Doom Patrol Second Season Overdoses on Bizarre

With the second season of Doom Patrol, I was hoping to see the team come together in... well, in any fashion. We learned who they were as individuals in the first season, so now it was time to start actually using these abilities and getting the independent members to work as part of a team.

But it appears they all still have their individual issues to work through, still, and rather than gaining more control over their abilities that seem to have even less. Robotman Cliff Steele (Brendan Fraser) is intermittently losing his ability to move his robotic limbs, leaving him frequently frozen in place while he tries to mend fences with the daughter he left behind decades past. Larry Trainor (Matt Bomer) is led by the Negative Spirit living inside him to reconnect with his family as well, only to be ostracized by them and hunted by the Bureau of Normalcy. Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero) is overruled by the other multiple personalities living inside her to allow Miranda to take primary control while Jane struggles to unravel the mystery of what is happening to the other personalities going missing inside her. Rita Farr (April Bowlby) is determined to learn to control her body's elasticity, but first must overcome mental blocks of inadequacy implanted in her by her patronizing mother. And Cyborg Victor Stone (Joivan Wade) falls for a girl in his group therapy whose body has been altered by technology, only to later find out she may very well be a ruthless killer.

And where is The Chief (Timothy Dalton) in all this? Is he helping guide them, coach them, teach them to work together. Nope, he's off on his own family fix-up as he tries to keep his daughter, Dorothy (Abi Monterey) from growing up -- because upon her maturity, the most dangerous of her imaginary friends will get loose and destroy the planet.

I'd like to say that all these disparate plot threads intertwine as the season reaches its climax, so that a wiser, more experienced Doom Patrol can put all their lessons to the task of saving the world. And in a way, they do -- come together, at least, with Larry Trainer actually stepping up and taking a leadership role. But once in the fight, the members are all defeated individually, leading up to the cliffhanger that will launch the third season.

My overall disappointment is tempered by the fact that many of these individual episodes were just crazy good. Episode like "Sex Patrol," "Space Patrol," and "Dumb Patrol" were each, in their own standalone way, very distinctly Doom Patrol in their presentation, and even introducing Valentina Vostok (Mariana Klaveno) -- Negative Woman -- was a nice nod to the comics. Eagle-eyed Easter egg hunters will also have caught a billboard for a book, with one of the many blurbs which read: "Hell yeah!" -- Kite Man. That was fun.

That there is a third season of Doom Patrol gives me hope that we may start to actually see some team dynamics and superheroics. Meanwhile, I've recently discovered there was an animated Doom Patrol series in 2013 which was short lived and now must be hunted down and added to my collection.