Episode 41 Review
Harley Quinn
"Getting Ice Dick, Don't Wait Up" proceeds with the season arc of new roles and acceptance as Harley tries to solve Barbara's disappearance to be accepted by Nightwing, Ivy accepts a new PR team's ideas to extend her reach across the world, and Jim Gordon rejects retirement and love for a new job. However, just when everything seems settled ego, resentment, frustration, and a cloned potato rear their ugly heads. The world of Harley Quinn is poised for another disaster but first, a shocking murder will send ripples throughout Gotham.
Jim is enjoying retirement at a snowy cabin rekindling a romance with his ex-wife when he gets a job offer from Nora to be a security guard at the Hall of Doom. He hops on his snowmobile, leaving her stranded. Harley discovers she needs eye surgery after having problems skulking the shadows on patrol with the Bat-Family. To boot, Nightwing openly states she's not part of the family. Harley gets the surgery from Supergirl but she has a hard time finding someone to drive her home. Ivy goes to voice mail. Nightwing hands up on her. Bane is stuck in customs. Ivy returns to the Hall of Doom, lauded by the other villains for Malcon. Luthor is surprisingly chipper and gives Ivy his PR team, the Jons. Nora shows Gordon around and points out how the common kitchen has some Lexcorp inventions like a sentient paper shredder, a black hole generator, a microwave/cloner, and a slow motion machine. Nora also points out Ivy's three mentees: Terra, Volcana, and Tefe. Together, Ivy calls them the Natural Disasters based on their elemental powers and is helping prep them for their public debut. Volcana wants to activate dormant volcanoes under Gotham, Terra wants to cause an earthquake, and Tefe wants to use her access to the Red, the force that connects all animals, to repopulate the shark population in Gotham Bay, balancing sea life and ruining peoples's summer. Ivy is whisked away by the Jons for some emergency.
Barbara's room mate Alysia comes to pick up Harley. On the drive, Alysia admits she looked up to Harley when she was transitioning but was disappointed when she became a good guy. Alysia isn't too concerned about Barbara going MIA because she usually does vanish for days on end. Harley returns to the Batcave with her hyenas acting as guide dogs. Nightwing is frantic about Batgirl being missing. Jons call Ivy a PR disaster and want the rest of the world to be talking about her. They present her some suggestions so she could be mentoring 3 billion people instead of just 3. They take photos for a statue to be made of Ivy. Nightwing refuses to work with Harley to find Batgirl and goes on his own.
Ivy appears on Tawny's show. Rather than talk about her agenda, she's urged to promote her statue. Harley surprises her back stage but due to their promise to keep work separate isn't much help with locating Batgirl. Jeffrey escapes. Alysia finds Harley sleeping in Barbara's room. Harley is shocked she took a 8 hour nap. They decide to snoop on her phone and find a charge at Jill's Guns and Ammo up in the mountains. Alysia agrees to go with her to make sure no brown people get killed. The Jons already wrote a book for Ivy called Poison Thrivy and she signs copies. The Natural Disasters are feeling left behind. Frank returns from visiting his sister Sally. The Jons haul him away but he states she's changed. Gordon tries to make friends with the Disasters but it doesn't go well.
Harley has a dream of ice skating with Ivy but almost kills herself, the hyenas, and Alysia on the drive up. Alysia thinks Harley is sleepwalking because she's repressing a part of herself much like she did before she came out. Before Harley can think much on Alysia's theory she's repressing her villain side, they run into Captain Cold, Minister Blizzard, Blue Snowman, and Icicle having a Cold Boys weekend retreat. Harley assumes they are the kidnappers and a fight breaks out. Barbara appears with an armful of firewood surprised to see them. Gordon contemplates his loneliness when the Lexco Clone-o-matic makes him a new potato. Barbara explains she left to get her abandoned mom only to be abandoned when her mom went to party with some ice villains. She was in a hurry and forgot her phone then got snowed in. Jill's Guns and Ammo was the nearest place to get any food and offers Quiche. A gala is held for the statue unveiling. The Disasters tell Ivy their plans failed and they were not pleased with Ivy's new tone. Barbara and Harley notice Nightwing up in a tree wearing the latter's friendship bracelet at last but he's dead.
