Talking Simpsons - Bonus Episode - Blabbin 'Bout Batman: The Animated Series "Mad Love"

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

The Talking Simpsons Network is taking a week off, so to fill the content gap, we've decided to post an episode of our Patreon-exclusive Blabbin 'Bout Batman: The Animated Series podcast miniseries! If you like this episode and want to hear the other 20 installments, head over to Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up at the $5 level. Once you do, you'll have immediate access to all of our limited miniseries, covering animated shows like King of the Hill, Mission Hill, The Critic, and Futurama. So visit Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and sign up today!

Hello everybody and welcome to Blabin' About Batman the Animated Series, the podcast that taught a piranha to smile. I am one of your hosts, the dedicated, career-oriented young man, Bob Mackie, and this is the Talking Simpsons Network's exploration of Batman the Anim animated series, who is here with me today. Nerds to you, Mr. Smarty Bat, it's Henry Gilbert. And this week's episode is Mad Love. Harley Quinzel. Rework it a bit, and you get Harley Quinn.

I didn't know that. And this week's episode originally aired on January 16th, 1999. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. The latest reports say that the wave of foolish hysteria is moving down 7th Avenue towards the financial district. Holy news, Bobby. holy news bobby the impeachment trial of bill clinton has officially begun in congress uh the kids wb airs the final episode of batman the animated series that's new and sadly gene siskel hosts his final episode of siskel and ebert at the movies it's funny that impeachment doesn't matter at all and I guess it used to once but then was Trump impeached twice oh yeah double impeach yeah the

second one after he was out of office just to just to do it I mean well you know I obviously I think the Democrats are like useless people in Congress but if the guy causes a bunch of people to storm the Capitol i feel like you do just have to do it just to prove like look there are rules we at least have to do that we officially don't like you on paper yeah but but yeah in our childhoods that that impeachment felt special because you could just look at the history books like oh when was the last impeachment trial the only other one like over a hundred years ago for Jackson, I think it was. No, the guy after Lincoln.

He was the other one. And then now it's like happened twice since then. And not only that, but like I have a feeling either Biden or the who comes after him, whatever the next Democrat is after him, the Republicans, if they control both houses, they'll impeach that guy twice or woman twice as well just to they might even do it three times just to say like they're now you're the most impeached president not donald trump we triple officially don't like you yeah but once you have double impeachments it's like oh then it uh clearly impeachment doesn't matter i thought it meant something it doesn't mean anything no rules laws

don't mean anything if they're not really enforced there's no punishment yep yep yep and gene siskel rip to him he's been dead uh now for more than 20 years which is crazy and sadly his legacy did not live on because roger ebert had the foresight to put everything he ever wrote on the internet yeah and it's still to this day very hard to find gene siskel's writing i know yeah ebert really was thinking much more about legacy in an online footprint i mean on top of that too even before he uh had his cancer issues of his own ebert was putting everything on the internet like he was blogging so much writing stuff like he would write you know three three to ten reviews a week and then on top of that he'd be like as a follow-up to my review here's 800 words about this and i used to love his blog uh

in his in his final years i would read it all the time i loved his twitter account i still follow it even though his like wife took it over so it's weird to see roger ebert tweeting yes yeah i just saw something like roger ebert reviews gives this I was like, wait, what? But no. Meanwhile, Siskel. Yeah. He like the show went on without him. His stuff wasn't as, as kept online.

And also I feel like his reviews, like, I don't know. And Ebert, a great or mean Ebert review felt forever to me. I never Siskel as a character talking with Ebert. They are a great pair, but I only ever really read roger ebert you

know and his name came first so he was the most important one and the taller one but you know what he'll live on forever in that amazing episode of the critic it really uh it's trapped in amber their relevance in 1995 i i watched some classic old interview with uh with both of them for like 2020 or some news magazine and uh you know they're asking ebert uh first in the in the sequence like so why is it cisco and ebert not ebert and cisco and he says i know it doesn't make sense i've been a professional critic longer than him i have the awards ebert comes comes before Siskel alphabetically. You got to ask Siskel. Then it cuts to Siskel, and Siskel goes, I won the coin toss, and I'm never doing the

coin toss again, so it's always going to stay Siskel and Ebert. That rules. I have to recommend, it's not necessarily a book about him, but Roger Ebert's autobiography, Life Itself. Of course, Siskel factors into it a lot because they're partners together for decades. Professional partners, that is and the the documentary uh life itself uh is amazing to make me cry god it's too it's too much it's too much man to see as an ebert liker yeah well it killed me and cisco's uh widow is in it too and she's talking about how like you know ebert got to see his friend die from cancer, and then it happens to Ebert himself.

And she's like, yeah. For her, she's like, I've been an old hand through all this cancer stuff, so I could help them. I do like that Ebert got to own gamers before he died. Yes, yeah. He made them so mad. And also tell Transformers fans, like, no, your movie sucked. I'm sorry. Your child, go away.

But yeah, we're going to be talking about the final episode of this series today. But first, let's do a Director's Corner for Butch Lukic. If you want to know how to say that name, I looked it up. It's Lukic. That's good. Okay. I've probably said Luckick or whatever in previous ones. It's from, I don't know, Czechoslovakia.

Who knows? So Butch started in 1990 as a storyboard artist on the John Candy Vehicle Camp Candy. And from there, he did storyboards on things like The Real Ghostbusters, New Kids on the Block, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventures with an S, Bucky O'Hare and the Toad Wars. He was a storyboard director on that. And also James Bond Jr. and Conan the Adventurer. So a ton of storyboard work in a few short years before the Batman series. Man, that's a lot of junk in there.

But I wonder if, I know with other folks, Real Ghostbusters is where they first worked with Bruce Timm. So I wonder if that was his early Timm connection as well. Maybe Timm knew of him then. I mean, Real Ghostbusters went on for a long time. Yeah, that's true. Like six or seven years i think and that is i mean also as you learn from like just reading any biography of folks like oh we were just if you worked in burbank as an animator in the 80s you

all knew each other you probably all like went to the same house parties in the same disgusting apartments you broke out of the same hannah barbara prison cell yes yeah you all are like uh we had to work on filmation last week. Ah, barf. So he was never a director on the original animated series, the original like 85 episodes, but he is credited with storyboards

on 20 episodes of those. So he began directing on a 1995 episode of Gargoyles and then directed four total episodes of the new Batman Adventures, where he's also listed as a series director. So his directorial work on Batman is limited to four episodes of the new batman adventures where he's also listed as a series director so his directorial work on batman is limited to four episodes of the new batman adventures that's you know that's interesting that he did a little stint in gargoyles and then went to batman most people

they do the long haul on gargoyles and then go elsewhere not back to batman in the in that travel yeah and then he directed a handful of episodes of superman and then tons of batman beyond so he directed 15 episodes of batman beyond and then moved on to justice league and directed 27 episodes of that so yeah he was just in the pipeline for the next project after this i more associate him with that you know third and fourth era of uh well who know it's how you measure time but yeah like the final phase of the dcau which does span like seven years of justice league yeah which is when i checked out because i don't care about the justice you know you'll grow to love them no i mean it's all the super things it's

it's super stuff not um noir stuff yeah it's not like mystery detective stories though i i think you would like uh they did several episodes i could pick out for you to be like oh i think bob would like these more ones especially where they bring in uh the guy they base rorschach on uh the question he has very like uh hard-boiled libertarian detective adventures and everybody's like man you're a paranoid freak i'm sure i would like 15 of justice league% of Justice League episodes if I gave it a chance. Maybe I will in the future, who knows? But moving on to Butch Lukich, he also directed a ton of the second and third Ben 10 series.

There's a lot of Ben 10s out there. And he was the supervising director on Beware the Batman. Again, a show I've never heard anyone mention, but it exists. I mean, Cartoon Network literally aired it three times and then took it away. Which, when you look at it, it is expensive. It is. It looks pretty pricey.

And since 2015, he's been a producer on a ton of Batman and DC stuff, including Batman Unlimited, Justice League Action and the recent two part adaptation of The Long Halloween. OK, you know, that's on HBO Max. I haven't given that a shot yet i mean i the the original comic is a great comic but uh one thing that's special about it is tim sales art which is so detailed and specific it i i've watched a little trailer for it there is no easy translation into animation no and there's a lot there's a lot of batman content on hbo max and there's been uh so many direct to streaming and direct to video things over the past 15 years it's really hard to tell what's good oh yeah the the one i am looking forward to in 2022 uh it's a cat woman one uh which is directed by like an anime guy

and i don't know the anime studio but it is a former lupin director who's the director on it and it's written by greg weissman okay mr gargoyles and and then once i do he wrote it then i looked at the cast i was like hey this is just all your gargoyles friends including uh jonathan frakes hey lead role that's fine that's absolutely fine i'm looking forward to that more now than the jj abrams reboots oh yes yeah no that this the chad's uh the chad catwoman special versus the virgin JJ reboot. You know, that might be good. But I'm just saying, watch that trailer for that Catwoman one.

I mean, also, it is anime horny for Catwoman, which I'm fine with. Catwoman is sexy. I say, prove us wrong, JJ. Prove us wrong. Prove us wrong. So this episode, Mad Love, it's based on the 64-page one-shot Batman Adventures comic released in December of 93 and it won the Eisner in 1994 for best single issue. Yeah, just Bruce Timm is equal to Nina Matsumoto in that way. Exactly. He is an Eisner winner. And just like the last episode, it's also

based on a one-shot. So there was that one-shot holiday issue. This was a one-shot Harley Quinn issue. Yeah, you know, some could complain that, like, oh, they just took it easy in this third season where they just adapted a bunch of their best stuff that they did outside of the show. But I think, like, they adapt these, like, perfectly. Like, so good. And also, it helped that, like,

it definitely seemed like Kids WB was way more lax than Fox about this stuff. Yeah, especially if you're watching this one and if you read the comic and i did i read it again for this uh it's like 93 the same thing they cut a few scenes that actually uh improve the animated version and a few lines of dialogue are changed for both like censorship and also i guess they thought a joke was funnier in a different way there was one i'll i'll say it when we get to there was only one bit that i was like i wish they kept that in there but uh yeah i i remember reading this in december 93 or early 94

and feeling like there's nothing in it that's like too dirty but when i was 12 or 11 reading it i just thought oh my god they could never do this on the show she kissed a guy and made hearts appear on his head well she you can see i mean she's wearing lingerie in this uh animated version but in the comic version you can see the silhouette of her body underneath the lingerie yeah it's it's much more see-through again like tim uh in in the deluxe edition of it uh like that has tim writing about remembering it and remembering making it and same with dini uh Dini I think is the one who says like yeah and Tim would

just do a great Harley sexy pose and I was like yeah that's good and then Tim in another part would say like I like drawing hot girls okay like give him a break some people like girls all right yeah actually I think he was saying my DC editor regrets giving me all this freedom

now yes yeah because this was a kid this is like ostensibly a children's comic, right? Yeah. Well, to be a Batman Adventures like special, I mean, it wasn't, it was not published as Batman Adventures number 78 or whatever. It was, it was separate and it had, I did have a certain level of prestige to it above a regular Batman Adventures comic, but they, it was still pitched as a kid's book you know it i think when it won the eisner that was the within the comic industry their way of saying like you need to pay attention to batman adventures they're actually doing good stuff in it that

that's why then you know a couple years later, when the Superman Avengers comic was really doing great stuff based on the show, people were more ready to listen. I'm like, no, seriously, you know, Scott McCloud, Mark Millar, Dan Slott. They're all writing really good Superman stories that just happen to be in the world of the cartoon. Yeah. Once this miniseries is finished with production, I'm going to go back to those old comics because i haven't read most of them and again we've said it before but the same people working on the show worked on the comics we don't know how yes yeah actually uh some of the interviews in that book you let me henry they talk about just being late all the time with all of their work yeah i do see you know the december 93 timing that does seem to line up with like we just finished mask of the phantasm and we're about to start up season two so we have

a little break to do that and i mean that shows you how much these guys fucking love batman they're like well we just finished 65 episodes of batman in a movie i gotta draw some more batman and tell this story i mean i'm married to a comic artist i know how long it takes to make like a graphic novel uh so i wonder just uh how much much of his time this took up having to write these comics and draw these comics. I, they detail another one they did where it's like Etrigan and Batman hanging out and it's an annual and they say like 72 hours. They drew the whole thing because they just found out while working on the show.

