What Should Have Been a Great Episode Turns Out to be the Worst as Harley Quinn takes “A Seat at the Table”

I’m a little shocked. I would have figured that the episode where Harley Quinn joins the Legion of Doom and comes face to face with the Joker would have been one of the show’s crowning achievements given how high of a comedic bar this series has set. This has been an event that the show has been building towards and, when it finally gets here, it’s… not that great. In fact, I would say that this is the first episode of Harley Quinn I found myself frustrated with and actually not liking at all.

It could be that the whole thing was just such a predictable bore. From the very first moment that the Joker said something nice to Harley, it was painfully obvious that he was playing her and watching Harley fall for it was like watch this ambitious character suddenly get incredibly stupid for the benefit of the plot.

I mean, yeah… Harley isn’t a MENSA candidate and, at worse, it someone I would call naive, but she has proven herself capable and smart enough and, although she can be manipulated and outsmarted, I find it hard to believe at this point that she can be manipulated and outsmarted by something so bloomin’ obvious.

That’s the breaking leg of this episode — everyone: The supporting characters, Ivy, the audience, even Batman… everyone knows she’s getting played and the abrupt change of character for her to be so lovesick to fall for it is jarring.

I get it… now that they are suddenly concerned with this ongoing Legion of Doom story arch, they want to send Harley to rock bottom. The only thing is, her journey to rock bottom should be more than just a one-episode journey. I wouldn’t have minded an episode or two with Joker slowly winning her back. Heck, they could have started a few episodes ago and it probably would have been a more successful outing, but as it stands it’s just such a strange and off-putting departure from what’s come before.

Sure, the scenes with Bane and Harley’s crew was high comedy and King Shark is such an amazing character that any scene he is in is automatic comedy gold, but overall, this is the worst episode of the series so far… in a series that has literally not seen a bad episode as far as I am concerned.