, and starts to existentially fracture into Mr. Nobody.
Then we go to Florida 1988. Cliff Steele is a race-car driver and not-so-happily married man who is having an affair with his nanny. He apparently gets killed in a racing accident, and wakes up in a robot body with Niles working on it. Thanks to Mr. Nobody's narrative, we soon learn Cliff and Niles are hanging out in Niles' manor, "Doom Manor". Larry and Rita are the other two residents, and we get flashbacks to their origins. Larry was an Air Force test pilot who was caught in a negative energy field above Earth's atmosphere. He passed out and crashed, and woke up merged with the energy field.

Rita is a 50s actress who swallowed a strange substance when she fell into an African river while filming. She turns into a blob of protoplasm that holds herself into human shape through force of will. And eats a lot of rotisserie chickens.

There are other "patients", and presumably they have gone out into the world. One of them, Crazy Jane, returns home and Cliff takes a shine to her. During this, Niles tells Cliff he's actually misremembering things. Cliff got sober and stopped cheating on his wife, but then accidentally hit a truck. The wife died along with their daughter, and Cliff's body was destroyed.

But as we find out later, that's a not-entirely-accurate story, either. Cliff's daughter Clara survived, and Niles lied to him to "protect" him. Cliff isn't too happy about this, and when Niles leaves on an expedition, Jane wants to go into the nearby small town of Cloverton. Eventually Cliff, Larry, and Rita all go with her. Rita loses control of her body and turns into a giant blob that rolls down the street destroying everything in its path. Larry loses control of his energy being and it flies around shorting out cars.

Jane manifests a giant flame-headed woman which doesn't seem to do anything, although it is from the comics. Cliff stops Rita, they go home, Niles returns, and isn't too thrilled they left Doom Manor. He warns they've revealed his existence to his enemies, including a donkey that appears and disappears. Niles suggests they run, but Cliff would rather stay and defend the town. Larry, Rita, and Jane eventually go with him. They confront the donkey, which farts and spells out "The mind is the limit". Mr. Nobody confronts Niles and then summons a giant vortex which starts destroying the town.

There's no sign of Cyborg yet. They already explain, or repeat the explanation, of why Elasti-Woman is considered a freak, in the original comics, she was a woman who could shrink and grow. There was some lip service in the comics about how that ruined her career and she couldn't control her powers initially, but she wasn't particularly freakish.

The highlights of Doom Patrol are several. One is Alan Tudyk's Deadpool-style narration, which starts with "Ah, more TV superheroes, just what the world needs. To be honest, have you hung yourself yet?" And continues from there. It's all done in Tudyk's own inimitable style, as anyone who saw Powerless and Con Man can attest.

Another is the general attitude Cliff and Jane have. They both speak their minds and Jane has at least one personality, Hammerhead, who is more than willing to insult anyone in her path and go off the path to find people to insult.

Yet another is April Bowlby, who played Kandi on Two and a Half Men and has drifted around guest starring roles for a while. She does the "woman out of time" bit since her Rita Farr has never quite forgotten how her career was destroyed but also has failed to keep up with the world since it moved on in the 50s when she was a big star. Bowlby does a good job of conveying strength and fragility.

Timothy Dalton doesn't get much to do as Niles, but he's a lot more sympathetic than Bruno Bichir was on Titans. He comes across more as a scared man on the run who is actually trying to help people, while Bichir's Niles was more of a mad scientist who cheerfully experimented on his charges. Larry ends up as either comic relief or to provide some incongruity: "Ooh, look, the guy wrapped in bandages tends to flowers in a school bus!" Hopefully they'll remedy that in future episodes.

Larry/Negative Man otherwise doesn't get much to do. We find out he was having a secret affair with a male Air Force field technician while he was also happily married with a wife and two sons, but nothing comes of it in the first episode. It's presumably a nod to the bisexual Rebis/Negative Man in the comics, but it just lays there.

Also, I'm not convinced all of the cross-marketing DC has been doing with the Doom Patrol works that well. We got the Doom Patrol in Titans, we got the Doom Patrol in Young Justice. We got Cyborg as a freak joining the Outsiders in Young Justice. Yes, I understand Young Justice and Doom Patrol aren't set in the same universe. But I wonder how many people watching both shows do. And if the people watching do understand, why do they need the cross promotion? I'm more confused than anything. It's not like Titans and Doom Patrol were separated by that many months. Why not get Dalton to play Niles in both? In Titans, Beast Boy is a long-time resident of Doom Manor, but there's no mention of his (former?) presence in Doom Patrol. Are Titans and Doom Patrol part of the same shared universe? Or does there happen to be a Doom Patrol in the Titans universe, and another slightly different one in the Doom Patrol universe? And how does this all fit into the upcoming Stargirl and Swamp Thing shows on DC Universe Channel?

If they're going to emulate the Morrison wackiness, why not bring in Morrison? Sometimes in the pilot episode it feels like they're trying a bit too hard, but mostly they're not trying hard enough. Morrison has the kind of style a creative team has to put their pedal to the metal and let it rip.

Whether the creative team, headed by Jeremy Carver primarily of Supernatural fame, fully embraces the weirdness of the Morrison era, remains to be seen. Me, I'd like to see the Scissormen, Redjack, Flex Mentallo (the Man of Muscle Mystery), Willoughby Kipling (an even seedier version of John Constantine), Sleepwalker (she has super-strength when she's asleep), and The Quiz (she has every power you've never thought of). A farting ethereal donkey and Mr. Nobody is a good start, but the creative team can pour it on.

Also, I'd be remiss if not noting the presence of Julian Richings and Julie McNiven. Who are probably on Doom Patrol in minor parts because Mr. Carver used them on Supernatural as Death and Anna Milton, respectively.

So overall, Doom Patrol's first episode is pretty successful. It's not a "typical" superhero TV show, as Mr. Nobody keeps reminding us ("...our four lovable losers banding together to become the superhero fighting force no one saw coming except everybody"). But then again, we have plenty of "typical" superhero TV shows: we can use a little bit of Grant Morrison-style zaniness.

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