Was it that the second season was mostly done to start with when the service announced the series renewal? I don’t know. But I do know the second season ended recently, and it was just as batspit crazy as the first, perhaps at times more so.

Season One ended with Gotham City in chaos. Batman (Diedrich Bader) and the Joker (Alan Tudyk) both appeared to be dead. Neither was, but they both appeared to be. The Justice League had been sucked into the Queen of Fables book. And the city itself was a mess following the Joker and the Queen’s attempted take over.

Seems like a good place for Harley (Kaley Cuoco) to finally make a name for herself. Too bad she’s cut out of the way the city’s been divided up by villains Penguin, Bane. Riddler, Two-Face, and Mr. Freeze. Additionally, with the United States government opting to cut the city off from the rest of the country, it may be up to borderline alcoholic Jim Gordon (Christopher Meloni), and he’s falling apart with Batman to back him up. Still, Harley has her crew of Dr. Psycho (Tony Hale), Clayface (Tudyk again), Sy Borgman (Jason Alexander), and King Shark (Ron Funches) to shake things up as her best friend Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) gets ready to marry sad sack supervillain Kite Man (Matt Oberg).

Basically, a lot happens. And it’s quite funny and character-oriented the way it plays out. Harley gradually comes to realize she’s in love with Ivy, and she suspects Ivy may be in denial about that, but the show actually made me care about Kite Man, a guy who was both sweet and obnoxious at the same time. Harley still has some unresolved issues involving the Joker, and there’s even an entire episode devoted to Batman trying to rush through his physical recovery to get back to fighting crime. Yes, though played as something of a straight man for most of season one, Batman is allowed to be funny in season two. Factor in as well introductions of plucky college student Batgirl as well as a standard morose Mr. Freeze and ultimate cool girl Catwoman, plus the use of a wide bench of DC characters and settings, and this is a show that is somewhat faithful to who these characters are while still making them completely ridiculous. This is a series where Superman will call out Wonder Woman for a racist comment about aliens as well as having Ivy’s carnivorous plant Frank (J.B. Smooth) trying to drive a getaway car.

And at the center, there’s Harley Quinn, a woman prone to heavy swearing and shocking acts of violence, but at the same time, a supervillain by profession who isn’t necessarily evil. This Harley has some limits. And sure, she may kill people, and this show isn’t above killing longstanding DC characters, but deep down, she wants to hang with her friends and experience love. She just needs to stop going off on projects that people like Ivy know is really not her. She’s not the crime lord type. And that’s just fine.

I don’t know if there’ll be a third season of this show, but I rather hope so. As I said while season one was airing, I was actually more looking forward to new episodes of this than I was The Mandalorian when the two shows dropped new episodes on the same day.

Grade: B+

Well, she somehow got herself an animated series on the DC Universe service, and with season one finished and season two coming in April, it may be time to take a look at the show and whether or not it may be worth the time of any self-respecting DC fan.

The series begins with Harley (Kaley Cuoco) and the Joker (Alan Tudyk) doing what Harley and the Joker often do, robbing rich people. However, it quickly becomes apparent this won’t be a kid-friendly cartoon show. There’s some pretty cartoonish-yet-disgusting violence here as some of the rich types die horrible deaths, and Harley herself drops the F-bomb rather frequently. Plus, there’s obvious romantic problems between the Clown Prince of Crime and his frequent assistant/punching bag in that she wants to join the Legion of Doom and Joker doesn’t think a sidekick ever gets to join that august organization of supervillains. And that’s before Batman (Diedrich Bader, reprising the role he played so well on Batman: The Brave and the Bold) arrives. Harley goes to Arkham, Joker gets away, and once there, Harley is convinced the Joker will be coming by to bust her free any moment. Harley’s friend Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) doesn’t see that happening any time soon.

A few months later, and Harley is still in Arkham until Ivy comes back to break her out. Realizing the Joker was just using her, Harley breaks up with him in the most violent way possible without killing him and decides the thing to do is get into the Legion of Doom on her own. That means having a nemesis and assembling a crew. The former proves a bit difficult, but the latter comes around when Harley basically gathers together all the villains that nobody else wants, namely raging misogynist Dr. Psycho (Tony Hale), wannabe actor but generally well-adjusted ham Clayface (Tudyk again), and eternally optimistic computer guy King Shark (Ron Funches). Working out of Ivy’s apartment, they even eventually recruit Ivy’s elderly landlord, a cybernetic old man in a wheelchair who may be a war criminal by the name of Cy Borgman (Jason Alexander).