They reminded like, hey, you were agreed to this and we already solicited the issue and they're like oh it's on sale in two weeks fuck and so they are just like and this is pre-digital so they're just like he drew a storyboard page and then i light boxed it and just drew over it and then he drew it back and then we just shoved it out the door 48 pages in 72 hours it's a good looking comic it really is yeah so mad love the title i'm guessing comes from the 1935 peter lorry movie there's also a 1995 movie with chris o'donnell and drew barrymore that has nothing to do with this uh comic it's just called mad love but nobody remembers that movie and if you do you're wrong to remember it so punish yourself in whatever way

you feel uh suitable now i i much more remember the boys on the side from a similar time with a time frame starring drew berry well she also riding in cars with boys yeah she did they were on the side they were in the cars she did lots of things with boys yeah she was a bad girl that was that was her that was her character and the story behind this comic is so paul dini pitched the idea to bruce tim as a potential episode of the series and tim was like let's do it as a comic instead and bruce tim in that book has more to say about potential episode of the series. And Tim was like, no, let's do it as a comic instead. And Bruce Tim in that book has more to say about the origins of the story. So I'll quote him here.

So Bruce Tim says, quote, a mutual friend of ours was stuck in a stormy but nonviolent relationship with a guy whose personal obsession precluded him from returning her unconditional love. I'm happy to report that the real life hardly did finally break away from her Joker and has been happily married for several years now and uh going back to the original uh title mad love i think it is a reference to that peter lorry movie because this is a like a noir psychodrama 100 about like a crazy dame in love with this vicious gangster if only she'd stop and realize she's too good for him uh this point yeah it's uh making this the core of her character has been

a tumultuous thing for people to deal with with harley going forward because like she needs to be joker's her is joker's sidekick is an interesting combo but it is a bad relationship and so other writers and artists afterwards have had to deal with like well do we keep uh do we you know make a bad toxic abusive physically abusive relationship funny or interesting like that feels uncomfortable i had to come to terms with how i don't like the newer harley quinn and i was thinking well i like this old one but she's also just a victim of abuse yeah so i don't i don't want to see that but i think she's a more of a fun character i don't quite like the girl boss version of her uh you know i she's okay and birds of prey i like i like the movie but i don't know maybe it's just because i like this

performance more and i like it in animation more uh i i don't know but it's it's funny to see where she came uh where she's been since this episode because we said it before and i'm sure i'll restate this before the podcast is over this is the final episode of the series for i know she's in comics i know she's in other stuff for nerds but guess what nobody reads comics people care about movies and television shows and video games for 10 years she's gone then 10 years later in 2009 she comes back in arkham asylum and i think that's what made everyone remember the character because, I don't know, 8 million people played that game. And it was like, oh, Harley Quinn writes.

She's so cool. And then that kickstarted the Harley Quinn industry we're all part of now. Though, you know, I didn't love her suicide girlification in Arkham Asylum. I mean, the writing was good. Yes. But everyone was McFfarland up yes yeah i mean and which because they hired a mcfarland like staff artist to design everybody with that is the longest batman ears i ever damn seen in that game like batman's ears but longer than they

are in this version of the series but but yeah bob you're right as as a comic reader i knew that harley had slowly transitioned into the comics like around when this aired she was starting to appear in real uh dc comics meaning the true dc universe not uh books for kids or or else worlds or all that stuff but they were they weren't giving her the a plus treatment and uh like she was in a side book that people didn't super love and they were kind of like okay is she is she joker sidekick or is she an independent lady i think really a thing that boosted her was that paul dini started writing dc mainline books in about 2006 and so he was able to put her in key positions and kind of start building her up again and then comes the arkham games which make her so

key to it and you're right from there it's like oh she's appearing in more of the comics or sorry more of the cartoons and side stuff too uh they put her in her own like r-rated cartoons as well yeah and then and then boom she's the star of suicide squad like she's the star of Suicide Squad like she's the breakout character of both Suicide Squads yeah yeah she is I think the best part of the second Suicide Squad of the Suicide Squad and yeah I think the version that Margot I was re-watching

Birds of Prey's opening which pretty much just takes like bits and pieces from this Mad Love origin and puts it in there and same like arkham asylum i believe it's in the audio logs for harley that's true it's her doing the scenes from this episode of interviewing the joker pre-origin and arkham origins also takes a little bit of it i know you're playing it i don't want to spoil for you but there's there's a plot in that game there is

okay and then some bits of this are peppered into there as well i see uh though it takes more from the killing joke i'll say but uh but yeah there's this adds so much to the batman mythos i don't think people really appreciate including like i the joker in this one especially reminds me a lot of dark knight joker and i think like line wise they took a bit from him too but reading tim say that it uh was inspired by a woman they knew who was in a bad relationship with a guy to me i that sounds like it was probably either a writer or an animator who is too focused on his job and ignores his girlfriend i see and that because especially like i at first thought like oh is dini and tim writing about themselves here because they feel bad that

sometimes they've been the joker that they had a hot girlfriend who was like hey baby let's let's let's ride the old harley and they're like um i have to write this batman story get out of here that's i feel there's some i don't think they were i'm not saying that they were abusive partners like the joker but i do think some of their guilt about being obsessed with batman to the damage of their relationship comes through in these stories with how productive they were being you could see that they they'd be going over their quote unquote blueprints all day and ignoring ignoring their partners yeah yeah yeah like again harley quinn for most people went away for 10 years and it was just kind of a footnote like oh yeah kevin

smith named his daughter harley quinn that's kind of neat and i wonder i wonder how she feels now where well now she's the star of all his movies so i'm sorry the star of yoga hosers harley quinn yes yeah and of course jay uh i'm at this point it's old when you're listening to this but i was just putting on the second half of the kevin smith he-man series and yeah she's she's in that too of course not not as a major character but yeah and it's you know hey it's a fine show that he-man revelations a fine show especially if you actually give a crap about he-man like mythology and history uh it kind of pays off a lot of stuff i've heard it's good in front of the show griffin newman is on there oh he's great orco he was born to play orco i just feel

that uh now that trauma is kind of on its way out lloyd kaufman's getting older uh no one's watching their movies on youtube at all i look at the numbers and it's kind of startling uh kevin smith just becomes the new trauma i mean yoga hosers and that jane silent bob movie are just trauma movies but he's also the new stan lee because he's like oh we hire you to be the nerd guy like he he can't get high and just say like oh that fucking sucks man kevin smith has to like everything now because that's the position he's in like he can't be critical uh i like his i like his sentimentality and sincerity maybe you have to die to reach that level or almost die but i i don't like posting yourself crying over the most like middle brow entertainment yeah he was

it's a bit much and it's it's harmless you know i'm not going to complain too much but i'm just like oh oh i hope i'm not like that he just did it over ghostbusters yeah oh my god he cried over ghostbusters uh well if you haven't had ghostbusters i haven't watched it but if you haven't had Ghostbusters, I haven't watched it, but if you haven't had Afterlife spoiled for you, it works really hard to tear at your heartstrings. You're not allowed to hate this. We brought a man back to life. I know, which like, you know, this is spoiler town for Afterlife. I don't want to spoil it in case somebody listening hasn't seen it yet. It's fair.

I'm done talking about this now. But yeah, this comic comic so damn good i watching this episode and reading the comic at the same time they barely lose anything i just wish joker had lipstick in it i just missed this there's so many funny expressions in the comic yeah that hinge on him having lips and pupils that i think get less funny in his redesign yeah yeah i will say i like the i mean they can spend more time on one panel in the comic and some of the more iconic panels from that are not as effective in animation, but they follow everything to a T the dialogue,

the posing, the staging. It just, it was their blueprint for the storyboards. Yeah. Uh, it's per it's, it's just so perfect.

And, and yeah, like you said, this is the last one. I, uh, that aired the last new one though in production order it's not the like on the blu-rays it's not last yeah it should be last

but and for some reason it snuck into 1999 the show should have ended in 1998 but this this one uh it's this airs while batman beyond starts and has started up already and i found somebody scanned and uploaded like a table read draft script of this and the final draft is uh dated at august of 1997 so that's that's how long they sat on this episode for probably close to a year after yeah i think it was like a 24 episode order and they were done with it and they those were parceled out between two seasons. Yeah, which, you know, but that also, that long-term, the time it takes to air it, I got to hear about in, you know, online or in Wizard Magazine,

like they're adapting Mad Love and so I was waiting for this episode hardcore by the time I was 16. I was very interested in this. I missed this when it originally aired. I think I saw it for the first time when it was on Blu-ray. Oh, okay. Or, sorry, no, DVD, like, in the late aughts.

Right, right. So it was new to me. Which, how could they not? I'm mad they didn't do commentary for this. There's only two commentaries. Like, just get Bruce Timm to sit down again with everybody and redo commentaries on stuff. By the time these episodes came out on DVD, the DVDs were kind of winding down a bit. Yeah, yeah, you're right by the fourth volume or third volume i could see them just say like yeah this ain't gonna make enough money like yeah and you know we did batman beyond return of

the joker in october and that made me think you know what uh i've been sitting on this for too long i'll give batman beyond a chance and watch more of it then we start doing production on this and once i get to the end of this i'm, no. I now actively resent the series again because this is where they ended. This is where they ended. And guess what? I mean, this series honestly could not have gone past 1999 because that's when WB got Pokemon. And that's when they're like, oh, this is way cheaper. What the hell are we doing?

