Doom Patrol season 1, episode 9 review: Jane Patrol

To fix what is broken from the last two episodes of Doom Patrol, Cliff must board the train of Jane’s mind that pulls into a station near a place called the Well.

When we last left our dysfunctional heroes on Doom Patrol, Larry and Cyborg were on a mission to explore a mysterious living street and its inhabitants. Meanwhile, Jane morphed into Karen — her most dangerous personality to date — and ran off to marry a guy she had under her thrall.

This week, the team deals with the fallout of that debacle, which was a result of Cliff’s impromptu therapy session. To do so, Cliff has to go inside the mind of Jane (in the vane of The Magic School Bus) and pull her back. In the process, we learn more about Jane’s past and the world of her mind.

The Underground

Diagrams and tapes of Jane with the missing Niles Caulder shed light on how vast the cast of characters inside her head is, but we finally see glimpses of them in their truest forms. Occupying a dystopian fantasy land dreamed up by Grant Morrison called the Underground, many of Jane’s better known and more volatile personalities show up.

They are embodied by faces that are not Diane Guerrero’s, for the most part. Hammerhead, Silver Tongue, and Penny Farthing, as well as others, feature and are played by new actors. Guerrero’s tremendous talent (which I’ve mentioned before) is given a slight break while allowing her to continue stretching her range. She picks up the slack as Jane, Karen, and train conductor Driver 8.

Jane’s mind indeed has its own rail system, the conveyance used for transporting her personas to the surface when they come out to play at the oddest, most unpredictable moments. The Underground functions like a city: it has rail, a school, the Well, a prison, and a warehouse in which Hammerhead and all the others hang out, or are stored.

A Negative Influence

More from DC Universe

• James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy casts more major DC characters
• New Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom trailer pushes Arthur to his limits
• 7 actors who could replace Ezra Miller as The Flash in the DC Universe
• Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League will have a battle pass (and that’s a bad sign)
• Harley Quinn renewed for a fifth season on Max (and it’s well-deserved)

Cliff takes a stroll through Jane’s dreamscape with the help of Larry’s Negative Spirit, so there is an easy way in and out of that quandary without more world-building or any diversions from the task at hand. The series brings out the Spirit as a convenient plot device when needed, putting his potential on display and raising questions that hopefully get answers down the line. But this isn’t his story.

No, the arc belongs to Crazy Jane and her love-hate relationships with Cliff and her crowded headspace. As damaged as she is, Cliff tries to be Jane’s rock amid the chaos in a vainglorious attempt to make up for his past sins by being the father he wasn’t to his own daughter. And showing more self-sacrifice than he did when he was a star on the racetrack, he learns something crucial — he does give Jane hope, after all.

Jane and Cliff’s interplay is a super glue for the team, yet another thing brought to us by Grant Morrison, as is everything in the Underground and what we’ve seen so far this season.

Doom Patrol digs deep inside the minds, pasts, and hearts of the team. Exploring the psyche, the spiritual, and the meaning of individuality as it does, the show is one of the most challenging and socially conscious superhero dramas out there. To say it’s the superteam with a message the X-Men could’ve been in cinema is thinking too small. Rather they are the most unconventional family streaming on television.