Monday, September 30, 2019

Ready for a Story About Superheroes? Or, What if I Told You This Was Actually a Story About Super-Zeroes?


Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the Blu-ray I reviewed in this blog post. The opinions I share are my own.

Doom Patrol: The Complete First Season

Disney+ made big waves by saying you can stream their service in 4K compared to Netflix which costs an extra three dollars. None of this really matters to me because I do not have a 4K TV. And even if I did, I am not sure I would be able to stream in 4K because I sometimes have trouble streaming in 1080p. One of the secret big disadvantages of the streaming era is that broadband in America kind of sucks. Other nations pay less for much better speeds. So if you want to watch something in the best quality, the be best to watch is to purchase the physical copy so you do not have to worry about buffering or internet outages.

Case in point, Doom Patrol. I watched earlier this year on DC Universe, which also offers 4K streaming at no extra cost, but like I said earlier I do not have a 4K TV. Not that I could watch on my HD TV either because DC Universe did not have an app for my Playstation or Android TV (it has since released one for the latter) so I was stuck watching on my laptop. I have to say, re-watching the season on the Blu-ray looks so much better. You have not lived until you have seen a horde of butt with teeth in glorious HD.

Okay, watching Doom Patrol on a laptop with a mediocre connection was still pretty good, it did top my list of the Best Television Shows of 2018-19. The group was introduced in the best episode of the first DC Universe show Titans and there were some tweaks to their own show from that episode (the Chief got recast, Negative Man got moodier, Beast Boy got forgotten), it was still mostly the same weirdness that made the Titans episode so good.

Timothy Dalton (Penny Dreadful) plays the Chief who hosts this group of outcasts in his mansion. Elasti-Girl has been there the longest after the actress who has trouble controlling her body and April Bowlby (The Slammin’ Salmon) is great with a pithy comment when one is needed. Then came Negative Man, who has some sort of negative energy with a mind of its own living inside of him. The latest addition (not counting Beast Boy) is Robotman, voiced and played in flashbacks by Brendan Fraser (Encino Man), as a former race car driver who was save by the Chief after a car accident where only his brain was save and put into a robot body, natch.

Returning to the mansion after a decade’s long hiatus is Crazy Jane and her sixty-four personalities, each one weirder than the next with their own abilities. Diane Guerrero (who voiced Jessica Cruz in Justice League vs. the Fatal Five) is great as all of them and it is a shame that could not get a whiff of attention at this year’s Emmy. Granted it took Tatiana Maslany three seasons to get nominated for Orphan Black and did not win until the fourth. Rounding out the group of heroes is Cyborg who was never in the Doom Patrol in the comics yet was a founding member of the Teen Titans, a show he did appear on.

Of course every superhero needs a good supervillain and Alan Tudyk (Firefly) chews all the scenes he can fit in his mouth as Mr. Nobody who is also the show’s de facto narrator. There are plenty of other Doom Patrol rouges gallery and allies that pop up throughout the show like Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man (be sure to always watch the background for more on him), Danny the Street (a living sentient street) Joshua Clay, Beard Hunter (who, um, hunts beards... so I guess his name is self-explanatory), the Bureau of Normandy, Willoughby Kipling (a Constantine rip-off because DC would not let Doom Patrol use Constantine in their comics so they made their own), Cult of the Unwritten Book, Lodestone, Flex Mentallo (who can alter reality with his flexing leading to one of the weirdest scene on the show which is saying a lot). Oh yeah, and Butts with Teeth.

As superhero fatigue slowly creeps (or much faster for some people) in as we keep seeing the same themes over and again, Doom Patrol is the cure because you have never seen anything like this team on the big or small screens. And as Disney dominates with the PG-13 shows and movies, Doom Patrol is very R. Sure I am not sure I needed to see Brandon Frasier naked but we do get to hear Crazy Jane’s most vulgar personalities in their most profane (really, the episode where we go inside her mind may be the best of the season). Oh, and did I mention the Butts with Teeth? This show is awesome.

Doom Patrol: The Complete First Season comes with all fifteen episodes across three disks (five per disk). The Blu-ray also comes with about fourteen minutes of deleted scenes. All deleted scenes are put of the disk with its corresponding episode, but you cannot watch them individual, they are grouped together on the disk. The final disk also has two bonus features, both about five minutes each. Firsts is a gag reel and boy, do the actors on this show like to break out into dance. The other is “Doom Patrol – Come Visit Georgia PSA about scouting locations for the show. The Blu-ray also comes with a digital copy (I know a started this review complaining about streaming) but keep in mind the code that came with my copy expires 12/31/2020.

Own Doom Patrol: The Complete First Season on Blu-ray and DVD October 1!



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