Creature Commandos Episode 6
"Priyatel Skelet"
Writer: James Gunn
Director: Sam Liu
Cast: Alan Tudyk, Benjamin Byron Davis, Mara Bakalova, Indira Varma, Zoë Chao, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Frank Grillo, David Harbour, Viola Davis
For the penultimate episode of Creature Commandos, we are treated to some old-school vibes straight out of Batman: The Animated Series: Yup, it's Dr. Phosphorus's tragic origin story!
As the episode opens, we see bloodied scientist Alex Sartorius (who appears nearly identical to his voice actor, Alan Tudyk) jumping from moving van, then dragged back in by the henchmen of mobster Rupert Thorne (Benjamin Byron Davis, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Borderlands). It has that old-school 90s animated feel, and Thorne keeps the character design from the original series. It's clear that Sartorius will turn into Dr. Phosphorus before too long.
The Creature Commandos are still trapped in Pokolistan after Princess Ilana Rostovic (Maria Bakalova) ordered them dead. She reiterates this to her guards at the beginning of the episode. While Dr. Phosphorus is getting along well on his own, The Bride (Indira Varma) and the amphibious Nina (Zoë Chao) run into each other and sneak into the Can-Can bordello, run by a madam voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Penguin, The Expanse). It's a tense stand-off between the always wary Bride and the sex workers whose workplace she has invaded. But they provide cover when the soldiers knock on the door, and The Bride and Nina will stay for the time being.
Rick Flagg Sr. (Frank Grillo) isn't dead from last episode after all! He's in a coma with a broken spine and internal injuries, but he's still alive and ready to star in some live-action movies! Frankenstein (David Harbour) was seen dropping him off at the hospital, and Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) thinks he might be just the person to take out the Princess. See, she still thinks that Princess Rostovic is going to take over the world — but that looks to be just a ruse by Circe with assistance from Clayface.
Frankenstein proves this correct as he's made his own way there to find The Bride, who is hijacking a plane about to leave for Pokolistan, his home country. His plan is to confront The Bride and show her that she's wrong about him, which … she isn't. He's a monster through and through.
Oh yeah, and Weasel. He runs off to the woods where he befriends some wolves.
Meanwhile, Dr. Phosphorus dodges patrols in the streets and in the sky by breaking into a house. The framed photos of a family with a daughter remind him of his own family back in Gotham. In a flashback, we see that he once had been working on a nuclear-fusion method of radiation therapy that would eliminate cancer — but he got into bed with Rupert Thorne's gang for the funding, promising to give the results to Thorne who would then share them with the dictatorship in the fictional DC country of Bialya. His wife, Parvin, wants nothing to do with it, but as Sartorius feeds Thorne false data, she's murdered along with their son. Thorne frames Sartorius for the murder, then drags him to the lab. His memories are interrupted by the little girl of the house seeing him, but not being scared. She offers him food.
At the bordello, The Bride and Nina are offered jobs. "Nina and I have more respect for ourselves," says The Bride. "You use your bodies as weapons, is that respect?" the madam fires back, "These girls struggle because they want to live." It's something The Bride and Nina can relate to, but the discussion is interrupted by two drunk Irish men, the Craic Brothers (who are, as far as I can tell, characters original to Creature Commandos) who storm in and demand women. Bad news. "What a wonderful life worth struggling for," groans The Bride.
Dr. Phosphorus's flashback continues as he eats cereal with the little girl.
Thorne was upset about being on the hook for false data, and his men ransack Sartorius's lab for the real stuff. Once they find it, Sartorius is thrown into his own machine and fried to a green, glowing crisp. In the present day, he's pulled back by the friendly little girl who exclaims, "Priyatel skelet," which is Russian for "skeleton friend." She pulls back her lips to mimic his skeleton face and in a heartbreaking line, he intones, "It looks like I'm smiling too. But I'm not."
Predictably, back at Can-Can, Patrick Craic gets violent with one of the girls, then with the madam when she steps in. He reveals that he's a metahuman with electricity crackling from his hands. Surprisingly, it's Nina who comes to the rescue, smashing a bottle over his head and slashing him with the shards.
This enrages Patrick, but The Bride steps in, blasts the other Craic brother with her gun (lots of hollowed-out faces this season), and takes on Patrick. She gets a blast of electricity to the chest, but, as she is powered by lighting, this causes her to snap. She breaks off Patrick's arm then plunges her hand into his chest, pulling out his heart. While the madam and the girls are appreciative, she and Nina recognize this as the time to leave. As they walk towards the castle, Nina jokes that now they really are friends, which The Bride halfheartedly denies.
Back in the Gotham flashback, Sartorius, now fully irradiated as Dr. Phosphorus, makes his way to Thorne's home, where he's doing the Charlie Chaplin "sausages as shoes" gag for his kids. It's all over for Thorne, and then his henchmen as well. We get a montage set to Gogol Bordello's "Wonderlust King" of a gleeful Dr. Phosphorus melting faces at a supermarket, setting a goon who is tied to a chair on fire, and dangling someone off the side of the roof, letting them fall as his hands burn through their shins. He takes over Thorne's operation in a gaudy display of pimp clothes, matching goon makeup, and a large dance sequence that is interrupted by … THE BATMAN. No fighting shown. We all know how this went down.
The flashback ends as the little girl's parents discover Dr. Phosphorus playing with her in the backyard, regaining a little bit of the memories he had with his own boy before they were cut short. "We were just pretending to fly…" he says to the terrified couple, as the girl happily runs back to the house. He respectfully asks for directions to the castle and is on his merry way.
In the final scene, Weasel leaves his wolf friends and meets up with Dr. Phosphorus, The Bride, and Nina on their way to the castle.
It's time to kill a princess.
