Characters destined to lose?
Focusing on a DC superhero group that is anything but, this four season show starts of insanely strong with characters so deeply flawed its almost like everything they do is growth. Unfortunately everything goes wrong at season three mark where, despite still having a few moments of awesomeness, the script really just circles that shitter with characters stringing out expletives just to be edgy, fill time, and/or try "cover" poor writing every few sentences to the point that my wife gave up on it. It also seems to suffer a similar problem which Titans did in that characters reverse their growth/progress each season which is annoying. Usually I'd say check out the first few seasons then drop out when it gets bad but in this case, maybe just avoid it altogether.
Monday, 27 November 2023
Doom Patrol
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It's true that the first two seasons are better than the third but the third isn't bad. The fourth season still doesn't have a distributor in the UK so I can't comment on that.
ReplyDeleteOn the wider point of character growth, though, I have never understood what the big hang-up about that is. Why do characters need to get better or learn anything? It's certainly not realistic - people frequently get worse and end up knowing less than they started out knowing in real life so why should fictional characters always have to go through some growth or redemption arc?
I like narratives that descend into chaos and don't resolve so long as they remain interesting while they do it. I thought Doom Patrol 1-3 was always interesting, even if it frequently didn't make much sense. Of course, not making sense was key to the original comics it's based on, so that's also part of the IP.
S3 The Sisterhood of Dada (especially the episode where Rita and a bunch of people are just making animal noises for minutes on end) must have been one of the worst episodes of any TV show I have ever seen.
DeleteAs for character growth - it doesn't necessarily mean get better, as you suggested getting worse is also fine - but in this case they... stay the same?
Like Cliff becomes less of an asshole as one season ends and next season he's back to where he was at the start. Nightwing (in Titans) learns that he needs to trust his team more through one season and next season is back to hiding / sidelining them. Stagnant characters aren't great.
However it might indeed just be that I was expecting something else since I didn't read the comics of either.