Doom Patrol “Undead Patrol”

Did I say the reason I love this show last week was because someone got Larry’s spirit to exit his body by whacking him over the head with a shovel?  No, that ain’t the reason.  The real reason may be related to subtitles.

Or it’s just that this is how this show consistently rolls.

See, escaping the underworld and returning to your own bodies does have a cost if the Night Nurse vomits on you.  That’s the lesson of this episode.  Sure, the mystery woman would love to tell them who she is or why she’s there, but she doesn’t remember.  She’ll go by “Claire” for now, and Rita is shadowing her because, well, she’s dressed the same way as the “Rita” that shoved Rita into the path of that alien ray gun that got her killed in the first place.

Regardless, she knows she has a broken time machine, and the others volunteer Vic to fix it because…well, someone has to, and the only other person with any sort of mechanical inclination is Cliff, and he’s limited to cars.

Regardless, there’s the usual drama around this show.  Vic is angry at his father since he could have gotten an alternate treatment that would have made him look more human.  Cliff offers Jane advice on how to mourn Niles.  Larry is getting sick for some reason after a meal.  And Rita is thinking she screwed up really bad.  The mystery woman does find an old filmreal that gives her a name, Laura De Mille, and shows she can transform into a bird.  She’s excited about that, but forgets the part where she was a cat first.

By then, Jane has vomited up some maggots and the others who came out of the underworld have collapsed.  Yup, they’re zombies.  They wanna eat brains and everything.  Willoughby Kipling shows up about that time, calls the team a bunch of incompetent idiots who of course got themselves turned into zombies, and manages to hold them off with a lamp while he talks to the strange woman who may or may not be Claire or Laura De Mille.  See, Kipling needs help finding the Chief’s head.

You know, if you’re gonna berate the Doom Patrol for being idiots, maybe you should give yourself a long look in the mirror, Kipling, since the only reason he even had the head was because he wanted to use it to make a golem to talk to his estranged girlfriend, the spectral spirit head of some kind of unicorn.  That’s at least on par with the whole zombie thing.

Then again, the best part of the whole zombie thing is the subtitles.  See, the group mostly grunts and groans any word that isn’t “brains,” but they still talk.  Subtitles reveal what they’re saying, and even as zombies, they somehow still manage to be themselves.  The only real change seems to be Vic doesn’t mind swearing as much if he’s a zombie.

Kipling, see, he lost the head and needs help retrieving it from a former employee  at the Bureau of Normalcy.  Said former employee took the head because he wants revenge yadda yadda yadda, and Kipling and Laura decide to help because he screwed up and won’t admit it and she needs to find Niles for reasons she doesn’t quite remember.

Plus, as long as the pair wear hats and enchanted air fresheners, the others won’t try to eat them and their precious, precious brains.

So, good news, bad news time.  They do find the guy with the Chief’s head.  The guy was bitten by something when the gang raided the Bureau of Normalcy’s headquarters.  Now, this guy is an angry were-butt.  And he has some friends there.  But this is the new and undead Doom Patrol.  They have no problem killing were-butts on any level.  Hell, Jane eats one.  That thing sure looked terrified when she bit into it.  Rita bit one too, but she didn’t care for the taste much.  The others just used garden tools.

Well, we can’t have the heroes of the show stuck as zombies, but the Chief does have a cure:  brains.  Brains actually cure zombies.  Hollywood got it wrong.  Again.  Plus, the Chief doesn’t need his anymore, so the others get to eat his.

Does this mean Timothy Dalton won’t be on the show anymore?

Well, regardless, he didn’t care to see Laura, and the memo he left behind describing her as untrustworthy and awful might explain why.

Oh, and if you’re like me and I know I am, and you’re wondering how Cliff can consume a brain when he’s just a brain…well, so does he when the others are all sitting around the sofa, perfectly recovered and watching the news.

Well, that solves that problem.  Except for the undead were-butt headed to town, of course.