Anyone else see those snowy mountains outside the cell window at the end, and think of the long training time spent far away from Gotham that made Bruce Wayne into the person ready to become The Batman? Hmm... Too soon?
Wow. Just... wow.
I think the mind-boggling depth of them all being (what appeared to be) fully "present" at several different birthday parties at once was what impressed my poor struggling brain the most. But there was so much else. The varied real personal struggles of each of Will, Lito, Sun, Kala, Wolfgang,... and the way they keep growing more fluent with their connections, keep showing up for each other...
Okay, yeah, the sex-visuals were arguably a bit much, IMO, but those weird virtual-orgy-esque crossovers are completely consistent with the growing connections (and blurring boundaries?) between the cluster-members, so...
Did I mention wow?
Looking forward to how these struggles all proceed, and what the cluster does about Whispers -- did Riley's flickering eyes look like she was chasing the beginnings of an idea? -- when episodes resume...
I guess that explains a bit more toward why Mario was so interested in the progress toward a Tetch-virus cure. I wonder if he's been spending more time stalking Lee as his infection has progressed. And, of course, will we find out how and when he was infected? Or is he just an early case of the Gotham-wide virus spread that we're apparently going to see start breaking out next episode?
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/
"Damn, Kent." :thumbsup::open_mouth::thumbsup:
"I call it the Kessel Run."
That look, and the sudden-but-smooth deflation-transition to it, was so damn perfectly delivered, that it easily deserved a couple of rewind-and-rewatches.
Leon must be the mostly weirdly interesting individual.
Oddly enough, I rather enjoyed Elliot's unusual take on How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.
Interesting mix. Some strong story-parallels to the original (both with Vicious and with Pierrot le Fou), with some differences that mostly worked well. (Except maybe for that one-hires-the-other thing; not sure that makes sense given who's involved. And I'm not sure that the reasoning for Pierrot le Fou's emotional crumble at the end was as clear as it was in the original.) Crazy, messy, mostly fun stuff.
But those gorram jerks abandoned Ein all alone on that dock. Not okay, guys. Not okay.
So we know that some (Jonas, Ulrich) can cross times through the odd metal gates in the caves. But others... Mikkel would probably remember if he'd opened and passed through those stiff heavy gates, and gone back. And I have trouble imagining Gretchen opening the gates at all. So... uh...
Again, some good stuff and some seriously lazy-writing bits.
Such as: That's not how CEO transitions work at all; like an "acting CEO" (which made no sense here to begin with) would have the authority to sign her job over to someone else without the approval of the company's board (which was threatening to fire her a few episodes ago) like that. But if it makes a story advancement easier for lazy writers...
So the Lazarus Pits here are pretty different from the ones on Earth Prime, eh?
Hmm. Let's let two superpowered but very emotionally and socially immature children play completely unsupervised for a couple of days. What could go wrong?
Okay, so for some reason, the 100+ year old kid still is still physically a kid. The show already has weird anti-aging phenomenon sprinkled all over. Okay. But, after 100+ years of life experience (even if a bunch of it was spent locked away), she still has the emotional maturity of a little kid? How does that happen? It just makes it a little more difficult to take her or her issues seriously.
Overall, the animation was a bit stiff, but perhaps expected as such given the incredible short notice with which the project to produce it must have been thrown together. The inventive transitions helped. In the end, I appreciate the dedication that brought it to us rather than simply letting the season effectively dangle after ep. 18.
I wonder how much of Elizabeth's IMO-far-too-easy slide completely over to the Mom Side (my only real problem with the plot development here) was rushed by the need to complete it with this one episode as opposed to across the originally planned four episodes that this one effectively replaced.
Mar-GoPro? Heh. Gotta love the odd cultural cross-overs.
That new title-intro is certainly different. And kinda weird. And I like it. Weirdly.
https://youtu.be/Ti3W74hset0
I think my only problem with this episode was the farcical treatment of the end of the Deep-saves-dolphin scene: everything from the van's hard-stop to the ending smear on the road felt like a bad parody (well beyond what the show inherently is), too ridiculous to be real. I get the point that Deep is no planner and screws up when he goes out on his own, but the writers could have worked just a little more to make that piece feel more real and less like a detour into self-parody.
I also have to wonder if, if Deep's apparently real passion-concern for marine life were taken remotely seriously by Vought and the team, maybe he'd be a better hero and less of the jerk they've basically taught him to be (and Vought could even spin it into yet another PR plus if they really wanted to), but that's a whole another thought-experiment.
Otherwise, this episode continues this show's pretty impressive job of stitching together an image of a superhero-populated world (rife with corporatism and politics and PR) whose possibility no one wants to face. Except, maybe, that it still has Spice Girls.
One of the more fun episodes in awhile, methinks, weaving in increasing threads of wackiness in a way that worked.
And I think we all knew that all sorts of wackiness lurked deep inside the mind of Patterson. Like ninja bo-staff warrior madness. Right?
But that Breakfast Club riff... (The Blindspot Club?) Now that was some funny wacky...
Did we just see the proto-beginning of Heroes for Hire?
Margo: Who are we, now, El? We used to be glamorous amazing mega-bitches. And now?
Eliot: We have... depth, and... character.
Margo: [the penultimate WTF look]
Another moment "pause" buttons were made for...
A few randomish highlights and comments:
Applause for the Punisher of the evening, Ward Meachum!
Am I the only one wondering how interesting a novelization of this season's story solely from Ward's tortured and evolving point of view would be? Hmm.
Damn, but Davos is taking his feelings of abandonment and betrayal awfully deeply. And now, feeding on redirecting Joy's newly devastating daddy-issues to fuel his own vengeful plans? Dark. Maybe he and Karl Mordo should get together and vent.
