Warner Bros. attempts to bring the DC universe to the big screen continually came up short compared to Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, but when it comes to television and streaming, there’s no question that DC has been superior for years. The Arrowverse set a new standard for superheroes on television, and DC’s short-lived DC Unlimited streaming service brought underrated characters to life for the first time.
Now that Peacemaker Season 2 is over, it’s time to go back and enjoy one of those unexpected streaming shows. Doom Patrol is about a team of misfits that’s both emotionally heartfelt and surprisingly horny for a show about superheroes.
From The Insane Imagination Of Grant Morrison
Originally created in the 1960s, Doom Patrol was revived in the 80s by Grant Morrison. Crucially, DC wasn’t submitting the title to the Comic Code Authority, allowing the insane Scotsman to get as weird as he wanted.
That included introducing Danny the Street, a sentient street. Flex Mentallo, the strong man from those old beach body ads, with mental powers, and Mr. Nobody, an insane supervillain who wants to turn the world into a monument to insanity by sucking Paris into a painting with psychoactive properties. It’s insane and even better when the Justice League shows up and realizes they have no idea what’s going on, leaving it up to the Doom Patrol to save the day.
How Doom Patrol got the green light is a modern miracle. It goes down a checklist of all the rules superhero shows have to follow and then breaks them all.
Within the first five minutes, we get to see NASCAR driver Cliff Steele (Brendan Fraser) with the nanny in the pool house, but instead of existing purely for shock value as it would in The Boys, here it’s representing his failing marriage. His rebirth later as Robotman, rendering him incapable of feeling any physical touch ever again, is only the very start of a series that treats intimacy, physical and emotional, as a core part of the human experience.
The rest of the Doom Patrol each have their own issues, including Hollywood starlet Rita (April Bowlby), known as Elastigirl after an accident in Africa turned her into plastic, and Air Force test pilot Larry Trainor (Matt Bomer), now the Negative Man after merging with a strange energy being lurking in space. Jane (Orange is the New Black’s Diane Guerrero, proving every episode she was underutilized on the Netflix series) suffers from split personalities, over 60 of them in fact, many who have different superpowers and wildly exaggerated personalities. They aren’t your typical superhero team, and they don’t deal with regular villain problems.
Doom Patrol Turns Raunch Into Heartfelt Emotion
No episode epitomizes the bizarre mix of heartfelt character work and pure raunch more than Season 2 Episode 4, “Sex Patrol.” After the team is restored to normal size, Danny the Street remains a brick, so in order to bring him back and rejuvenate him, the Doom Patrol throws a rager.
Rita takes the time to have Flex Mentallo, who earlier accidentally brought a whole town to climax by flexing the wrong muscle, use that power on purpose to send her over the edge with ecstasy. It’s done not for the sake of pleasure, but to uncork repressed memories, learning more about herself and her powers in the process. That and a demon that feeds on pleasure is drawn to the party, again finding a way to combine raunch, character work, and superheroics in a bizarre package that goes further than Marvel ever will.
For the first two seasons, Doom Patrol is the best superhero streaming series thanks to its strange characters, wild plots, and capability to balance the absurd with the heartfelt. The final two seasons start to fall off, but still have their moments, including a chorus of singing butts. It makes sense in context.
Part of the problem is that Alan Tudyk’s performance as Mr. Nobody is so great that he’s missed in the later seasons, though the live-action inclusion of Monsieur Mallah and The Brain does help to make up for it.
Alan Tudyk as Mr. Nobody on Doom Patrol
Describing Doom Patrol to someone unfamiliar with the work of Grant Morrison reads like a series of Mad Libs. There’s been nothing like it, and there never will be, which makes it a great companion piece to Peacemaker, the only series that comes even close to matching its insanity.
If you enjoyed Peacemaker Season 2 and need more R-rated, well-written non-superhero superheroes, you have to give the denizens of Doom Manor a chance. By the end of the first episode, you’ll be invested in the oddball team.
Doom Patrol is streaming exclusively on HBO Max.
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