Harley Quinn Review!

Alright! Today I'm reviewing the animated streaming show Harley Quinn, a solo adventure about Wonder Woman's replacement in the DC trinity. After breaking up with the Joker and rethinking her life, Harley Quinn goes on a quest to become the greatest villain in Gotham City. Along for the ride are her friends Poison Ivy, King Shark, and Clayface, an entire family worth of Bat-people, and an abusive ex seeking revenge. 

Season one

The pilot episode is the most vulgar and graphically violent of the entire show. That's not to say the rest of the show isn't vulgar and graphically violent - it definitely is - but it makes for a rough breaking in if unprepared. It definitely establishes the tonality of the show, though! Harley Quinn is crass and gleefully violent to a fault, taking extreme advantage of its TV-MA label to take Gotham to hilariously violent depths never before seen. 

The first season is a mostly-fresh retelling that successfully introduces these versions of DC's iconic characters. It cements Kaley Cuoco as the best Harley Quinn voice actress of all time, completely redefines characters like King Shark and Kite Man, and provides the funniest and most sensible version of Poison Ivy. The series combines a winning dose of blue collar humor and mundanity into the DC universe (such as Harley Quinn complaining about The Daily Planet's paywall) that contrasts very well against the nonsensical situations (Harley Quinn kidnapping Lois Lane to become Superman's archnemesis). Lake Bell is particularly well suited to delivering the hilarious lines the writers cook up for her. 

That was where the real joy of Harley Quinn came from - seeing the fun riffs on DC characters interact with each other in ways the comics or films can't really do. Bane is a hilarious parody of Tom Hardy in The Dark Knight Rises; Poison Ivy is an introvert who prefers the company of plants to people; and Clayface is a completely nonsensical actor with a vocal tic. It reminds me of The LEGO Batman Movie, where simplifying characters into their most basic cartoon selves brings out the complexity, and an insightful message on discovering your own self hits in the right places. 

Harley Quinn's animation is also very impressive, with character designs that feel classic but still differentiate themselves to be recognizable in their own right, with lush backgrounds and fluid action scenes that make it one of the best-animated entries in DC's TV canon. In general, the show succeeds as an irreverant deconstruction of the DC Universe that fans who can stomach some gnarly violence and language will highly enjoy. 8/10. 

Season Two

Season two is interesting because it chews through five seasons worth of content: It adapts Knightfall, an Apokalips invasion, Poison Ivy's wedding to Kite Man, bachelor parties, Doctor Psycho's betrayal, Batgirl's origin, Riddler University, Mister Freeze, the return of the Joker, the Pit, and Jim Gordon cleaning up GCPD in thirteen episodes, one of which is completely stand-alone and dedicated to Batman. 

The good news is that season two is never boring! It maintains a constant kinetic energy that is instantly endearing and impossible to look away from. The team is up and running, the motivations for Harley Quinn's actions are well-established, the revenge quests are fun, the adaptation of Knightfall is hilarious, and, most importantly, the moments of drama all hit. Harley Quinn's second season is Harley Quinn's most melodramatic, which is where the show cools down and shines bright.

One of my favorite scenes in all DC media is in season two: Mr. Freeze, desperate to find a cure for his wife, partners with Poison Ivy and finally acheives his singular goal. He and Nora are reunited for a brief and touching moment before he collapses and dies. It is a heartbreaking end to Batman's most tragic villain, and I hope that any future adaptations of Mister Freeze look back on Harley Quinn as an inspiration for how to emotionally satisfy his journey. 

Unfortunately, the sheer amount of plot in the season makes it feel unbalanced, and you never get to spend as much time in each locale as you would like. While I applaud the episodic consistency, some of these moments deserved to breathe more - especially Doctor Psycho's betrayal in the finale of the season, Harley abandoning the parademons, and the overall resolution to the Apokalips invasion. 9/10

Season three

Season three saw Harley Quinn moved from DC's streaming service (Y'all remember that? It was a thing back in 2019, I swear) to HBOMax, and the difference in quality is palitable. The animation immediately dips and the show becomes a loose parody of itself, which was already a loose parody of the DC Universe.

The simplifications of characters stops being inisghtful and instead becomes trite and generic, and soon the show is indistinguishable from any other adult animated series. Episode five is specifically when the series jumps the shark - Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and a completely unhinged Nora Fries go on a trip to Louisiana and meet Swamp Thing, portrayed as a hipster with a swamp bun. It's not a characterization that enhances our understanding of Swamp Thing, it just reduces him into a general archetype of a millennial parody. And then, if the series jumps the shark, it nukes it to hell and back by portraying the Court of Owls as a place where Gotham's elites get their freak on and have a giant orgy. 

