The Doom Room: “Donkey Patrol”

Doom Patrol S1E2 Donkey Patrol
https://open.spotify.com/episode/64Id2yjJcKqQn1SKPTTdPl?si=04661c51efa0499d

The Doom Patrol faces down with Mr. Nobody and comes away… Victorious? As we recap Season 1, Episode 2 “Donkey Patrol”. In the aftermath of the destruction of Cloverton, the residents of Doom Manor are dealing with the fallout, when they meet a real live superhero: Cyborg. But it turns out Victor Stone might be as messed up as the rest of them.

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Full Episode Transcript

Alex:                 No time for gloom, welcome to the Doom Room. I’m doomed, I’m Alex.

Justin:              Boom boom, it’s the Doom Room. I’m doomed, I’m Justin.

Pete:                I’m Pete.

Alex:                 And we are going to be talking about season one episode two of Doom Patrol Donkey Patrol as we continue to make our way through the first season here. Now if it’s been a while since you checked it out, for whatever reason, the Doom Patrol, and they don’t even call themselves that yet, they’re just a bunch of people who are hanging out. They have decided to be heroes, stand up to, they don’t know it also yet, but Mr. Nobody, and save the town of Cloverton after they wrecked it in a blob fueled rampage in the last episode. Niles Calder is a little bit pissed about it. He’s going up against Mr. Nobody this episode. We find out a lot more about everybody’s back stories. So that’s the brief recap before we get into here. But first episode, just a little bit of a reset, as we mentioned, Pete and I have watched, not the full series, but definitely ahead just in…

Pete:                First season.

Alex:                 What?

Pete:                We’ve watched the first season.

Alex:                 We’ve watched the first season. I don’t want to go through every episode each time. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time here, but if you want to recap the whole thing, Pete, you love recaps.

Pete:                No, I was just saying that we’ve seen this old season, we haven’t seen every episode, but-

Alex:                 Yeah, but then you ditched it after the second season, right?

Pete:                Now we’re going to go through it together.

Justin:              Wow, a scandal. There’s steam coming out to your ears boy.

Pete:                Oh man.

Alex:                 I wanted to check in with Justin because you are still coming into this relatively clean in terms of the second episode. I think you were pretty positive on the first episode. If anything, I was probably the most negative about the first episode, even though I really liked it a lot. But what’d you think? How did you feel this one improved on the first episode? Was it a step down? Where was it for you?

Justin:              I think it’s an improvement. I really like the tone of this show is so different from every other superhero show. I think I said this a lot last time, but it’s really funny. At the same time, it’s actual jokes, good comedy writing paired with all this bad stuff happening to these characters. And we meet Cyborg in this episode and get to see a bunch of bad stuff that has happened to him as well.

Alex:                 Cyborg to me is a really weird, interesting fit for this show. And certainly that’s the point here because he’s presented as an actual superhero or the way that he puts it, I think he says he’s five years away from the Justice League.

Justin:              Yeah, future JL member.

Alex:                 Yeah, so he’s very different from everybody else here and he’s in this mode that I really like a lot where he’s playing against Rita and Larry in this episode who are like, “We don’t want to do anything, please leave us alone.” And Cyborg’s whole thing is like, “No, I’m a hero. I’m going to do my hero thing. I’m going to push you a little harder about this.” And that push and pull versus where we left them at the end of the last episode really plays nicely into that tease from Alan Tudyk as Mr. Nobody, I think, where at the end of the last episode, he was like, “We’re not going to do the typical superhero thing. This is not going to be that.” And Cyborg is still in the superhero mode, but is slowly going to have to come around to the idea that things happen a little differently here at Doom Manor.

Justin:              Nice. I think that Dalton, Timothy Dalton?

Alex:                 I don’t know what that was. Southern gentleman is kind of what I was going for.

Justin:              Wow, nice.

Alex:                 I’m just sitting here on the porch drinking my sweet tea and being doomed.

Justin:              Don’t spoil a huge pivotal character coming down the pipeline for this season.

Alex:                 Foghorn leg horn.

