Transcript for Episode 11: Harley and Ivy Are Domestic Partners

This is the transcript for the installment of the show in which we discuss the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Harley and Ivy.” If you’d rather listen to Glen and Drew than read what they say, click here. The transcript was provided by Sarah Neal, whose skills we recommend wholeheartedly.

Poison Ivy:  Admit it, Darling. You didn't think two women were capable of bringing you down. 

Batman:  Man or woman, a sick mind is capable of anything. 

Poison Ivy: A very enlightened statement, Batman. We'll carve it on your headstone.

Harley:  Aloha, sucker!

[Batman: The Animated Series theme music plays]

Drew:  You are listening to Gayest Episode Ever, the podcast about episodes of classic shows that feature LGBT themes. I'm Drew Mackie. 

Glen:  I'm Glen Lakin. 

Drew:  And today, we're giving you a bonus episode. 

Glen:  Bonus episode!

Drew:  Bonus episode—not a sitcom. 

Glen:  No. I mean, kind of. But no. 

Drew:  It's a very special episode of this show for sure. We are going to be doing a season two that will be episodes of classic TV shows like season one, but in the interim we're going to do a few shows that don't quite fit into that label. Part of the reason you haven't heard from us for two months is that I've been working on a podcast project. 

Glen:  And I've been crying in the bathtub. 

Drew:  That's not—you might have been doing that, but you've also been writing your ass off. 

Glen:  Oh, yeah. That too. 

Drew:  So sorry for that, but this is the first of the extra bonus episodes we're going to do. There's also going to be a few interviews in there. One's already in the can, and it's really good. But we're starting with this episode, which is a show that's very dear to me. And if you couldn't tell by the intro, it is Batman: The Animated Series. 

Glen:  Yay.

Drew:  In particular, we are doing "Harley and Ivy," which is maybe one of the most queer coded of the entire run of the show, which is a kids' show, and that's saying a lot that they worked a lot of themes that you wouldn't necessarily expect from a kids' show. But this is also one of the best shows of all time, I would say. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's not quite as gay as the episode "Alfred's Day Off," but it's a close second. 

Drew:  Wait. Which one's "Alfred's Day Off"?

Glen:  I just made it up, but I'm assuming that would be a very gay episode. 

Drew:  Yeah. Well, it made me think of that one episode where him and that girlfriend we only see one time go to the health spa. It's a Poison Ivy episode where she's rejuvenating them and giving their sex drives back but literally turning them into wood. 

Glen:  Yeah. I just want an adaptation of Mrs. Dalloway starring Alfred. 

Drew:  Make it happen. 

Glen:  Dreams do come true. 

Drew:  Batman: The Animated Series started airing in 1992, and the Batman-specific line ends in '99—or maybe with Justice League in 2006, depending on how you count what is actually part of the real timeline. But this was a huge part of—I think both our lives for the entire time it was on. What was your first experience with this particular version of Batman, Glen? 

Glen:  It was coming right off of Batman Returns, which was a hugely influential movie for me, and then I remember vividly the first episode being with Man-Bat, and then the second episode was Mr. Freeze. And I think where I was living, Fox premiered it by having one episode every night for a week—sort of made it an event. And I definitely remember taking a week off of school to hunt down the toys at Toys "R" Us. I was legitimately sick the first day, and then I think my parents were out of town and I just pretended to be sick and kept going to Toys "R" Us.

Drew:  How old were you? [laughs]

Glen:  I don't know. Doesn't matter. 

Drew:  You were still valedictorian. 

Glen:  Yeah, yeah. It's all good. It ended up fine. 

Drew:  That's very impressive. I never took that much time off for anything. 

Glen:  Oh, I just didn't—I had my own things to do, like hunting down Batman toys, and I did get the Penguin, and I was very excited about that. 

Drew:  You were excited about the Penguin? 

Glen:  Yes, because the other Kenner Penguin figure was just a reused Super Friends toy, and it was only the Animated Series toy that had a Penguin that looked at all like Batman Returns with longer hair and flippers, so I was into it. 

Drew:  Right, right, right—because that was the first version of the show before they redesigned a lot of the characters and made them sleeker and slimmer and Penguin got skinny.  

Glen:  Correct. I prefer this version of the show. 

Drew:  I prefer this version of Poison Ivy because she always looked creepy with green skin. 

Glen:  Yeah. A little fey. 