See you later, WB. There's no way Batman survives the existence of Pokemon. No, no way way no how i mean that's why justice league moved moved to cartoon network because jean mccurdy could actually like protect them there and say no we can spend real money for you on cartoon network like the ink was still wet on the batman beyond contract when they picked up pokemon so they couldn't do anything about it exactly yeah they're like ah well we already signed up for 52 let's go all the way but then yeah once like uh we said on the batman beyond one they do that third season that gets it even worse than uh than mad love they the last two episodes of batman beyond don't eat they air

like a year later and on cartoon network not even on kids wb is that because of 9-11 yeah i mean partially one of the last episodes they air is about terrorism and blowing up buildings. So partially it was that. But they didn't even want to air it on Kids WB. By the time they're like the 2002 fall season, they just go, Cartoon Network can have it. It's first run on Cartoon Network. Just like Freakazoid.

Freakazoid had the same deal. That's right. That's why whenever you see Freakazoid footage on YouTube, it's got the Cartoon Network bug in the corner, usually. So yeah, also animation by Coco and Dong Yang. If you Cartoon Network bug in the corner, usually. So, yeah. Also, animation by Coco and Dong Yang. If you want me to tell you about those, we have been paying attention to the series because they've been animating a lot so far. And this is one of their better ones.

They always give you, like, a B+, you know? Yeah. And they had a great blueprint once again. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, Tim is credited for, for like on the script is like co story writer but i mean i do know the comics aren't exactly the storyboards and you can tell storyboarders had to like rework pages and stuff yeah so much of this is taken from bruce tim's

like amazing comic pages i i never thought of it before until reading his afterword, but that he said he was so influenced by Mad Magazine's Harvey Kurtzman. I was like, oh, it all clicks into place. It's perfect. Yeah. I mean, just do a Google image search for Kurtzman with work and you'll see the connection. Yes. Yeah. I always think of him just as like, oh, yeah, he's a guy who likes Kirby.

But it's not just. It's also. It's Kurtzman and Kurtzberg, which that's Jacob Kurtzberg. That's Jack Kirby's real name. Jack Kirby's Jewish? I knew that. I knew that. Yeah, some things I noticed about this in Holiday Nights is I think just out of necessity

animation wise, there will be other characters in the background in the scene, like extras, but they get rid of them. So in Holiday Nights, when Batman goes on the shopping spree with Harley and Ivy, there's other people in the store watching all of this as he's humiliated and he's getting off on it, I think. He's a pay pig.

Yes. When Gordon goes to the dentist, the building is occupied. There are people in the hallway, but I think it's creepier and it's a more effective Joker plot that he's the only one in this entire office building floor.

Maybe he killed everyone because you know what the joker is so much more hardcore in these new batman adventures he's an ugly character yeah he's ugly like he's like just this skull-faced guy who murders people like this and this episode gets uh i'm shocked reading the comic page i was like thinking before re-watching it oh man he must have had to trim that down. And there's so many references, like the Joker kills a bunch of people that they just keep in. Like, oh, I guess the Joker is a mass murderer in the show now. It's funny. Some of the things that are

quote-unquote censored are things that are cut out of dialogue, but they'll be written down on a newspaper or a legal pad. So they're technically still in the show. But yeah, in our first clip here, Commissioner Gordon is walking into a very obvious trap. I don't mind saying I really hate these checkups.

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Making your usage clearer, your trips greener, your home cozier, and your world brighter. Find our Net Zero Hub at electricireland.ie You little... My, my. This doesn't look good at all. I'm afraid everything will have to go. It was an easy hint, Joker. predictable you're losing your edge and there's nothing i mean it's kind of a silly plot but the joker is going to drill his face a bunch until he dies yeah he's you know it's not a batman is right to call him out on this like well you're gonna just drill his face open like i guess that's you know it's not a batman is right to call him out on this like well you're gonna just

drill his face open like i guess that's you know an okay death trap did you notice the the the anagram on the door for yes like dr j reco uh dds yeah it's just joker backwards but the j at the front yeah i uh also it was funny to read that this was like a plot they had had for another joker episode that they just cut i'm like oh we'll just use this as a set piece they repurpose it and then say like oh there's a reason it got cut is what batman said like it's kind of boring you know like pretty obvious like you know you're losing your touch and i'm looking at the at imdb right now and yes this is the last time he plays the joker uh in an animated production outside of the uh return

of the joker movie but technically is that really the joker let's ask ourselves that well in the flashback it's oh right right it is he is in there he is in that but yeah again not until arkham asylum does he come back so i mean you can count the uh Batman Vengeance uh and I think oh yeah he could I don't think he's in Rise of Sun Tzu or Sun Tzu he is you know he does appear in a Justice League episode one and it's a big deal like wow the Joker's here that's cool he's like he's really hamming it up like that's right your old pal Joker he's here but no this is kind of a farewell for all these guys. It's fun hearing Joker. There's two bits in here that got worse through the adaptation

only because of the facts of the universe, which is in a comic book, you can see a word balloon from a person who's off screen, but you don't hear their voice, so then the reveal of who's saying it can be a surprise. Twice in this episode, they translate that in there but unfortunately you have to it's it's an audio medium you know that's the joker's voice though hamill is doing a good normal guy voice as the joke i mean if you don't know it's a joker from

the sign on the door then you are too young to be watching this that's true yeah you you should probably know it's joker anyway actually i I'm looking at other Joker appearances by Hamill. He was in Static Shock as the Joker, which I wasn't aware of. I got to watch that Static Shock show. There was a 2002 Birds of Prey TV series. He was the Joker in that twice. What? Yeah.

What is that? Okay. Well, that got canceled like almost instantly. I believe he's just the Joker in a flashback. I don't think he appears on screen as the Joker. It's like his last uh you see it's it takes place in like 20 years in the future where batman's daughter teams up with like uh black canary and stuff it's it's not exactly the birds birds of prey used to just be huntress and black canary and then they shove in harley quinn who just kind of takes it over

because he's like yeah i'm harley quinn i this Harley Quinn this is my show now so if you don't count 12 other appearances this is his last appearance as the Joker I mean I consider this a farewell to his Joker I mean his real last one is Arkham Knight like I don't think no then he did the Killing Joke series he just can't stop I know you know

he said well then he came back for oh that's also in that He-Man show. He is Skeletor. And in the second half, he is hamming it up so hard as Skeletor. You can tell he just loves it. And Kevin Smith is like, no, be a bigger ham. Be crazier. Be as big as the Joker.

He misses the Joker. Well, I can respect Arlene Sorkin for just retiring, period. Yeah, yeah. Well, both of them are very rich. But Mark Hamill. Arlene Sorkin for just retiring period yeah yeah well both of them are very rich but like mark hamill uh arlene sorkin is not mark hamill rich she's not star wars rich ah but her husband oh right man he's uh she's got that frazier bucks and actually she's she's got more than star wars bucks the frazier is worth more at this point in history if you're an executive producer versus a star wars actor you probably of executive producer versus a Star Wars actor, you probably, of executive producer of Frasier, you probably pick poor.

I think so. But also, she was never like, she's a working actress. Mark Hamill, he wanted to be the Joker. As famous as he was in 1991, he was like, hey, please, let me be the Joker. Please, please, please. So he's the real deal. He wants this for real. So yes, we heard harley there she's uh playing the

nurse in this little game and she interrupts batman to tell him the uh the teeth were her idea so there's like a little bit of uh the teeth aren't chattering maybe they were supposed to but there's a little like name tag on it like to batman yeah care of gotham pd so which means she ruined it yeah like he wouldn't have come in time and they'd have just murdered gordon yeah it's part of this part of the plot for them like uh at least sending out one clue because it yeah like he wouldn't have come in time and they'd have just murdered gordon yeah it's part of this part of the plot for them like uh at least sending out one clue because it's like the joy it's like the thrill of almost getting caught as part of this too i think that's for joker yeah i mean well like batman will say later in the app part of it is for joker is that batman has to be witness to it he has to know like he has to he uh so for this batman would need to come in though i think

this plan for joker just was like well, I'm going to murder Gordon. And essentially, like, long term, this will just piss off Batman. Yeah. That's why I'm doing this. It'll really cheese him off. Yeah. And her other plan is to just spray him with dental anesthesia. And she's really showboating here.

She's upstaging the Joker by saying, it's a real gasser, isn't it? Yeah. And the Jester, you know, sorry, gasser isn't it yeah and the jester you know sorry not the jester it's the joker she's wearing a jester's cap which he yanks on and says you know i give the punch lines around here man like yeah from that moment there it's like joker is rarely nice to harley like like in this same season there's the great episode joker's millions where he just like gives her the boot and hires a new, cheaper one to replace her. He calls it Mr. G all the time. So they always show that Joker cares way less about Harley than Harley cares about Joker. But this time, it's like him just being like, I am going to beat you if you don't shop.

It is physically imposing on her. And he basically yanks her out of the room uh to leave batman behind i think too joker knows that she's starting to be uh challenging him for popularity in the in the real world he's like hey you i'm gonna put you in your place you're not gonna upstage me it's really true there's only there's only one movie called joker but then harley quinn's a star of a bunch of movies now yeah well i mean you'll never be big the joker is like a number, the most famous like comic book villain ever. So even as big as Harley gets, I don't think she'll ever surpass the Joker. Like a, I don't know, 40 year headstart though.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But now Harley, I mean, yeah, the next generation of kids who've grown up on like Harley everywhere, maybe, maybe then the next, uh, the next Harley after Margot Robbie, she wins the Oscar for just Harley. I bet they're looking for a new one. Yeah. she's an executive producer on that so they can't just fire her because they're like how are you 24 get out of here grandma there's a new aunt may roll

opening for you soon yeah so joker uh basically says goodbye to batman throws a grenade into the room and says may the floss be with you that is not what he says in the comic i think he just says remember to you know floss between meals or whatever but this was the one time they could make mark hamill say a star wars thing and it wasn't the final episode that's that also is why this feels like the end where they're just like you know what mark let's just do it we haven't made you say a star wars line yet we've let you be your own guy and you're not just luke skywalker is joker but now that we're at the end let's just have some fun give us one star wars line yeah but yeah batman saves commissioner gordon uh chucks the grenade out the window off of his lap and shields him from the blast and we

get one of his bat uh cape just shields people like that it where that somehow it's like fireproof and explosion proof yeah no shrapnel can pass through it and we get one last clip from gordon i really hate these checkups and uh in the book gordon is in it more he's kind of backing batman up with a few things honestly it's it's superfluous it doesn't need to be in the book and it's not in the cartoon yeah no the way the book reads it honestly could have been a two-parter if they wanted to really luxuriate in every scene of the book but they made the right cuts to get this down to 22 and even then this moves so fast in 22 minutes every minute is packed and we are now at uh funny bone shipping the new ironically named

joker hideout that man should know that it must be i guess like if there's an abandoned novelty warehouse in gotham you need to just destroy it because there's like eight of them and the Joker finds a new one every time. I've said it before, but any abandoned amusement park, Wayne Tech should just buy the second it hears about it and just bulldoze it. Be like, there are no more abandoned amusement parks. Don't even check it for supervillains first. Just blow it up with them inside. The Joker is working on blueprints harley is sneaking up behind him wearing some skimpy lingerie and humming a jaunty tune and he is not

uh he's not in the horny jail for her in fact he broke out he's in work jail yeah so i like this joker too that like as as an abusive partner uh he one of his things is that he just won't give her anything that like she is so sexy and hot but joker part of his control of just like no you can't get me uh you can't make me excited to have sex with you like i'm in control here i'll have sex with you when i feel you're not as important as what i'm doing now yes yeah and also it definitely plug uh keys into the idea of joker is obsessed with batman he doesn't give a fuck about sex or anything else and there's some good camera moves that are mimicking the staging of the comic like we see the back of her bare legs we push through them to uh to the

back of the joker really hard at work joker right between her legs like meow and and though honestly i was thinking like this is pretty lax on wb's part but in the beware the creeper episode that is her coming out of the cream pie oh covered in just uh white goo and i was like this isn't even as sexually suggestive as that which by the way don't google that term harley quinn cream pie oh no oh no that's an entire category on pornhub i think yes yeah uh yes so she just basically poses seductively on the desk again in the comic version it's not like porno or anything but you can see the silhouette uh Bruce Timm loves drawing pointy breasts he's a real pin-up artist at heart you know him and

Masamune Shiro have very similar tastes in pointed curved breasts though he's not as into the greasy he doesn't want to grease them up so this is too dirty this episode yes uh so harley is horny in our next clip go away i'm busy oh come on portent don't you want to rev up your harley oh sweetie i got the whoopee cushion. Batman was right. That setup today was corny. Old hat.