Justin:              Yeah, that’s right. Animated. What I was going to say is as far as Cyborg goes, I’ve never really liked the character in-

Pete:                How about Teen Titans Go?

Justin:              Fine, fine, Teen Titans go.

Pete:                Okay, Jesus Christ. Let’s not slander.

Alex:                 It’s surprising to me that that was your go-to Pete. Mind you, I love Teen Titans Go. It’s very funny, but I would be sure you’d call out a comic book run or, I don’t know, one of the animated movies that you love so much, something like that. But no, Teen Titans Go is your go-to?

Pete:                I mean, Cyborg’s amazing in that.

Justin:              Teen Titan-

Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:04:41] Payton, man. He’s great.

Justin:              Alex, now I can’t unhear you doing a light foghorn leg horn accent.

Alex:                 I’ll say, I’ll say, I’ll say.

Pete:                No, stop.

Justin:              It’s very close. But this is definitely my favorite version of Cyborg that I’ve seen in any other comic or anything. I feel like Cyborg’s often painted as this, pardon the pun, but stone. He’s just like, “I’m sad, but I’m going to keep doing this superhero work that I don’t really like and I’m going to figure it out.” And it feels like such a character that you have to really work to enjoy. And this character has enough of that to still be Cyborg, but he makes mistakes. He’s sort of a dick to Cliff in a funny way here in a way where I’m like, “Oh, that’s a person in there,” as opposed to so many other versions of Cyborg are him being like, “I’m a man in here.” And I’m like, “No, you’re not, you’re a robot human who has a robot part attached to him.”

Alex:                 For me, it was really interesting revisiting this because it took me a very long time to come around to Cyborg even being on the show.

Justin:              Really? Dude, what’s your deal?

Alex:                 I’m a bad man. I’m about to explain it. Part of the reason was that Titans was airing at the same time and you think about Cyborg as being part of the Titans, being part of the Teen Titans, that’s how you see him. That’s usually his place in the comics. So if you were going to put him anywhere, I thought, all right, you put him in there. And then also, I don’t remember the exact timeline, but this is about the same time as the original version of Justice League that came out in theaters right? So it still felt like why are you doing both Cyborgs at the same time? I don’t know why we need all of these different versions of the same character.

Justin:              You thought there was a mix up at the factory?

Alex:                 Yeah, I thought there was a mix up at the comic book roll out factory. And as you pointed out the last episode, there were so many characters in what Pete incorrectly called the DC flip at the beginning of the episode.

Pete:                It’s the DC flip mother fucker. What are you talking about?

Justin:              No flip.

Alex:                 Nothing’s flipping.

Pete:                Okay, well all right. So Marvel coined the term Marvel flip or whatever-

Alex:                 No they did not.

Pete:                All right, well whatever, there’s the Marvel flip. We all know what I mean. So I’m calling it the DC flip, even though it’s this kind of animated intro to a lot of-

Justin:              It’s a character pastiche. It’s a character pastiche.

Pete:                Its a character wheel, if you will. Whatever, it’s the DC flip. You know what I mean, don’t be an asshole about it.

Alex:                 I really don’t.

Pete:                What I appreciate about it-

Alex:                 Because I did, I legit after we taped the episode, I legit… I visually skip over it most times in my head because I’ve seen it so many times. This time I watched it and was like where is this flipping that he’s talking about? And there was nil.

Pete:                All right, so the DC intro, what’s great about it is it is-

Alex:                 That sounds wrong. Can you go back to DC flip? That sounds better.

Justin:              Yeah, I like flip. I like when you say stuff that’s wrong.

Alex:                 I’d rather you use DC flip.

Pete:                Okay, great. But I appreciate the fact that it’s animated because it is closer to the comics roots, which I feel like Marvel has gotten away from and it’s a little upsetting.

Justin:              Wow, the hill that you’ll die on is very interesting. I look forward to attending your funeral on this DC flip hill.

Alex:                 To get back to the Cyborg thing though. Oh, go ahead Justin.

