The momentary reference to the 1985 movie "Gotcha!" was a nice touch.
"My cabbages!"
For viewers who haven't seen the original animated series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuQJDVIEnfs
Gotta say, I liked this take on Johanna Constantine. Wouldn't mind seeing more of her contributions.
And Matthew. Keep us going, here, Matthew.
So, I mostly liked this finale (and season), but...
Some of this episode's personal-demons confrontations felt a bit blunt, although it's difficult to do this sort of thing without it feeling blunt. And this season's villain is all about surfacing your painful memories to the point of despair. So... okay.
More of an issue for me was how many transitions into and between those confrontations, seemingly at Andre's all-powerful whim, felt so arbitrary and discontinuous. Fleshing out the cause-and-effect connections of those power-flexes and transitions could have produced a much stronger result.
Who else saw moments in which Magnifico looked a bit like Homelander?
Somehow, to me, Rita's farewell is so suggestive of a potential new J.D. Robb-style book title: Elegant in Death. Bravo.
I do remember thinking that it'd be great to somehow get Isabelle and the butts to take each other out, but somehow I hadn't thought of doing it quite like that...
There's just something about a bunch of butts singing Shipoopi...
The whole time, I was thinking that one call to Gene and/or Sara expressing concern that the call warning Jimmy about the sting might have come from Josh (which Gene or Sara could then easily find out), and just sit back and let Josh experience the same arrest-and-trial and blind-jail-prisoner hell he was so determined to see Murphy get. Much easier, much more poetically appropriate.
But instead...
Not at all what we all wanted for Murphy or Felix, after everything they've been through, especially once someone finds Josh and fingerprints the big knife right nearby (or did she pick that up on her way out?).
Pretzel deserves better.
i think my only plot objection is that, when they ran upstairs to help, Max and Darnell should've gone up, knowing the lunk they'd have to get through, while Felix made sure to copy that recording and Leslie made the call. But in the heat of such a moment...
Felix did show up surprisingly well upstairs, though.
Otherwise... daaamn.
And, dammit, Josh, look what you did. :cry:
Wow. An episode in which a lot of progress happened and everything seemed to go well.
We all know what that means for this incarnation of Murphy's Law (even without the flashforward bits)...
Wow. Just...
Okay, if you're one who truly hates musical episodes and just can't fathom the thought that a non-musical TV show can come up with a concept that fits a musical into the storyline and execute it well, then maybe skim through this one or find a synopsis somewhere and move along.
But, if you can open your mind a bit and give it a chance...
Musical episodes just aren't the cool concept that they were some decades ago. I still cringe whenever I hear that a show I watch is doing one. But I've learned to give 'em a chance, 'cause sometimes they don't suck. I think that most productions these days have learned that, if they're gonna do a musical episode these days (as opposed to forty years ago), it can't just be a cheesy sort of fun; it has to be solidly good or it'll backfire hard. They can't all live up to what The Magicians did with the concept (especially with "All That Josh" S03E09 and "All That Hard, Glossy Armor" S04E10), but...
Then again, Doom Patrol already has such a pantheon of all kinds of Weird about it...
IMO, this one was actually pretty good. It made sense within the plot (especially concerning Isabelle's super-naïve experience and wannabe musical theater background) and it was executed surprisingly well. (And we got to see Keeg as a Disneyesque Happy Fun Ball.) Personally, I found it fun and it suited the story. And knowing that the actors all sang their own songs kinda adds to it (especially since since of 'em are pretty good).
Not everyone will agree, and that's okay. This show's wide range of weird almost guarantees that not everyone will enjoy every episode.
In case anyone's interested, more about what went into the episode at https://www.tvinsider.com/1108762/doom-patrol-season-4-episode-9-musical-songs-immortimas-day/
The Weird is strong with this one.
This show is a perpetual study of how plans can so easily fracture, intersect, interact, and go completely and utterly wrong.
The lesson: Do not bring Compound V into contact with cancer cells.
Or the wonderful and wise Sun-Hee will come back and spank you. :cry:
Freaky flashbacks to the Golgothan (a. k. a., The Excremental), if a little less visually gross.
The bathroom "Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I was just here taking a sh*t" moment was weirdly pretty damn funny.
Pretty much the rest of it was a whole lotta WTF?
Muriel is so oddly adorable in her utter cluelessness.
The degree to which this episode captured the look, movement, and sounds of the old Warner Brother's Looney Tunes / Tiny Toons cartoons (excepting the gore) is weirdly stunning.
Successfully blending that much adorableness with that much carnage is something of a [weird] achievement in itself.
Man, every puffed-up local mini-lord that tries to prey on the passing-through Joelorian and his charge just get destroyed, don't they?
Poor Radovid looked like he was having one hell of a panic attack there at the end.
When the episode title shows additional meaning in the episode's last few seconds...
Turns out there're other reasons for at least some of this last season's choppy abbreviated feel: https://ew.com/tv/the-flash-showrunner-reveals-everything-cut-from-final-season/ :disappointed:
It was a nice goodbye.
A somewhat weak action/conflict episode, with multiple super-bads (some of whom individually once stymied the team for most of a season) defeated far more quickly and easily than they ever were or should have been.
But at least it included a fairly nice goodbye; better than some.
Edit: Turns out there're other reasons for at least some of this last season's choppy abbreviated feel: https://ew.com/tv/the-flash-showrunner-reveals-everything-cut-from-final-season/ :disappointed:
"Damn, Kent." :thumbsup::open_mouth::thumbsup:
I like seeing occasional episodes that focus on various other characters, but this...
This felt like the writers took a genuinely interesting story-concept idea and tossed together some quick and sloppy story around it. There were some good bits in there, but most of it was... disappointing.
I was actually encouraged by the first four episodes of this season; still not as good as Superman & Lois, but certainly easily better than much of The Flash's recent seasons. Then... sigh.
That may have been one of the goofier SF/comic-series timeloop episodes I've seen, but it kinda worked in that the characters got use out of it to reconsider parts of their lives and parts of the presentation were just a fun sort of funny. The cause and solution to the timeloop were weirdly out of nowhere, but they usually are, so... Yeah, kinda silly in places, but other parts worked, and it was mostly fun overall.
Besides, I feel like comparing it to Legends of Tomorrow's "Here I Go Again" (episode 3x11) is kinda unfair. ;-)
That said, I hope that story and presentation get more serious (at least in terms of plot and execution quality) as the season progresses, as, while fun for an episode, this tone won't work for the season as a whole, and feels like an odd choice to open with (given that it could be taken as a promise of what's to come).
That logo at the end, though...
That was some seriously randomly wacky side-story.
Although I did like how it tied back into the main growing plot at the end.
Damn, but crazy ol' Bet Sykes has the craziest damn charmed life, must have the wiliest guardian angel on watch.
