"So You Need a Crew? – Harley Quinn S01E03 Review

If last week's Harley Quinn tackled office-place humor, this week's "So You Need a Crew?" tackles real-world glass ceilings and the efforts of men to put down strong women. It misses its mark a couple of times, but it's generally on target.

"So You Need a Crew?" continues following the post-breakup of Harley and Joker. It starts with Harley stealing a warhead from a Russian train. She gets upstaged by Joker once more, as Joker has his three goons open the door when Harley can't, and then tosses her out of the train. Back in Gotham, Harley tells her gal-pal, Ivy, that she wanted to use the warhead to blackmail Gotham into naming a highway after her.

Harley decides to build a crew of her own, and first goes to a talent agency. The two smarmy agents are all over her until they discover she's no longer with Joker. She then goes to a bar to recruit some men, but none of them want to work for a woman. One man literally dives into a Hell portal to avoid working for Harley.

Meanwhile, Dr. Psycho (Tony Hale) is having issues of his own. The character in the comics has always been a viewpoint character for William Marston's... unique views on women back in the 30s and 40s. After he calls Wonder Woman a "cow" on TV during a battle, he's shunned by the public to the point that even the Legion of Doom (led by Lex Luthor, voiced by Giancarlo Esposito) dumps Psycho like a hot rock.

That makes Psycho the perfect recruitment subject for Haley. Conveniently, Clayface (Alan Tudyk) is working at the bar as the bartender. And Clayface is one of the two comic standouts of the episode. Anybody remember that various Clayfaces have been actors? Writer Jess Dweck hasn't. Clayface is an actor of... William Shatneresque proportions. Not only does he spin when he shapechanges (tossing off excrement-like mud everywhere) but he really, really gets into character to pose as the main super-villain's long-lost son. Clayface works up elaborate backstories for his supposedly simple role as a mailman, which turns into him borrowing plot points from Forrest Gump. Which is duly gaslit by the main bad guy of the episode, Maxie Zeus (Will Sasso).

If you don't know who Maxie is, he's a relatively minor Batman villain who believes he's the Greek god Zeus reincarnated on Earth to become a crime lord. Except now he's a motivational speaker for wanna-be super-villains. Harley attends a seminar and briefly becomes obsessed with Maxie, until he reveals that he's just as sexist as Psycho. Maxie also mentions that he stole Olympic gold medals, so Harley decides to pick on him with her new crew of Psycho and Clayface.

While Clayface distracts Maxie, Harley sends Psycho through an air vent to unlock the main door from the inside. Because despite the fact that Psycho has psychokinesis powers, Harley seizes on the fact that he's a little person and therefore the only one who can fit in the vent. They steal the medals, but as noted, Maxie figures out that Clayface is an imposter and beats him to within an inch of his life. Harley won't let one of her crew get beat up, Psycho does some psychokinesis on Maxie, and Harley demands that Maxie tell everyone that her crew can't be f---ed around with. The next day, Maxie does so, and Harley trades the medals for a warhead so that Gotham will name a highway after her.

Besides Psycho and Maxie, the other part where the episode hits the women's issues target is when Harley goes to visit a former super-villainess, the Queen of Fables (Wanda Sykes). The Justice League took her down but didn't just throw her in Arkham, they trapped her in a tax guide. Which is what happened to her in the comics in her first appearance. Now the Queen works in a tax office, chats with her former storybook subjects (like Mark the Gingerbread Man, who prostitutes himself on street corners), chain-smokes, and regales anybody who will listen about how the League did much worse to her than put her in Arkham.

This is where the episode's message is a bit mixed. The Queen is a lot more powerful than the villains that get tossed in Arkham, so yes, the Justice League did a lot worse to imprison her. We don't know what the League does with super-villains who can transform entire cities into fairytale forests. So it's more a tale of how the Justice League deals with powerful villains, then how they deal with powerful women. Especially since a couple of episodes ago, we saw Harley and Ivy... tossed in Arkham. The Justice League trapping the Queen in a tax guide seems more like proportional response than some kind of anti-woman message. Do they treat male super-villains on that power level the same or differently? Who knows?

Also, Wonder Woman and Zatanna are members of the Justice League fighting the Queen. And earlier we see Wonder Woman fighting Psycho.

However, whatever weaknesses the subplot has are made up for by the visuals. The Queen as a chain-smoking tax guide with a cigarette and Wanda Sykes' voice in her mouth is hilarious. Some of the flashback visuals, like Superman heat-visioning Mark, are also pretty funny.

Also, the fact that Harley recruits two "strong" (and in one case, misogynistic) men as part of her gang doesn't sell the message, either. Shouldn't she be recruiting... women? Granted, Harley sends mixed messages in general as she dances around in hot pants and a cleavage-revealing top. It's hard to tell if she's a victim of men, or cheerfully going along with a stereotyped female image for whatever reasons of her own. Or to put it another way, it's hard to tell when the pro-woman message ends and the taking advantage of females begins on the show. I don't expect the show to dress Harley as a nun. But she's often been a highly-sexualized character, more so in recent years. Margot Robbie in the Suicide Squad movie pushed Harley even further.

If this were presented with some irony, it might work a little better. Like someone (Ivy?) pointing out that Harley is the very thing she's fighting against. We'll see.

So whether you consider "Let's put Harley in hot pants and show off her sexuality" as hypocritical and undermining on the same show where the creative team wants to portray her as a woman struggling to get by in a man's world is up to you. It also depends on whether you're watching Harley Quinn for "the message(s)". If you're looking for humor and adult language, there's plenty of it. We get Clayface, and Psycho, and the Queen, and a return of last week's Kite Man, who the wannabe henchman flock to for no reason other than that Kite Man is white and male, and Harley's antics, and Ivy's long-suffering attitude toward whatever crazy train Harley has gone off on in any given week.

Basically, Harley Quinn is Powerless, if Powerless had been able to afford the rights to DC's massive cast of characters. And if Powerless had been on DC Universe rather than NBC. Since I liked Powerless, and wish they had gone further into Harley Quinn territory, I consider that a good thing.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?