Justin:              Yeah, because I just want to say one other thing that I think the weirdest move you can make in a show where the characters are, “Weird,” is to have a character that is so straight laced and so Justice League wannabe added to the mix. It’s a great different flavor to mix in here.

Alex:                 Well I agree with you. And what I was going to say is that away from those preconceptions of why isn’t eon Titans, why are they doing two Cyborgs at the same time? I like the character a lot better, and exactly what you’re saying, it really worked really nicely because they do dig very heavily in in this episode into the horror elements of Cyborg’s origin because he gets… Go ahead, Pete.

Pete:                Well I was just saying, you don’t get that a lot. And the fact that it’s done in this way and not only does Cyborg have that kind of trauma, but there’s also the issues with his father that really make him a perfect fit for this team that is dealing with so much. And you look at Cyborg and there’s a guy who’s rocking Jordan’s, looking clean, seems like he has everything going for him. But when you kind of peel him back a little bit, it’s nice to see his flaws and to see the start of who he is and what he’s going to grow into, a young Cyborg who’s still figuring stuff out is kind of a unique character and I think it’s a fun fit for the Doom Patrol. And there’s also this cliff thing of you have this older robot who doesn’t do as many things-

Justin:              Clunky robot.

Pete:                And then the newer model, there’s a lot of fun that can be had with these characters.

Alex:                 Oh yeah, that was the other thing that bothered me initially was the fact that I was like, there’s two robot guys. Come on.

Justin:              Oh come on dude.

Alex:                 I was fine with it.

Pete:                You’re a robotist.

Justin:              That’s a robotist and one of the robots is clunky is like a Motorola Razor and one of them is like an iPhone that’s dealing with some mama trauma.

Alex:                 Also you mentioned his dad, that’s Phil Morris, who is awesome. He’s great [crosstalk 00:10:13].

Pete:                Phillip Morris? You see what they did there?

Alex:                 Phil Morris. Well you’d probably know him better as Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld, Pete.

Justin:              Yeah, very similar characters here.

Pete:                Guy is a great actor he can pull off [crosstalk 00:10:25].

Justin:              Really disappears to do a role.

Alex:                 Well and I also like the fact, this is jumping all over the place, but the overall plot of the episode, again, if you haven’t watched recently is they’re trying to figure out what happened at the town where Cloverton went. Ultimately they find out it went inside of the ducky, which is this keyhole to another dimension. They get a tour from Mr. Nobody through their individual traumas. And ultimately it’s Cyborg a little bit who pushes back on Mr. Nobody, but it’s something with the negative spirit that ultimately gets them out of there, makes the ducky explode, and brings the town back. But I really like that moment there where Cyborg is lying on the ground, blown apart and he tells Mr. Nobody, he says, “Listen, that’s not what makes Cyborg, this is not my trauma.” This is in a very Peter Parker, a great power, great responsibility type way. This is what pushes me to be better every day. Ultimately there’s a great twist there where it turns out he probably doesn’t feel that way, that’s actually something his dad programmed into him. But it’s a good moment, nevertheless, and it’s played really well.

Pete:                But what’s interesting is we have the intro to the characters in the second episode here by this narrator that obviously we can’t trust, but it’s such a cool fast forward of look at these four couch potatoes and just breaks them all down in such a fun snarky bad guy way that is just so enjoyable and fresh, back to what Justin is talking about a little bit.

Justin:              It’s a great tone, yeah. And some of the lines in here are so funny, like let the pretentious title sequence begin, just we were talking about. It’s like they heard our first episode of the podcast and then changed the show to suit it.

Pete:                And also I listened. He was like, “You know what? I should be drinking for this.” And I was like, “You’re right. What am I doing?” I went and got a drink.

Alex:                 Wow, that’s great. What did you drink? What did you partake of Pete?

Pete:                I had some vodka.

Alex:                 Oh, just straight vodka?

Justin:              You really take that shit seriously. I also like the line right after that where he’s like, “Who is this even for?” And it’s like Grant Morrison fans, Reddit trolls, DC universe subscribers, and the three new fans that stuck around after the donkey.

