In Review: Titans – Doom Patrol

Synopsis: Dick and Kory try to track down Rachel while Gar takes her to the house of the Doom Patrol for safety.

Review: This episode gives us a little backstory on Gar and introduces us to the Doom Patrol.

The Story

Picking the plot up from last week. Rachel has broken out of the convent and while on the run reconnects with Gary who reveals his secret to her.

Elsewhere, after having learned the truth about Rachel and her powers. Dick and Kory are going all out to find her.

Having gained Rachels trust Gar takes her to his home where he introduces her to his ‘family’ – a bunch of misfit medical experiments we will come to know as The Doom Patrol. This family includes Cliff Steele aka Robotman, Larry Trainor aka Negative Man and Rita Farr aka Elastiwoman.

It is Gar’s hope that introducing Rachel to his friends and Dr. Niles Caulder will help her learn to manage her powers better, but Caulder’s experiments threaten to unleash the Darkness, which hides within Rachel.

The Acting

Some solid performances this week.

Jake Michaels puts forth a sympathetic performance as Robotman, which is no easy task underneath a ton of metal, but what he does with his voice to make up for us not being able to see much in the way of his facial expressions is really well done. I especially liked how he dealt with the scene when all the Doom Patrol were sat at dinner. The excitement he conveyed about the various descriptions other people were giving him of what the food taste like was infectious.

Also putting in a great performance was Ryan Potter as Gar, who we haven’t got to see a great deal from until now. The friendship that he forms with Rachel is not only a lot of fun but its also very believable.  The scene toward the end of the episode when he tries to stop Caulder’s experiment was very well performed.

The CGI

A lot of cool CGI effects in this episode. The partial transformation of Gar from a tiger into his human form was good as was the effect involving Elasti-Girl when she was at the dinner table.

Overall

This was a really enjoyable episode with some awesome character beats coming from most of Rachels scenes with the Doom Patrol. I lived Robotman and also loved the scene in which Negative Man is dancing around the Kitchen to Thunderstruck while cooking the big meal.

Hopefully, this will not be the last we see of Doom Patrol, but what I’d really like to see is a TV adaptation of Frankenstein Agent Of S.H.A.D.E.  Hopefully they can somehow fit old Frank into future storylines.