Doom Patrol Episode 5 RECAP (VIDEO SCRIPT)

Paw Patrol

• So this episode starts off in a flashback to New Jersey in 1977 where we find Jane at a punk rock concert in a bar, before being taken to an asylum with whack-ass abusive guards.
• And it’s here that I find out something about her that probably a lot of you long-time Doom Patrol fans already knew about here that didn’t really register to me when I joked about it in the second episode
• (Spic slur)
• That’s right. Jane’s not white
• Which means that her saying “Dad I’m home” to Niles during the second half of the first episode probably wasn’t meant to be taken seriously either.
• So for those of you who corrected me in the comment sections of either of those two recap videos, thank you and I appreciate you
• Also, thank you show for giving me the information necessary for me to not keep that ignorant train of thought, especially in the form of that Crazy Jane backstory and exposition that I crave
• Meanwhile we fast forward to the current timeline with the Decreator summoned
• /And just disintegrating things one at a time, acting like a dollar store Thanos n’ shit/
• I say that because the Decreator has to focus its eye on something in order for it to, y’know...decreate it
• Then again, this happens (Kibly takes a sip of his flask before it disappears) So I don’t really know for sure if those are the ACTUAL rules...
• So with that, we have some good news.
• /The good news is that in a fit of rage, Cliff realizes that Nurnheim - the dimension of the Cult of the Unwritten Book that he and Jane are stuck in - is actually a snowglobe. The bad news is that Mr Nobody and Niles agree to work together in order to stop the Decreator by creating a religion and a deity to combat it through one of Jane’s alters that have the ability to manipulate the influence of others./
• That’s where the flashback to Jane’s institutionalization in 1977 becomes a Butterfly Effect sense of time travel, and we’re introduced to one of my favorite alters of Jane’s, Dr. Harrelson
• And I say Butterfly Effect /because Mr. Nobody with his abilities goes back in time to 1977 at a precise moment in Dr. Harrelson’s relevancy and convinces her to create a cult with the other patients and workers of the hospital, called the Cult of the REwritten Book, with the goal of summoning a god called the REcreator upon the summoning of the DEcreator/
• That way in modern time, there will be a counterpart to Elliot’s UNwritten book to summon the REcreator to fix everything that was destroyed
• And I’m not gonna lie; this was NOT the route I was expecting the team to go in order to do battle with the Decreator
• I also wasn’t expecting Mr. Nobody to play that significant a role in it either? Especially since he played NO role in the Nazi Meta-Human scientist episode, which you’d imagine would be the one he would actually participate in.
• But I digress. Speaking of Elliot, the best writing and character development in this episode takes place in the form of he and Rita having a chat, and she continues to impress me with the route of her development.
• /She continues to reach out to Elliot and try to be a rock for him, exposing herself and making efforts to save him from himself now that he’s brought about the end of the world. Everything coming out of her mouth is genuine, not just to make him feel better. She is literally making the most sincerest efforts to care about someone other than herself and her compatriots in order to not be as selfish as she started out as./
• That’s...when this happens
• (Elliot gets Decreated)
• And I...LOVE IT
• So, let’s just ignore the fact that the REcreator plan is gonna work, because let’s just be honest here; we already KNOW it’s gonna work
• Do you understand how powerful the moment that we just saw is??
• This happening to Rita’s attempt to become less selfish has all of the potential to push her in the direction of the hero she constantly says that she isn’t.
• The loss of Elliot in this manner -- when she was so close to connecting to him and assuring him that it wasn’t his fault, and that things will be better -- can push her into realizing that life outside of hers and her own are just as precious as Elliots and can be taken away just like that
• And even more importantly, she has the power to do something about it and make sure that nothing like what happens to Elliot happens to anyone else
• This entire scene was like, the BEST of the episode, and I’m SO glad that they made this decision. Anyway the chief is back. AND WALKING
• /Revealing to the rest of the team that he’s working with Mr. Nobody to create a counter-cult and counter-god to deal with the worlds impending doom, they find the location of the REwritten book, and head there to summon the Recreator/
• When they get there however, they find that the cult that Dr. Harrelson formed from mental patients in the asylum 40 years ago kinda differed from the way the cult of the UNwritten book works when it came to their book
• And it’s here that we find out why the episode is called PAW Patrol. Because the REwritten book isn’t on a boy, or a human for that matter. It’s on a dog.
• And as a safety precaution to keep the rewritten book safe from the cult of the UNwritten book, the text is only visible when Jane rings a bell
• /She does so while she and Cliff are still in Nurnheim, causing Kipley to read the text and summon the REcreator, who proceeds to recreate everything the decreator decreated before the two enter into a staring contest cancelling each other’s abilities out before they both nullify each other out of the current plane of existence./
• Now Readers, you may think that this was a pretty anticlimactic ending to this two-parter, but I personally thought that everything about this was just...smart
• As I stated before, this was NOT the way I intended the team to handle this situation
• But after seeing how well the writing and the execution handled dotting every I and crossing every T, I can’t help but be impressed
• Especially since after the threat was averted, Mr. Nobody was quick to reclaim Niles as his prisoner
• It wasn’t the resolution I was expecting, but it was still cleverly handled with good writing and great development choices made throughout and that’s all I can really ask for.