It's time I capped off our feud with his ultimate humiliation. Followed by his deliciously delirious death. Why don't you just shoot him? Just shoot him? Know this, my sweet. The death of Batman must be nothing less than a masterpiece. The triumph of my sheer comic genius over his ridiculous mask and gadgets

yeah i mean harley is asking the question every viewer asks of all these people and you know what i mean spoilers at the end that's kind of what he wants to do that yes i love this was the first time it really hit me like this line isn't just about joker's you know vision and how like he thinks bigger than harley or whatever it's about joker's a hypocrite he says he wants all this stuff really just so that he can yell at harley and put her in her place because he's an asshole but then at the end of the episode when he's got the chance he's like you know what i am just kidding like just a slug between the eyes the end and he doesn't even give her credits well because he just thinks well she's dead now who cares i just killed her well

all he does is steal credit from her like that's uh and and also you know this why don't you just shoot him thing obviously this episode airs after austin powers has a similar joke but the comic was years before austin powers that's right that's right yeah that's what scott evil says i love he's like just shoot him he's like you just don't get it i just love that i know austin power is i'm just gonna do all the impressions freaking lasers yes scotty don't yeah hey it's still good the first one's still good uh but yeah i just love that he's like ah it's corny old hat again this is like a dork planning stuff and actually in that mr mix's spit lick episode pretty much the same also written by Paul Dini has a very similar scene of a

super dork making plans to attack Superman and ignoring his super sexy wife who's just like hey let's let's go out on the town and he's like no I gotta get back Superman there's a theme that runs through their work yes yeah so Joker all he's you know having

a little tantrum here he sprays acid of a flower basically basically just melts a batman mannequin harley has to duck out of the way he basically was gonna kill her there like i know that uh because it's a super villain weapon it doesn't feel as awful as him backhanding her in the episode because that's just like realistic violence but yeah in both cases the intent is there of like an abusive man like that i'm gonna spray this acid if any of it gets on you it's your fault everything's her fault like yeah i mean also too that whoopee cushion line i'm like i don't want to know how that's incorporated into the bedroom by joker it's a cute naughty joke that that is like a sex toy for them yeah and i think uh paul dini said the network or dc didn't have a problem with the rev up your harley line because they saw it as silly and not sexy so they're like oh it's a silly

goofy line yeah when it's like no you're gonna ride your harley like that she's saying rev up but you ride a harley yeah i mean she's doing the pantomime of like writing yes yeah when she does the rev up she's she's also bouncing up i mean we yeah the intention here is clearly harley quinn wants to have sex yeah this is a kid's cartoon in this kid cartoon this character is saying have sex with me your sexy girlfriend adapted from the children's comic drawn by sickos all these sick written by the king sicko paul dini we better lock them all up that's what i think so while the joker is having this tantrum he spots a blueprint on the ground that he forgot about. It's called the Death of a Thousand Smiles.

Sorry, a hundred smiles, not a thousand. It's one of his abandoned plans. And he's going over what the plan is. Basically, piranhas eat Batman. So the last thing he sees are a hundred beautiful, hungry smiles. But the one problem is he remembers why he scrapped the plan. He couldn't get the piranhas to smile not even with joker gas yeah yeah i i that's an important thing to do because in laughing fish it was shown that joker toxin can make fish smile but apparently it doesn't work on piranhas worked on that other

breed of fish maybe only freshwater fish i don't know i really i wish you know they cut it later but that's another bit, a little joke I wish they'd have kept when Harley says, like, I had to get all these fish from everywhere. And I hate fish because in Laughing Fish, she hates fish. That's right. I forgot that was a character detail. Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, Herb, this again, if you take Joker as a guy who writes for the Batman cartoon show, this is him going like, I got to think of a plot for next week's episode. Oh, wait, what about this old plot? Ah, wait, it doesn't work. The ending sucks. And then when his girlfriend fixes the ending for him, then he just gets mad like,

no, how dare you fix the ending? This was my story. It's kind of about writer's block, not just emotional abuse. Yes, yeah. Which again, though, that makes the Batman creatives Joker in this sense,

which I don't want to say that. Now we've all become the Joker, so it's fine. Yeah, yeah. So Joker slumps on the stairs. He's very crestfallen. And Harley comes up behind him and says, I know how to make some smiles, Puddin'. And then we cut to the outside, this alley where his little hyenas are standing by. And then she's just thrown out the door.

Right on their face. I think Harley does get abused, but it never feels more personal than when you see the backhand in this episode. Oh, sure. Presumably he could have just kicked her out the door. It could have been a much more violent act, but we don't see it. And it's more cartoonish. Yeah. It's played just like, oh, it's like Garfield being kicked out of the house.

Or DJ Jazzy Jeff. Yeah, exactly. But when you really think about it, like here she is just basically naked kicked out to the curb in the uh in the cartoon they can't really like cover her in in gross like rhyme like she is on the comic page but yeah it's uh i also just love when she's away from the joker sorkin does such a great job with her character of like her voice changes to let you know she is putting on a voice to be a person around the joker like that's a very important detail about harley's character and so she comes to all the

wrong conclusions face it harl this stinks you're a certified nutso wanted in 12 states and hopelessly in love with a psychopathic clown at what what point did my life go Looney Tunes? How did it happen? Who's to blame? Batman, that's who. Batman! It's always been Batman! Ruining my life! Spoiling my fun! Coming between

me and my burden from the very beginning. Harleen Quinzel, I'm Joan Leland. Hi, Joan. Call me Harley. Everyone does. I must admit, I was surprised you wanted to intern here at Arkham. Well, I've always had an attraction for extreme personalities. They're more exciting, more challenging. And more high profile.

You can't deny there's an element of glamour to these super criminals. I'll warn you right now. These are hardcore psychotics. If you're thinking about cashing in on them by writing a tell-all book, think again. So in the comic, I like that they cut this out uh it's revealed that before all of this harley is just a person of ill reputes sort of uh in her own like duplicitous way where uh in college she rises to the top by sleeping with her professors it's kind of sex shaming and it's kind of something i don't like them putting on her yeah and uh sorry slut shaming and i like that she arrives here as kind of an innocent although

it's implied like you're probably here to make a lot of money off these freaks yeah so let me get one thing straight it's not gonna happen a key part of harley's downfall is her hubris that she thinks she's smarter than the joker that she's actually using joker and joker's not gonna use her that's that's important for her character to it makes her more... If she was just an innocent destroyed by the Joker, then it's just a tragedy. But if you add in just a little bit of like, oh, she actually thought she was going to trick the Joker and use him for a book deal,

that makes her... At least you're not pitying her entirely all the time. It's just a pure victim of the Joker. Yeah, I'm just happy that they cut out the parts. Like she rose to academic success by having sex. yeah yeah that was something they were smart enough to already cut by this point yeah you know in the in the recent tv show and in the margot robbie stuff they they just treat her like no she is a therapist for joker like if if she slept her way through college to get uh you know a degree then that also explains why she's not ready for the joker like if if she slept her way through college to get uh you know a degree

then that also explains why she's not ready for the joker and how the joker can play mind games on her i think it's much better of like no she's truly a genius but the joker used her that much and and he's that good at at taking advantage of this person yeah i mean i chose to read her uh in a similar way and that she is an academic with basically no real life experience so she's like well i'm smarter than all these weirdos i'm sane i just came out of harvard you know i can beat all the these guys can't trick me yeah and and i also just loved what a great set with that joan leland character who i saw we didn't do harley's holiday but that was her first appearance where that's that's the one where harley gets out on parole

and it's really just oh at least the ending is really good is that batman saying i had a bad day too or whatever yes yeah yeah it's a cute ending and and it shows that is kind of like a seed for this episode too of just having batman show that he pities her that he's just like yeah i know i and uh and and joe leland's in that one too just to know that they were colleagues and that she was like no look if you're gonna work at arkham you need to hate every patient here which is that's a crazy thing to think in the real world of just like oh i i hope people who work in mental institutions don't go in there saying like you should hate all of them they'd kill you if you could that's what the new new Halloween movie teaches you, the 2018 one.

Yes, yeah. That movie's not very good. I know people like it. So who plays Dr. Joan Leland? Suzanne Stone plays Dr. Joan Leland. She played this character one other time in the 1997 episode Double Talk. And this is her last role, period. I think she's still alive. Okay.

