My Review of Doom Patrol's 3x04: "Undead Patrol"

 

Written by Tamara Becher Wilkinson

Directed by Kristin Windell

Madame Rouge: "I don't feel like a bad person. Surely that's not the kind of thing that can be erased with one's memory."

Well, if we're sticking to the comics, then yes, Laura, you very well might be a bad person. Enough of a bad person that Niles would recommend you being terminated by the Sisterhood of Dada (of which we learned Laura happens to be a member of). 

This week was definitely about revealing answers to the audience about Madame Rouge if not to the main characters themselves. The main characters themselves did spend much of this episode in a rather zombified state and without Laura, Willoughby and Niles's head, they would've remained that way.

Having the gang as zombies was a lot of fun to watch on screen. They were craving brains but were a lot more coherent than you'd usually see in this type of scenario. Of course Niles would make one more sacrifice in order to bring the gang back to their normal delved while also warning Laura to leave the manor, which she didn't.

As for Laura/Madame Rouge, her presence mostly irritated the gang who were initially skeptical of her time travelling while at the same time, impatient to know who she was. Rita worked out some prior connection but couldn't piece everything together until an old film revealed exactly the connection between Rita and Laura.

Of course when the episode wasn't tackling zombies, we also had the personal problems as well. Cliff took some steps to deal with the possibility of having Parkinson's while Jane  found a way to get closure from Niles with a bit of a bonfire. 

Then there was Larry. What's going on with him? Is he dying? It does look like he had a giant tumor on his stomach while Victor had his own issues when learning that there was an alternative to his current state. I do wonder how much longer we're going to have Victor offline as well. It's been three episodes now.

- Darren Jones from the Bureau of Normalcy has turned into a Were-Butt. A zombie one of them is on the loose right now.

- Willoughby did not add much to this episode, but he did have some funny lines with Niles, Laura and the gang.

- Laura can shapeshift but struggled with it when needed this week. However we knew she was fine with it back in Codsville.

- Chronology: Two weeks since the events of the first episode.

Undead Patrol had fun with the zombie trope and it could've been a fun Halloween episode had it been a later season episode. I like that the episode didn't waste time with Laura's amnesia and we learned most about her this week. Though whether she'll turn on the gang now that she knows her identity will be interesting.

Rating: 8 out of 10