Doom Patrol season 2 premiere: Where is the team now?
By Monita Mohan
Doom Patrol season 2 premiere: Fun Size Patrol
In the season premiere, the majority of the characters are miniature-sized, and being cared for by Larry Trainor/ Negative Man (Matt Bomer). He continues to be an absolute darling of a character – Larry painstakingly recreates delicious pancakes in tiny portions, while making his friends comfortable by creating new furniture and equipment.
The team is living in Larry’s toy racetrack, in makeshift tents and tables. They’re smaller than matchsticks and desperate to return to normal. But, all of Caulder’s experiments, which Larry tries out, have failed.
Each member of the team is battling much more than their immediate problems. The Negative Spirit reminds Larry of the time he broke his son’s heart by criticizing an aircraft model he’d made.
As we learnt in the first season of the show, the Spirit causes Larry great pain and this painful memory from Larry’s past is about to get so much worse. Larry is shunted into another vision, this time with his son who is much older.
His son Gary weeps over his father not being proud of him, though Gary was always proud of his father. To Larry’s horror, he sees a bunch of empty pill bottles next to Gary. Larry learns soon after that Gary passed away. The Spirit allowed him to reunite with his son one last time, but did either find peace?
Heroes Surviving
Rita Farr (April Bowlby), after spending the majority of the premiere season steering away from heroics, has now decided to train to become a superhero. She tasks Victor Stone / Cyborg with helping her finally control her elastic powers.
These two have formed quite a bond since they met and it continues throughout this episode as Vic encourages Rita to move beyond her emotions and control her power, and Rita supports Vic as he wrestles with his demons. Vic’s life was shattered by Caulder, but he also lost his mother during the accident and blamed himself for years.
Now he has the additional struggle of worrying about his cyber parts being commandeered by Mr. Nobody.
Cliff Steele/ Robotman (Brendan Fraser) is taking the whole situation really badly. There is nothing that is calming him down. He’s angry about Caulder’s actions, about being tiny, and about Dorothy and her creepy imaginary friends. It doesn’t help that his surrogate daughter, Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero), disappears into the Underground in her mind and is taking drugs to survive her situation.
Jane is so broken by her life that she’s virtually catatonic, but her other personalities mutiny. She sees a sign that says ‘Time for a Change’, but she doesn’t know what it means. Things start to look up only when this pair get together to gossip.
It’s an adorable little scene that is refreshingly realistic. It’s unfortunate they start criticizing young Dorothy’s appearance, but Niles shuts them down and asks for empathy.
Here’s Dorothy
Dorothy’s been locked up for 90 years because in 1927, she was captive in a circus and flaunted as a freak. When one of her imaginary friends lost control and massacred everyone, she needed to be kept away for her own safety.
Niles strives to protect her from her emotions, but there is one imaginary friend who seems to only have malice in its heart. This unseen creature is more perceptive than Dorothy, but it’s also baying for blood. The scenes between Caulder and Dorothy are particularly touching – Dalton comes alive as the doting father and it feels incredibly natural in a show that’s so bizarre.
When all else fails, Caulder turns to Willougby Kipling (Mark Shepard) for a way out of being ‘fun-sized’. Kipling asks for his immortality talisman that he procured in Paraguay, as well as the painting that has Mr. Nobody trapped in it.
Caulder’s mission in life has been to stay alive for his immortal daughter, but he isn’t selfish enough to keep his ‘family’ trapped in tiny bodies forever. They return to normal, but what does this sacrifice mean for Niles? Perhaps Niles is able to make this decision because he’s seen Dorothy interact and become close to the other members of the team.
They don’t necessarily like the girl, but it’s possible Niles sees them becoming her new family.