Where to find it: Amazon
Length: Thirty seven 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Superhero shitposting, starring everyone’s favourite Halloween costume
Recommendation rating: 3/5
What I like about it: DC Comics gags, gets better as it goes, voices
What I don’t like about it: adolescent animation ultra-violence and coarse jokes, stinks of male feminism
Review:
In this cartoon, Harley Quinn (Kaley Cuoco) decides she’s been fucked over by the Joker for the last time and strikes out on her own, personally and professionally. She forms her own crime squad consisting of best friend Poison Ivy (Lake Bell), King Shark (Ron Funches), grandiose thesp Clayface (Alan Tudyk at full ham) and misogynist Doctor Psycho (Tony Hale), largely replaced in later seasons by talking plant Frank (J.B. Smoove). It’s an impressive cast and they do fun work, especially when the material works as it largely does when they’re dunking on Jordan Peterson guys or some of DC Comics’ sillier Silver Age villains.
Unfortunately, much of the material doesn’t work, such as whenever romance, plot or anything other than jokes are included. It contains many gratuitous bloodsoaked action sequences and many of the jokes, especially in early seasons, betray a core problem: Warner wanted a show primarily about the friendship between Harley and Ivy and they handed it to three people named Dean, Justin and Patrick. The show gets a lot of mileage out of Quinn’s coarseness when it’s really only funny to teenage boys and those who share their mindset.
Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence and blood, sexual references and swear words, lots of death