Doom Patrol vs The Umbrella Academy

I started watching both series at roughly the same time and was struck by their similarities and by their differences. I have to admit that with both titles I’m more than ignorant in regards to their comic books. Vaguely aware of both titles, I never read the books, nor was I aware when while watching episodes of Doom Patrol that this is a spin off of Titans a web series I haven’t seen. I couldn’t tell you if the comic book version of Doom Patrol (first published in 1963) was always post-modernist superheroes or if that didn’t begin until after Grant Morrison’s historic run…of which, of course, I never read. There is certainly a post-modernist flavor to the series, including a villain who narrates the first few episodes with self-referential acknowledgments that he is narrating a television show.

Some of this post-modernist stuff is fun and a lot of it just too winkingly precious and the more the show winks the more I can’t help but roll my eyes, even if I have a hard time taking my eyes off of the show. Production wise Doom Patrol is not nearly as impressive as the Umbrella Academy which does some remarkable things with their production. The problem with those amazing production values is that the writers try so hard at telling an ordinary story of a superhero family who has ordinary problems. Where Doom Patrol embraces its stylistic panache (to much so), The Umbrella Academy keeps the stylistic flourishes at a minimum and largely at bay while it settles into Ordinaryville, sort of.

Doom Patrol is in love with the idea of a bunch of losers as reluctant hero’s. The writers feel compelled to constantly remind it’s audience that these guys are losers. These losers are five misfits; “Robotman” played by Brendan Fraser in his pre-robot form in the form of flashbacks and the voice of the robot, while Riley Shanahan plays the corporeal robot while Fraser voices him. Then there is Crazy Jane (Diane Guerrero) a psychotic with 64 “distinct” personalities, each one in possession of a superpower/ Matt Bomer is Larry Trainor the human host to an alien known as “Negative Man.” April Bowlby is Rita Farr/Elasti-Woman and Jovian Wade plays Vic Stone/Cyborg.

Four of these misfits are residents of Dr. Niles Caulder (Timothy Dalton) who has taken these saps who “needed a miracle” and used his skills in medical science to bring them from the edge of death to the state they are in as the series premiers, a bunch of losers ever so mournful about being losers. There is a similar mournfulness to the hero’s of The Umbrella Academy who in flashbacks were not at all losers but gleeful teenage hero’s dressed absurdly in academy uniforms (black sports coat, white shirts and black shorts) with cat-burgle eye masks. In the present day however, brought together by the mysterious death of their adopted father and founder of their team, this family is in disarray, one dead, another missing for the past thirty years and the remainder sullen about their lost potential. Each adult version of the Academy kids still living (with the exception of #5) and unlike the Doom Patrol hero’s, do not embrace their current loser status and what they mourn is the loss of glory days.

Colm Feore is Sir Reginald Hargreeves, the billionaire industrialist who in 1989, after forty-three women mysteriously and without ever showing any signs of pregnancy give birth to children. Sir Hargreeves searches for, finds and adopts seven of these children. Each one, with the exception of Ellen Page’s #7/Vanya, have different superpowers. Tom Hopper as #1-Luther/Space Boy possesses super strength and hides his oddly misshapen body under an overcoat. Diego (David Casteneda) is #2, The Kraken who has mad knife throwing skills, Emmy Raver-Lampman plays #3/Allison/The Rumor who can manipulate others by whispering rumors and #4/Klaus/The Seacne (Robert Sheehan) can conjure the dead.

These four have regular names only because this is how they named themselves, their adopted father never bothering to name then anything but respective numbers. In the premiere we learn that #7, numbered so because of her value to the team, has earned disfavor with the rest of the family for authoring a tell-all autobiography of her time being the marginalized and powerless sister in a family of superheroes, but this is not the only conflict between siblings. #2 (Diego) naturally has a competitive relationship with #1 (Luther), and #1 is in love with #3 (Allison) who loves him back while Klaus is a drug addict desperately trying to stave off the haunting dead, including #6, the ghost of #6 (Ben) who died a mysterious death sometime in the past.

#5, who appears out of the blue at the end of the premiere episode looking just the same as he did when he disappeared as a teen, falling from a vortex above the Umbrella Academy mansion next to the statue erected for their fallen sibling Ben. While he looks the same, he is not. Although he’s never bothered to assign himself a normal name and answers easily to #5. He has come from the future and warns the family (being from the future he already knows Sir Hargreeves is dead) of an impending apocalypse. This sets into motion the story that follows while the episode ends in one of its stylistic flourishes where each sibling in their own rooms are (as the camera dolly’s out to give a fuller view) really boxes and they all appear to be dolls in a dollhouse.

