Doom Patrol Episode 6 RECAP (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Readers, the Doom Patrol Patrol episode...of Doom Patrol (yes I know, me too) is SO GOOD

Not like I wasn’t expecting it to be good mind you, but wondering where it could go after the Decreator arc was pretty much me for a week

And while it didn’t necessarily advance the plot of the overall season, I’m definitely happy that it used the plot of the episode to give us the next best thing: character development

I mean, yes; the show’s been pretty good as far as properly distributing it to us so far, but I’m glad that these latest episodes have been properly rotating the focus on which characters get it so that everyone has their time to shine

Cult Patrol and Paw Patrol were great turning points for the wheel, but that bitch really started spinning with Doom Patrol...Patrol. *sighs* Let’s begin.

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Doom Patrol Patrol

• To give you an idea on which member is gonna be the main focus of this episode, we start off with a flashback to Rita about a year or so after her accident
• /She’s off trying to get a lead role in an upcoming picture from a big wig producer. But because this is the 50’s and because she’s a woman, he’ll only “entertain” the possibility if she decides to play “Patty Cake” with him./
• That was a Who Framed Rodger Rabbit reference for all you youngin’s out there.
• /But because she’s still fresh from her accident, Rita doesn’t know how to properly keep her emotions in check and accidentally (yet rightfully) shows the producer that misogyny is a hell of a drug. Luckily the scumbag’s secretary proves to us that she’s a ride or die for the Me Too movement/
• (He had a heart attack scene)
• Back in the current timeline we get an idea of what everyone’s doing. Cliff found his daughter’s social media profile and asks Cyborg to help him hack in it to see what she’s been up to
• Instead of doing that, he helps Jane do some research regarding the original Doom Patrol, which was something that Mr. Nobody asked her to do after the lot of them handled the Cult of the Unwritten Book crisis.
• /Once they find their previous headquarters, and after Rita reveals that she and a member of the team named Mento were lovers once upon a time, the alter of Jane that can teleport takes herself, Rita and Larry to the location. When they get there however, they find out that its now a school and that the headmaster was actually expecting her/
• Turns out Niles actually formed the Doom Patrol with Mento and the other two superheroes once upon a time, and was behind turning it into a school for metahumans. So the fact that Rita and Mento had a past isn’t necessarily out of left field. 
• Especially since it didn’t start off as a romance. We find out that when Rita first arrived at Doom Manor seeking Niles’ help, Mento was actually part of her therapy to gain control of her abilities
• /You see Mento is a psychic who wears a reverse Magneto helmet to help enhance his powers outside of reading minds. Once Niles realized that there was a mental block in Rita’s way of keeping her shape, he assigned Mento as her psychological therapist/
• You know that mantra she was saying to herself in the bathroom in Episode 3? Her therapy with Mento was how she learned it. Which only really tells me that slowly but surely we’re going to get answers to a lot of questions previous episodes set in our heads, and that’s never a bad thing.
• Meanwhile back at Doom Manor, Silas arrives to reboot Victor after Mr. Nobody blasted his arm off in the last episode and Cliff reset him to grow it back so that he can be at 100% efficiency again.
• /But rightfully so, Victor doesn’t trust his dad to reboot him without doing something shifty, so he asks Cliff to keep an eye out while he’s offline to make sure Silas didn’t do anything suspect. He agrees...if Vic hacks into his daughter’s social media and gives him access./
• The exchange went just like you think it went.
• /Back at the school, while Jane and Larry are getting more info on Niles and what the retirees know about Mr. Nobody, Rita is reunited with -- Oh, come the fuck on!/
• Does Niles just keep this immortality juice in barrels in his basement or some shit? Why is everyone still like they were back in the 50’s and 60s?
• Like, yes. Rita and Larry make sense. Rita’s condition allows her to keep her shape and appearance the same as she was in the past, and Negative Man’s cosmic essence I assume is pretty much keeping his body alive.
• But then there’s the Chief. Thanks to the last episode, there’s Jane. And now Mento? How is everyone a fucking Highlander??
• *sighs* Anyway, Rita and Mento reconnect and there interaction shows that they didn’t necessarily break up on good terms
• Also this happened (first glitch)
• Then it happened again (second glitch)
• Then after we find out that the Doom Patrol actually FOUGHT Mr. Nobody in the past with Niles leading the way, we find out that this entire thing is a simulation
• /A simulation, made by an AGE APPROPRIATE MENTO, who after breaking the illusion proceeds to force the three and the administrator to endure their worst fears because that’s what Mr. Nobody did to them. Which is some petty-ass shit, just saying/
• But because Larry’s cosmic ghost is awesome, it’s able to get Mento’s helmet off and the nightmares stop, giving the administrator time to explain what when they fought Mr. Nobody, they lost and have been slowly deteriorating and going crazy. Mento’s projection of themselves and the school is how they stay grounded and that the administrator -- who is ALSO a metahuman -- is there to take care of them
• Turns out, Mr. Nobody wanted Jane to find the original Doom Patrol to show her what he did to the previous team as a way of showing her what he’d do to them if they kept trying to pursue them
• And while this story was a very well put together way of delivering that info, I’d still say that the character that developed most of all here was Rita
• After reliving a moment of her own past that just completely had us asking MORE questions, she came face to face with her own sense of identity after experiencing the lie Mento has to tell himself in order to stay sane.
• /Realizing that she has to break this cycle in order for her to properly progress, combined with her role in the events of the last two episode, is such a huge and important leap for her/
• Speaking of leaps, the B plot with Vic, Cliff and Silas has a satisfying ending as well, first and foremost because Cliff isn’t being a dick to Cyborg for once
• /And secondly, because Cliff checks Silas on him being a shitty parent by using his own moments of self reflecting to show Silas that he’s been a shitty parent. So when Vic wakes up from his reboot, he finds out that Silas properly switched on his Privacy Mode and promised to no longer interfere with his crusade to rescue Niles. As a thank you for what he did, Cyborg gives Cliff access to his daughters social media account as a friend request she doesn’t know she accepted./
• That’s gonna be a fun episode

Readers, with Jane’s involvement and the deeper dive into Rita’s development, this episode of Doom Patrol was awesome

Which at this point shouldn’t really surprise me, because all of them so far for the most part have been awesome

I guess what makes this one stand out to me most of all is that, with the episodes we’ve seen so far, I can see how they all do a proper rotation in which characters should be the focus and which ones should take a lesser role yet use said lesser role build up for the anticipation regarding their arcs and development

And with 9 episodes left in the season, hopefully it gets better from here. God, I hope I didn’t jinx it just now...