I respect and admire Doom Patrol for its pushing-the-envelope wisecracks and bold, Baum-ish insinuations. It's DC's tune-laden answer to Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, as siphoned through the Uncanny X-Men, but with a darker, demented heart and placed, no less, in an alternate (and therefore superior) 2021.
As should come as no surprise, all of our endearing, mad misfits return for Season 3: Timothy Dalton as Niles Caulder (in good, spectral shape); Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan as Robotman; Joivan Wade as Cyborg, Diane Guerrero as Crazy Jane; Matt Bomer and Dwain Murphy as Negative Man; Mark Sheppard as Willoughby Kipling; and of course, there's my personal favorite, April Bowlby's enchanting and flexible-to-a-fault Elasti-Woman. (Gosh, if only there were veritable, Rita Farr movies I could watch, I'd be in friggin Heaven!) The decor-shifting anomaly named Danny also returns, but will Devan Long's Flex Mentallo? (I sure hope so.)
The dependable scene stealer, however, is Abi Monterey's Dorothy Spinner, Caulder's meta-daughter. For fun, she's a great manipulator of tangible, imaginary friends. The series has come to represent her plight of self discovery, and if she were to depart (for a long, episodic haul, that is), all would no doubt fall apart.
Joining spry Spinner's journey is Michelle Gomez's Madame Rouge, a steampunked, face-stealing vixen of the Brotherhood of Evil, and Stephen Murphy's Garguax, a vigilant, green extraterrestrial of a not-so-nice kind.
I have no idea how these newbies will impact Dorothy and the Patrol, for Doom Patrol is the epitome of sardonic experimentation and sublime, (in)human possibilities. In other words, the less revealed, the better.
Check out Season 3's first batch of episodes on HBO Max, and if you haven't caught any of the prior, please do delve in. All episodes have been queued for your convenient viewing pleasure.
My goodness, Episode 4 gave me ASH VS EVIL DEAD flashback, which was nice. The zombie-brain-eating angle was clearly culled from RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD instead of Russo/Romero lore. I guess that's okay, but I'd have preferred a more generalized munching.
ReplyDelete