Alex:                 Yeah, that’s us. That’s us.

Pete:                We stuck around after the donkey.

Alex:                 Yeah, it’s great. And it’s great that all of this fourth wall breaking stuff that Alan Tudyk is doing fits with the tone of the show, because the way it’s filmed, it’s filmed very dramatically. It’s very dark. It’s very DC extended universe, but the way that everybody is playing it fits differently and fits with the tone of what’s going on there and allows those things to happen. It’s also like you were saying, it’s a little thing, but the fact that Alan Tudyk does the recap and is making fun of everybody during the recap perfectly sets the tone there right at the beginning of the episode where it does allow these wild flights fancy to begin where you don’t even… I think you briefly get to see the characters if I remember, and then there’s a talking cockroach named Ezekiel who’s like, “Finally it’s my time to shine.”

Pete:                The cockroach. Yeah, the cockroach booger part. Yeah, booger. Yeah, from revenge of the nerds, gives this whole soliloquy just so fun and so amazing in this, as the narrator says, a shit show of all this crazy stuff going on. But also I wanted to say the part where he’s recapping what happened to Cliff Steel and then just goes, “Yikes.” Comedically, so impressive.

Alex:                 Total side note here. But if you like Alan Tudyk’s narration at all on Doom Patrol-

Justin:              You’ve been waiting to bring this show up for a while.

Alex:                 It’s another comic book show, you should check out Resident Alien on sci-fi, which is also very funny. It’s a different character, but he narrates that the entire time and just the same sort of thing where he’s very hateful at making fun of everybody. But again, different character, different focus, but also super, super funny and super fun there as well.

Pete:                The part where he is like, “And these clowns got in their clown car and went to the clown…”

Justin:              Went to clown town.

Pete:                Yeah, went to clown town.

Alex:                 Good stuff. What do you think so far of the relationship between chief and Mr. Nobody? Because that’s something that plays big in this episode, not just for the two of them, but also in terms of the other members, the other residents of Doom Manor and how they’re feeling about this overall conflict? Justin.

Justin:              It feels like there’s a lot of depth here that we don’t know yet. And in general, Calder is such a mysterious character so far. It’s clear that he’s up to something, that there’s a lot of underneath here. And he has this fake exterior, like professor X exterior, where he is this kindly-

Alex:                 He’s a little more of a magneto in a wheelchair type, I would say.

Justin:              I think that’s exactly what we’re saying. But I do think there’s going to be more here and I think he’s going to have some up to no good reveals coming is my prediction.

Alex:                 Yeah, timothy Dawson is really good. How do you feel about this, Pete? I assume you’re a big bond fan. So seeing him take this turn, does it-

Pete:                Well that’s the thing, we don’t know that he’s bad. He seems like a shitty leader, which Professor X also check that box. So it’s just one of those things where there’s some history. We don’t know. We’re rooting for the James Bond chief because we think he is on the right side of history, but we will see. It is definitely mid boss battle where it’s like there’s so much history going on and we don’t know what got these two there.

Alex:                 One element we get in a big way this episode, and I’m not even joking about this that I love about this show, is we finally get Cliff cursing up a storm throughout. And I mention that because it is very hard to curse that much and give a different inflection each time and different intent each time. But that’s exactly what Brendan Fraser does here so well. Every time he says-

Pete:                Holy shit, or just-

Alex:                 Yeah, every time it’s different, every time it’s funny and it’s easy to make those things feel like cheap jokes, but he makes them work for the character and work for the dialogue. Pete, just to call you out again, it reminds me a lot of Roy Kent on Ted Lasso, just in terms of a character who also curses really well. Somebody else on TV who we should see a team up, right, Cliff Steel and Roy Kent?

Pete:                Oh my God, that would just be magical, yeah. The swear off begin. And what was great is you have Rita there going like, “We get it.” You know what I mean? But he is right. It’s so insane, somebody’s got to be standing there saying, “What the fuck? Holy shit, holy, holy.” Just trying to come to grips with all the madness that is going on.