After Gordon fell off season 3, it's nice to finally see him back on the show. Rather than accepting a happy ending in retirement and rekindling things with Barbara Senior, he throws it all aside just to have a security guard job at the Hall of Doom and being alone and miserable. Gordon has often struggled with his relationships: Barbara, Barbara, Batman, Two-Face throughout the series. Like most of the cast this season, Gordon has taken on a new role but is still dealing with old problems. Gordon being okay with working for the people he spent most of his adult life hunting feels a bit out there but on the psychological level, when Gordon was a cop and living within the conflict between good and evil – he was probably at his best. Immersing himself among the super villains seems like the next best shot at returning himself to a safe, well-treaded status quo than moving on to something new. Also side-bar, it's a surprise Barbara turned out a functioning adult considering her parents are who they are. Asking your daughter to look up lube facts? Yeesh.
Harley is still really craving acceptance from the Bat-Family, Nightwing in particular. Even after moving into Wayne Manor and trying to make them friendship bracelets, Harley has still hit a wall. Even with corrective eye surgery, the gesture falls on deaf ears and Nightwing still won't call her family. With last week's sleepwalking incident, Harley's 8 hour nap and Alysia's theory about repression – it sounds like Harley is on a season arc-long path to admitting she's not cut out to be a good guy. The new mystery of who murdered Nightwing, seen wearing the bracelet, seems to all but point at an evil sleepwalking Harley. I mean come on. This is the Harley Quinn show we're talking but there's no way Nightwing was killed by a parrot handler... hmm. In any case, Harley's quest for acceptance is really shaping to be a journey of accepting she's always going to be a villain. Well, an anti-hero perhaps.
Ivy is feeling herself after Malcon and it is only exacerbated by an overbearing PR team that won't stop at molding Ivy into something she's not. It seems clear that Ivy will eventually exit the ego trip and come back down to Earth and probably murder the Jons in horrific fashion. You may have noticed them in the background but this episode cemented that Ivy's been mentoring three new members of the Legion of the Doom: Volcana, Terra (the first time this version has been in animation and no, this isn't the Terra Markov associated with the Teen Titans), and Tefe (also animated for the first time, Swamp Thing's daughter). Thematically, they all have elemental based powers so natural for Ivy to take them under her wing. With the trio feeling ignored, stands to reason that this will end with Ivy rejecting the "new Ivy" and accepting three super villains in training matter more to her than three billion adulating groupies.
This week was as always, a surprising mish-mash debut of who's who in the DC universe. First, there's Supergirl appearing but not in a typical super hero capacity. Supergirl working as an optometrist seems way out of left field but this appears to be a hat tip to Supergirl's comic book history of random jobs. While Volcana was properly introduced already this season, this episode formally introduced Terra and Tefe. While both aren't supervillains in the comics that I could recall, stranger things have happened on this show. Atlee, in the comics, is the third person to use the codename Terra and also has geokinetic powers. Tefe is the daughter of Swamp Thing and in the comics has a connection to both the Green and the Red, the forces that govern plant and animal life respectively. Barbara's room mate Alysia Yeoh is introduced. Yeoh is from the recent Batgirl comics circa late 2011. As hinted at in the episode, Yeoh is transgender. Lastly, and probably the most obscure of this week's debuts were two Wonder Woman villains, Minister Blizzard and Blue Snowman. Along with them is also Icicle, whom we saw on a dating app earlier this season.
"Getting Ice Dick, Don't Wait Up" continues to balance focus on Harley and Ivy as they navigate their own "worlds" and orbit of supporting cast while continuing to expand on the season long arc of accepting or not accepting the new status quo, introducing new characters, world building, and throwing in a last second shocker for fans to stew on for a week until the next episode drops on Max.
Rating: 9.6 out of 10