So her first role was in 1975, and she had a recurring role on shows like sanford which was the sequel to sanford and son and the daytime drama texas so those were her two really recurring roles just a lot of bit parts between those and after that yeah didn't the sun just quit the show and they're like you know we just need sanford we don't need the sun get rid of lamont is that his name the sun yeah okay maybe it is uh so this could be an imdb goof but i don't think it is because it just shows the direction imdb goof but i don't think it is because it just shows the direction her career went uh it appears that she has gone on to become a researcher on jeopardy really she did it intermittently throughout her career but it

appears to have been uh on this job for a large portion of 2021 so yeah so there you go the interesting way the life of a character actor goes in hollywood man i'd i mean jeopardy they all film it in la right so i could see that happening that they they need researchers and that well that shows she's got the brains of a doctor just like uh she's she comes off very well as a smarty pants in this episode and also one of the sick freaks in arkham is paul dini the window licker yes who's also in the comic so they just took that right from the comic uh that that's always fun that tim draws dini is just this sicko like in so many times though d i mean tim even does it to himself of drawing yeah as like tim had to actually play the guy making fun of him as a

as a toy collector you know we just had bruce tim and paul dini in our last episode too yeah drawn in his cartoon characters and you know in know, in the first Harley and Ivy gal pals episode, it's Bruce Timm's design who says, what are you going to do? Spank us? And he acts out a spanking. I was like, yeah, that's as horny as Bruce Timm. That's his own fantasy. And, you know, as a Harley Ivy fan, I really like that this isn't about Harley and Ivy's

friendship, but before she sees the joker her and ivy make eye contact that's right yeah which even it even in the uh in the extras for that book bruce tim called them gal pals which is the coded way of saying we can't write them as lesbians but they are a couple like yeah uh yeah i forgot about that little like the knowing glance between them so uh the first sight for those guys but but joker he's so perfect he's just like what a bad boy just like lead he can't lean up against the light post and be flicking a quarter but basically the same deal he's like oh uh new meat fresh meats here uh and he's whistling his own theme like you can see if you're into bad boys like Harley is,

or at least for Joker, why she's into Joker here. And this act ends. She goes back to her office. There's a single flower in a vase on her desk, and there's a note attached that says, come down and see me sometime from Jay. And she sniffs the flower and smiles, and we hear these psycho strings in the soundtrack

knowing this is where it begins. Oh, man. The way she takes off her flower and smiles. And we hear these psycho strings in the soundtrack knowing like this is where it begins. Oh, man. The way she takes off her glasses and smells the rose. It's like there is something just so like sensual about it. It's really well. And what a great way of just expressing simply without words how she's truly infatuated with the Joker. Yeah. And act two begins and she immediately goes down to see the Joker and confronts him because

she knows he got out of his cell and she's threatening to tell the guards. But he responds, if you were really going to tell the guards, you would have done it already. Yeah. So he already knows. He's already broken her basically with this one act. Yeah. He's like, oh, you think you like she's when she says, you know, I can tell the guards

that's her trying to assert power. And instantly he's like, you have no power over me. I'm the one in control of this relationship and this is when we get the opening clip where uh the pun harley quinn is explained and i like that they kind of have to do this but then her response is yeah i get that all the time i'm kind of sick of it yeah i've heard it oh that's been my name my entire life i've heard it like if you ever meet someone with a name that seems like oh have you ever heard this of course they've heard it before like bob mackie yes like perhaps bob mackie i think my relevance is now uh you know outdone his at this point maybe i need to make like a thousand more podcasts you know yeah he's not

making any new dresses for share these days so yeah so yeah that's that's for all the kids out there don't know what harlequin is and uh yeah he says to harley that name puts a smile on my face and it makes me feel there's someone here i can relate to and then he follows it up with someone i can tell all my secrets to yeah and that's when it's like that's when she stops and smirks so again that's the hubris on her part she thinks like it's why you can't completely feel sorry for her because you do feel sorry for her because joker is using her and has turned her into a monster but it all begins with her thinking she's tricking him so yeah yeah she's she's a bad person too or at least that shows that she's not the best person yeah and i like how it's more subtle in this when it's kind of underlined in the comic i like how you can clearly tell she

is out for uh to profit off of this new position to say like i want to profile these people and make money off of them yeah but there's nothing said outright from her own perspective but she's totally like well in the comic i think also had more distaste for pop psychologist yeah they even call her it was it was the era of frazier speaking of frazier hey you know what i never even thought about that yeah making arlene sorkin a psychiatrist to the wife of the frazier series showrunner that's pretty funny and uh yeah this this comic came out in december of 93 frazier started in fall of 93 so we were all we held frazier on the brain we were loving uh he's still on our brains all our brains waiting for that frazier reboot but that no one's coming back for no thank you yeah oh come now they can't even get niles

for it yeah you know what's he doing anyways uh the joker undergoes some therapy in our next clip it took me nearly three months to set up a session i studied all his tricks and gimmicks and felt i was ready for anything you know my father used to beat me up pretty badly anything except that every time i got out in line bam oh sometimes i'd be just sitting there doing nothing pow pops tended to favor the grape you see there was only one time i ever saw dad really happy he took me to the circus when i was seven oh i still remember the clowns running around, dropping their pants. My old man laughed so hard, I thought he'd bust a gut. So the very next

night, I ran out to meet him with his best Sunday pants around my ankles. Hi, Dad. Look at me. Zoop. I took a big pratfall and tore the crotch clean out of his pants and then he broke my nose that's pretty shocking uh account of child abuse to have on a kid's cartoon i thought this believe it i thought this cartoon aired later because it gets away with a lot more no it aired like at 9 or 9 30 that's nuts yeah i couldn't i it feels like kids wb are just like let's just burn this off like wash our hands we're not gonna get any emails about it but yeah i knowing what was in the comic page when watching this the first time i was like they actually let him say that his abusive father beat him like the only thing they cut out was him saying like dad came home from the bar or dad was an

alcoholic there there are references in the joker story to his dad drinking too much and i think when he shows his dad his trick his dad is drunk yeah yeah but favors the grape you see yeah what a great this whole sequence is such a great story because it feels like it could have been written in a 1930s movie too like the way he tells the story and and the first time i read the comic i thought this circus story was like oh is this the joker's origin now how cliche the circus and the clowns made him laugh and that's why he's a clown that's why it's so clever because it is a cliche and joker's telling her a great lie that tricks her and he's tricking the viewer too who uh i mean it's played to trick you as well

thinking like oh this is where it's coming from in this series i didn't know that don't you feel bad for the joker too he's just and i mean too this is perfect of like this is the abusive boyfriend tactic like from then on if you tell a story about like well you know how i'm bad well it's actually because i'm a victim don't you feel bad for me like and you know but passing even if you are a victim of abuse lots of people who do abuse were abused themselves that does not make their abuse okay so and this uh i don't know if this is a trait of the joker just being a liar, but then this would become a running gag in The Dark Knight, the 2008 movie. Except they're not facial scars, they're emotional scars he's talking about.

That's the bit. When I watched this, I was like, oh, I absolutely think Nolan or somebody else on that remembered these scenes of the Joker just lying about what his origin was. And usually involving some sad wife or father or mother and just saying like no i got these scars this is the same setup like they just lifted it from this i feel it's here too i haven't seen that movie since i saw it in the theater once oh man isn't like the first time he explains that you're supposed to believe him as the viewer like oh that's how it happens and then every other time he tells a different story yes yeah you're like, oh, that's how it happens. And then every other time he tells a different story. Yes. Yeah. And you're like, wait, what is this? This guy's so chaotic.

No, I'm surprised you've only seen it once because I have literally watched it like 20 times. 20 times? Well, it did come out on DVD when I worked at a video store. I see. I can put it on. So chalk up about a dozen of those to that. Okay.

But also it was like any anytime i would be flipping through the channel on tv during uh like holidays with family i'd be like oh well the dark night's on all right so i'll just watch that we'll eat up three hours with commercials yes four hours soon as well i've at least once where i've had it turned on and it's like on tbs or tnt and then a commercial starts i'm like well i know where my blu-ray is i'll just put it in and just watch it without commercials maybe i'll watch it again one day it's it's really great it's the one i liked i remember like oh it's the best everyone out there bully me into watching it again uh also i now was watching this with the view of like joker is an abusive uh pickup artist fuck boy him what a pickup artist

move that part of his story like hey i'm just telling a fun story and then he takes his pants off of like what it's just a fun story you know i'm just uh but he's actually like getting more like sexually suggestive with her they even like in the comics it's more clear in a single cell but like as he's taking his pants down like she blushes a little bit like like so yeah uh but and he's escalating he is man soon he'll be in safe touching or nagging or all of the things i've heard secondhand about the pickup artist i mean the staging would not be as interesting if they did this but honestly the joker should be chained up getting this done to him yeah you can't trust him alone in a room

with one other person i know the layout of it though is so perfect just him on the couch and her sitting in the chair especially because it's setting it up that starkly when then it reverses it's so much more powerful too yeah and uh yeah the joker explains after talking about how his dad broke his nose that's the downside of comedy you're always taking shots for folks who don't get the joke like his dad or of course batman and what a great line by him too of like he he knows that a average psychiatrist will he's giving her the connections to make and the connections he's giving her are if i explain to you an abusive father story and then i say or like batman then you make the easy connection of oh he associates batman with his abusive father like that's armchair psychiatrist 101 you know and he knows that and we see uh harley's legal

pad where she writes down everything they really can't say on the air which is abusive childhood alcoholic father beaten when prank went wrong three days in hospital so i think in the comic the joker says that's what landed him in the hospital exactly yeah yeah they it's funny you can write it down yeah maybe they think like well the kids who can't read uh they'd be the most scarred by it if they heard it so you could write it down and and yeah i also love that in her flashbacks like she's seeing the version of the story that batman or that joker tells her of like oh yeah the the Batman is like picking up the Joker and throws him himself into the vat of acid. Like,

yep, Batman did it. It's the Joker was just a victim of Batman. You know, now I'm thinking of this. We talked about it earlier as a, I don't know, a criticism of psychiatry at the time,

because it feels like, I mean, it was the Bill Clinton tough on crime. Like even, even the left, but by that, I mean, the Democrats were like, well, no, we lock you up forever. You're a super pro. And it's like, oh, uh bill clinton tough on crime like even even the left uh but by that i mean the democrats

yes we're like well no we lock you up forever you're a super and it's like oh you're a victim of circumstance oh you were right you were brought up the wrong way broken home blah blah blah go to jail uh well that's why with joker it's like no he's just a liar like he's like like everybody who says they're a victim of happenstance they're just lying and evil i wonder if they changed their stance by now but you know what you're right about that yes batman is not known for its positive portrayal of crime uh or people who commit it or mentally ill people as well i mean it's it's about a rich guy who teams up with the cops to beat up the mentally ill yeah that's that's a when you get down to it what are we doing on this show we're aggrandizing the wrong person

here so uh harley's conclusion is that the joker is a tortured soul crying out for love and acceptance and then like you said i receive various joker moments we see a batman throwing him into the acid that gave him his clown like appearance i don't think that's ever explained in the show but i think in the show he's just the guy with makeup he's not like jack nicholson who was uh you know so definitely in this flashback him in the vat of acid and looking at the mirror, like that's them taking off from the stuff that's in the Burton movie. But in the Beware the Creeper episode, they do treat that as Batman, as Joker's origins.

I didn't rewatch that one for this. Because that's how the Creeper is born, because he also falls into the acid. Like he's a journalist telling the story about it and Joker's mad that he's doing it. But I think that's the only time they say that he actually did have the Jack Nicholson origin. And all the others, they treat it like he just was... In Mask of the Phantasm, you see that he used to be a regular guy

who was just like a gangster's hitman. A coin-flipping gangster. Yes, yeah. Which i guess also makes him more of an attractive fuck boy i i think too you know people always say about uh the casting i've seen people complain about how the original show cast the uh harley is just this victim and and how it's you know this ugly toxic relationship that they turn into funny but the show wants you to root for her to leave too like even this far back when they even do episodes like harley and ivy or uh harley's holiday they

want you as a viewer to think i wish harley would leave him too like they want you to want her to leave they are not saying it's good no that's why the ending is like a funny but also in a super dark way where she learns nothing from all of this yes and yeah we see uh batman giving the joker his origin story we see the joker shooting up gotham national bank with a huge machine gun and then we see batman looming over the joker and beating him up and that's when harley describes him as the self-righteous batman determined to make life miserable for my angel and that will be echoed the word angel will be echoed later in the episode the final line she says and what and this is another bit where it works slightly better on the comic page

because you don't hear audio but just the positioning of her that you know she's talking to like seemingly her own psychiatrist and you can tell she's on the on the couch that is such an amazing reveal that she's talking to the Joker the whole time. Just to show, Joker has so fully broken her and made her his own that he's like, now their roles have completely reversed. Like, literally, their positions have reversed. He's now in charge of her. Let's hear the roles reversed in our next clip. Pretty crazy, huh?

