Review: Harley Quinn “Lovers’ Quarrel”

OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

Harley is nearly done in by the mind controlled Ivy, but is saved by none other than Kite Man, who takes her back to his apartment. There, Harley uses Sy’s cyborg eye to reveal that his consciousness lives on within it, then using his instructions to create anti-mind control ear plugs for Ivy (I guess it wasn’t just plates in his head like he first said). Meanwhile, the Justice League (minus Green Lantern and Flash) cut through the Parademon hordes and make their way to Psycho, who throws the controlled Clayface, King Shark, and Ivy against them, who they also beat back pretty quickly.

They almost dump Ivy in the Phantom Zone before using Ivy’s pheromones to distract them and take Harley back to the mall lair, where Darkseid appears waiting for Harley’s head. To add to the poetic vengeance, Psycho makes Ivy kill Harley, but Harley tries kissing her to snap her out of it. While it’s not true love, it does distract Psycho with its hotness long enough to get her out and give her the mind control blocking device and take down Psycho. Out of respect, Darkseid offers Harley control of the Earth again, which she refuses, saying she might not even be that much of a bad guy. Darkseid vows revenge eventually and leaves, so everything’s cool right? Well, Psycho mentally projects Ivy’s memories of her tryst with Harley to all of Gotham…including Kite Man.

OUR TAKE
The penultimate episode of the season (and possibly the series if this isn’t renewed for some reason) is another action heavy one, though one I feel more like I can get behind mainly because a lot of the action has emotional weight to it. Harley fighting Ivy is obviously tragic because of all the complicated stuff going on between them at the moment, same with the Justice League fighting Harley’s crew since we’ve been following and caring about them more than whatever this version of Superman or Wonder Woman have been doing. Actually this is probably the most time we’ve gotten with this show’s Clark and Diana and, true to fashion, they’re stylistically heightened versions of the funniest things about the two of them. Just like how this Batman is a bit of an overly serious joke of himself, Superman is a bit into the “big blue boy scout” act and Wondie is a little more bloodthirsty and direct, even a bit more of a straight man than Batman oddly enough. They’re not the most interesting of the cast, but they serve the purpose as “big guns” brought in to clear out the villain problem, and they of course have no reason to really care about the villains beyond getting them out of the way.

Also hey, Sy’s back! Which…yeah, I think I’m alright with. There’s still plenty of jokes to pull out of his shtick of being an old spy, though I am glad that we got him out of the TV since the glitching speech was starting to wear thin near the end there. It also pays off him giving Harley the eye before he “died”, which I guess I should have seen coming was leading somewhere. Also on the topic of characters who turned out not to be dead, Bane, who I totally called still being alive! Like Sy, I think he’s still got plenty of comedic potential left, so this is a nice little surprise and a bonus for me calling it!

But yeah, one more episode to go and it seems we’re saving it for resolving the Harley x Ivy stuff. I didn’t expect the Darkseid stuff to wrap up here, especially since fighting the Joker (who I guess gets to have a happy ending with Beth?) carried over into the last season finale, though now that I think of it, that could’ve probably been cut a bit too. And frankly, I’m liking a relationship based finale over one that involves a lot of fighting since it’s really the human drama that keeps this show afloat. Well, that and the comedy, with the King Shark “BLOOD!!!” bit probably the highlight of the episode. This show really knows how to get me chuckling, so I’ll be sad to see it go, even if it’s only on break until the next season if it gets renewed. Still, I’m glad to be able to sing this show’s praises, making it a good choice for my 1000th post.