Doom Patrol: Youth Patrol
December 29, 2022 8:15 PM - Season 4, Episode 5 - Subscribe

Willoughby Kipling returns to lead our heroes in a charge against yet another vaguely defined threat, and predictably they fuck off and get high instead.
posted by kittens for breakfast (5 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
All of this just feels like floundering not actual story development.

The writing team is working on an awfully big assumption that that the audience trusts the producing powers to lead us on this long, winding meandering journey and eventually take us to a place where everything pays off and we reach some satisfying conclusion. The problem is, this show has never been about the big payoff, it's always been about the little moments and the stories told along the way. I don't feel as if we're getting those nuggets this season. It also feels like the writers are trying too hard to give us heart-wrenching and poignant revelations about the members of the team, but, for the most part, they'd shown us nothing new, nothing that we couldn't extrapolate about the characters on our own and nothing worth any of this slow, grinding slog of a season.
posted by sardonyx at 11:08 PM on December 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


I feel the same way. I have no sense of what the stakes are for the story or for any of the characters, or at least, I don't care enough to try to figure it out. The show feels phoned in, which is a shame because there are still glimmers of the ideas and positive/inclusive themes that made the show so entertaining in the first 2 seasons.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:55 AM on January 2, 2023 [1 favorite]


The preshow bumper on HBO Max was for Titans, and I commented "huh, looks like they have an actual antagonist this year? must be nice..."

Same problem, Doom Patrol writers! Navel gazing is ok, and I'm ok getting to know the characters, but I still want the plot driver to feel like it's more than just something tacked on in the last few minutes.
posted by Kyol at 6:27 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]


Yeah, the Big Bad this season (Immortus, I guess) is so fucking nebulous that even the main characters don't care -- which I guess makes sense given their experiences in the world of the show, but doesn't inspire a lot of faith for the audience.

The other problem with the navel-gazing aspect is that we're learning nothing new about the characters, just going over some of the same shit with a different desktop skin to mod the details.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:19 AM on January 3, 2023 [1 favorite]


glad to know I'm not missing anything by noping out... i couldn't even make it through last season
posted by kokaku at 5:29 AM on January 4, 2023 [1 favorite]


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