TV Review: ‘Doom Patrol’ Season 4, Episode 7 — Difficult To Return
by Frank Martin
It’s very difficult to get into certain TV shows when not even the executives who greenlit them are fully behind what they are producing. Fans have seen this with a lot of DC Comics properties as the leadership at its parent company feels directionless and keeps changing. Titans is just one Max show affected by this. Its spinoff off, Doom Patrol, is in the same boat. But since Doom Patrol has a much more whimsical and absurdist storyline, it’s much harder to break the season into two parts while still retaining audience interest. The first episode back from the hiatus proves this to a great degree.
Doom Patrol pretty much picks up where the hiatus left off. The bad guys are continuing still trying Immortus. Cliff (Brendan Fraser) is the last member of the team to still have his longevity. In the end, he actually gives it up believing it would bring him closer to his daughter and grandchild. This unleashes Immortus upon the world. Meanwhile, Vic (Joivan Wade) and his friend continue to fight the scissorhand beings while Rita (April Bowlby) and Rouge (Michelle Gomez) get drunk while trying to come up with their own solution to save everyone.
All in all, this episode felt empty. It didn’t give the sense that the characters are really growing in any particular direction. This isn’t necessarily Doom Patrol’s fault. The characters are so outlandish to begin with and have gone through such a journey over the course of its four seasons that it’s hard to find untapped territory for them. This is way different than a series like Titans, which was primarily plot driven. In a show like that, characters can have slower moving arcs so that the plot can be the main focus of the show. With Doom Patrol, the characters are much more important than the plot, but there’s only so much territory to cover. This episode felt to be dragging until the main villain was eventually revealed. Hopefully, future episodes will pick up the tension until the series finale. But even still, it’s hard to get excited about a show that’s already, ahem, doomed.
Doom Patrol streams Thursdays on Max.