Not at all. As a dedicated, career-oriented young woman you felt the need to abstain from all amusement and fun it's only natural you'd be attracted to a man who could make you laugh again i knew you'd understand anytime then there was that horrible week when he escaped the poor thing was on the run alone and frightened i was so worried they've got him uh i love when she's talking about the joker being alone and afraid the paper the news line says headline says uh body count rises oh my god joker yeah the joker is way more vicious in this uh this set of episodes and you know what that does make it more like a harvey

kersman kind of mad magazine thing of like that this character saying like i feel so bad for this guy and the guy she feels bad for he like, has murdered a dozen people so far. Like, God. I think one of the choices they make in the cartoon version, I don't know if it's for censorship reasons, but in the comic version, when Batman brings the Joker back, he's also beaten up. Yeah. And in the cartoon version, he's not.

But I like that more as her memory is like, oh, he's so much more powerful than the Joker. It's so mean to pick on him. Yeah. I do love the posing of the beaten up batman to let you know like wow a really awesome episode of batman just ended and he's dropping off the joker but but yeah you're right it works better that batman is untouched though in the flashback to they cut the bit from the comic where you see batman just reacting like what the hell like to harley but it's not really needed i but yeah you can you can see it from her

vantage point of just that oh here's the batman showing up after having horribly beaten this poor defenseless man like but that puts you in her headspace of like this is why this poor woman has given up her entire life for this guy they even get away with a bloody nose on there's a lot of blood in this episode everybody gets like a little blood trickle in this episode coming out of their mouth or nose and this is when she becomes harley quinn there's no like gamma rays or accident she goes out uh you know she sees the joker um injured inside of his cell and then she goes out raids a novelty store to become harley quinn they have all the harley quinn accessories on sale it's like a hot topic i guess and then i like how the proprietor is first excited like wow she's buying

a lot and then he basically just gets ripped off and kicked out the door i love her like thousand yard stairs she just walks past him because she's she's just broke like she snapped she's going like you know what time to throw away my entire life like It's one thing, her doing all this stuff with the Joker, that's one thing. And Joker only wanted to use her, who knows? I definitely don't think he thought, she'll become my sidekick and break me out. He probably just at first saw her as just a play thing.

Like, oh, this woman wants to interview me. Let's see if I can just break her. This will be fun until I break out again. I mean, Batman says he saw you as a hired hand the second he laid eyes on you. So yeah,'s harley quinn she breaks back into arkham she knocks a guy out the uh the guy running the toll booth or whatever with a rubber chicken with a brick in it i love that a loaded rubber chicken like she's got her sense of humor right from the start too and she's in shadows until the reveal but we can clearly see she's in the costume yeah she's in the harley quinn outfit oh man the the hero shot of her like it's straight off the comic page but

her after uh smashing the glass to get to joker or say like say hello to your brand new harley quinn it's like that is an amazing just hero shot reveal of her yeah and i just like the joker watching all this happen he's he's horribly injured he's in his bed and she just puts like the bomb on the glass yeah and somehow does not get murdered by the flying glass you know that should have killed him yeah you're right but you know i i like the joker there's a little more of that in the comic page but during their whole escape joker is just like cackling laughing because he's like wow i'm pretty lucky i didn't expect it i didn't expect all of this but uh let's go with the flow here yes let's hear harley being born in our next clip knock knock puddin say hello to your new improved harley quinn it seemed like we would live happily ever after

but that'll never happen as long as there's a batman around to torment my pudding so yes batman is the problem here in this relationship yeah she's like oh obviously everything's perfect except for batman like that explains why a normal woman would constantly be trying to kill batman which you know there's even a tiny bit of that even this is good like uh book ends to our series like we said when we did joker's favor like in joker's favor they have that one little scene of harley and bat like, I know what you're thinking. This poor girl falling into this. This is pretty much the same, like just a bigger version of that scene.

And except if they knew Harley well enough, she wouldn't have any regrets about working with the Joker. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. She wouldn't say I got beauty school starting to look good. That's a funny one off line for just a character you don't have long term plans for but this tragic uh origin that makes her forever like she just be remembered if without this origin story harley would just be remembered as like oh that was a funny henchman for joker in a few episodes this makes her eternal this this elevates her to like yeah if you've got a good origin story then you're a real batman that's true once you're important enough to have your origin story told and with batman who barely features in it really uh that's just like on naruto or other shonen anime where they're

just like oh you thought i was an unimportant fight well learn my origin story now you'll know that i'm actually an important enemy and this is when uh harley becomes a liar because uh we cut to the bat signal in the sky and we see batman gordon and bullock all watching a when uh harley becomes a liar because uh we cut to the bat signal in the sky and we see batman gordon and bullock all watching a video and harley is on the video asking for help because the joker's gone off his nut he's gonna blow up the entire city and to make things even more serious she takes off her mask and says it's not funny anymore i need your help i love the posing of that she's like please i i and then she even just goes back into her old voice instead of her harley voice uh yeah i wish they were cute pages on the in the comic but i understand why

they cut it but in her all her fantasy shots of what her future life would be would joke yeah there's some really good jokes in there it's funny that like paul dini always goes back to harley imagining like a sitcom lifestyle for them like an old-timey one that's what we see in uh the batman beyond movie yeah yeah and in this case they're like they're married by jerry lewis officiating and buster and babs are hanging like that's such a great joke and like the little harley quinn girl says oh jj poisoned me and harley says you just poisoned him back yeah oh man and and also like them as old people like basically it's on golden pond with peter fonda except they're about to have sex yes yeah i still want to fool around honey oh so good and uh so yeah uh batman goes off to meet harley the plan is to meet her on the

docks and she'll give batman the joker's plan in the comic version he's like communicating with gordon bullock about what's going on like oh she's alone she looks afraid and he says he's watched her for like 30 minutes like it makes batman not seem as gullible as he is in this but in this case like harley did a good job acting and batman falls for this too because he's i think he always hopes like is just like poison ivy does is she finally coming to her senses and leaving the joker yeah if so i want to support that and help this woman he he should know this is a trap but he's like no i want to believe in her somebody has to reform in this damn town can this finally be the one person who reforms but batman doesn't realize he's in a

comic book that can never end and that's no one can reform so he basically appears in front of her like just teleports in scares her and just says open it because she's got the briefcase and this doesn't trust that briefcase wants to give it her lets her do it and we've all heard of Joker's trick well here is Harley's trick okay I want Gordon to see these if what you say is true the police will Wenn das, was du sagst, wahr ist, wird die Polizei... Keiner wird auf mich zurückkehren und lebt! Schöne Träume, Arschloch. Äh, nicht. sweet dreams sucker he gets hypodermic from behind and i will say this joker so what happens is it's not really the joker it's a joker kind of mannequin that talks and fires a machine gun and i guess can pilot a boat or the boat was was sent off by somebody else who knows it's like an autopilot

you just say turn on the boat and it runs yeah you know what she really does need assistance to pull this i think she just went to the goon store and got one goon i guess she knows a lot of goons she'd be like hey you want to help me for the afternoon with this i think it's more effective in the comic because i believe it's just one panel uh or it's it's very limited they have to show more of this yeah in the animated version and i love how it looks on the the painted cover that paul uh sorry that bruce tim did for the original release of this comic yeah yeah of him just in shadow this scary joker shooting a machine gun from his thing yeah it's uh and when she when she get a recording of the joker saying that too

you know she hired another goon to do the voice uh but yeah that batman trusted her too much i also you know we did that jury episode too or the trial episode and in that one she also knocks batman unconscious like bruce tim really is into harley quinn knocking batman unconscious she's secretly way better than the joker yes yeah that that's the clear point of the third act which is if you don't give a crap about you know making it the perfect death or all of the drama she just cuts to the chase she's like dispassionately going like yeah batman i killed you like this the point and batman i'll just say it but the point is she's way better at this than the joker is if she just focused and

that's how the joke i'm sorry that's how batman breaks the joker's brain by explaining like this plan is actually awesome yeah i love that yeah uh so yeah this is what happens we come back to act three batman is strung up over this tank full of water filled with piranhas harley is just nonchalantly sipping soda at the bar i love her a little grape soda and that thing yeah it's a cute what a cute like teeny like she's a 50s teeny bopper just now over on her elbows over the uh edge drinking out of the bottle. And this place that this set piece takes place is called Aquacade, but it's based on some place called The Paradise, which was a tacky tropical theme restaurant downstairs from WB's animation office.

And that's where Paul Dini pitched the story to Bruce Timm. You know, if we ever go back to Burbank, we got to see if that place is still open and we got to eat there just to know like this is where the mad love was born. Did it survive 30 years like three economic depressions in a pandemic? You know maybe not but we've got pals in Warner Animation. Let's ask them. What did it become?

Yeah. So Batman is just coming to. He's groggily asking her questions and Harley reveals her ruse and it's only just the two of them there. Theoker is not involved at all according to her yeah which batman can't believe it he's like where's the joker nah it's just us like she also just batman is ready for like all right where's joker where's the big speech this is time for the joker speech like nah i'm just uh she just so relaxedly her interaction with batman in this death trap is so great and i mean we'll get to it but batman knows like, oh, I need to get the Joker involved

because he'll fuck this up. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Batman keeps it so cool the rest of the scene, but internally he's thinking like, I'm definitely dead unless I bring the Joker in here right now. And this is when she explains how she finally cracked the death of a hundred smiles in that she can't get the fish to smile. So she hangs Batman upside down. So it looks like they're smiling.

I love her saying like, and the victim, that's you. You see him all upside down. Clever. Brilliant. And I like how they do this more in the cartoon because in the comic, there's a panel of her. I think there's no dialogue of her like turning the blueprint around and going like aha yeah but it's only until the explanation of batman that we get her idea like her working through the process i love her just saying like yeah i figured out this perfect bit joker couldn't i cracked the case like and just her whole interaction with batman

just her saying like uh you know bats it's uh's not personal. I just, I got to kill you. Then I can be happy with the Joker. You don't understand. My husband is too distracted by you. Yes, yeah, exactly. To have sex with me and to start a family. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at BetMGM, the king of online casinos.

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Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care. Did I mention that we care? So up next, Batman breaks Harley's brain. You and the Joker? Right-o-rony. I've never seen you laugh before.

