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.
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...
Oh, Ein, you data dog.
Heading into this finale did kinda have the feel of an oncoming classic tragedy. It did deliver.
Straight outta the ISSP's Arkham Asylum...
Ed must be the happiest random-wacky generator ever.
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...
While it was nice seeing everyone return to help save the day, it would have been so much nicer if those appearances had been given real substance and felt less like shallow tokens.
So much of this episode (including that panoramic battle sequence) had so much potential to build and be the climactic sendoff of the series. However, so much careless lazy clumsiness in the design of its details wasted so much of that potential that the result... Sigh.
I think the only part that I actually liked was Esme grabbing the All Stone and throwing it down to break it in three. Besides that Esme may have been the best acted in this episode (and the moments featuring her generally being the better ones), that one move reflected some of how I felt about most of the episode as a whole.
That was oddly fascinatingly done, overall; cool stuff. (And WTF, Ed?) Except... then what? Just like that? Where'd the ending go?
Oddly amusing when the episode's title makes no sense at all until the very last minute of the episode.
So I liked pretty much every bit with Gloria, Esperanza, and Astra, and the thing with the pocket-mansion, but most of the rest was like watching gradeschoolers throw around goofy story ideas. I hope there's a better story-plan this is feeding into...
I'd been wondering how Rita would finally end up back in the present. The possibility of her doing a Dr. Helen Magnus return had occurred to me, but... still... 😮
Welcome to the Dada Sanctuary?
Damn, Connor. Not like that, like Dick did to you.
Daaamn. Double cliff-hangers with a side of Cliff-shrapnel? Brutal.
Spoiler: The Candlemaker is truly evil. The Candlemaker is COVID.
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.
Well, I suppose if Mr. Nobody was going to bolster his post-revenge-high mood-crash by getting stoned on blue Curaçao and then stumble-magic his drunken way into a doomed corner (on Danny Street in a psychoactive paintingspace with... them) and then, at his desolate lowest, get pep-talk coached into wresting back enough narrative control to guide everyone else out while forgetting to account for himself...
As I now think back over the many weirdly assorted elements of this episode, they do fit together into a chaotically odd but functional collage. And, think about it: if the seriously wacky-weird world that is Doom Patrol is going to escalate all the layers of wacky it's built thus far into an appropriately wacky and intense climax (too soon?), that does sound about right, doesn't it?
OTOH, as the credits were first rolling, I did have a minute or so of "what in Beebo's name did I just watch?!" going on there.
The improbability drive was working overtime with this one.
Daaam. Dark.
The team (or at least Beth now) has to wonder about the limits or conditions of Eclypso's true real-world power if he's attacking them specifically with illusions and psychological warfare instead of just taking them out head-on.
Overheard in the Doom Patrol writers room:
"If loose lips sink ships, what do loose butts do?"
"Let's find out."
That operating center of the Bureau of Normalcy is just so... abnormal.
At the end, that security monitor image with the cell ("zelle") number in the corner... I have to wonder if the use of cell number 2187 was a deliberate reference.
It ain't detention block AA-23, but...
That's okay. Finn didn't get the reference, either.
Okay, so the world of the lands surrounding that Stygian railroad weren't as thoroughly thoughtfully fleshed out as I'd've liked. But, it was a nice way for Donna and Tim to meet and return, and it gave us a last (and better) goodbye for Hank.
And for everyone mad that Hank didn't get his return, consider: Donna and Tim woke up in the bodies they'd left behind: how would that have worked out for Hank? :-(
This episode was seriously wacky and yet amazingly done.
It also gives me very much the impression of what might happen if the production team from Titans was asked to create something new and different with inspiration and input from both Legends of Tomorrow and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Did anyone else kinda-sorta want to hear IG-11, somewhere along the way, say "Come with me if you want to live."? ;-)
I don't know. I'm kind of all over the place on this one.
7 (good) bits: End scene with Cindy and Bobbie and Eclipso, maybe the bits with Richard and Pat, and maybe Rick's DoorDashing.
6 (fair) bits: Most parts with Jenny.
5 (meh) bits: Most parts with Courtney.
4 (poor) bits: Huge green flares (and a new crater) in the park in the middle of town and no one notices.
YMMV.
I just... what is... going... errg.
Lemme see if I can break some of this down:
Overall high-level storyline: fair (6/10).
Actual story-portrayal execution: ranges from terrible to fair (4/10).
Sigh.
That they can each mold their lightning power into the creation of a big lightning-sword? Okay, weird, but kinda cool.
That that somehow suddenly makes them all swordsmanship experts? WTF? No.
This episode was the usual-of-late The Flash mix of fairly well-executed moments and really poorly-executed moments, but that one... what the... I just... Sigh.
If nothing else, I did kinda like that Cecile Horton's mind-memory prison when being taken over by the mask was conceptually similar to Khalil Payne's when taken over by Painkiller.
Definitely got the impression that Sidious was very much enjoying this (then quite rare) opportunity to flex.