Drew:  Yeah. She's a little wood fairy—evil little wood fairy. This show was a big deal for me. I was a kid who was really into Tiny Toons and then really into Animaniacs, and this kind of fell in the middle. And I was astonished to find out that this shared so many of the same creative people because it's so different in tone than anything that was on TV at the time. It's dark, it's serious, it's quiet. Every episode is fully scored, and the score is amazing, but also there's episodes where you're just watching Batman walk through a dark room silently. And it's moody and influenced a lot of stuff I would like later in life. 

Glen:  I will say that shirtless Bruce Wayne gave me body dysmorphia. There's that one episode where Alfred walks in on him working out shirtless and all sweaty and the sun is setting. Anyway. 

Drew:  I know exactly what you're talking about. People talk about comic books having overly idealized female bodies, but I got to say, they didn't fuck around with the guys on this show. Square jawed, square framed—they know how to draw a handsome cartoon man. 

Glen:  When we were recording this episode, there is a debate on the internet—go figure. People are angry over the new She-Ra designs, and men are freaking out because they can't jerk off to this version of a children's cartoon show. And plenty of women are bringing up that men in comic books are drawn the way they are for men—

Drew:  Like freaks. 

Glen:  —and their fantasies of masculinity. 

Drew:  Okay. Here, maybe they're in an in-between place. He's not the In-fucking-credible Hulk. He's just art deco and elegant, like an Arrow Collar Man or something.

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  When we were talking about doing an episode of Batman, I initially wanted to do "Beware the Creeper" because I thought that was gay enough, and it is super gay. But this was the gayer one, I guess. But that one is about a very handsome TV reporter who gets dunked in The Joker chemicals and comes out as a flamboyant, hyperactive antihero who wears a Speedo and a feather boa, and that's his costume. And I say there's still something there, but maybe season four. 

Glen:  Save it for your book. 

Drew:  [laughs] This episode first aired January 18th, 1993. I was 11. It was directed by Boyd Kirkland and was written by Paul Dini, who basically wrote our childhoods. In addition to all the Warner Bros. cartoons, he also wrote for Transformers and He-Man. 

Glen:  What!

Drew:  I know. Isn't that crazy? 

Glen:  Actually, I did know that. 

Drew:  Do you know about his personal life? Do you know who he's married to?  

Glen:  Teela? 

Drew: I mean, kind of. So his favorite character is Zatanna. He loved writing for Zatanna in the comics. There's only the one Zatanna episode of the proper Batman series. But he's married to a female magician named Misty Lee who looks like Zatanna. I think it was—I was listening to What a Cartoon! or something, and they described him as him tulpa-ing it into existence and just married Zatanna, basically. Good for you, Paul Dini. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  First off, "Harley and Ivy," a reference to Thelma & Louise, a reference which didn't occur to me until—

Glen:  They got in a car? 

Drew:  It didn't occur to me until now, I don't think. I mean, it's a very good title for telling you who this episode is about, but it's just interesting to think about Thelma & Louise being such a pop culture property that they could do an entire episode riff on it on a kids' show, and no one would have thought that was weird. 

Glen:  I certainly didn't. 

Drew:  Have you seen it? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  I recently saw it, just a few years ago. It's a very good movie. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. Young Brad Pitt—very attractive. Who would have thought? 

Drew:  Yeah. Taught the world what abs were. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Now we all have to have abs. So let's jump into it. Scene one. The streets of Gotham. Joker's escaping from Batman. Harley is driving. 

The Joker:  Quick, turn here!

Harley:  But boss, that's...

The Joker:  I said turn!

Harley:  Yes, sir!

The Joker:  Why didn't you tell me someone put a hill there?

Harley:  I tried, but—

The Joker:  Never mind, just hand me the gun.

Drew:  This is an abusive relationship. 

Glen:  Oh. Oh my, yes. .

Drew:  Yeah. He treats her like garbage. She is doing the work. She's driving the car. He literally has his feet kicked up in the back seat, and he treats her like shit the entire time. 

Glen:  Yeah, even though she does help him get away. 

Drew:  She does. 

Glen:  She's the only reason he gets away. 

Drew:  Batman latches on to the back of the car, and Harley knows to disconnect the back fender so Batman can't follow them anymore. Can you think of another cartoon show that ever dealt with navigating an abusive relationship? 

