Notes on - Doom Patrol: Subconscious Patrol

 

Subconscious Patrol notes

The face birds on the wire are creepy AF  They’re the DP, right?

So, going by the title, they’ve all been transported into their own sub consciousnesses?

Why is kid Vic just throwing toys on the floor?  Rude.

Still super racist the way the employee handled it

Silas:  We don’t get to make mistakes.

The racism in this scene is much more overt than it usually is in the real world.  I do like the way they’re making appoint about representation in toys.

Silas:  We don’t get to make mistakes.

So the bird with Vics face just swapped Adult Vic for General Tony

And now all of Jane’s alter are puppets

Why is puppet swearing always funny?

‘Underground Avenue’

Why is Jane’s subconscious grown up Kay instead of child?

Puppet Hammerhead is a lot of fun

Hammerhead: Here’s the deal.  We’re in Kay’s subconscious.

Jane: I thought we’re always in Kay’s subconscious.

Hammerhead: Do I have a PHD in subconscious shit?  How the fuck should I know??

So it appears that this is a subconscious level below the level of the underground where Kays deepest sense of self is represented by an adult.  And this time the birds swapped Adult Kay for Jane

Nice PIL shirt Cliff

This whole thing is an excuse for Brenden Fraser and Riley Shanahan to interact, right?  Cliff has some dark memory inside that warehouse but doesn’t seem to remember what it was.  His subconscious is played by Brenden Fraser, appropriately

I like the look of the bird with the robotman face.

The bird alter-faces kind of explain what Lloyd was doing in the mist making face sculpture of Cyborg

So the birds are flying them into their own sub consciousnesses and swapping the ‘real’ them for their subconscious self image.  That explains what Lloyd said about it only being dangerous if you’re a bad person then

And now Matt Bomer and Matthew Zuk together.  Fun

It’s so odd to see Matt Bomer and Brenden Fraser on set

A gay man on his wedding day committing to living a destructive lie is a whole mood in and of itself.

And of course Rita’s on hand to explain what’s happening

Rita apparently has her full memory back. 

Is Rita a supervillain now, technically?

Everyone in the world has swapped places with their subconscious selves.  Apparently the weather guy is a little kid in his subconscious and there’s something about a water buffalo?

A memory, a fantasy, a hidden shame, a deep dark secret.  Are those really ‘who we are’?

Rita says she ‘returned’ from the past.  So she didn’t just wait it out.

Larry:  So the plan is we just stew in our own shit and the world is saved?

You know, I don’t hate this as a plan to force the whole world into threapy

Brotherhood of Evil 1949 – Laura is interviewing with Brain and Monsieur Mallah to be in the Brotherhood of Evil.  Niles wrote his letter as (one presumes) a result of her betraying her friends, and now she’s joining them.  They want her to travel in the time ship that they built based on their drawings of the ship Rita arrived in to go forward to the future and steal Niles’ inventions and bring them back.  Only of course they don’t know that her memory will be wiped and all that will be left is her hatred of Niles.

That means the time ship isn’t in a loop itself, it just inspires its own creation

Brain:  My God, the accent on her

Monsieur Mallah: Very evil.

Brain:  Right??

Love that Monsieur Mallah gives her the name ‘Madame Rouge’

Brain:  So what do you say?

Madame Rouge:  I’d say you had me at ‘Fuck Niles Caulder.’

So the Brain and MM don’t know about the time travel wiping memories thing that’s going to ruin their plan

Nice touch that in the memory Larry’s mom is talking to where Larry was standing at the time, not where he’s standing right now.

So Larry’s mom knew about his gay-ness and wanted to squash it.  That’s typical.

Yeah, this is exactly what coming out in the late 50s would have looked like.

Jane as the voice of positivity and productive action is nice

Holy shit, she just tore Harry the Lamb’s ear off.

The red yarn blood looks surprisingly visceral in this context

I wonder what Joivan’s response to being packaged in a toy box for most of these scenes

Thank you general Tony for clarifying the timeline

What does Rita want the subs to do, exactly?  Therapy talk?  Is Admiral Whiskers back?