I don't think I like it. Cut it out! You're giving me the creeps! You little fool. The Joker doesn't love anything except himself. Wake up, Harleen. He had you pegged for a hired help the minute you walked into Arkham. That's not... No

No! He told me things, secret things he never told anyone Was it his line about the abusive father? Or the one about the runaway mom? He's gained a lot of sympathy with that one Stop it! You're making me confused! What was it he told that one parole officer? Oh, yes.

There was only one time I ever saw Dad really happy. He took me to the ice show when I was seven. Circus. He said it was the circus. He's got a million of them, Harley. You're wrong! My put does love me does you're the problem it's great reading by

conroy because he's contemptuous but also full of pity when he goes you little fool oh so yeah he's just like you know what i gotta i gotta just be straight with you girl like that no this is one of conroy's best batman speeches like and we started the series with like one of the few times batman laughs and we're ending it with the most laughter bat it's not even just like uh trying to it's not a trick he's like well this is hilarious no and you know return of the joker also uh has he gets doused with joker toxin but it's conroy laughing again it's all uh you know trading on the unnaturalness of Bruce Wayne laughing but this case I just love it so much like this this is Batman saying you think you know your boyfriend

I know him way better than you and that guy's an asshole like just that he knows that Batman did what Harley thought she was doing when interviewing him Batman actually does have a perfect psychological profile on Joker which is that he lies to everybody about his past to gain sympathy or use them so that he said like oh what was that one parole officer like that parole officer probably is like 20 harleys ago like got murdered and something but just the batman knows everything i just yeah love that the batman knows the joker so well he's like i've heard every lie the joker tells like i i know it very well and he tricked you harley and he just is breaking her by saying well you're not important to him at all oh and just god the shot of her saying like he said it was the circus like god it's though you know from a certain point of view isn't batman just

saying to her whatever he needs to say to get what he wants out of her just like the joker did yes but it's the truth it is the truth yes yeah and it's to save his life and you know save the city and continue living yeah good stuff and save her from like a murder rap yeah yeah but in a way he's kind of like the joker here you know but she doesn't want to she doesn't want to hear it at all she marches back to the handle that activates the trap and she says and now you're going to die and make everything right. Yeah. And her eyes are full of tears.

Again, it's a kid's cartoon. It's on at 930 in the morning saying, you're going to die. Yes. It's a big move. Oh, and again, just Batman's other speech of saying like, well, you're not going to prove to him I'm dead. Sure. And when she looks at his belt, he's like, yeah, I guess you got is that really enough is he really gonna believe you he's got to see me die what a great way to trick her into doing it and i like that just drop line to let you know well here's

where his belt is yeah and obviously she's smart enough to have taken it off of him oh man just the way he says like uh you know scraps of bones and cloth like he's not gonna believe that and just the look on her face like looking back and forth she's like oh cloth. Like, he's not going to believe that. And just the look on her face, like, looking back and forth, she's like, oh, no, he's right. He's right. Like, you can see the math. She's doing it all in her head, like, logically thinking, crap, he's right.

Joker's never going to believe me. And meanwhile, the Joker is hard at work while Batman is strung up. He's looking at all of these different blueprints, pacing back and forth. That's when we get the line to Riddler. One of my all-time i've said it a million i think i've said it on this podcast so many times but i love him you were right i forgot that was in this and there there is a very fine line between a riddler plan and a joker plan yes they both involve clues but one of them is funnier which joker is noticing there he's like ah this is why i can never do these things it's too riddler i can never give too many clues and that's when the phone rings he answers it and we hear from his end you have who tied up where oh man i love his half listening of like oh batman you don't say

what like yeah yeah and this is when the joker mobile speeds off into the distance in the uh comic you can see he's actually hit somebody with his car. Yes, yeah. And this is where it's the one scene I really wish was in this of just Joker to further show that Joker is a toxic man and an awful person. His imagination of why he doesn't want Harley killing Batman. He's imagining Riddler, Two-Face, and Penguin all saying like, oh, did you hear Joker's girlfriend killed Batman? What a loser. Oh, hey, look, it's Mr. Harley Quinn. And it's all making Joker doubt his manhood if she kills Batman. That's true.

You know, a lot of awful guys, they don't like when their partners, their female partners are more successful than them. Yeah. And they just are resentful or they can't let it happen. They sabotage things. I know that they sabotage. Like, either they just let the...

That's the too far for Joker here. He's like she's gonna succeed where i failed like it it's already it's very clear in the next scene but i do it's maybe too jokey for this moment i can see but just him or also it would add a lot of money to the budget if they had to get in those three voice actors yes one moment but it's Paul Williams up to? But it is so funny seeing the Joker imagine like all the guys in the club are going to laugh at me that my girlfriend killed Batman. That's why I need to win the Eisner of podcasting.

Or else I'll always be inferior. You'll always be in her shadow. That Eisner's mocking me from her shelf. So yeah, we cut back to Harley who says, nerds to you. And when I told Mr. J what I was doing, he was so thrilled he could hardly speak. And then we get the Joker busting it with Harley.

Oh man, just his hands pushing the door open and screaming, such a great pose. It's straight off the comic page, so good. It is a better pose in the comic. I rewatched the animated series. Obviously they can't do as good of a job as someone sitting down to draw one panel, but it's still effective in the show but man that is an amazing pose that bruce tim drew yes yeah man and just this again is when joker becomes like this

captures an abusive partner so perfectly that he that harley is saying but you said all these things these this is what you wanted right and then he just moves the goal post absolutely no this is why you're wrong you did everything i said i wanted but you're wrong and this is how like nothing is good enough joker again this it it's painful if you've been like they say in the in their talk about adini and tim in the in the comic of just if you know what being mad love is like this is very painful. It's so perfectly expressed here with Joker. And Harley's in denial.

She does not read anger on his face. She runs over to greet him like, oh, you'll never believe what happened. And that's when we get the slap. And you know what? I think it's more effective in animation because we have the Joker drawing back his hand and we pan away from it as he slaps her. Yeah. And see Batman's reaction. Yeah.

It's like oh yeah and yeah this is like a violence that intimate is still pretty shocking in a kid's cartoon yeah and it's tasteful it's tasteful because they cut away but you see the hand drawing back so it's an interesting choice they you know marvel has had this thing too where a couple of superheroes in in an old like story from the 70s, there's an example with the Ant-Man character Hank Pym. He, in a time of distress in a story where he's literally losing his mind, he backhands his wife, the wasp, and that has been with him forever.

People think, oh, Hank Pym's not the main character of the Ant-Man movies because everybody knows him as the guy who hit his wife. And yet this guy has an eatery at Disneyland. That's the thing. The domestic abuse hot dog stand. Well, see that? Yeah, it is Pym's Kitchen. Well, that's not in the movies now. But meanwhile, with Joker, Joker can do all of this stuff.

Like in the killing joke by Alan Moore, he essentially, yeah, he does sexually assault Batgirl like Barbara Gordon. He has all this stuff. It doesn't make him any less of a sellable Lego of a main character and stuff. Yeah. It's crazy that Joker can go to the darkest of places, but they can still also put him in all of the kids stuff too you know Joker is that flexible of a character I guess and yeah it's uh I guess it's fitting that's the last episode because this is just the ugliest he's been yes yeah you know this you got a little taste of this in Joker's relationship with her but this is if you look

at it this closely the Joker could only be this kind of boyfriend to her he could not be loving or caring in any way then he wouldn't be the joker he's gotta keep tearing her down yeah like in this next clip but puddin i i don't understand don't you want to finally get rid of batman only if i do it idiot but it's still your plan see everything just like you said except i hung the guy upside down so he'd see their little frowns as little smiles. Now it all works. Except you had to explain it to me. If you have to explain a joke, then it's no joke. Now I'll calm down, Putnam. You've forgotten what I told you a long time ago. One of the painful truths of comedy? You always take shots

from folks who just don't get the joke. And don't call me Puddin'. That's a shocking, another shocking moment. Sorry to repeat myself so much, but i was thinking if this was like a noir psychodrama from like the 40s or 50s she would die yes and the joker would be caught and they just say you killed the only woman who ever loved you and he'd be taken away

by the police but they obviously can't kill this marketable character they can't kill her on a kid show but effectively this should be her death like the most ironic death ever and tragic death that after doing everything the joker wanted it actually pushed him far enough to just be like you know what i'm done with you just like you're dead i've had enough of your shit i i you've i've used you in all the ways i can i can't use you anymore and even when we see her just broken body in the alley with blood coming out of her mouth she blames herself oh my fault yeah i mean what's painful too is like is they were writing it then they were basing it on the real world like you

hear you would hear so many stories of people in abusive relationships who just even even when the person is injures you horribly the the other the victim just says it was my fault i must have done something or i made him mad or i shouldn't have talked to him after this. Well, obviously, I should have known. I shouldn't have talked to him after his team lost the Super Bowl. It's my fault. And that's what Joker groomed her into thinking. It's all so painfully realistic.

That's what makes it a memorable story, but also shocking to be in a, again you said 9 a.m on a saturday morning kind of cartoon and i mean there's a lot there's a lot more blood in the comic and i think uh i keep wanting to call him professor gordon i don't know why sorry commissioner gordon and like montoya and bullock find her in the alley and they're like oh my god it makes it sad yeah i think it's montoya who's closest like to see have another woman look at her i think makes it even more painful to see but yeah the and also the coco and dong yang you know they don't have the biggest budgets for these certainly not as big as it was in the first season they're told to do slow-mo fall with shattered glass all around but they make it work they're like we'll do four seconds of slow-mo and

that's all they need to sell it as like Your brain buys the entire scene with slow motion. And I guess Tim thought that there was a prominent stuffed swordfish on the wall at that restaurant, and so that's why he has a swordfish be her defense mechanism against the Joker there. That's also sad because she's supposed to be in love with him, but she realizes, oh, I need something to defend myself with. and it's just like you feel like she's been in this position before oh well yeah she's like recognizing before oh he's talking this way he's he might almost kill me i better you know what just like just as a precaution just get this swordfish between us and this is when uh the joker uh at first is going to let batman go because it's like well

this isn't my plan and let's just forget this whole thing ever happened. All right. See you later at the store. Yeah. And then he stops himself and realizes like, oh, this is a pretty good opportunity. And he comes back and he puts a gun just to Batman's head. And again, that's Harley's original plan. Like, just shoot him.

Which he had a great big speech about like, oh, you're so wrong. And now he's like, hey, you know what? Bat in the hand is worth two in the belfry. I you're gonna go out with a laugh after all ha ha ha but batman has been in this position before because as soon as the joker fires he kicks his arms up into the air yeah and then that's when the bullet uh shatters the piranha class obviously there's some comedic opportunities here because they're flying out of the tank and biting the joker on the butt i love yeah an old butt bite which after the joker as far as you know as a viewer murdered his girlfriend in a in a in the height of

abusiveness now it's a silly joke of like i'm getting bit in the butt by piranhas hey and uh batman it's kind of silly after seemingly the death of harley quinn but batman is like hopping across the floor while being chained up gets the lock pick in his teeth and that's how he frees himself that's so great with his teeth he pulls the lock pick out of his uh belt and then frees himself which you know once you see the batman's down but you're like oh yeah he's he's gonna be free of those chains like in eight seconds that that that's bad man for you and that's when batman chases the joker up this all these flights of stairs and i think uh gordon and bullock and the rest are there in the comic too they're with batman but batman goes off on his own after this next part there is a funny bit in a comic where joker's gonna pull out his gun and then uh gordon says look out he's got a fish

and joker had a fish replace his gun and he's like oh crap my gun's gone and yeah they chase him to the edge of the roof of the building uh the joker jumps he grabs into the railing of the building and it snaps off and we hear a blood curdling scream. Then we pan down. He's on the back of a train and says, made you look. Oh, so good. So good. What a little stinker that Joker is, man. And he continues to taunt Batman, who unfortunately for the Joker, teleports behind him.

