Season 1 Episode 5. “Six brave puppies, captained by a tech-savvy 10-year-old boy, Ryder, work together to accomplish high-stakes rescue missions to safeguard the residents of the Adventure Bay community.”
The Good & The Bad
The Good
1. The episode kicks off from the previous story about the book, and the eye. Furthermore, this episode is very Jane orientated, as we learn more about her backstory. An interesting one too. We find out her personalities gained their powers in 1976 and moved to the Chief’s mansion two years later. I liked the aspect of how the character was handled. She was tortured in a mental institute before Niles saved her. We see the save at the end of the episode when she’s loaded into a van by a nurse, and Dr Harrison. He calms her immediately but we hear Mr Nobody tell her she needs to find the Doom Patrol.
With Jane’s 64 personalities, I think it’s amazing how much can be done with one character. Diane Guerrero does a fantastic job when she portrays each personality as Crazy Jane. It has to be tough playing a character, but with many different variants. The character never fails to make me laugh as well, which is always an added bonus. However I am intrigued to see where she goes from here.
2. Mr Nobody is such a strange character, but in a positive way. It’s slightly confusing to begin with, especially when he’s narrating the actual episodes. I laughed when he mentioned he has not been in the last two episodes. I wrote in my last review asking where he was, it was a nice touch him mentioning it too. He works with the Chief this episode as he seems mad about the eye destroying everything, when he wants to be the main villain, and they hatch a plan together to save the world. He then goes back to just after Jane got her powers and made her the Recreator to take down the Decreator. She turns into a speaker at the asylum gaining “followers” to build a plan for the future when she’s stuck in the snow globe. The book was then switched from Elliot to a Pug dog, and the story was rewritten from what we saw last episode.
We also get a glimpse of Dr Harrison trying to torture Jane, and we then hear she used to be called Kay, a scared little girl. In the Puppet Patrol episode we hear that Jane could be one but have control over the powers, but she was scared. We know the real Jane has not actually showed up yet, is Kay the real Jane? I hope we find out soon.
3. Rita comforting Elliot again deserves another nod on the list of Good. The emotion of her desperately wanting to save his life was hard to watch, but in a positive way. Most of the Doom Patrol have felt pretty useless since gaining her powers, and right here it felt like she wanted to be useful. I liked it. Rita displays strong emotional tendencies from the rest of the group, considering she was so uptight when she was Hollywood. It’s been the same for most the season when she really wants to be involved with the group, and she genuinely wants to help. Last episode we saw her gain a slight control over her power, I hope this continues in the next episode as this story ark laid down the foundation of what’s to come.
4. Teenie Weenie Peenie, I will say nothing more.
5. Larry and the energy surge relationship continued this episode. Larry spoke to the Chief about him seeing the tape. Niles pleads with him to try communicating with the energy, and that the energy may be looking out for Larry. We have saw this in previous episodes. Larry is torturing himself, and even he said himself he feels like Larry died and he’s living in an afterlife. I hope soon we delve deeper into this relationship and actually see something of it. The energy has been an interesting part of the group, however we haven’t seen all that much from it, and it begs you for more. Some of the theories I have read about the surge are , so what’s next to play out for the both of them will be fascinating.
The Bad
1. The episode, for me anyway got a little confusing with the timeline jumps. It wasn’t until 3/4s into the episode I understood exactly what was going on. With Mr Nobody altering the story to suit his own needs, and the fourth wall breaks, can bring a lot of confusion into the episodes. This is not always a bad thing, but I feel for the strong start of this particular ark, I feel like it shouldn’t of gone down the road that it did. I wouldn’t preferred more action, which brings me onto my next point…
2. The episode was boring. I hate to say it because of the love I have for Doom Patrol. 20 minutes in and I nearly fell asleep. There’s not enough action in the season as a whole. There wasn’t a single fight season. The most action we see is Jane snap a door handle off and scream when they’re in the snow globe. With the inclusion of Cyborg, I felt like the scenes would be more heavily action packed. We saw none of that this episode, just a confusing timeline with a “rewritten story” ark. I get Doom Patrol is strange, and weird, and that’s what makes the series beautiful, I just feel it could’ve benefited from something this episode.
3. The eye. Well, Super Thanos turning not just people to dust, but everything. This kind of just, well, happened. It was just there in the sky wiping everything out one by one, but that was kind of it. It didn’t feel like it was the main thing of the story, when you think it would be. It ended after the story was rewritten with another eye looking at it until it disappeared. It was a strange episode, with a strange ark to say the least.
Holy Shit Moment
I struggled this episode to find my Holy Shit Moment because it was a fairly laid back episode. However, Cyborg overcharging his canon and blowing his arm off did it for me. We saw a couple of episodes ago that Cyborg will eventually look more Cyborg than he does now, that he will gain upgrades at some point. Is this the beginning of that? Silas surely cannot be impressed with such a failure, maybe it’s time to get some upgrades? I hope he does very soon.
The Verdict
An average episode of a dual episode story. The first part was strong, but the second fell short for me. While some good scenes, with some excellent progression to the characters, I just feel this story went back on itself. It had barely any action worth getting pumped about, and the episode just kind of fell flat on it’s face. The constant character progression does however get me excited for future episodes, but I don’t think I will remember this one in a hurry. Crazy Jane made the episode, she really is incredible to watch.
Rating 6.5/10
