1. Harley QuinnÂ
Yeah, I know that the villains of Birds of Prey got their own topic already, but Harley Quinn’s presence as the Big Bad Evil on the show takes the cake for its insanity. Harleen Quinzel, or Harley Quinn, operates as a psychiatrist even though she essentially inherited Joker’s meta crime empire. Now, Quinn’s day job, while somewhat unnecessary given the fact that she’s the head of all organized crime in Gotham, is explained as merely being a hobby of hers, as she urges her patients to take more psychotic and suicidal responses to their day-to-day problems. Fair enough, as I suppose this helps reinforce Quinn as an agent of chaos, however what I have a problem with still is the fact that Harley Quinn is still employed as an in-house psychoanalyst at Arkham Aslyum.
How would a former inmate of Arkham Asylum — home for the criminally insane — not get her psychiatry license revoked? Because no one can figure out that Harley Quinn and Dr. Harleen Quinzel are the same person. Seriously, the Huntress has like ten sessions with Dr. Quinn and neither of them figures out that they are one another’s respective nemesis until the season one cliffhanger.
Perhaps I’ve mentioned it to death already, but how can’t anyone figure out that Helena is Huntress? In fact this may be a trope on a show, as even Huntress’ Commissioner Gordon stand-in, Jesse Reese, begs Huntress/Helena to tell him who she is even though she doesn’t even wear a mask. A Gotham detective and a self-proclaimed Queen of Gotham Crime can’t figure it out, and mind you Helena is in weekly, Gotham legal system court-mandated, therapy sessions with Harley. I mean Clayface told his son that Helena’s father was the Batman, and Clayface is locked up in Arkham right where Harley moonlights. She can employ Clayface once but she can’t check back in on him for that vital information?
We are never told how Harleen Quinzel MD turned into Harley Quinn explicitly, however this is a universe where Jason Todd’s Robin exists and Halle Berry’s Catwoman is established canon. We can go off of Harley’s origin story originally established in Batman: The Animated Series— psychiatrist Harleen Quinzel, at the top of her game, is assigned the Joker as a patient, and gets seduced by the most insane man since Han shooting second, and busts the Joker out of Arkham to become his Gal Friday of Fatalities.
Even if it were a different prison that she initially met the Joker in, Quinn became infamous as Joker’s girlfriend after breaking him out. So how does she still retain her psychiatric license after all of that? Her damn name is already incredibly similar to her super villain alias, and she even asks people to call her Harley. It’s only fitting I suppose that the most insane character on the show is its most absurd one as well.
But perhaps my brain has been burnt out from re-watching too many episodes of Birds of Prey. While there are some holes in logic and cornball villains, for the most part the show is actually entertaining when taken with a grain of salt. What do you think though? Should there have been a Birds of Prey season 2? Is a super-powered Catwoman necessarily a bad thing? Let us know in the comments!
