Doom Patrol

The latest DC comics TV series is Doom Patrol.  The Doom Patrol consists of a bunch of misfits with superpowers, more or less.  There is Robotman, Elasti-Girl, Negative Man, Crazy Jane, and the Chief.  Cyborg shows up early though he appears to be on -loan rather than a full member.  The series opens with introductions of each character and their origin story.  Cliff was a race car driver who, in 1988, 'died' in a car crash.  Now he is a brain in a can.  Rita Farr was a successful Hollywood actress who, in 1955, was exposed to a toxin that made her melt when stressed.  She has achieved some control so as to maintain her shape but she's still iffy.  Larry Trainor was a test pilot with dreams of joining Project Mercury in 1961 until he flew through a radioactive entity that left him horribly disfigured and inhabited by an alien symbiote.  Crazy Jane has multiple-personality disorder with the twist that most of the personalities have a superpower.  Chief is a rich, secretive genius who appears to be immortal.

Early on, the Chief (Timothy Dalton) is abducted by archvillain Mr. Nobody (Alan Tudyk).  The entire season has the general goal of finding Chief.  Instead, it mostly delves deeply into the ruined hyper-sensitive psyches of the misfits.  Robotman is obsessed with the daughter who grew up without him.  Rita misses the limelight but starts melting at the slightest provocation.  Larry is gay.  Though the show takes place in the current year, he is still stuck in 1961 and obsessed with a lover he hasn't seen in almost 60 years.  Flashbacks and imagined encounters have gratuitous face sucking.  Of course, the comic version of Larry was straight (he was written in the 60s after all).  Crazy Jane is just a basket case who emotes venom at everyone and at all times.  She shifts from one unappealing personality to another.  Cyborg is guilt-ridden about his mother's death and can't seem to master his cybernetics.

The biggest problem of the show was the timeline.  It keeps flashing back to each character's origin which becomes infuriating.  Rita and Larry are in their 90s.  Cliff and Jane are pushing 70.  The Chief was an active explorer in 1912 and doesn't look any older as of 2019.  Clearly, the comic was published in the 60s and the character bios would work just fine if the setting was somewhere in the 1960s.  Robotman looks like he was assembled with 1950s technology rather than 1990s tech.  Why?  Every time you start to buy into the characters in the modern era, we flashback to the 1950s or 60s and you wonder why these characters aren't dead already.

Beyond the timeline issues, the characters suck.  Robotman and Crazy Jane spend their time being angry and dropping a variety of four letter words.  They scream and yell and curse to prove that they care and want to be proactive.  Or, in Jane's case, just wants to scream and yell and curse because life isn't fair.  Negative Man is generally apathetic.  When he isn't having his imagined trysts with his 1960s boyfriend, he mopes and bemoans his fate.  Wow, 60 years on and he still hasn't adjusted or even figured out how to communicate with his symbiote.  Rita is similar though she is more of the keep up appearance type person.  When forced to participate, she complains and whines.  Cyborg is tolerable.  In fact, he's a fairly likeable character who isn't either in a constant rage or soul-crushing depression.  Chief is rational and stable but has a very small part and is absent for much of the series.  Of course, the 'team' he has assembled reflects poorly on him.

Skip this turkey.  I wish I had.