And Joy. Sort of like experiencing all of Ward's last thirteen years of torment and disillusionment and despair slammed into just a couple of days. She looked so crushed. That won't be good.
And, yes, Danny, you abandoned your singular guardpost without warning or backup for a good while. Of course something happened while you were away. Duh.
Here's hoping that both Finn Jones (portraying Danny Rand) and the Iron Fist writing/directing team hone their skills -- which came off as a bit clumsy over much this season -- more fully before returning to us in The Defenders. Much potential -- especially with such strong support from Jessica Henwick (Colleen Wing) and Tom Pelphrey (Ward Meachum), and of course Rosario Dawson (Claire Temple) -- but much rougher than the other Marvel Netflix series so far. We'll see...
I have to wonder what they saw, and how much of that we'll see in near-future episodes. Maul is clearly after something specific -- some one specific, apparently now -- and I thought I heard Ezra say "twin suns" which sounds very Tatooine. Iiinteresting...
That was a whole different kind of hallway fight scene.
My name is Artemis Crock. For three months, I was lost and alone with only one goal: revenge. Now I will avenge my parents' terrible death, and stop the monster who murdered them from ever hurting anyone again. To do this, I must become someone else. I must become something else.
Did we just see the energy-absorption powers of DC's Parasite?
This is another one of those frustrating combinations of some good fun stuff and some lazy stupid.
Take the gradual elimination of the robos:
* Robo-Behrad: Taken out by a magic-blast from Astra. Cool. More of that wands-at-the-ready action please? 7/10.
* Dr. Sharpe & Robo-Astra: Assuming that Dr. Sharpe is still the Ava Clone, then I'd expect the digestion disruptor concoction to work on her, but shouldn't there have been some question of whether it would work on Robo-Astra? The Robos (starting with Robo-Hoover) were designed to fit into society, presumably including meals and such, so maybe it'd work, and I'm willing to buy that it might've, but think there should have been some quick throwaway question about whether it would. Other than that, their lure to the door and jump push into the fire works well enough for me. 6-7/10.
* Robo-Gary & Robo-Esperanza: As goofy as this was, it works quite well (and is rather funny) if watched while remembering that Robo-Gary is a moron. 7-8/10.
* Robo-Zari: Everything about this scene was so thoroughly stupid. Zari, using the barest "90s hacker" description, somehow absolutely nails Robo-Zari's current look. While I can buy that Robo-Zari may not be programmed as combatant-heavy as the other Robos, I have trouble buying that she slap-fights just like a panicked Zari. Gary I might expect to stand there indecisively gawking, but Astra could have magically frozen or stunned both Zaris, examined them both, then plug-pulled the Robo, but suggesting that Gary eat them both and spit out the non-Robo? Really? And then... Zari beats Robo-Zari? Stupid upon stupid upon... 2-3/10
* Robo-Sara & Robo-Nate: I like the basic idea, but no questions at all to "pull your CPUs" on the spot like that? Hmm. 5-6/10.
There're some classicish Legends recklessness that I could go either way on:
* Operation Ruckus: counting on the Robos to properly and safely clean all that up? (Although "Can you describe the ruckus?" was priceless).
* That last duping Robo-Nate trick; inventive and funny in the moment, but who knows what damage that moron might do while working that post? (Or maybe we haven't heard the last of it?)
IAC, a lot of this is obviously subjective, and I'm sure that some of what annoyed me will entertain others, so... shrug
OTOH, there's the impressive trick of making this-Eobard's last bit an actually sad moment, and Robo-Astra's "from Hell's heart I stab at thee" surprise which I suspect will now lead us directly (and sadly) to how the Legends finally fully take the new Waverider)...
Wow. My reactions to this one are a bit all over the place, but...
First of all, nice job adapting the anime's opening-credits sequence. That was fun. And now that music's back stuck in my head.
For the most part, this one's story is that of the original anime's "Asteroid Blues" episode, with some minor adjustments, and that much works pretty well, although introducing Faye this early is a bit odd but... we'll see what they do with that.
I'm not sure I like giving Jet a family, making his immediate motivations about buying his daughter a decent birthday present. That sorta works, but the anime's making him the starving loner ex-cop whose motivation is mostly about putting food on the increasingly empty table seemed more effective. Otherwise, I'm liking Mustafa Shakir's take on Jet a lot—as well as John Cho's on Spike. Haven't seen enough of Daniella Pineda's Faye yet to have much opinion, but her attitude seems to work so far. (I don't really care that this Faye's not playing so hard to original-Faye's overt sensual angle, as long as this Faye is otherwise similar and interesting.)
As for the end... Hmm. Vicious is, of course, well, vicious, but that seemed rather unnecessarily unstable of him. And was that Julia? If so, that's a rather large change...
Waitaminute. No preview-of-next-session with those randomly wacky character narrations? Perhaps they were a bit too goofy to adapt well. Sigh. They were a fun dessert to each anime ep.
Overall, an interesting start with its own adjustments and wrinkles which we'll have to watch to see how they play out.
Ryan: "Ok. So how do we dose that many people all at once?"
Luke: "You have to inject each person one at a time."
Ryan: "But that means…"
Me: "It's time to call Barry."
I do have to wonder, watching this, how much of Boba's drive to avenge his father comes from within vs. being stoked by old-friend-of-Jango Aurra Sing. Probably a mix of both, but it might say something about the influences of elders/mentors on the youngers' choices, such as Aurra Sing on Boba, Plo Koon (and Tera Sinube and Luminara Unduli and...) on Ahsoka, etc.
