Doom Patrol Season 3 Review: Deep DC Comics Cuts and Constant Reinvention

When one of HBO Max’s characters Doomed patrol Mention it’s the year 2021, it feels incorrect, given how unstuck in time the characters have always been. Mastermind Niles Caulder brought each member of the misfit superhero team from somewhere in the 20th century: a presumed dead race car driver, an Air Force pilot possessed by a being of mysterious energy, a 1950s actress. exposed to a powerful gas, and protected / sequestered. them in their mansion, where they remained in stasis until the action began, when the series launched on DC Universe in 2019. For the third season, now exclusively on HBO Max, the contrast between the characters’ origins and their wavering attempts at rejoining the world has become a powerful engine for both experimentation and distraction.

In the span of the first three episodes of the new season, Doomed patrol includes a 2001space lighting travel style, a dilapidated resort on the east coast, and a walk through the afterlife that wouldn’t be out of place in Supernatural, a previous house for Doomed patrol showrunner Jeremy Carver. And as with Supernatural, Carver’s Doomed patrol has created an environment that can easily accommodate new and goofy characters who can get in and out of the action and still feel right at home on the show, be it the alien conqueror Garguax or SandmanDead Boy Detective Agency.

The older addition to the cast is a literal substitute for this approach to storytelling. Chilling Adventures of SabrinaMichelle Gomez enters the series as Madame Rouge, a time traveler who has forgotten who she is and what she is supposed to do. She could be anyone and go anywhere, in the same way. Doomed patrol it can be anything from episode to episode.

Madame Rouge, Garguax, Dead Boy Detectives and Brotherhood of Dada join characters like Flex Mentallo as toys drawn from the deep box of DC history, ready for whatever game writers and producers want to play. This endless experimental quality, the feeling that Carver and his team are looking for bright and different things to try, makes Doomed patrol occasionally hit or miss. Even the best additions to the program (especially Garguax) hardly have a chance to establish themselves. Still, the show’s constant mutations and dedication to novelty are always a draw.

Doomed patrol has a lot of competition in the field of “weird superhero shows”. Staying on top of every superhero TV show is a part time job right now, but the fact that we are in an ecosystem that can support Legends of tomorrow, WandaVision, Boys, and Titans, not to mention animated options like Teen Titans GO!, proves that the medium has reached a certain degree of maturity. Now that there is an established pattern of success, there is much more room to experiment with different tones, niches, and sub-genres, and for audiences to expect a lot of different things from superhero television.

However, one thing they rightly know they shouldn’t expect right now: Superhero 101. Doomed patrol almost completely ignores any of the obvious “Wait what?” level questions. that anyone could have about the crazy things that are happening. And the characters are just as indifferent to the strangeness of an unconventional superhero world as the characters. In a subplot this season, Cliff Steele, aka Robotman, tries to make peace with his daughter, Clara, and be present in his son’s life. Cliff’s daughter-in-law Melissa is concerned, not because her wife’s father is a gigantic metal man, but because he is simply too desperate to stay and help.

And when the gang meets Garguax, an intergalactic conqueror who lives in a resort that is spiritually (though not literally) set in the Catskills, everyone except Cyborg – a soft spot this season precisely because he feels like he belongs more to consciousness. of himself. “Brave”, serious Titans – he just shrugs his shoulders and takes care of what is in front of them, instead of questioning it.

There may be five minutes of actual “action” in a given episode of Doomed patrol. Most of the time, the wacky supernatural moments, the “super” parts of the superhero show, have nothing to do with any larger mission or plot. Jane uses her super strength to pull Cliff out of neurologically induced paralysis, or Rita literally melts in response to pressure. In the vast intervals between outbursts of heroism, the characters are arguing, doing comedies, playing steampunk machinery, or turning into zombies. You know, having fun.

That gives Doomed patrol the space to toss a can of spaghetti to the wall, and while some of his ideas don’t stick, the ones that do are great. Garguax is by far the best part of the season so far. Her makeup, gestures, and really all her treatment are straight out of a 1990s genre show like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the way the show promises not to explain why he’s at the resort is fantastic. (Really, Garguax feels like a throwback to Lorne from Angel in the best way.) Better yet, his assistant Samuelson, played by Billy Boyd (Peter Jackson’s Pippin Lord of the Rings movies), starts out as an absence and gradually grows into a major force, simmering in the background until it’s ready to erupt with rage. If there is a problem with Doomed patrolThe hunger for experimentation is that these frequently charming characters are in and out of the show.

Fortunately, several of the main cast members are successful and relatively stable experiments, most notably Robotman, who has really come to life as a collaboration between Brendan Fraser (who voices the character and plays him in flashbacks), Riley Shanahan (his body on screen, in its cyborg iteration), and the rest of the wardrobe, production, and post-production staff who create it. Fraser’s vocal performance subtly shifts the emphasis of Robotman’s enthusiasm from childish to Grandpa Boomer, and gives the show an emotional center through sheer force of will, even when Cliff is insane or inexplicably speaking Japanese.

At one point, Carver and the other writers and producers of Doomed patrol you will have to decide which of the new characters, if any, will stay and which will disappear into the background. So far the most consistent addition to Doomed patrol is Michelle Gomez’s Madame Rouge, playing in the same theatrical and vaguely menacing register she has recently perfected Sabrina and Doctor who. (Not that that’s a bad thing.) But there are plenty of new players, like Garguax, the Dead Boy detective agency, and a reinterpretation of Brotherhood of Dada member The Fog. Any of them could make consistent additions to the series, but given the ever-changing nature of the Doom Patrol, they could all disappear at any time as well.

At least the relationships between the main characters, especially between neurotic team members Rita and Larry, and between disgruntled team members Cliff and Jane, have become strong enough to support Doomed patrolday-to-day action whenever restless reinvention becomes too much hectic. If that base stays stable enough, and the occasional (or not-so-occasional) addition of weird new spices to the mix is ​​still exciting, Doomed patrol You can keep daydreaming on a rainy day for as long as you like.

The first three episodes of Doomed patrol Season 3 is now on HBO Max, with new episodes arriving on Thursdays.