Glen:  I'm going to say Gargoyles. I can't think of the specific example, but if I had to go out on a limb, I'd probably want to delve into Demona and Macbeth. 

Drew:  Right. Okay. 

Glen:  Since that is a pretty symbiotic relationship, I'm sure there is some sort of abuse dynamic along the way. 

Drew:  I'm sure. Gargoyles, we should note, is another dark kids' show made by Disney that I'm pretty sure only exists because of Batman: The Animated Series, right? 

Glen:  Oh, yeah. 

Drew:  Okay. Yeah. Batman himself has one line in this scene. It's all Joker and Harley who are voiced by Mark Hamill and Arleen Sorkin. Mark Hamill, I guess, needs very little introduction. It'd be weird if you were listening to this and didn't know who he was. I say Joker is his greatest role ever. 

Glen:  I mean, everyone will disagree with you and they'll say Luke Skywalker, but—

Drew:  He's so much more interesting as The Joker and makes that character so much more interesting. This is the version of The Joker that matters to me. And when I learned that it was Luke Skywalker that did the voice of The Joker as a kid, I was floored because I just can't really imagine those sounds coming out of Luke Skywalker's mouth. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. It's kind of like when I found out that Buster Bunny and the Crypt Keeper were the same person. 

Drew:  I know. Isn't that weird? But you can kind of hear it at the same time. Arleen Sorkin is Harley Quinn. Arleen Sorkin is probably best known to people as the first cohost of America's Funniest People with Dave Coulier. She's also quietly a major player on Frasier, and this came up in a previous episode of Gayest Episode Ever, and I can't remember. 

Glen:  Probably the Frasier episode. 

Drew:  That would make sense. She's married to Christopher Lloyd—not the Back to the Future Christopher Lloyd, the writer Christopher Lloyd—and he was a major creative force on Frasier. And on that show, every time Frasier took a call, the voice Kelsey Grammer was actually hearing was Arleen Sorkin, and then they would dub in the celebrity voice after the fact. And then we finally see her in the final episode on screen, which is nice that they did that. She also wrote Picture Perfect. 

Glen:  What!

Drew:  Yeah. The Jennifer Aniston/Jay Moore romantic comedy. Yeah.

Glen:  I'm familiar. 

Drew:  Yeah. I saw it on a plane and kind of liked it. I was okay with it. 

Glen:  It's okay. 

Drew:  I was 12 or 13 when I watched it. An important thing to know about Harley Quinn is that she was created specifically for Batman: The Animated Series. She was the break-out character. She transitioned to the comics. Now she's getting her own movie. She's one of the most people DC characters, probably one of the more people comics characters in the world, is not really voiced by Arleen Sorkin anymore. There's other actresses who have taken over the role. But her origin is entirely tied into Arleen Sorkin because Arleen Sorkin was on a soap opera called Days of Our Lives. 

Glen:  Never heard of it. 

Drew:  She played a character named Calliope Jones, and that picture I sent you of the freaky clown lady, that's her. Have you seen that before? 

Glen:  You've shown me that at least three or four times. 

Drew:  Oh. Sorry—[stammers]. 

Glen:  You're very enthusiastic about the origins of Harley Quinn being tied to Arleen Sorkin. 

Drew:  Right. Well, I want people to know. She dressed up as a jester—I'll dub in a little of the clip so we can hear it.

[bugle horn squeaks]

Calliope:  [sings gibberish] I'm on [inaudible 00:12:51]. Get it? Okay. Two drummer boys go into a ball—badum-badum-bum. Boy. You're a rough crowd. 

Drew:  But she sounds just like Harley. Harley's voice is very close to Calliope Jones's voice. It may be her natural speaking voice. And Paul Dini saw this and was like, "How about that?" So when the character got created, he asked Arleen Sorkin—who I believe he already knew—just to come in and do the voice, and it was the perfect match.  

Glen:  And the rest is herstory. 

Drew:  This is all herstory. First instance of sexual imagery in this episode, I would say, is The Joker pulling out a handgun. 

The Joker:  Hey, Batsy! This is where I leave you flat! [laughs maniacally] 

[gunshot sounds]

The Joker:  Huh? You nincompoop!

[glass shatters]

Harley: [screams] You didn't say which gun!

Drew:  But it's a handgun with an elongated barrel. It's rifle length, even though he's holding it just with one hand. And it's a dud. It doesn't fire properly. It shoots out a "bang!" flag. 

