"Cyborg Patrol" - Doom Patrol S01E12 Review

With "Cyborg Patrol" we get another week, and another ladle of Grant Morrison weirdness along with the current Nobody shenanigans and the Cyborg subplot. Which is out of the fertile mind of the creative team rather than anything Morrison created back in the day. That may explain why the Vic parts are a bit boring, and feel stitched on. It's not that Vic hasn't earned his place on the dysfunctional "not the Doom Patrol" Doom Patrol.

It just feels a bit disjointed. Why is Nobody bothering with Vic? Vic is leading the "search" for Niles, sure. But it's not like the team is anywhere close to finding Niles, with or without Vic's "leadership". Nobody may be sadistic jerk, but no matter how well Alan Tudyk does sadistic evil, there's no indication of what Nobody's plan is. If it's torturing Niles and making him suffer for whatever is between them, shouldn't he be... torturing Niles and making him suffer? Or looking for Niles' wife, who he memory-probed to learn about a couple of episodes ago?

Although in the comics, this version of Nobody was an anarchistic force of chaos who had no real plan. He went around collecting superpowered misfits and tormenting the world, and the Doom Patrol got in his way. In Doom Patrol he seems to be doing... something. But it's not at all clear what.

And maybe we don't care. The show spends most of its time looking at the backgrounds of the team members, and recreating certain Morrison bits (Danny the Street, Kipling, and the Cult of the Decreator, the Ant Farm, Flex Mentallo). The superhero stuff seems crafted on as an afterthought, so Nobody gets turned into some kind of Big Bad even if he isn't in the comics, and only seems necessary on Doom Patrol to provide some kind of overarching storyline. Because that's what TV does in 2019.

So what Morrison stuff do we get this week? We get the Ant Farm, and it's a little more coherent than in the comics. We get Flex Mentallo (Devan Lock), but he's locked up in a cell and doesn't come across as anything except an amiable oaf. The Bureau of Normalcy is present along with three military types and the (unnamed) Switchboard and the Operators.

How do we get all of this? Vic is captive at the Ant Farm after his unexplained capture last week. Yes, if you read Morrison back in the 90s you know about the Tearoom of Despair. But we don't find out about the devices on the Bureau agents' sleeves, or why Dolores is working with them. Instead, the Bureau is interested in Vic, and they've captured him, so they start studying him. Meanwhile, Vic is having a mental breakdown of sorts as his operating system, Grid, recreates itself in his cyborg parts. It's also tormenting him with videos of the lab accident where Vic seemingly killed his mother.

Silas Stone (Phil Morris) tracks Grid to Doom Manor and finds it downloaded onto an old computer. The team members explain what's going on, and figure Vic has been taken to the Ant Farm. Silas knows about the Ant Farm but none of his contacts will talk to him, so he decides to break in, and asks the team to help. Silas, Larry, and Jane go in taking Cliff as a fake prisoner. However, it turns out Silas betrayed the team to Darren Jones (Jon Briddell), and they soon end up captured.

The absent Rita reveals herself as having blobbed into Cliff's robot body, and emerges to free him. Jane frees herself by changing to her Karen personality and making her torturer, Dirk Wells, (Mac Wells) fall in love with her. The team frees Larry, and Cliff decides to release all of the other Ant Hill prisoners. Most of them are human-ish, but there's a cell full of sentient ill-tempered butts. They go on a rampage, and kill Darren and his men, while the team stay out of the butts' way.

And yes, that's "butts". Which I don't recall from the Morrison comics or anywhere else except the flashback in "Doom Patrol Patrol" when Nobody unleashed a giant balloon butt. Or a giant butt balloon. These butts have legs and teeth. And as a general notes earlier, "Don't get the butts upset." Unfortunately, releasing the butts upsets them.

Grid apparently plays Vic a video of Silas saying he doesn't care if the nanites he's put into Vic's body turn Vic into a machine. So Vic beats Silas to death. Nobody appears and says he set the whole thing up, including the last (fake) video. He congratulates Vic on falling for his trap by killing Silas, nyah-hah-hahs, and then disappears. The rest of the team arrive and find Vic sobbing over Silas' corpse. The end.

Also, an unnamed Flex Mentallo is in the cell next to Vic's, and gives him some not-very-helpful advice about how the Bureau sends them on missions occasionally and gives them perks, but he doesn't remember the missions. There's no mention of how Flex ended up there, or what he can do, or his relationship to Dolores, or what she's doing with the Bureau, or why Danny directed the team to Flex as a lead to Niles when Flex has been locked up for fifty years. Maybe it'll all be explained next episode, in "Flex Patrol".

The episode focuses on Vic, sort of, but we get a little bit of Larry's backstory about when he was in the Ant Farm. Karen shows up again, and Jane isn't too thrilled. Cliff gripes a lot, and Rita gripes a lot. And Jane gripes a lot. All we really learn about Vic is Nobody has been playing with his mind and Grid. We learn other stuff, too, but Nobody admits he tampered with the last video in Vic's mind. Which means the other video memories could be false as well. Although we already thought they were false, but put there by Silas rather than Nobody. We're supposed to think they're true, but with Silas as the one planting them.

The whole thing is a bit of a jumble, so if you're expecting linear plot points from Doom Patrol, you're watching the wrong show. We do get to see Joivan Wade go through a lot of anger, but that's been building for a while.

Phil Morris is the episode's MVP, as he goes from concerned father to traitor to "help the team get into the Ant Farm and fake their capture" to concerned father who is desperate to help his son. Although as noted, Rita gets to do something useful for once, by "blobbing out" and hiding in Cliff's body. Which she gripes about, of course.

We do get to see the team act as a team, which is a relief after seeing them split up and go separate ways, then come together, then split up again. Even if they go a more comedic route than, say, Titans. Rita drops Cliff on an analytical tech, the military triumvirate running the Ant Farm are weird with one general being served fast food on a platter, and of course, the butts. So if you want comedy and weirdness, "Cyborg Patrol" is the episode for you.

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