Tuesday, December 20, 2022

My Review of Doom Patrol's 4x03: "Nostalgia Patrol"

 



Written by Tanya Steele
Directed by Kristin Windell

Laura (to the gang): "I think Rita is in the movie."

Talk about a double meaning there. Not only did we get a nice look at three of Rita Farr's movies but most our main characters even got to star in them and all because a certain emotional vampire needed Rita's emotional juice for the Immortus plot. Nice to see the latter bit wasn't forgotten about at all.

Rita started the episode watching a movie and commenting on the lead actress's lack of emoting, only for a flyer about a retrospective of her own movies got her in a rather emotional mood. To be fair, it looked like a trap even before Rita stepped into the empty venue and low and behold, it turned out to be a trap.

Having Rita being transported in her movies - Secret Rendezvous, The Haunting Of White Manor and Spartacus 4052 was a pretty clever twist and April Bowlby delivered a brilliant performance throughout the episode. Rita had felt abandoned by her friends but most of them spent this episode trying to help her. Even Laura in her own way was trying to make amends for her own past misdeeds towards Rita.

The best part of the episode might have resulted in giving the mysterious Dr Janus (Timeca Seretti) and Mister 104 (Sendhil Ramamurthy) exactly what they wanted and putting Rita in a coma but seeing Rita and the gang really step up for one another too. Now it's just up to them as well as Victor and Laura to get Rita out of her coma by next episode.

Speaking of the gang, as per usual they had their own shit to deal with. Larry had gotten increasingly frustrated with Keeg not talking to him while Cliff had been annoyed about feeling the wrong things. Then there was Jane's encounter with a jigsaw piece of Shelly and Laura reconsidering being the team after the way things panned out this week during her trust building exercise.

As for Victor, he had an awkward reunion with Deric and two of his former school friends but things seemed to smooth between everyone during a game of laser tag. It was a nice subplot for the episode, even though it kept Victor out of the main action until the last scene.

- Anyone else got a tiny bit of a flirty vibe between Larry and Mister 104? I wasn't a fan of the latter as Bloodwork in The Flash but he was a lot more interesting here.
- Jane and Cliff bonding over Top Gun was rather sweet along with Jane exploring the creepy kid horror trope to Cliff. 
- Did Keeg end up bonding with Mister 104? Why did he do that?
- Chronology: From where the previous episode more or less left off.
 
Nostalgia Patrol had some great fun with the movie throwback to Rita's career, a strong secondary story with Victor while also introducing new players like Dr Janus and Mister 104 and continuing on with the Immortus plot. This was a great episode.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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