Glen:  If you told me that Joker never fucks, I would believe you. 

Drew:  I mean, yeah. I can't imagine. He's just so fried mentally that I don't think that would even register as something he would want to do. 

Glen:  I think he probably gets off, but I don't think he has intercourse. 

Drew:  Right. Right. Yeah. Their relationship is so screwed up. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  But Harley saves the day. Joker and Harley get away, and the next scene is at the Laugh Club, which is the abandoned comedy club that is Joker's hideout. 

Glen:  If Gotham just fixed its financial district, these villains would have far less hideouts to go to. Between Joker's hideout and then Ivy living in this failed subdivision that we'll get to—

Drew:  I have a lot of questions about the logistics about that, by the way. 

Glen:  Yeah. Gotham is huge and varied, and most of it's rundown. 

Drew:  Yeah. It's terrible. Bruce lives in the only nice part of it, I'm guessing. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  So Joker's belittling Harley in front of the goons and won't give her credit for anything she's done.

The Joker:  Funny? You presume to tell me what I should think is funny?! In fact, when have you ever contributed a worthwhile idea to this gang?

Harley:  Well, I did get us away from Batman.

The Joker:  Oh, huzzah! The kid gets lucky and she wants a medal! Maybe I should just let you run the gang. Maybe you're a better crook than the rest of us put together!

Harley:  Maybe—not. 

Drew:  There is implied violence. 

Glen:  Yeah. The body language in this scene is amazing. I meant to look up the director for the episode. You probably did. 

Drew:  Boyd Kirkland. 

Glen:  And just the way that there is implied violence in their relationship without ever showing it very good, from the way he sort of looms over her, approaches her when he's talking to her, pins her against the wall by just having his arm to one side of her and then the other side—it's all very well done. And then, of course, it cuts to the comedic version of violence with her getting kicked out of the club on her ass in the street. 

Drew:  But he's literally throwing a woman out a door. 

Glen:  Yeah. But they don't have to show it. They just show the result of it. It's well done. 

Drew:  Poor fucking Harley. The next scene is—

Glen:  The museum. I have a question for you, Drew. Do you think that the title of the exhibit Treasures of Gem World is a reference to Gem World, another DC property? 

Drew:  I mean, they totally would have known about it. That's a weird title for a museum show, so I would bet money that they just wanted to sneak in a little reference to Amethyst: Princess of Gem World, which is probably never going to be a show now that Shera is getting rebooted because—yeah. Aw, that's too bad. I always liked Amethyst. Remember when she was part of Justice League Dark? 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  Amethyst, Princess of Gem World, was part of Justice League Dark for a brief period. 

Glen:  I only read the first trade.

Drew:  Oh. That one's good, too. Yeah. So she's like, "Who needs you? I'm going to steal something on my own," and decides to steal the Harlequin Diamond from this—the theming. Like, just don't name it that, and Harley Quinn won't steal it. 

Glen:  Yeah. She does a very good Catwoman job of getting into the museum and cutting the glass and would have gotten away with it if not foiled by Ivy's brutish smash-and-grab of plant toxins from another part of the museum. 

Drew:  Yeah. No finesse there on Ivy's part. You're right. Harley does a great job flipping over the lasers and landing perfectly, and you're reminded she's basically an Olympic level gymnast in addition to being a psychotherapist and criminal. She has a lot going for her. 

Glen:  Yeah. She's way better than Joker. 

Drew:  Yeah. Totally. The alarm goes off as she's trying to delicately remove the gem, and she's like, "Well, fuck it." Smashes the glass, and they run out together. 

Glen:  It's a great meet-cute. The rest of the scene sort of plays out and is directed like a rom-com. They have jokey lines— 

Harley:  Nice work, Butterfingers. Why didn't you just turn on the Bat-Signal while you were at it? 

Poison Ivy:  I wasn't trying to get caught. 

Harley:  Could have fooled me. Hey. Aren't you that plant lady, Poison Oaky? 

Poison Ivy:  Ivy. Poison Ivy. 

Harley:  Sorry. Harley Quinn. Pleased to meet you. 

Glen:  —there's hijinks, there's upbeat music—they're in love. 

Drew:  They've never met before, which seems—they both appear in "Almost Got Him," which aired before this, but they don't have any scenes together, so I guess maybe—there's not a club for supervillains to hang out at. 

