Doom Patrol: Hair Patrol

April 19, 2019 11:10 PM - Season 1, Episode 10

The Bureau of Normalcy enlists the help of a freelancer.

So, more new stuff:

* Beard Hunter veered too far into gross for me personally.
* We learned a lot about Niles. Unfortunately, so did Mr. Nobody.
* Vic may need to run a malware sweep.
* Rita's the best. "We may need to co-star with him." "Do you mean 'team up?'"

Den of Geek review.
IGN review.

posted by mordax (6 comments total)

That was one of the creepiest, hardest to watch things I've seen in a long time. The bathroom scene was bad enough but somehow the scene with Vic's hair follicle was even worse. I don't know if it was amplified by Rita's reactions or what but it was definitely a step too far past my comfort level.

I hadn't thought of Niles being immortal, but it does make a kind of sense.

I had problems buying the art depicting the tribe. The male figures with legs and female figures with skirts seemed really off, especially given what Niles was wearing. I don't know what they would be, but I'm sure there are better ways to depict the genders of the tribes people.

The more I watch this, the more I come to like Rita as a character.
posted by sardonyx at 2:20 PM on April 20, 2019 [2 favorites]

At the end of last week I was really hoping we'd get to hear Rita and Vic's long story, and okay, yeah, I would not want to have to explain Beard Hunter either. They're a fun team.

Points to them, I'm pretty hard to gross out and I had to look away from the sink scene. GaaAAHhhh. If he didn't get eaten at the end, I felt like it's maybe not a coincidence that the same episode introduces Beard Hunter, a woman with a (frankly resplendent) beard, and a bunch of people looking for that woman.

This is more relevant to last week, and was maybe 100% a plot device, but I'm curious why the Negative Spirit helped Cliff and Jane. It seems pretty particular about when to intercede, but we know so little that it's hard to tell when it's acting randomly, pursuing its own agenda, or doing a favor for its current meatsuit. (Also, it's lowkey pretty funny that at this point the others don't even rearrange him or put a towel under his head or anything, it's just easier on all concerned to leave Larry wherever the lightning ghost happens to dump him.)

This is a personal TV/movie gripe and yes, Mr. Nobody is a bad person, but surely it must feel ludicrous to refer to a clearly adult person who's thousands of years old and the protector of her people as "the girl".

Also, this episode pretty much promised Flex Mentallo, and I'm super curious to see how they adapt it.
posted by jameaterblues at 5:26 PM on April 20, 2019 [5 favorites]

I notice Caulder was using a Pilot Metropolitan to write in his notebook back in the 1910s, but that pen came out in 2012. I almost never notice anachronisms in stuff like this!

It's an interesting balance they're walking between having an accessible and watchable TV show and weaving in lore that barely made sense in the comic books. The Men from NOWHERE become much more accessible government creeps, but they keep Danny, the Beard Hunter, and Flex Mentallo. I really hope they keep the whole possibly-too-close-to-trademarked-material origin story for Flex because it's hilarious in the source material.
posted by ikea_femme at 11:21 PM on April 20, 2019 [6 favorites]

At first, Timmy Dalton laying on the Imperialism really thickly felt icky, then that scene, then going native. But I guess it was all the more to reject?

Totally buy that Chief's agelessness is something he learned from his companion (who departed voluntarily or involuntarily or some mix of both) - and that kind of info is what will be used against Mr. Nobody.

Tellingly, they don't show why Chief decided to 'come in out of the cold' (so to speak).
posted by porpoise at 7:38 PM on April 29, 2019

You mean why he came back to civilization? I thought it was clear that he wanted to report that there's nothing out there, to protect the woman (or "Oyewah" as the credits list, but I thought that was just a word she was using to portray her... nature?)

I'm hard to gross out, and I was cringing a bit too. Like every episode there's a new thing the show does to push the limits of what the viewer will endure or be amazed by.
posted by numaner at 4:10 PM on May 3, 2019 [1 favorite]

Yeah - I dry heaved on the bathroom scene - not going to lie. I am obsessed with this show and know nothing of the comics.

Rita is by far my favorite. My guess for Marybeth is that she ruined her reputation by saying she she had sex with that slimy producer (which likely produced a child we saw earlier), knowing that he likely raped her and had the child sent to a home of sorts. It would be too pat if that child turned out to be one of the other characters.
posted by Suffocating Kitty at 4:13 PM on December 30, 2019