OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)Harley and Ivy mourn Frank’s death, welcome his newly born daughter Frankette, and plot with Lena to stop Frank’s presumed murderer, Brainiac.OUR TAKEWe’re heading into the home stretch of this season kinda early, even with the shorter than normal season, considering we still have three episodes left. Frank’s death last episode was more confusing than impactful, and a bit disappointing since I still like the character, but at least they made use of him at least one more time in this episode. Can’t say I feel the same for Frankette, but that’s mainly because she’s a baby and doesn’t have much of a character as of yet. As for babies I definitely don’t like in this show, there’s King Shark’s son Shaun who is still inexplicably around and contributing nothing, and Bane’s adopted daughter Goldilocks who I hate because she is a reminder that the Kite Man show happened. This series does a lot of poking fun at classic sitcoms, so it’s a bit ironic it seems to have fallen victim to a major case of Cousin Oliver Syndrome, wherein a show adds a kid character to liven up the cast but instead ends up damaging the dynamic. And they have three of them now. To borrow another sitcom parlance, it really feels like Harley Quinn has Jumped the Shark, and not just because they added a literal jumping shark.As things stand, Brainiac has been shrunk, Lena has control of his ship and wants to bottle Metropolis herself, and Harley and Ivy are fighting because Harley was put in an impossible situation to make a deal with Lena to stop Brainiac (when in reality it was her who killed Frank and orchestrated this so that Harley and Ivy would help her beat Brainiac). Taking this all in, I can’t help but think back to the first two seasons, where the villainous manipulations felt clever, the insane action balanced with the absurd comedy, and the personal drama between characters, especially Harley and Ivy, felt real and worth investing in. Oh yeah, and the character deaths hit hard, even if the character came back to life a couple episodes later! There are three episodes left, so there’s a small hope that they could turn things around, but it really might be time to drop the curtain on this show. Five seasons and a spin-off is nothing to sneeze at and it’s impressive how it’s managed to be the last show standing from the DC Universe app days (which started back in 2018 if you’ll recall), but uh…let’s quit while we’re somewhat ahead.
