Review: Harley Quinn “Bensonhurst”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

After being blown off by her former team and Ivy dodging her texts to apologize, Harley goes home to Bensonhurst to visit her supportive mom and grandma…as well as her deadbeat dad who is surprisingly out of prison. Harley has a bit of a rocky relationship with him, considering he forced her to take a dive on a promising gymnastics career because of his gambling addiction. Doesn’t help that some assassins are trying to kill them, but specifically her dad for him borrowing money from the mob. To save the family (and avenge poor grandma), Harley and her father set aside their differences to kill the people after them. It looks like bonds are mended! Until it turns out that her dad has found out about a million dollar bounty, which her mom supports because Harley becoming a super-villain made their family a laughing stock.

Meanwhile, Ivy has been kidnapped for harvesting by Scarecrow, so she sends a stray dandelion to get Frank and his stoner friend to pick up Harley, who is eager to reform her REAL family. And the one who asked for the bounty is revealed to be Joshua, who wants revenge for her ruining her bar mitzvah…on the Legion credit card.

OUR TAKE

It’s easy to sum up this episode with just its plot, but it’s probably the most layered and complex episode of the series yet. Since the beginning of the series, Harley has been trying to find a group of people that can accept her. It may have been under the guise of wanting a team to beat Joker, but it became a family in a better sense than, as it turns out, even her own biologicals. It’s only now, when she returns home to what she thinks might be a safe haven that she understands that blood may be thicker than water, but the blood of covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.

And even with that rather important message, there’s still plenty to gleam from the story. For one, the episode being about Harley visiting family also gives us some better insight into her personality. Her anger issues come from her dad constantly squashing her dreams and her mother passive aggressively trying to push her in a less fulfilling direction in life (the line of “I AM a doctor” in response to her mother telling her to marry one says plenty right there), while her taste for abusive boyfriends likely comes from observing her own parents’ crappy marriage, and a life of crime also probably seemed pretty tempting from the get go considering her father’s constant brush with death by mob.

Yet even with those similarities, we still manage to find important distinctions between Harley and her family. First and foremost being that she cherishes the friendships she’s made instead of turning on people for monetary gain, showing a strong loyalty that she can count on from her friends (once she wins them back) instead of her own family unfortunately. So even if she and her father are both criminals, it can be said that Harley at least has honor among thieves. And around much better dressed people, I’d say.

Though what’s probably the most cool thing about this is how it fits so well with Harley as a character in pretty much all aspects. It plays on her Jewish heritage, her villainous roots, has excellent comedy at just about every second, and is intensely psychological. It’s probably the quintessential Harley Quinn episode that isn’t in some way tied to the Joker. I’ve been a huge fan of this series since it came out and am so glad to be finally able to gush about it for the remainder of this excellent season.