Review: Harley Quinn “Back to School”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Harley and Ivy settle in Metropolis with Lena Luthor’s help, but Harley is saddled with babysitting King Shark’s ever growing kids, while Ivy meets with an old flame.

OUR TAKE

Well, this didn’t really do anything to settle my concerns from last week, though I also wouldn’t say there weren’t some bright spots. I’m glad that we’re getting what seems to be another ongoing Ivy plot since it means we’ll get some more character development for her at least, and it’s actually connected to an important point in her life: how she got her powers and the birth of Frank. Turns out it was during her time with Jason Woodrue, a professor who she was sleeping with who then stole her idea and left her for dead, which would most certainly have added to her “people suck and plants are my friends” mindset that she maintained until she met Harley. But now she’s turning the tables and leaving him for dead, or at least until he becomes his comic persona, The Floronic Man. It’s also a bit of a callback to the version of her origin in the infamous “Batman and Robin” movie where Woodrue is also the cause of Ivy getting her powers, though those who have not suffered through that won’t have to piece that together thankfully. I guess we’ll see if there’s more that happens with this subplot in the weeks to come.

The weaker spots of the episode come from Harley’s plot, which gets her thrown into babysitting King Shark’s kids, who have grown quite a bit since last season. Now, my issues with this are not with the premise itself, which are wacky and fun and gruesome in all the ways that this show typically revels in. It’s more that it just reminds me at multiple points how far this show has fallen from what I so enjoyed about it in the first place. For one, that it’s a reminder of how much the show has to bend over backwards to find reasons to put characters like King Shark back in the story, even for a little bit. Him and Clayface and Psycho used be regulars, but their respective stories have simply drifted them away from Harley and Ivy so much by this point that, as much as I enjoy these characters and their actors, it just makes me feel more like we’ve stayed in this world past our welcome. And second, we bring in Bane with his dom girlfriend and Goldilocks, the latter who he met in Kite-Man’s show, so put another tally down for my pet peeve of a main show expecting us to have seen the spin-off to understand the plot, as well as Bane feeling pretty removed from the character I liked early on. Here’s hoping things improve on these fronts in the coming weeks.