Saturday, February 08, 2020

My Review of Harley Quinn's 1x11: "Harley Quinn Highway"


Written by Adam Stein
Directed by Vinton Heuck

Ivy: "I asked you for one favour, but instead you ditched me for the Joker who treats you like shit. I thought you could change but I was wrong. You still live your entire life based on what he might think."
Harley: "So how do we fix this?"
Ivy: "I don't know."

As a certain movie finally hits the big screen, back in the world of streaming we're into the final hurtle of episodes and things have actually taken something of a serious turn, both in terms of an actual looming threat and the fractured relationships between Harley and her crew.

In terms of the relationships, I love that Ivy being in danger was enough to actually get Dr Psycho, King Shark and Clayface to move on from their grievances with Harley to try and save Ivy. I mean, it's wild when you consider the type of character someone like Dr Psycho is after all.

Anyways the gang manage to get to Ivy and with Sy Borgman on watch and soon a trip into Ivy's mind reveals a few obvious things about the character. She was a lonely kid, had a horrible father and Harley being her biggest fear made a lot of sense.

Of course Harley chose probably the wrong moment to later confront Ivy on this one but at the same time, at least Ivy was able to give Harley a much needed home truth about her still dependency on the Joker. I mean, it's not a new beat but one Harley definitely needed in that moment.

As for the main plot, Scarecrow extracted some of Ivy's pheromones and the episode ended with a lot of killer trees on the loose. Between Harley having to fix her relationship with Ivy, finally break free from the Joker, it looks like her and her crew might have to be heroes in the last two episodes. Now that's a development I don't think Harley was aiming for.

- I had forgotten Harley had the city name a highway after her. At least it somewhat contributed to the plot this week.
- Kite Man appeared in Ivy's subconscious but quickly burned up. Has no-one still not figured out that he's a love interest of Ivy's.
- Before reuniting with Harley we had Clayface working with the Riddler, Dr Psycho working at a fair as a fortune teller and King Shark using his computer skills for a woman named Denise.
- Chronology: From where the previous episode left off.

Harley Quinn Highway made use of it's title as the crew got back together and the trip into Ivy's mind while shorter than the one we had in Harley's earlier in the season was still done rather well. I did like all the Harley/Ivy scenes and we had a fantastic threat for the final two episodes of the season.

Rating: 8 out of 10

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