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The first season of Harley Quinn was a pleasant surprise to me. I got a free trial of the (now defunct) DC Universe app to watch it. The animated show was violent, raunchy, and really funny. It felt fairly fresh, and it was amusing. The second season was also enjoyable, though not quite as good. It built to a romance between Harley and Poison Ivy I didn’t feel was earned. I found out after the fact the two are a couple in the comics, and it felt like they show decided they could just go ahead and do it because the comic did, but that doesn’t qualify as putting in the shoe leather on the story front.
Harley Quinn now exists on HBO Max, and I have enjoyed the third season by and large. Although, I will also say it is the weakest season thus far. Part of it is probably how invested they are in Harley and Ivy as a couple. When your show is built upon amoral, violent, villainous characters, you are asking a lot to care about the emotional lives of your characters or their romantic endeavors. It’s like asking me to care about, say, Michael Scott finding love, but even more egregious.
However, assessing it, I think ultimately what is the weakest element of the third season of Harley Quinn is that is has become the pinnacle of therapy fetishism in media. Therapy has emerged as a fetish object in the last couple of years. Now, I am not against therapy. I myself have made use of it. It is a tool one can use for self-improvement and for taking care of yourself mentally and emotionally that works for some people. Sometimes it isn’t constructive. Some therapists are bad at their job. It’s as complex as anything. There is an increasing number of people out there, though, acting as if those therapy is a panacea, or using it as a signifier, or just trying to be interesting.
There is an element of “making mental health your personality” running through the third season of Harley Quinn. Characters are frequently stopping down to have conversations about their feelings and their relationships. It’s just a bunch of awful people constantly talking about their emotions. One, there’s an element of “telling, not showing” to that. Two, it feels too akin to back patting. It reminds of when critics and viewers fawned over You’re the Worst (which isn’t a good show) because a character had depression.
Taking care of your mental health is emotional. Being mindful of your emotions is valuable. Therapy can be a useful tool for some. Others don’t necessarily benefit. It is not, evidently, a great thing to make the crux of your ostensibly violent-and-vulgar show about DC supervillains. If they were looking to prove something, they have surely done it by now. At this point, though, the third season of Harley Quinn is suffering under the weight of being the (clown-painted) face of therapy fetishism.
