"Penultimate Patrol" – Doom Patrol S01E14 Review

Another week with "Penultimate Patrol", and another wacky adventure with the group more viewers and reviews call "the Doom Patrol" than the team members themselves. This time it's a climactic showdown with Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk), as the DP finally gets around to finding him. How they find him doesn't make any sense: they track down Beard Hunter, who has retired and living on Danny the Street. Beard Hunter has no idea how to find Niles, but the DP brought Flex with them and Danny finally tells them Niles is in "White Space". Flex knows that's the white space on the border of comics, and Nobody's "White Space: is the border around reality.

Either that, or Nobody actually exists in the borders of a comic book. Even though he's talked in the past and talks later here about controlling the streaming service. I'd suggest the idea of Nobody dwelling in the borders of reality is too weird for Doom Patrol. But... this is Doom Patrol. Nothing is too weird.

Flex flexes the wrong muscle and gives everyone on Danny an orgasm except Cliff since he's a robot. In a funny bit, Cliff plays along so he doesn't feel left out. How Danny can have an orgasm but Cliff can't isn't clear.

Flex finally flexes the right muscle and transports the DP into White Space. Nobody promises each of them their old pre-Niles lives. They'll forget Niles since they never met him. But have their old lives back and never experience the accidents that turned them into what they are today.

The four heroes (Vic is elsewhere) nobly refuse, and are sent to White Space. In another amusing bit, Rita takes control of Nobody's narrative and his super-narrative powers by... narrating. She narrates the team coming together, and Jane takes on her Dr. Harrison/psychologist persona to determine Nobody is an inadequate loser. The group refuses to fight him, but Vic arrives and since he didn't get the memo, he blasts Nobody apart.

Cut to one year later, and the team fights a giant robot and gets killed. Over and over and over again, while Niles is forced to watch . He eventually realizes they didn't defeat Nobody, they end up back in White Space, and Nobody basically says the team can win if Niles tells them the truth. And Niles admits he engineered all of their accidents.

In a brief opener, we find out how Nobody's girlfriend Millie (Victoria Blade) rejected him when he was kicked out of the Brotherhood of Evil.

In the B plot, Vic spends most of the episode hanging out with his hospitalized father, Silas (Phil Morris). And Silas admits he lied about how Vic's mother died: he had the choice to save her or Vic, and chose Vic. Silas didn't tell Vic the truth for fear his son would hate him. Father and son share a manly embrace, and I guess everything is resolved between them.

As I noted above, the plot isn't particularly linear. First we have the hunt for Beard Hunter, which makes no sense. The last we saw him, he was being attacked by the creature Niles hunted back at the turn of the century. How Beard Hunter is alive, much less happy and unscarred, is not at all clear. Flex knows about White Space, but needs Danny or remind him. So Grid led them to Beard Hunter, who is living on Danny, and Danny reminds Flex of something he already knows so he can get them to White Space.

Then there's the time looping at the end, where Nobody forces Niles to witness the DP die over and over and over again. Set to the strains of Perry Como's song, "Hot Diggity". So it's all very timey-wimey and plot-incoherent. But hey, it's Doom Patrol. As we're told several times, the DP can't defeat Nobody. So being able to incoherently not beat him makes as much sense as coherently beating him.

If that's coherent.

The performances are good all around (nobody does "mummy having an orgasm" like Matthew Zuk) except for Diane Guerrero. Who is okay but doesn't get much to do. She does get to do more as *sigh* Hammerhead. And you'd often think Jane has two personalities rather than dozens. Giving her just a relative few personas to display makes sense from an acting standpoint. And an audience standpoint, since it would be confusing to many to see her go through a dozen or more personalities through episode. But from a story and character and story standpoint, it's a waste. Why establish a character with dozens of powers and personalities if you're only going to see a handful?

Like Nobody last episode, I find it a relief the team is finally doing something superheroic. Their battles against the Decreator and the Bureau and the Beard Hunter have been fun, as has the exploration into Jane's psyche. But it's a lot of time to focus on the team coming together. They did the same thing with Titans, but the DP members are a lot more interesting and have more interesting backstories.

There are a lot of bits that are amusing but have nothing to do with the party. Some I've mentioned. Flex giving everyone on the street an orgasm is weird and has nothing to do with the plot. It's one minute and 47 seconds (I timed it while smoking a cigarette) and has lots of little moments but don’t advance the story at all.

"Lots of little moments" like Beard Hunter gazing lovingly at another man's beard, and then sharing a cigarette with him after the *ahem* climactic moment.

The Vic/Silas scene is a bit awkward because everything with Vic has seemed a little awkward. I noted a review or two ago he seems to fit with the team. But this episode separates him from the team. If the creative team want him to be part of the DP, make him part of the DP. Sending him off on his own sideplot seems like they're wasting both the character and the previous attempts to integrate him into the team. It's hard to convince myself Vic should be part of the team if the creative team keep breaking him off from the team to do his own thing.

Since "Penultimate Patrol" is the... penultimate episode of Doom Patrol, next week is the season finale. And then we're off to Swamp Thing on the DC Universe Channel on May 31. It has to follow Mark Lindsay Chapman and his hair, so it has a tough road to follow. But I'm sure it can do it.

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