HARLEY QUINN-- SEASON 2 (2020)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *irony*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological, sociological* 

As was the case with my review of Season 1, I still have not read more than a tiny number of the DC comic books that promoted Harley Quinn to starring status. Prior to this review, though, I did listen to a couple of podcasts on the subject. One, by a podcaster known as "JesterBell," asserted that in the early 2000s, DC wanted to engineer a competitor to the runaway success of Marvel's "merc-with-a-mouth" Deadpool, and that the editors chose Harley for that honor. I could not find any other fans advancing this theory, however, but I tend to believe it.

The Deadpool theory at least has some applicability to specific iterations of Harley. Deadpool's raison d'etre is that he's a mercenary who conveniently only kills bad guys and says a lot of goofy things while so doing. Season 1 pursued a similar course for Harley, in that the moment she became estranged from the Joker, she decided that she wanted to become as vicious and violent as he is-- but only toward other Gotham criminals. For a time during Season 1, she wants to become a member of the Legion of Doom, but her rejection there further embitters Harley, and so in Season 2 she becomes obsessed with disposing of the "big guns" of Gotham, such as Riddler, Bane, and Penguin. However, if QUINN's writers ever read Deadpool, they learned nothing of that feature's trademark snarky humor. QUINN's humor is, to repeat a comparison I made before, like that of ROBOT CHICKEN, predicated on loading familiar pop-culture icons with extreme quantities of sex and ultraviolence. Thus the first episode of Season 2 begins with Harley besting the Penguin by biting his nose off, so that the criminal bleeds to death.

  Still, despite the show's girl-boss rhetoric, the stories never really sell-- or even try to sell-- the idea that Harley Quinn possesses some inherent talent to become Gotham's new crime-queenpin, and the fact that most of her crew consists of goofball losers like Clayface and King Shark confirms that impression. If anything, the script suggest that much of her crusade is a deflection from the thing that truly motivates her, the subconscious desire to become entwined with her gal-pal Poison Ivy. Ivy, for her part, has committed herself to marry another loser villain, Kite-Man, though on two or three occasions Ivy and Harley somehow fell into bed together. The consensus is that both of them are repressing their lesbian tendencies, and that their previous dalliances-- one with an amiable idiot, the other with a murderous psychotic-- prove that Girl-on-Girl Power is far more meaningful than the pitfalls of heterosexual entanglement. And though not every female in the QUINN world is a lesbian, one certainly doesn't get any ringing endorsements of male-female encounters. Catwoman's in a few episodes of Season 2, as is Baman, but they never meet, as if alluding to one of the best-known hetero relationships in comic books might muddy the waters for the ideology.

 In the end, both Harley's quest for queenpin-power and her conversion to lesbitude seem forced and superficial. Later in the season she gets the idea to appeal to Darkseid himself to give her enough power to conquer Earth, and the Dark Lord does so, though he requires that she pass a test by duking it out with the gargantuan Granny Goodness. Harley thus spreads untold devastation to Planet Earth, but hey-- it's OK, because she's reacting to her repressed passion for her best gal-pal. Harley's least worshipful acolyte, the dwarfish Doctor Psycho, attempts to undermine Harley by also petitioning Darkseid for power, but in this case, Psycho ends up facilitating the writers' goal of championing the irresistible amour fou of the two super-villainesses.

I can't deny that the animation on HARLEY Season 2 is top-notch, as much as Season 1, and I liked this or that bit of voice-work, like Michael Ironside for Darkseid. But ROBOT CHICKEN's style of humor works because each vignette exploits its shock-value very briefly before moving on to the next target. Within the context of a melodrama about costumed heroes and villains, that style wears out its welcome very quickly. And I absolutely cannot forgive these pinheaded ultraliberal writers sticking an idiotic word like "cis-gender" into the dialogue of a classy villain like Mister Freeze!