Harley Quinn season 1, episode 5 review: Being Harley Quinn

After an unexpected brain freeze, Harley Quinn and her crew travel with Dr. Psycho in her subconscious.

Following the escapades last episode, “Finding Mr. Right”, when Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco) attempted to search for an archnemesis, she continues to make her mark in Gotham as a supervillain, now that she has King Shark (Ron Funches) added to her crew. With Damian Wayne/Robin (Jacob Tremblay) denied as her worthy adversary, things resume as normal.

Search for a Lair and Brain Freeze

After the staged denouncement on Tawny Young’s show, which involved Batman (Diedrich Bader), Poison Ivy (Lake Bell), Quinn, Robin and The Joker (Alan Tudyk) squaring off against each other, Quinn is in search for a secret lair in the fifth episode, “Being Harley Quinn”. In her search with a Realtor (Suzy Nakamura) and Ivy, they have already gone through six different lairs including a skull island, a hidden labyrinth of tunnels underneath an acre wide park and a castle toy shop Mr. Freeze did quite the number on with his ice.

Back at Ivy’s apartment they are currently moving out of, Quinn and Ivy sit down the Realtor to get an understanding why the Quinzel became a villain in the first place, just so they can align her specific lair to her own identity. Both realize Quinn is indecisive due to her abusive ex, The Joker, making the majority of the decisions. As King Shark, Clayface (Tudyk) and Dr. Psycho (Tony Hale) come in with Suicide Squad regalia and the Realtor pushes Quinn to find out where her true heart lies as a villain, this overwhelms Quinn and causes her to have a brain freeze.

Trip down Memory Lane

With the help of Dr. Psycho, Poison Ivy, Clayface and King Shark travel inside Quinn’s mind, which has the cost of making their physical bodies inert during the astral projected mind-reading process. Dr. Psycho, as he previously suspected finds that Quinn’s psyche, although insane, is more or less a blank slate.

They find a manifestation of Quinn as she currently appears on the bench sitting in the Museum of Memories where her crew discover her messed up childhood, which imply domestic abuse between her parents, her tenure at Ace Chemical Processing Plant, which transformed her life forever. However, Ivy and Quinn notice the latter memory that unveils her true origin has a part of her memory gone.

The Eye of the Beholder

With the full crew formed last episode, this one has to be the most zany and fruitful thought out yet on Harley Quinn. For all intents and purposes, this is a character study on our series protagonist. While initially, from the preview it may have appeared to be a step back for the Harleen Hammer, this was actually a good use of character development.

By now, just over a quarter of the way in what can be presumed to be the first haul of the season, Hale and Bell really embody the characters of Dr. Psycho and Ivy, respectively, which complements Kaley Cuoco’s Harley Quinn. While Ivy is her moral support, the Wonder Woman villain is something of a guide to a degree in her career path as a criminal and companion.

The best parts of this episode are when the script allows the audience to get a chance to be shown who our mad former psychiatrist really is. As for her origin, DC fans will not be disappointed. There are only minor changes, which centers more on the motivation than the act through a series of events. Yes, there were some funny moments, but the better parts were its subtext and the hidden meanings behind the psychobabble.

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Not too many problems as such, except the punch-lines were quite light, possibly due to the shade of comedy, which links up with its gratuitous violence and obscene nature of human wellbeing. However, the series does find its footing in terms of its overall expression on-screen.

While the action did make great use to break the tension without getting too Freudian, it only slightly chopped a bit of the fun that went into exploring more extreme and outlandish parts of the gang’s misadventures in her subconscious. There were points where Quinn said “I was screwed up before I [became this.]” Though how? While thematically, her whole life was shown and implied to be messed up before her skin ‘got bleached’, her trigger – if you will – could have been extenuated more.

Aside from those points, while the animation has remained consistently great in quality, the style of the backdrops was not as imaginative in terms of shots and movement. That is mainly direction at hand. What sells the show are the neon-like, vibrant colors and its overall character design and tone, but here it was lazily uninspiring.

Off-The-Wall Observations:

We discover Harley Quinn is not fully over The Joker.
Her origin story is more or less similar to the comics except it was governed by choice and not force.
Frankie Muniz, the actor-turned-racing driver makes a cameo as himself as Harley’s childhood crush.
The episode references the government–sponsored supervillain team called Task Force X codenamed Suicide Squad.
King Shark was one of the most notable members of Suicide Squad of whom Harley worked with in the past in the comics, especially in The New 52 run.
Victor Fries/Mr. Freeze was mentioned when they visited the last secret lair Harley and Poison Ivy were looking to buy.
The shopping mall underneath Ivy’s apartment could be a reference to Batman & Robin where the main protagonists faced Mr. Freeze’s goons on an ice rink.

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