Justin:              Well and let me just say real quick. I think it’s amazing that Cliff’s face is pretty still. He doesn’t move much, but I am so on board with this character, this character feels one of the most human, you ride with him throughout this whole episode. And it’s crazy to me, we have two characters who are VO’d over the course and I believe Cliff more than I do Larry and he has a human face underneath those bandages and I don’t know why that is.

Pete:                But yeah, I definitely know because Larry is not only struggling with who he is, but also this thing inside of him. But because he doesn’t know himself, there is less emotions there. And yeah, I didn’t really think about that until now, but you feel Cliff so easily and he has no facial features, no emotions. It’s all the tone of his voice and the way he echoes in that robot too makes it extra sad. It’s really impressive what they’re pulling off.

Alex:                 I wanted to give a shout out to the actual actors doing it, not just the voice actors, but for Cliff it’s Riley Shanahan is the name of the guy. And for Larry Trainer, it’s a guy named Matthew Zuck. And he actually, apparently… I meant to look this up years ago, but he appears as Larry without the bandages as well, which is interesting. I wasn’t sure if that was Matt Bober coveted for a quick shot in some makeup or something like that. But I think to the point that Pete’s making the difference there is that Cliff is very big and he is all external so it allows Riley Shanahan to do those big movements with his hands and shaking back and forth that give Brendan Fraser’s voice that extra oomph versus Larry Trainer, he’s scared of everything. He’s all internal, he’s wrapped up in the bandages, he’s barely moving, he doesn’t want to touch anything.

Justin:              He can’t catch a bus.

Alex:                 Yeah, can’t catch a bus.

Pete:                Oh man, heartbreaking.

Alex:                 Fun sequence though.

Pete:                Is it fun? Every time I’m just like, “Oh dude, stop, just stop. He’s not going to let you go anywhere.”

Justin:              Well I’m very curious when we learn what the being, the sparkle, the sparkles inside of him are.

Pete:                The light beam, come on, man.

Justin:              Well I don’t know. They haven’t really defined.

Alex:                 It’s called a flip. It’s a flip.

Justin:              Because that being seems to have more of an understanding of what’s going on than Larry does, or at least cares more. But I’ve got to say a couple things. First off, Kernville does have good tubing if you guys ever want to pop over. And secondly, Greyhound’s bus ticket sales must have been triple. That’s a raw… They must have been like, “What are we doing? We’ve got to…” The service there is excellent.

Alex:                 Where does Larry get all that money? That’s what I’m wondering.

Pete:                Exactly, yeah.

Alex:                 Also makes me wonder where… Are they going to the grocery store or is somebody delivering their groceries? What’s going on in Doom Manor? How are they keeping fed? How are they eating? How are they getting supplies?

Justin:              Well fresh direct, but I don’t know anyone that has the resources to get fresh direct on a regular basis, especially fruit, any fruit shipped in. Basically a big timer would be able to fresh direct an apple.

Alex:                 Like a large apple? It took be while to realize what you were getting at. Listen, I don’t want to talk about it on every podcast [crosstalk 00:21:17]. I’ve had some large apples recently is what Justin is getting at, this is neither here nor there.

Justin:              Which is a euphemism, it’s a euphemism.

Alex:                 I’s a euphemism for enormous apples. They’re the size of a baby’s face. That’s all I’m saying.

Pete:                Yeah, that’s a weird thing to compare it to.

Alex:                 No sizes.

Justin:              What size? What size am I? Oh, I’m about six baby faces across.

Alex:                 I do really like the Larry Trainer negative spirit relationship in this episode. It definitely goes into surprising direction in terms of him trying to make some sort of peace with it, putting that post-it note up there and trying to-

Pete:                What an asshole man. It didn’t say thank you on that post-it note. He was supposed to say thank you, man. Come on.

Alex:                 Larry Trainer?

Pete:                He was supposed to thank the light being on post-it note and he didn’t. He’s like [crosstalk 00:22:10].

Alex:                 What is your deal? This is the second episode in a row that you’ve gone directly for Larry Trainer’s manners.

