Last week’s Doom Patrol saw Cliff and Niles rescue Dorothy from space but ended up with Cliff being jettisoned to Earth alone while in the Underground, Miranda returned from seeming destruction in the well and replaced Jane as primary. Larry discovered that he’s not the only person with a Negative Spirit residing in him and Vic decided to try to get answers about Roni’s condition – and found that Caulder Robotics once played a role in her situation. This week’s episode, “Dumb Patrol”, picks up all of those threads as most of the team deals with some very bad ideas. Read on for our recap.
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Warning: Spoilers for this week’s episode of Doom Patrol, “Dumb Patrol”, below.
In Switzerland, a phone rings but a machine picks up. A museum is unexpectedly closed due to an infestation. Elsewhere, Cliff returns to earth and crashes with through a billboard. At Doom Manor, Rita goes over her lines and is unexpectedly visited by the play’s director who asks her to take over the role of the Blob Lady and Rita agrees only for her mother to also appear and belittle her. Turns out, Rita is having a nightmare. Vic brings Roni to the house and introduces her to Larry, who tells them that Niles in space and Larry’s not sure when Niles will return. Rita is also introduced to Roni as well as Jane’s latest personality, Miranda. Miranda is a great cook and is also a big Rita Farr fan. Rita is going to go shadow the Cloverton Beekeeper. Larry informs them all that Dorothy is also in space. The doorbell rings and a mysterious crate shows up and a pink fume escapes it. Miranda, Larry, Vic, and Roni breathe it in. Despite being labelled “do not open” everyone but Miranda wants to open it, so they do. Inside is the painting Mr. Nobody and the Beard Hunter were trapped in…but they’re not there.
Elsewhere, Nigel has landed in Yukon Territory and sets off into the wild while Dorothy sleeps. Cliff decides to walk home to Doom Manor, very angry at Niles. Rita goes to meet with the beekeeper, who is kind of rough around the edges. She also has a daughter that she’s hard on and has her take a jar of honey to help her get better grades at school. It upsets Rita.
Larry decides to try to go visit his grandson in the hospital and asks Miranda/Flit to help him. They go to the hospital and the nurse alerts security who shows up to arrest him. Flit gets them out of there. At the Roni and Vic decide to perform surgery to fix Roni. Miranda tries to intervene as it’s a bad idea, but they don’t seem to think so. Willoughby Kipling shows up just then and it was a bad idea to open the box. Turns out they are all now infected by Scants. What are Scants? A helpful film reveals that they are pink humanoid pests that place bad ideas in people’s heads and causes a pink substance only Scants can see called “idiot” to come out of the infected’s ears. Scants use that to create uma jelly which gives the queen powers. The only way to fix things is to kill the queen. Miranda appears to be the only one not infected while the rest decide they want to help kill the queen by going into the painting.
Cliff continues his trek home, but his legs suddenly malfunction, and he ends up stuck in a parking lot. A guy shows up and has him do a shoutout for his friends before letting Cliff make a call — a call no one answers. Cliff’s second call is to leave a message on his daughter Clara’s machine. Cliff falls over and gets unstuck. Elsewhere, Rita opens up to the beekeeper about her mother, who suggests that needs to see things through her mother’s eyes and since she can’t talk to her, she needs to find a surrogate to scream at — the bees. It doesn’t work for Rita the way she hoped it would. On her way home, though, she encounters a mugging in progress and — as the Beekeeper — saves the day.
In the painting, the group finds Beard Hunter who has painted himself white to blend into the painting. He’s trying to hide from the Scants. While they talk, Scants show up and Larry reveals himself. The Scants then take them. In the Yukon, Niles tries to speak to Dorothy’s mother, but ends up being confronted by the Candlemaker instead who says Dorothy belongs with him now and says that her ancestors created him in the first place.
The Scants start to harvest the uma jelly and Willoughby shows up, as does the queen who describes the uma jelly as pure evolutionary potential and also reveals to each of them their bad ideas. Miranda is weirdly immune and with the help of other personalities, electrocutes the queen.
Back home and back to normal, Roni decides to go back to Detroit, but it’s revealed that she has a vial of the uma jelly with her. Larry goes to the hospital on his own and finds out his grandson has been discharged, presumably having recovered. Cliff makes it home and finds Clara there waiting for him. She got Niles’ confession tape in the mail. In the Underground everyone celebrates Miranda’s victory, but Pretty Polly reveals to Jane that Scarlet Harlot has gone missing. Jane goes to investigate and discovers Scarlet’s station is closed. Niles summons Willoughby and asks him to deal with Dorothy — though he wants one more day before whatever it is he will do happens.
New episodes of Doom Patrol land Thursdays on both DC Universe and HBO Max.