Now, I said back in my Mandalorian review that I actually looked forward more to Harley Quinn than The Mandalorian. And I meant that. Harley Quinn managed to pack more character development and drama into a 22 minute or so episode than most episodes of The Mandalorian could over something closer to 40. Cuoco gives her Harley a very distinctive voice. She’s angry, manic, and nothing much like Sorkin’s original dumb-but-sweet take, and that’s all to the better to fit into this show. Bell, meanwhile, comes across as the more pragmatic roommate, the one quick to point out she prefers to be called an eco-terrorist instead of a supervillain while still being embarrassed to be seen spending time with Kite-Man. In fact, most of Harley’s crew (except Dr. Psycho, whom the show always frames as wrong) are a rather likable bunch of well-meaning loser types. Harley may be a supervillain, but she’s still a nice person when she remembers to be, and there are real villains out there that are much, much worse.

Also, props to connecting Harley thematically from time-to-time with Batman, the one character the series more or less plays straight. Every other character here is just a bit silly, but Batman doesn’t make jokes. The closest he comes is an uncomfortable moment with the Damien Wayne Robin (Jacob Tremblay).

Season one ends in a very chaotic way, setting up all kinds of potential mayhem going forward. Harley learned a few lessons about herself and who really matters to her after repeated disappointments trying to set up relationships with other people she felt she needed to connect to, and though Harley may not be a completely benevolent person, she doesn’t seem outright awful either. That’s a promising start for what could be a very fun series.

Grade: B+

Considering the most problematic aspects of Harley’s character is her abusive relationship with the Joker, showing a Harley on her own is only the right thing to do as she stops becoming a doormat and starts becoming something unpredictably worse for the male control freaks of the world.

Harley (Margot Robbie) and the Joker have broken up again, only this time she’s sure it’ll stick. The problem is no one believes her. Now, there is an advantage there in that as long as everyone believes Harley is still with her Mistah J, she’s essentially untouchable. But as Harley is tired of being mistaken for the Joker’s punching bag, she makes a big move so everyone will know she isn’t with him anymore. That means anyone with a grudge against her is no longer unwilling to let their personal grudges slide. And among the baddest of the bads is Roman “Black Mask” Sionis (Ewan McGregor), the unhinged disowned son of one of Gotham’s richest men, looking to get into running all the organized crime in the city.

But there’s more to Sionis’s grudge then just Harley. A teenage pickpocket named Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco) swipes something Roman really wants, and he’ll stop at nothing to get it back. Factor in tough cop Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), lounge singer Dinah “Black Canary” Lance (Jurnee Smollett-Bell), and vengeful vigilante Helena “Huntress” Bertinelli (a very deadpan Mary Elizabeth Winstead), and Harley might be able to keep the kid and herself alive, presuming Harley isn’t as terrible a person as even she thinks she might be.

Director Cathy Yan and screenwriter Christina Hodson made something that is mostly fun. Birds of Prey isn’t deep cinema, and maybe it doesn’t have to be. Coasting largely off Robbie’s rather effortless charm as Harley, in many ways this is a standard, well-done action movie. Harley, acting as narrator, doesn’t tell the most linear of stories, and she isn’t exactly a role model, but she isn’t pretending to be. She’s a young woman who may not be as bad as she thinks she is, but she’s hardly a saint.

But then there’s the bad guys with McGregor and Chris Messina as his sidekick Mr. Zsasz, and both of them make for some requisite awful people. MacGregor seems to be having some fun, and Messina comes across as a man who not only like his work but may also be in love with his boss. That said, neither seem to be as scary as the movie wants us to think they are.

Of special note was this movie’s version of Gotham City. It’s a bit crazy. Colorful in a Harley-approved sort of way, it also seems to combine traits from just about every cinematic version of the fictional city thus far. There’s some art deco stuff from the Burton/Schumacher era, some modern city stuff for the Nolan trilogy, a few run-down slum areas that could maybe be a somewhat cleaned up version of the recent Joker, and even the set for Sionis’s nightclub wouldn’t be too out of place if Adam West were doing the Batusia there. It gives the movie a distinctive look.

All that said, the movie is fine, a bit fun, but not much more than that. As I said, Robbie has a lot of charm, and she can mostly carry the movie, but the plot beats are pretty familiar with the other “Birds of Prey” being a bit more rote for a movie like this. Harley isn’t quite Deadpool, and they aren’t trying to necessarily make her a DC Deadpool, but the comparisons are somewhat obvious. The movie feints in the direction of Deadpool-style wackiness in its storytelling style but never quite commits to it, and why should any Harley story have commitment issues? The end result is something I mostly liked, but I wouldn’t say I loved it.

Grade: C+