Jack Bauer is a scary MacGyver of emergency enhanced interrogation tactics.
Jack Bauer on a one-man rescue-raid mission is always a winning hand.
Leon must be the mostly weirdly interesting individual.
Hmm. So how much of the Dark Army Minions' willingness to die for the cause is fueled by their belief that White Rose will bring them back once the mission is complete?
Oddly enough, I rather enjoyed Elliot's unusual take on How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying.
"We are chaotic."
"But Chaotic Good."
Indeed. :dagger_knife::dragon:
And so,
Robo-Sarah,
following a brief bout of discovery and resistance,
gets her invitation renewed
to remain
in the Twilight Zone.
So, basically, Tannhaus created the break, Jonas/Adam and Martha/Eva perpetuated it, and everyone else suffered through this ultimate twist on Greek tragedy, all until Claudia finally figured out where the original break was. And we all felt our brains stretched and twisted trying to follow all of the convolutions that a bunch of time-traveling breaks and perpetuations would cause, despite what all the other time-travel stories have told us.
Interesting at the end to see some of who would still have existed without all the mad timeloop feedback yarnballing the family trees (and thinking through why they're still there and others aren't), and that Hannah would be the one to somehow Kenobi-sense the millions of voices crying out in release...
Daaaamn.
There was probably no way to wrap up all of that interwoven complexity in a way that would make all viewers happy, but I'm at least satisfied that this wrap-up make some sense and tied (so to speak) up the loose ends, despite the loss of some characters that will now never be. Well done.
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...
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?
So the Lazarus Pits here are pretty different from the ones on Earth Prime, eh?
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.