Tuesday, August 04, 2020

My Review of Doom Patrol's 2x08: "Dad Patrol"



Written by Tom Farrell & April Fitzsimmons
Directed by Amanda Row

Candlemaker: "It's time, Dorothy."

No kidding, eh? All season long we've been building towards the inevitable with Dorothy and now it's here. All season long this show has done a great job with developing Dorothy and making her as sympathetic as possibly with Abigail Shapiro putting in a fantastic performance but with one episode to go, it was time for the Candlemaker to finally come out and properly play.

Niles will never win father of the year but in this episode he attempted to give Dorothy one last nice day before he'd have to do something to prevent her from maturing. However fate got in the way as Dorothy did mature and the end showed that the world might be doomed as a result.

It's hard not to be sympathetic to Dorothy's plight as all she's wanted is to be a normal girl and loved. Niles has repeatedly failed her as a parent and while the others have done their best to try and help, the most helpful adult in Dorothy's life was the woman in the bathroom who explained to the girl that she was getting her periods. 

With Dorothy's tale playing out in the present, the episode delved more into the past to examine the abuse that Kay/Miranda had to suffer at the hands of Kay's father. The show hasn't been shy in highlighting how awful Kay's father has been but in case any of us had forgotten, we really got another painful reminder of what a truly evil human being he was to his daughter.

Jane wonderfully stepped up with a little help from Larry by going down the well to retrieve Kay's stuffed teddy Harry before Miranda revealed her true colours and shoved Jane down another well where the likes of Scarlett and Lucy were also floating in. I know Miranda was too good to be true and we've got an interesting battle for Primary on our hands with her and Jane in the finale.

As for Rita and Victor - they made a lovely team up this week as they went looking for Roni, who killed someone from her past and admitted to stealing the Uma Jelly. Things did not end well between Victor and Roni in this episode but here's hoping those two can work it out. I really like Roni and I'm hoping the show can keep her around for a bit longer.

Elsewhere Cliff was also kept out of the main events this week but on the plus side, he got to reconnect with Clara and it was rather nice to see the two of them getting along. More interesting was the fact that Cliff seemed to have a reaction when cooking breakfast. Is he starting to regain some feeling?

- If you liked the idea of Steele & Stone a few episodes ago, how does Borg & Beekeeper sound? It could be the modern version of The Avengers.
- Larry had some flashbacks to spending time with his son, Paul while Willoughby was consulting with a white guinea pig named Burbunny over the Dorothy situation.
- By the looks of this episode, I'm thinking that Niles will not make it into next season. 
- Chronology: 1954 and 1961 for scenes with Kay/Miranda and Larry/Paul as well as the present day for the bulk of the episode.

Dad Patrol took the theme of fathers and daughters with varying results but each look was either compelling, heartfelt, horrifying or a mixture of the three elements. I know we're one episode short on what we should be but I do hope the finale does resolve the main story with Dorothy well but even if it doesn't, the numbers on HBO Max would imply that we'll be seeing more of this show for the time being.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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