'Harley Quinn' Season 2 Episode 2 Review: A new hero rises in Gotham as Harley and Ivy fail 'Riddler U'
Spoilers for 'Harley Quinn' Season 2 Episode 2 'Riddler U'
With Gotham neatly divided into separate territories for very different villains, there's a lot of opportunities to see Harley Quinn (Kayley Cuoco) and her crew in a lot of different settings and situations. The show appears to be taking full advantage of this, with Harley and Poison Ivy (Lake Bell) posing as college co-eds, while Doctor Psycho (Tony Hale) and King Shark (Ron Funches) deal with black-and-white mobsters and Venom-charged Luchador wrestlers.
New New Gotham is a strange place to be, but it's definitely a fun one.
For an episode all about Riddler University, there's disappointingly little time devoted to Jim Rash's Riddler himself. Seeing Jim Rash go from the dean on 'Community' to the dean on 'Harley Quinn' is a real missed opportunity, but the show makes up for it with the introduction of Barbara Gordon (Briana Cuoco), who is a delightful addition to the cast.
Relying more on her 'Batgirl of Burnside' interpretation, this Batgirl-in-the-making is filled with energy, youthful naivete, and an optimistic approach to supheroism that is especially funny when contrasted with career criminals like Harley and Ivy.
Both Harley and Ivy are out of place at Riddler U — it's a fun twist on the Undercover College Kids trope that neither of them really fit in with the younger college crowd anymore. Clayface (Alan Tudyk), however, gets the role of a lifetime as for the first time since the show began, he truly gets to immerse himself into a character, and you can immediately see why the group never lets him do it.
He's almost entirely lost in the role of the young college girl he's playing, a hilarious take on the identity issues that Clayface often has in the comics.
While Psycho and King Shark's side-quest in search of water is a fun break from the main plot, what it mainly does is serve up a preview for what things will be like for Harley as she explores the other territories of New New Gotham. From classic, jazzy mobsters in Two-Face's (Andy Daly) turf, to the hulked-out, masked wrestlers of Baneton, Harley is in for some very interesting — and colorful — challenges ahead.
The next episode of 'Harley Quinn' airs April 17, on DC Universe.