Pete:                Yeah, I just don’t like the way he’s treating the light being who’s doing all the heavy lifting in the fucking relationship.

Justin:              You love this light being.

Alex:                 Yeah, you don’t like the way he is treating his wife. What do you like about Larry? Name one thing you like about Larry Trainer so he doesn’t feel bad if he listens.

Pete:                He’s nice to Rita. He really looks out for Rita, which I appreciate.

Justin:              I like his donkey blood look.

Alex:                 I felt bad for the donkey when it exploded towards the end of the episode. That was a bummer.

Justin:              No, that donkey was ready to go. I think how full that donkey was that whole episode?

Alex:                 Go ahead, Pete.

Pete:                I do love the idea of Cyborg trying to wrap its mind around the fact that this donkey is somehow a gateway to something, that was really fun to be like, “Just give me a second, I need to process-“

Justin:              You don’t have to say donkey like Shrek does. Shrek doesn’t own the pronunciation of donkey. You can say it normal.

Pete:                What, how am I saying donkey?

Justin:              You said donkey.

Alex:                 Yeah, donkey.

Justin:              Donkey.

Alex:                 To be fair, we should mention to anybody listening to the podcast right now, Pete is taping this from a swap.

Justin:              Pete has the most Shrek in him technically.

Alex:                 Do you have any Shrek in you, Pete? Do you want some?

Pete:                That was the worst dad joke ever.

Alex:                 You know what? I’ve been married for a very long time, but that never worked as a pickup line.

Pete:                I feel bad for your wife.

Justin:              Could see him in a bar in the mid ’90s just being like, “Hey…” Height of Shrek.

Alex:                 Shrek Two even, even bigger than the first one. Didn’t work, never worked.

Justin:              It was the green face paint.

Alex:                 I love the scene where Rita is trying to psych herself up to blob out and go inside of the donkey. Very fun stuff there, very fun stuff in terms of she needs to channel the proper emotions as an actor to get into blob form. That was really good. Just overall, I love Rita in this show. She just has a fun tone and I love the idea of it seems almost beyond refusal of the call so much as she has no heroic bones in her body whatsoever.

Justin:              Yeah, and just have someone who’s so vulnerable but also gets to be the brassy tough one as well from moment to moment is great.

Pete:                And also, she’s surrounding herself of posters of herself. That’s pretty vain. One thing I did want to talk about that you guys mentioned in the last episode that I really noticed in this episode, the music. The fact of when we had that open pit and the heavy organ was so fun and really emphasized the intensity, but also this clowny fun to undercut it a little bit was such an interesting, cool choice.

Justin:              And got to shout out the Bowie song at the end of the episode. Lazarus, I think is the name of it. And man, awesome.

Alex:                 We should talk about regular human Jane because we haven’t touched on her at all and she has a big plot line in this episode, as Cliff finds out a lot more about her, about her different personalities, how she has this whole map of her different personalities called the underground. Justin, what was your take on that? How’d you feel about all this information here?

Justin:              I really like all this. I really like the way their showing her personality shift, the little blur that goes across her. I think that’s really cool. We get to see her Phoenix energy character, Lucy Few, hammerhead, the person that turns words into metal was very cool.

Pete:                That’s that’s so hardcore dude.

Justin:              So hardcore. I have a crackpot theory that you guys probably already know the answer to, and it seems a little bit too neat, but I was getting the idea that she’s maybe Cliff’s daughter in this episode, but I just wanted to say it.

Pete:                What’s interesting is I really liked Cliff’s choice in this. He was like, “Fuck this, I’m out.” But then was like, “I’m going to go to the fucking chief’s office here and get to the bottom of some of this.” And he’s watching the tapes, he’s putting in the time to understand how to talk to Jane, because that’s really where a lot of these issues are. They don’t know who they’re talking to, they don’t know what she’s been through, they don’t know who’s what. So the fact that Cliff was willing to put in the time, watch VHS tapes, which is not easy and-

Justin:              On a very old TV with knobs.