That's not a parody of DC at that point, nor is it a funny adult show. It's just weird, man. Even weirder is the Valentine's Day special, which is so pervasive that even a brief description would be too vulgar for my blog. 

If season three has one saving grace, it's that the laughs are consistent and that the show remains extremely bingeable. Batman has a really zany arc that the mere concept of is inherently hilarious, Nightwing's introduction is well-received, and Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy's relationship is really cute. Other than that, the peak of Harley Quinn is well behind us, and it doesn't get much better from here on out. 6/10. 

Season four

Well, that's a lie - out of the HBOMax seasons, I like season four the best. Harley Quinn still slowly degrades into generic sitcom tropes, but it's more restrained when compared to season three, and goes back to riffing on the DC Universe as a whole and not just random sexual midadventures. Nora Fries returns as a believable person, Bane's subplot is hilarious, and socially conscious evil is a deeply hilarious idea that only Poison Ivy could come up with.

After the overstuffed plot of season two and the plot (?) of season three, season four does a better job balancing the zany personalities of Harley Quinn with terrific a and b plots: Harley joins the Bat-family and learns to fight crime while Poison Ivy becomes the new head of the Legion of Doom. The couple's jobs directly contradict the other's, the blue collar mundanity that made the first season so enjoyable returns, and the development of the Joker, Batman, and Alfred are all definite highlights. 

The riffing on the DC Universe returns as well - Nightwing's carefully drawn buttocks is a recurring joke in the DC fandom, and Harley Quinn plays into that by having Professor Pyg kidnap him to attain the perfect butt for the perfect human model. That's a hilarious wink-wink DC meta reference that really only Harley Quinn can give us, and this season is full of them: Lex Luthor stealing Superman's hair, Thalia al Ghul running Wayne Enterprises, and Gotham City Sirens are all beautifully woven into the DNA of this story. 

The only caveat is that they cartoonize Nightwing and he ends up getting killed by a sleepwalking Harley Quinn. Under no circumstances should Harley Quinn be able to strangle him to death, but it does play into the larger trope of Nightwing dying laughably terrible deaths. Batgirl's paralyzation is also totally glossed over in a way completely unfair to the strong character they had spent so much time developing... although again, just like the comics. 8/10. 

Season five

After spending so much time destroying Gotham, season five spices up Harley and Ivy's relationship by moving them to Metropolis, a beautiful utopia with no crime... except for the crime they bring with them. It's all part of a larger scheme from Brainiac to perfect the city and then bottle it, a scheme that Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy now have to thwart. 

First of all, this season gets rid of Superman faster than The Rise of Skywalker got rid of Rose Tico. It's understandable and inevitable given his powerset and the premise of the season, but it's somewhat hilarious just how quickly and how easily he leaves to go explore the galaxy. Metropolis also offers a fun host of new characters like Lois Lane and Lena Luthor, although the show bends over backwards to include the favorites from prior seasons: Clayface, Bane, and King Shark, out of whom King Shark's presence feels the most contrived. Clayface actually has a really funny subplot where he poses as Perry White and forces the Daily Planet to post positive reviews of his performances, but King Shark, by this point in the series, should probably be written out entirely as he has the kingdom to deal with and children to raise. The introduction of these three also means Lois takes a back seat, which is disappointing since she's one of the strongest draws a Metropolis-based season has. 

The "riff on DC" vs. "generic adult animation" is very blurry here - on one hand, Alfred going insane and admitting he revived Nightwing to kill the Bat-family is... well, it's not exactly a riff, but it is different. And like all sitcoms that go on for five season, the cast's shrinkage means we lose the full-ensemble effect that made seasons one and two so enjoyable. The loss of Doctor Psycho, Batgirl, Riddler, Batman, and Sy Borgman all heavily affect the comedic balance of the ensemble, and the show never returns to the Gothamite vibe that made the first two seasons so instantly likable. 

On the other hand, season five probably has the most well-developed seasonal villain with Brainiac, whose backstory is yet again reinvented with a tragic twist on Koko's end. The musical the heroes put on to expose his plan sounded horrendous but ended up being really funny, and the climactic resolution is a classically Brainiac tale. Season five is still enjoyable, but it's definitely a watered-down version of when the show had something to say. 7/10

Overall, I give Harley Quinn a 7/10, "While the first two seasons of Harley Quinn are some of the best and funniest adaptations of DC Comics one can find, the subsqeuent seasons are plagued by sitcom degradation and overly adult humor."