She almost had me, you know. Arms and legs chained, dizzy from the blood rushing to my head. I had no way out other than convincing her to call you. I knew your massive ego would never allow anyone else the honor of killing me. Though I have to admit, she came a lot closer than you ever did. Puddin'. Yeah, and this is the beginning of a pretty brutal 20-second fight. And everything from the comic, how it's staged, plays out here, including the Joker just pulling out a knife.

Like, I'm just going to stab this guy to death. You know, on the page, when you can read at your own pace, the posing, like, feels even more impactful because it lasts as long as you want to imagine it. They integrate it into animation very well especially with you know in the comic page batman like hand claps his ears like boxes his ears and he does it in the comic cartoon too but you do have to have that flash of white for the impact yeah which still is like you're still teaching little kids to do that in a fight with their brother to just like oh yeah i should just smash him in the ears when i'm fighting my brother but yeah it's not even like a silly uh like a funny sword or whatever it's like i'm just gonna stab you with this knife i found on the streets which also then is when he finally makes contact

with that knife in return of the joker right yeah i just i love batman rubbing it in of just like explaining oh yeah she definitely was gonna kill me i had to trick her into bringing you here because i know you'd fuck it up and you know what she got closer than you ever did put in and telling him calling him the name he hates being called like god damn what a great just rubbing by batman and just his little smirk when he says it like that's why it breaks the joker because joker's like you got a joke on me like yeah you asshole the bat Batman's scoring off all these people in this episode. I know, yeah.

And yeah, blood is trickling down his chin after this next scene because he blocks the knife. He just bats the Joker off the train. The Joker falls into a smokestack. He's seemingly dead. And yeah, everyone is bleeding in this episode. But even the people on the news afterwards are like, yeah, Joker always survives this stuff nobody

joker's not dead you know i forgot the ending and of course you know batman beyond exists uh and the movie exists but i thought you know before this epilogue did they just kill harley quinn and the joker for their last episode because i forgot how the ending went you know what i mean i think they want to fool you right they do yeah they want you to think because it would be the perfect ending of like, Joker's dead and Harley's finally free. What a great ending. And that's why it feels,

to build it up so well like that is why Dini is so good, because he and Tim, that they let you think, no more madness. Everything's fine. Harley's at least free because Batman saved her. And then, boom! No no it's not uh man that that even joke you know batman in this episode he really is the third wheel in a bad relationship

like he's the person who's uh in his own way saying like you know girl you got to get out of here like you you're in a bad place it is a weird weird love triangle, I guess. Yes, yeah, because Joker is in love with Batman. I mean, hearing Batman say, like, Joker doesn't love anyone except himself, like, yeah. But I think Batman is lying to himself a little bit there. Joker's in love with Batman. Absolutely. Yes, yeah.

Let's hear our final clip of this series. Though the Joker has been notorious for resurfacing when least expected, it seems unlikely that he has survived his latest brush with Batman. Never again. No more obsession. No more craziness. No more Joker. I finally see that slime for what he is.

A murderous, manipulative, irredeemable... Angel. Oh, that last music there, that last up there, like the music was saying she's finally cured. Like that little up like, oh, no, she's she's not. And this this plays out better in the cartoon version. There's a lot more uh dialogue from harley in this uh and also the other doctor has a few words to say kind of like a real i told you so kind of maneuver you know it doesn't work as well with that i told you so uh because it doesn't let harley it's better to be inside harley's mind to know that she almost was free like that makes it more tragic she's telling

herself yes i see it all so clearly now this is who the joker is and then the one rose gift brings her back she's like oh actually no i was wrong he is the perfect little angel again instead in the comic to have leland be there to just be like see didn't i tell you what was gonna happen to you and like i like it better than it's just her journey it's more economical more effective also in the comic page instead of saying an angel she's like what did it feel like and she says it felt like a kiss uh that's a reference to the 1962 pop song by the crystals he hit me and it felt like a kiss oh wow okay which is an intentionally tragic story of a woman

in an abusive relationship and how she justifies herself to it to herself it's meant to be a sad song not a happy song though the song is produced by phil specter so yeah adds a bit more darkness to it no i was surprised to see that uh the this this wraps up so nicely that it's different in the comic the dialogue and i didn't know that was a reference to a song oh yeah yeah yeah i mean uh it's it's one of those like saddest song list kind of songs i i like it better if her just going back like he's an angel like boom all he had to do was get her back and also because uh the endless cycle of these stories harley can't really leave him for this world she always needs to be with him but not until she gets her own series in 20 years.

That's what's great. Her getting her own series actually is when she can finally be independent again and not be Joker's sidekick. And yeah, that is my preferred way of seeing Harley Quinn now as a character. I like the idea that Harley Quinn used to be Joker's sidekick. I think that is an important part of her origin, is that she was in a toxic relationship with Joker, but

the Harley that has new adventures now today is somebody who overcame a bad relationship and is now navigating the waters of what is my life without the Joker? And you know, sometimes she relapses, sometimes the Joker comes back in her life and convinces her to

do one more mission, but most of the time she lives in her life and convinces her to do one more mission. But most of the time she lives her own life. And sometimes she dates Poison Ivy. Sometimes she doesn't. You know, but that's what's interesting about Harley to me. It's a rich tapestry, in other words. Yes, I really didn't like when Suicide Squad, the first one, came out in 2016. Hot Topic was selling all this stuff of like harley and uh harley and joker what uh the uh

classic romance and they were sold it's like like they were jack skellington and um sally sally yeah like they were being sold the same and tons of fans including me were thinking like this is not how you sell harley and joker to today's you i mean people read them the wrong way because i see that memed all the time where it's just like, I'm the Joker. I'm psycho. My wife's a crazy bitch. She's Harley Quinn. Yes.

Yeah. It's like, no, this is all wrong. No, I'm sorry. I mean, look, Skellington and Sally aren't the healthiest relationship through that movie either. But both know they made a mistake and they're fine in the end. Yes. And this just shows what's a cycle that she'll never break free from. Yeah. Yeah. they're fine in the end you know yes and this just shows like what's a cycle that she'll never break free from really yeah which is what i like like in the uh the harley show that we did what a

cartoon about it's all about what she does when she breaks up with the joker like yeah and yeah this is the last episode of batman and again i curse you batman beyond you took this from us no it's a fine show but it was look at how good it was when it ended it's so tragic yeah yeah it's you know the the the comebacks they did they're always good but it's never as good at like you know mystery the batwoman's all right uh basically the finale of this series that they did in return of the joker a great one episode of batman but uh you know they always they've done so many things that try to recapture the magic but they can't really i much prefer when they do the justice league show is its own show and a

really good riff on the super stories and not trying to be like oh it's a batman noir story no this is batman having sci-fi adventures with his costumed pals you know but this this was a really special thing and i think it's great for as far as last episodes go and i like to consider this the last episode to take their greatest comic story that they hadn't adapted and then adapting it feels like a perfect like full circle yeah especially because the harley was invented for the series so ending with her origin story is also a perfect yeah ribbon to tie it off i guess it's better to go out on top than to continue and then just have people regret that you're still on the air yeah and what their budget would keep getting cut and like pokemon would have

killed it anyway you'd have to see even more commercials of bruce wayne going like pikachu he's a powerful light i want all of those i want to see pinky in the brain finding like gold bad or something i don't know there's a lot of those out there oh yeah those uh it's it's amazing that the spielberg team like played ball i'm surprised that ruger and his guys weren't just like we're not touching this pokemon bullshit yeah promote the thing that's going to kill you yeah but yes uh thank you everyone for subscribing and listening and yeah we really appreciate this has been really fun like you said up front Henry at the beginning of this we normally just cover

animated sitcoms so this was a challenge but also a fun challenge just to talk about something different and it's also been the first miniseries we've done where life has not been utter hell in terms of COVID so it's been strange where I mean these have always been fun distractions

but now the world's opening up again too so i think we've all been in better moods yeah and just to live in batman and this was our first time of not just going in chronological order but picking our favorites from a gigantic series which was a lot of fun you know i especially for a short-lived show like mission hill it's fun to go through every single one of them but for a show as big as this i'm glad we just did if we had just kept ourselves to just the first 10 episodes of batman the animated series we couldn't have taken the full scope of it all at once you know and it worked out really well because uh we covered the first joker appearance first and

the last episode last and then the holiday episodes lined up with the holidays yeah yeah it all worked out and uh i mean in case you're wondering i i know we'll be back to this i mean there's 100 episodes we've covered 10 of them yes and there are so many i mean uh i i had to skip a few of the ones that i think could have easily fit into this 10 oh totally and there's only a few ones that i sort of bad but still watchable it'd be very easy for us to do another 10 very very easy laughing fish that's my first one in the next picks for sure i it shouldn't be every joker episode but they really are the best yes i hate to say it it's uh well i mean they they wanted to write the best episodes with him

in it yeah he's he's great and for all our patrons out there just to remind you uh this is the end of 2021 i had to think about that for a second. Crazy to say it out loud. Yes. 2022 is beginning, but don't go anywhere because we are having now in the new year, both Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill are going to be monthly series now. So immediately once the new year starts, you'll have two new exclusives coming at you in January, along with early access and all that stuff. So yeah, we moved Talking of the Hill to be a now monthly series just like talking futurama was last year and they're going to be running uh every month uh throughout 2022 i had to keep thinking of what year is next year yeah because because you know before very likely king of the hill would have won our spring mini series thing again anyway so

we're just like instead of just doing 12 episodes of king of the hill across three months like we did before, let's just spread it out over the year like we do at Talking Futurama. And it's just a constant now. So once a month you get a Futurama and once a month you get a King of the Hill. Yeah. And then in the fall we'll be doing another miniseries and who knows what form that will take. But there's another one coming at you. So just to let you know, there's going to be tons of new stuff coming in the new year. We can't wait along with our Talking Simpsons live show and all that fun stuff.

So many fun things. But what a great 2021 for all and i hope all you batman fans enjoyed us uh exploring the dark knight so indepthly as we did so thanks again for subscribing and we'll see you again next year for more fun podcasts take care It's just me, B-Man. No Joker, no gas bombs, no city in peril. Just you, that tank, and me. Why? To show Mr. J I could really pull off one of his plans. See, he could never get these fishies to smile.

But then I had the bright idea of hanging the victim That's you upside down that way to you. It'll look like this smiling clever brilliant