Both series bear some resemblance to The X-Men. Doom Patrol’s “Chief” is a wheel chair bound benefactor, and Sir Hargreeves is an emotionally crippled benefactor of a school of heroes. Neither of these groups are anything like The X-Men except when the X-Men stories are intent on portraying people with ordinary problems. The X-Men also has always been riddled with countless mutants good and bad, but both Doom Patrol and The Umbrella Academy keep their hero team ups relatively small, with Doom Patrol counting five hero’s (not counting the other 63 personalities of Crazy Jane), and The Umbrella Academy boasting roughly seven…well, six…or maybe five.

With Doom Patrol the apocalypse comes early on, at least for the town of Cloverton, Ohio. The four misfits have lived essentially lives as shut-ins and while the Chief is away Jane convinces the rest of the gang to get out and have some fun in the nearby town of Cloverton. None of them having any particular control of their powers despite each one in possession of them for quite sometime now, Elasti-Woman can not control her disassembling into a devouring blob which begins to do just that to Cloverton. The Chief arrives angrily telling them that their little field trip has likely attracted the villains Dr. Caulder has been hiding from and demands they leave with him. All but Robotman do, but Cliff can’t leave the town of Cloverton to face the apocalypse without at least trying to help.

This act of heroism inspires the others to go back and stand by Cliff to face whatever threat it is Cloverton faces. While Chief watches from his van, Morden (Mr. Nobody) confronts him and the premiere ends with Morden opening a vortex. The second episode picks up where it left off after a cutesy winking narration by Mr. Nobody who takes Caulder into the vortex with him. Jane heroically jumps through after Caulder before it closes leaving the other three misfits to figure out what needs to be done. The destruction of Cloverton has also attracted the attention of one of Caulder’s allies in the person of Vic Stone (Cyborg) who joins the team of misfits to find the missing Chief.

It is the embrace of weird that permeates Doom Patrol. Morden’s vortex is somehow connected to a regurgitating donkey that winds up spitting Jane out of the vortex. This leads to them concocting a plan where Elasti-Woman will enter the mouth of the donkey to look for the missing Chief. She winds up inadvertently dragging Robotman and Cyborg with her. Inisde the vortex. It was also the donkey’s farting that produced a green mist that threatened to destroy Cloverton to begin with. Doom Patrol has no interest in being ordinary even if it tends to follow certain modern character designs such as the closeted gay man (Trainor), the fading beauty queen (Rita Farr) and the absentee father (Cliff Steele).

As Doom Patrol finds its footing it lets go of the winking self-referentialism and begins to focus on the story at hand. Where The Umbrella Academy has its own winking self-referential devices they are largely relegated to ways in which to produce the opening title and credits. Stylistically they are impressive even if they tend to stick out as sore thumbs in an otherwise straight forward superhero tale. Because Netflix distributed The Umbrella Academy the full episode count was released all at once so I’ve seen all of them but only five episodes of Doom Patrol. I was watching each episode as the new episodes for Doom Patrol were released, but wound up finishing The Umbrella Academy because despite its flaws it was compelling enough to do so.

Ellen Page as Vanya is the most recognizable actor of the Umbrella Academy and also the least compelling even when her character becomes more compelling. Of the siblings in Umbrella Academy, Robert Sheehan and Aidan Gallagher are the most impressive, with Sheehan finding nice detail to his wreck of a junkie hero who sees dead people and Gallagher (a fifteen year old boy) doing impressive work portraying a world weary and wizened old man. Hopper and Casteneda are fine as #1 and #2 with Emmy Raver-Lampman only slightly more interesting in her performance than Page. It is the minor characters that really shine.

Cameron Britton (Mindhunter) is eminently watchable as Hazel and his partner Cha-Cha (Mary J. Blige) is too as two assassins sent to eliminate #5. Adam Godley as Pogo winds up showing more emotional resonance than any of the leads and he’s a chimpanzee! As the Handler, Kate Walsh (Grey’s Anatomy, Bad Judge) is fun and there unfortunately too little of her. John Magaro as the red herring villain is a little too obvious about it but is otherwise fine and Jordan Claire Robbins does some nice subtle work as a robot mom. The season ends in a cliff-hanger in which we are not so sure the apocalypse will be averted as it appears it hasn’t.

I like both shows and look forward to the second season of The Umbrella Academy assuming Netflix will make it, as I also look forward to watching the remainder of season one of Doom Patrol. Brendan Fraser has gained some weight since his movie star days but has turned out compelling performances in television shows such as Trust and now Doom Patrol. Diane Guerrero has the more difficult character with so many personalities to convey and generally does well with it if not too obvious with some of them and not near enough distinction between others. Farr and Bomer are less interesting, but this may change as the episodes roll out.