Pete:                And then gets the key information and then goes to say Vic was pretty awesome. But then when he’s just sitting against the door talking to her, it was just so amazing and heartbroken and so well shot to show this monster of a character trying to make himself so small to be able to talk to Jane was such a cool, great idea.

Alex:                 The other thing that I really like about that dynamic, and this gets back to your theory about the daughter thing a little bit, is at the very least, Cliff’s reasons for trying to help Jane are not entirely altruistic, which she immediately calls him out on. And I do think that makes a really interesting dynamic because in a lesser TV show, you would have Cliff realizing, “Well I’ve lost my daughter. I’m going to connect with this woman.” And she’ll be like, “You know what? Niles Calder was not really a dad for me, let’s connect and hang out.” And she immediately calls him on his shit and is like, “No, I’m not your daughter. Don’t try to replace your daughter with me. What are you doing? Stop this.”

Alex:                 And so even if it potentially heads in that direction or she does turn out to be his daughter or anything like that, I think the way that it plays out here, we talk about this a lot for the improv terms, but I actually think a lot of the no but works this show and that is what a lot of the character… Well, I think that’s what a lot of the characters are doing. That’s definitely what Rita is doing. She’s like, “Leave me alone,” is her whole game.

Pete:                Yeah, but those no buts are the reason that are keeping her from growing and being a better person. The same thing with Trainer, the fact that he refuses to get to know the light energy being inside of him is what’s causing him to be stuck and emotionless.

Justin:              What they’re doing is swimming backward into the shark’s mouth.

Pete:                Or the donkeys mouth in this-

Justin:              Donkey, another old improv term is swimming backwards into the shark’s mouth, which means the character looks like they’re trying to get away but you know they’re going to end up in the most interesting place for the episode or the scene right in that shark’s mouth.

Alex:                 Now let me ask you, Justin, as someone who was watching this for the first time, when you saw Jane get coughed out of a donkey, because my reaction is, “Oh man, this is a fun show.

Justin:              This is one fun.

Pete:                Yeah, this is a fun. Were you having fun at that? Or are you just like this show is too weird to comprehend?

Alex:                 [crosstalk 00:29:57] and can I also get a large popcorn? Thanks so much.

Justin:              I’m not super hungry, I’ll just get one baby’s face of fun. Just one baby’s face will do me. Throw in an arm. Sorry Pete, what were you saying? Did I think it was fun?

Pete:                [crosstalk 00:30:19].

Alex:                 Pete is one of America’s most hardest hitting interviewers and would like to know if you’re having fun watching this TV show.

Pete:                I love, I love it. Taking the Chris Farley show to the next level. Yes, it wasn’t too weird. I knew that donkey was something else. Remember that donkey farted words last week. So I was like this donkey is a fun and I’m going to keep watching wherever it goes.

Justin:              And we stayed past the donkey. So we’re kind of in.

Pete:                That’s what I’m saying.

Alex:                 Any other notes, any other scenes or moments that you guys want to call out? I’ll just mention, I wrote down the light. I think this is definitely Rita, but I think this is whether to about the donkey door thing. Her shouting, “I am a golden globe nominee,” made me laugh pretty hard.

Justin:              So good, great dialogue on this show. Great writing, great dialogue. I wrote down same line. I do want to say, we talked about it briefly about Cyborg’s dad repeating the line back to him at the end of the episode and Cyborg looking at him like, “That’s in my brain.” I thought it was such a cool move to have that happen, but not really explain it and just put it in the air because clearly that’s something we’re going to deal with later. And I think we’re going to learn that Vic’s dad is maybe not so great and then through that, that Calder is also maybe not the greatest person.

Alex:                 Well and also I think I like the way that Vic plays that immediately afterwards because he isn’t, like you’re saying, he doesn’t immediately shoot it back as his dad, he plays it pretty cool. And it’s like, no, I’m going to hang out here for a little bit. I’m going to just see how things go. No big deal. Don’t even worry about it. So he’s starting to realize things are very wrong with his life and he might be as monstrous as anybody else in Doom Manor, but he is not quite there yet. And like a good hero, he is trying to investigate the mystery and figure it out first. Pete, any scenes or moments you wanted to call out in particular?

