Written by Tamara Becher-Wilkinson
Directed by Christopher Manley
Steve: "Folks are going to start to forget who the Doom Patrol is."
After this episode, it should be safe to assume that the current team (minus Cyborg and Robotman) are unlikely to forget what happened to the original team. This episode somewhat begs the question - should the team even bother to look for Niles? Maybe him being away from them is the best thing for them after all.
In the 1950s, we saw the original members - Steve Dayton/Mento (Will Kemp), Arani Desei/Celcius (Jasmine Kaur) and Rhea (Lesa Wilson) work with Niles in order to go up against Mr Nobody with absolutely disastrous results for them and with only metahuman, Joshua Clay (Alimi Ballard) to try and keep them in a place where they were still suffering the aftereffects of their defeat.
I did like in flashbacks that we saw Mento's brief love affair with Rita and how it played a role in her general guarded behaviour which she has been letting go of in the last few episodes. Their romance started off well before Steve's ability to read Rita's mind revealed something shameful from her past and the two of them subsequently broke up.
However it was Rita who managed to help out her former lover and his team mates when Mento's own mind became part of the problem in this episode. I felt sorry for the original team here, especially Celcius who genuinely seemed to believe that she was married to Niles as well and given that he was ready to wash his hands off this team for Joshua to pick up the pieces, perhaps Jane (who took a leadership role this week) should be prepared for Niles doing the same with her team as well.
When we weren't delving more into the past of Caulder's questionable leadership skills, the present also had Cyborg and Robotman dealing with Silas Stone as the latter helped his son while also telling Cliff a bit more about his real relationship with Niles, which again wasn't strictly positive. This episode did a little better in making Silas come across as better.
As for Victor and Cliff - their rivalry probably isn't going to go away anytime soon but I did like that the former attempt to help the latter connect with his daughter through social media, even if Cliff got one hell of a harsh wake up call at the end of it though.
- We got a rather embarrassing update on Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man as he rather unsuccessfully attempted to rob a convenience story.
- Mr Nobody is apparently not a good enough threat to worry about for the JL. Also no snarky commentary from him this week, which I actually missed.
- Standout music: Perfect Day was used pretty well during the bittersweet last moments of this episode.
- Chronology: 1958 for the Doom Manor scenes and a little earlier for the opening scene where Rita accidentally killed a sleazy casting director.
Doom Patrol Patrol really did give us an insight into the original members and their tragic defeat but aside from reminding us that Mr Nobody is a right bastard, it didn't do much to advance the plot. Saying that, I did enjoy this a little more than the cult two parter and next week's episode will probably be anything but therapeutic.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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