Glen:  I'd believe that they'd never met. 

Drew:  Yeah. Poison Ivy/Dr. Pamela Isley is voiced by Diane Pershing, who is—basically, the thing she's known for is voicing this character. She's done it through almost every incarnation of the Batman Animated universe. Her other role is on Shera. She voiced Netossa and Spinnerella. 

Glen:  [gasps] Those were going to be my guesses. Well, Netossa was going to be my guess. 

Drew:  Oh, fuck. I should have let you guess. 

Glen:  That's fine. 

Drew:  Yeah. I'm happy she got this. I think she's a fantastic voice actress. She's sexy and mean and husky, and that voice coming out of this diminutive elfin body—yeah. It might be one of my favorite performances on the show. 

Glen:  I'm trying to think of what other Batman villains have doctorates or are doctors, like Dr. Strange—Hugo Strange. 

Drew:  Dr. Harleen Quinzel. 

Glen:  Well, yeah. That's what I'm saying. These two—I think Scarecrow also has—you know what? Mr. Freeze is also probably a doctor. It's fine. There are a lot of doctors in the Batman universe. 

Drew:  Evil doctors. Evil Dr. Leslie Thompkins, right? 

Glen:  How dare you? Although wasn't it retconned that she sort of—didn't she let someone die recently? 

Drew:  She allegedly, at one point, let the first female Robin—Stephanie Brown—die. And then they retconned that, like no—it didn't happen anymore. 

Glen:  Oh. That's right. 

Drew:  Poison Ivy, if you need to know, she doesn't have all the pheromone powers that Uma Thurman had in the movie version. She's just immune to poison, and she hates humans and likes plants. That's all there really is to her. They get the fuck out of the museum and jump into Poison Ivy's car, which is a pink convertible compared to Joker's purple convertible. Did you see what the license plate was? 

Glen:  ROSE BUD.

Drew:  Do you get the sexual implication there? 

Glen:  I do. But explain it to our viewers who may not—viewers. Whatever. 

Drew:  Audience. Listeners. 

Glen:  Listeners. 

Drew:  Rosebud is the key phrase in Citizen Kane. 

Glen:  Very sexual. 

Drew:  It is because of where it came from. Citizen Kane is a thinly veiled parody of William Randolph Hearst, and according to Gore Vidal, Rosebud was Hearst's nickname for Marion Davies's private parts. Gore Vidal's exact phrasing is "For Marion Davies's tender button," is what he calls it [laughs]. Isn't that disgusting? Is it the creepiest, gay way of referring to a clitoris you've ever heard in your life? Tender button. They speed away together, and they end up at Paradise Meadows, which is a planned housing community, but it's also a toxic waste dump. 

Glen:  Yeah. I'm trying to figure out the timeline there. Was it a Poltergeist thing where it was a planned community in a very bad place that went awry? Because you can bury toxic waste and put shit on top of it, but it's going to bubble up. 

Drew:  Right. Well, they're still putting toxic—there's just barrels of oozy stuff everywhere. So I don't know what the fuck happened there. Gotham City's planning department is garbage. Not a great place to live, but it's where Poison Ivy lives. She has a nice little three-bedroom home with a nice little living room, and we see that she is giving Harley a shot to immunize her against the toxic atmosphere there. 

Harley:  I hate shots! I hate shots. 

Poison Ivy:  Now, now. You're not immune to poison like I am, and you won't last 10 minutes here in Toxic Acres without my antidote. 

Harley:  [moans sadly] [sighs] You'd think after living with Mr. J I'd be used to a little pain. 

Drew:  Such a fucked-up line. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  If they were implying visually that he's physically abusive to her, she's actually—maybe she just gets hurt on their capers, but it would be very easy to imply that he hits her. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. Why wouldn't he? He's psychotic. However, the scene of Ivy giving her the shot is a nice flip of the dynamic of her other relationship. Where Joker hits her because he's a bad person, Ivy's doing something that causes her pain but it's actually to protect her. 

Glen:  Well, Joker may say that as well. That might be his rationale. 

Drew:  Oh, yeah. So they have real talk. 

Poison Ivy:  Why do you put up with that clown? 

Harley:  Don't get me wrong. My puddin' is a little rough sometimes, but he loves me. Really. 

Poison Ivy:  Sure he does. You're just one big, forgiving doormat, aren't you? 

