Written by Marcus Dalzine & Chris Dingess
Directed by Stefan Pleszczynski
Rita (re Decreator): "We're too late."
Willoughby: "Maybe I should've done A Hard Day's Night."
There's probably an unwritten rule somewhere where something isn't a genre show until a certain actor appears in it. In this case, the actor in question would be Mark Sheppard and low and behold, he appears in this episode playing a character who might be a recurring presence throughout this season. Hard to tell as DC Universe are annoyingly spoiler phobic with their shows but for now, let's assume he is, yeah?
Sheppard in this episode guest starred as occult detective (no, not that one), Willoughby Kipling, an old ally of Caulder's and a member of the Knights Templar and wasted no time in insulting the Patrol members (especially Cyborg) while also bringing some trouble to their door when tasked with taking care of a walking doomsday book named Elliot (Ted Sutherland). Kipling wanted to kill Elliot, but the rest of the gang didn't share his enthusiasm for that particular idea.
Elliot's story does play out rather well as we see him being prepared for his prophetic doom by his parents until turning 18 made his father change his mind and his mother even more determined into playing her role to seeing her son bring about the Decreator's goal. She's rather zealous about that and even seemed to take a little too much pleasure in also deconstructing both Cliff and Jane when her acolytes also get a hold of them as well.
Breaking away from Nobody's overall machinations, the Cult of the Unwritten Book are not the most original of doomsday laden baddies but they are a rather addition. My only surprise is that they're being introduced a bit early into the show but I did like the look of the Decreator and next week's episode should give viewers a good measure of what his world will actually look like considering that Elliot was read by the end of this one.
Cult stuff aside - I do think the dynamics are coming along nicely enough. Larry got a bit more insight into one of his past conversations with the Chief while Rita was the only one who really came the closest to keeping Elliot safe until the cult got him in the end. I'm liking that Rita is stepping up more and more as a hero, even if she and Larry are reluctant to embrace that term.
Then there's the dynamics between Cliff and in particular, Jane's persona of Hammerhead. Hammerhead might have made some points about Cliff but it's hard not to find her stance on him a tad hypocritical as well and I'm glad that we got to see Cliff call her out on that as well. At some point though, I'm sure Hammerhead's perception of Cliff will hopefully change for the better as the series progresses.
- We got to see a more passive personality of Jane's this week with Penny Farthing, who is probably not the most useful of people to have around when trying to stop a doomsday cult.
- Like that other occult detective, Kipling has some rather unusual items on his person including Janis Joplin's floss of all things.
- Singing blue horse with a nail in it's head. I think that might have been a bit more striking than the giant eye in the sky at the end of this one.
- Chronology: Not long from where Puppet Patrol left off.
I'll admit that Cult Patrol isn't my favourite episode so far but I did like a lot of the characters, found Elliot sympathetic enough and there was something rather Wonderland-ish about the lost city of Nurnheim along with Kipling proving to be an interesting if morally grey ally to the gang. It'll be interesting to see how the next episode resolves this doomsday cult.
Rating: 7 out of 10
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