1949 – Madame Rouge is dressed and Ready to leave for the future

God, this scene with Rita and Laura is RIVETING.  Neither of them are really wrong.  They both have valid points.

Plus they’re confirming my whole thing last review about what happened to her

*** This is all you ever were.

Madame Rouge: Did you really think you were going to change the world with a jangly hat made out of serving utensils?  Another word poem to stick it to the man?  Art is bullshit.  Art is a narcotic you suckle while life, ambition, purpose, pass you by.

Oh Shit Laura,  Hard core turning into malcolm to hurt Rita the most.

Love that they acknowledge that they had been really good friends to one another before life ground them apart

Where does Rita want them to go in the fog?

No one is adjusting their eyelines in the memories.  I love that

This memory is SO Cliff

The subs are hiding

General Tony:  We’ll be safe here.  It’s comfortable.  Secure.  I’ve reinforced the cotton sheets with the flannel sheets.

Why is Joivan Wade the only actor not playing his own sub?  Was he busy?  Is there a plot significance?

They’re being quite vague as to which time ship is being stolen by whom?

Apparently the time traveller narrator is diagetic and Rita can interact with it.

The second time trip is restoring her old memories

Ah, OK, it was actually Rita, not Laura who locked them in the poconos just to make sure she ran into Malcolm in the afterlife.  Nice story loop closure

Larry is pushing for them to talk through their feelings.  Is that the whole point?  Then what was Rita trying to take them to

Cliff forgot Clara in the back of his car while he was partying with strippers.  That tracks

How did Cliff summon the portal to Larry’s memory?

Cliff:  Fuck this Freaky Friday shit.

Larry:  That’s not even close to Freaky Friday.

Larry put down the ring, symbolizing his giving up the past

Kay has a damn good point about not being obligated to honor her father

Cliff is desperate to not deal with his emotional baggage.  Then reveals that he’s dying.  Referencing the parkinsons, I assume.

Cliff’s monologue about suddenly having money and power after growing up poor is exactly how that happens

Metaphorically, it makes sense that Vic sees himself as his father’s ‘toy’

Vic wants Larry and Cliff to give younger him the rock of his mom’s that he went and got from under the tree.

The puppet/alters have gone full Lord of the Flies.  The blood and wool in Polly’s mouth is a nice touch

Cliff:  Which one of you felt fucks is Jane?

Doctor Harrison’s ‘never again’ is very sinister.

LOVE the 70s graphics.  Still not at all clear what’s fascilitating them moving from mind to mind.

Larry:  You’re the day I committed to lying to myself.

Oh, General Tony is there to avoid doing a Joivan Wade split screen.  With Kay that worked around it by making Jane a puppet.

Larry and Negative man making peace with their guilt was beautiful

The thing that Cliff is torturing himself because he didn’t feel guilty about leaving clara in the car.  He’s describing addiction perfectly.

So the subs are manifesting to insist that the current versions finally actually learn from their past mistakes and make better choices instead of suppressing and wallowing, making the same mistakes all over again

OK, I get why they have someone else playing General Tony

They’re making a really good point about the trauma that young black men are put through by necessity of keeping them safe.  ‘We’re not allowed to make mistakes’

Kay says that everything Jane does brings her more pain and trauma.

Oh shit.  She wishes Jane would die???

Holy shit that is some heavy shit to process.  Is Jane going away?  Is another alter going to step forward?

Cliff:  OK, I think we can all agree that what happens in the eternal flagellation, stays in the eternal flagellation.

And poof, they’re all back where they were before it started.  Cliff getting busted by Clara using her credit card for thrillseeking, Jane alone in the underground with Kay.  Where did all the other alters go?

Larry’s in time to rescue his pupae baby

And Vic went ahead and had all of his cyborg parts removed

Damn, Joivan’s ripped

And finally, present day Laura De Mille appears and confronts Rita by a lake/river.  You could light a cigarette off the sparks flying between those two.

Laura didn’t deal with her emotional baggage because she flew away from her bird at the end of last episode.