Review: Harley Quinn The Big Apricot

REVIEW (SPOILERS)

With Gotham at its worst, Harley and Ivy decide to move to Metropolis for a new life.

OUR TAKE

I’ve been watching this Harley Quinn show since it first premiered in the short-lived DC Universe spin-off, the only show left from the original lineup that also included the Titans, Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, and Stargirl. And now here I am after it went from that to HBO Max and now to Max. I covered the last third of the first season and all of the second, and what reminds me of why I’ve enjoyed the show so much over the years is its comedy and character writing, which is shown no better than through Harley herself. She began the show trying to rise through the solo ranks of a professional thief, making friends and facing external and internal struggles. In the next season, after defeating her past Joker and her own insecurities, she took down a bunch of other villains and came to terms with her feelings for her best friend Poison Ivy. In the next season, while not as funny as the previous two, we still got a substantial journey for Harley as she faced the challenges of maintaining a healthy relationship and even realized that she wanted to be a hero instead, while also using her skills as a therapist , to help Bruce Wayne accept the death of his parents!

Then there was season four, which canceled a lot of things, including more interesting developments for characters like the Joker and Batman, and then we had that Snakeman show that felt like one episode spread too sparsely over ten episodes, and now here we are in the fifth season of Harley Quinn, which is off to a… disturbing start. Remember when Harley, along with Ivy, Catwoman and the needlessly crippled Barbara, became the sirens of Gotham City? Well, if you were confused about how this team would work when their goal was to find a missing body, don’t worry because they’ve broken up. Also, the show just ended with Gotham and Harley and Ivy are packing up and moving to Metropolis, which really just means they’re replacing all the Batman jokes with Superman jokes. Oh yeah, and the main bad guy will be Brainiaic, as hinted during the final scene of the Kite Man show. And all this… does not give me confidence. Last season actually showed us that a lot of the elements that made this show work were more or less exhausted. The team Harley put together went their separate ways, aside from Ivy, the Joker had a good reformation as a stepfather and then mayor before that suddenly changed. And now most of the rest of the cast has stayed in Gotham. Basically, my question is, what are we doing here, man? I guess we’ll find out over the next few weeks, but we’re not really off to a great start.