Doom Patrol “Therapy Patrol”

Superheroes in therapy?  Huh.  That sounds like something that should happen more often.

Yes, the group that doesn’t call itself the Doom Patrol decides it should get its act together if they want to rescue the Chief and defeat Mr. Nobody before he messes with their minds, bodies, and souls.  That’s how Cliff puts it with a few more F-bombs.

What follows is an episode where we get a quick scene of each character’s childhood hinting at their future problems, dealing with future problems, and finally a group-therapy session to talk through their problems.  You know, like the Chief used to do for them.  How does that go?

Rita accidentally sludges herself into the basement and realizes she has maybe always been slime, so she’d better be the best slime she can be.  That may be the best pep talk for a slime I’ve ever heard.  Ultimate conclusion:  she’s never really been allowed to be herself.

Larry is really lonely, and the Negative Spirit may or may not be helping him come to grips on that.  His past wasn’t perfect.  His present sucks.  At least he acknowledges that now.  Ultimate conclusion:  he misses human contact, and his sexual orientation isn’t the issue.

Vic wonders if his father monitors him all the time, but getting control of his social media accounts doesn’t help at all since no one there wants to know him so much as they want to know Cyborg.  Ultimate conclusion:  he’s worried about why he doesn’t trust his father quite so much.

But then there’s Jane and Cliff.

Jane spends the morning arguing with herself, and her “big reveal” is that Mr. Nobody gave her a look into the future where Cyborg takes the others out from the looks of things.  She’s torn between wanting to find or punish the Chief, and she’s slinging insults where she can, especially at Cliff who she says isn’t really a man anymore.

And Cliff?  Well…

Cliff is actually the most gung ho about therapy despite the fact he doesn’t seem to really know how it works (why would he?).  But earlier in the day, he decided to go see the guy his daughter called dad.  Cliff finds the guy rather quickly.  And the guy is kind of a jerk about the whole thing…only he isn’t really there.  Cliff never left the mansion.  He’s hallucinating, seeing Vic as his former friend and hearing voices.  Just as the episode really ends, he sees really bad things, and before he can attack the others (minus Jane, who has some personalities that are really concerned about Cliff), Vic tackles him to take him down.

And that was because of the last individual present for the therapy session, Admiral Whiskers.

Who’s that, you ask?

He’s a rat.

Six episodes earlier, the team ran over his mother with the team bus, and Mr. Nobody came to him as the narrator, telling him he needed to get revenge by messing with the team’s minds, bodies, and souls with a lot more F-bombs.  The night before all this happened, Whiskers climbed into a hole in Cliff’s arm left over from a previous battle and messed with Cliff’s mind, making him see and hear things and then slipping out when Vic knocks Cliff out.

That rat has problems.  He may need some therapy.