Pete:                Yeah, the part where, Trainer is struggling and then the little kid goes, “Mommy, the mummy is awake.” Ah, just really fun. The fact that they’re just monsters out in the world struggling at things and there’s people commenting on it. Just very, very cool.

Justin:              The bandage guy, miss goopy Cyborg set up there for when they first arrived inside the donkey was very cool. And then we get this last image of this painting, which I think was Cyborg holding Calder was it, that we see?

Alex:                 Was it Cyborg holding Calder or was it just Cyborg as a monster? That’s what I saw it as.

Pete:                It was holding somebody. It was definitely like-

Justin:              It was something horrifying and it feels predictive and I guess we have… Whoever the painting personality maybe is.

Alex:                 I mean my first impression was it was a picture of my father never being proud of me, but I guess it could have been the other thing.

Justin:              That’s the thing about art. Oh yeah, that’s the thing about art is it’s up to the beholder really. And I guess the words Alex Albon were written over the top of it.

Alex:                 Yeah, yeah, it was weird. It was surprising is what it was, but it was pleasant. I also wanted to call out, you touched on this briefly, but the whole audio tour was great. I loved the visual of the townspeople set up as these different paintings and placards throughout this strange landscape. Just the whole thing was really good. And we touched on this briefly at the beginning, but all of the trauma stuff that Rita deals with and Larry deals with and Vic deals with is really good. Love the moment where Mr. Nobody says, “Hey, I know you’re a big hero, so I’m going to just cut to the part where I torture you,” with Vic. Yeah. It’s nice also just because it rhythmically changes up what they’re going through so you’re not having to walk through the same thing with all three of them. Vic gives it that different feel.

Pete:                Also he has a great line of like, “Victor, this is about who you are. I’m trying to figure out who you are,” which is an interesting… Because sometimes we have these villains doing torture and you’re just like, “Well how does this fit into their big plan?” But I think it’s smart to have this villain trying to figure out what makes these people tick so maybe he can take them apart and find their weaknesses. But also the back and forth of the narrator having fun at Rita’s expense. She knows this isn’t real and she’s going along with it and to see her struggle with the being on stage and having the voice in her head. Very, very cool, very, very powerful stuff.

Alex:                 Before we wrap up here, let’s talk about who we think was most doomed this episode. Justin, you want to kick us off? Who was most doomed this episode?

Justin:              I feel like Larry was most doomed in this episode. He seems to be struggling the most with everything that’s happening, doesn’t understand his powers, doesn’t know what he’s there for, and is sort of running away permanently. And you can tell someone’s doomed when they sit in front of a mirror for a long time. Mostly, it’s a big sign.

Pete:                Well you could say that for Rita too. She sits in front of a mirror for a while. But I would say the donkey is the most doomed because he explodes at the end. And I hope we get more of donkey because we had a lot of fun.

Alex:                 You should check out Shrek Forever After for that. I’m going to call out Cyborg and-

Justin:              Say donkey, same actor.

Alex:                 Oh donkey. I’m going to call out Cyborg as the most doomed in this episode because he finds out that he’s not the hero he thought he was, everything in his life is a lie, his dad might-

Pete:                Yeah, just doesn’t seem to like him that much.

Alex:                 Things are going pretty poorly for Cyborg and worst of all, he’s just moved into Doom Manor which is not a good idea for anybody it seems, it just makes things worse. So we’ll certainly have to see what happens with him long term. And that’s it for this week’s episode. If you would like to support our podcast, patreon.com/comicbookclub. Also we do a live show every Tuesday night at 7:00 PM to Crowdcast and YouTube, come hang out. We would love to chat with you about Doom Patrol. Probably by this point, iTunes, Android, Spotify, Stitcher, or the app of your choice to subscribe and listen. @comicbooklive on Twitter, comicbookclublive.com for this podcast and more. And now as usual, we’re going to leave you with a piece of advice from Pete. Pete, take it away.

Pete:                Hey, don’t look in the mirror too hard, all right? It’s just one person’s opinion.

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