Harley:  I am not a doormat. Am I? 

Poison Ivy:  If you had a middle name, it would be "Welcome." 

Drew:  She's reclining on a sofa that's made out of a new-mowed lawn or something? I don't know how to describe it. 

Glen:  Just call it lawn furniture. 

Drew:  Yeah. Lawn furniture. 

Glen:  I mean, all of Ivy's body language and poses in this episode are amazing. I don't remember clocking it in her other appearances, so I think it was directed this way here to evoke a very particular sort of tough-as-nails woman. But yeah, the way she commands a room and poses herself on furniture is a way of establishing dominance in a way that makes her the alpha but is different from how Joker does it where Joker literally has to pin Harley against the wall to show that he's aggressive whereas Ivy just is stronger, and you can read that from her without her actually doing anything. 

Drew:  Right. Yeah. That's an interesting point. Again, I think it's especially interesting when—except for Baby-Doll, she's probably the smallest of any of Batman's foes. She's not physically big at all, and she's not even super athletic like Catwoman or Red Claw or anyone else is. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And maybe the reason we're seeing that now [and] we haven't really seen it before is that this is the first time she's been given a scene with a woman. We've seen her almost exclusively relate to either Harvey Dent or Bruce Wayne at this point. She offers Ivy some lessons in female self-esteem, and they go to the Peregrinators Club. Peregrinator is an old term—like peregrine falcon means "traveler." It's like a rich dudes club, I guess. 

Glen:  It's like a hunters club. 

Drew:  What's a hunters club? 

Glen:  I don't know. A club for hunters. 

Drew:  Oh, okay. Okay. So they all suck, and she just again commands the room. Saunters in—

[men chatter]

Man:  Who's that? A woman? Here? Outrageous!

Chairman:  See here, young lady. Is this some kind of joke? 

Poison Ivy:  The joke, my dear chairman, is this obsolete, sexist mockery you call a men's club. Now I ask you, what kind of adventurers refuse to admit women? 

Man:  Oh, what does she know? 

Drew:  They're just like, "[stammers] A woman!"

Glen:  Yeah. The collection of lines from the room is, "Is that a woman? Here? Outrageous." Never mind that they're supervillains in their supervillain garb. Also, never mind that they're there to rob the trophy room. All the men are in this room. They could have just robbed the trophy room. They didn't have to come in and—

Drew:  Well, that's not fun. 

Glen:  No, it's not fun. I'm just saying, they were there to emasculate them. 

Drew:  Right, which is a great lesson in female self-esteem. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  So the way they do this is—how would you describe what happens? 

Glen:  Ivy makes a speech. Harley throws some plant pods that sprout vines and restrain the men against chairs, very similar to a device used by Cobra-La in the G.I. Joe animated movie. 

Drew:  Oh. What are those things? 

Glen:  Well, those are—anyway. Let's just have a different episode about that movie, which I love. 

Drew:  Okay. So they loot these fuckers.

Glen:  Then we get a montage. 

Drew:  A spinning-newspaper montage of just all these headlines, the last of which is "New Queens of Crime," and you see them—it's a really great picture of them. That photographer really lucked out that he didn't get killed by the supervillains when he was taking it. 

Glen:  Maybe they took it themselves like Peter Parker/Spider-Man and then just submitted the photos to the newspaper. 

Drew:  Oh, yeah. With a tripod. That was smart of them. And the montage dissolves into Ivy putting that clipping on the refrigerator, and so time has passed. This has been going on for a while. They're very proud of the crime career they've made together. Then the camera pans out [laughs], and Ivy's wearing—she's out of costume, maybe for the first time in a very long time. She's wearing a gray shirt and no pants. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm, and Harley is wearing a white button-down, no pants. They're both in how men picture women being casual and lounging. 

Drew:  Right, which maybe that's just the artists being horny comics dudes being like, "Oh, my gosh. This would be hot." I'm guessing that female roommates do not typically lounge—even lesbian lovers probably just don't lounge around the house without pants on all the time. 

Glen:  I don't know. I have female friends who do not like pants. They usually live alone, but—no. I have a friend who as soon as she gets home from work, she takes off her pants. 

Drew:  Is she listening to this? 

Glen:  She is. 

Drew:  [laughs]

Glen:  And I know when we lived together, Christina, she'd be very happy whenever I was out of town because she could come home from work and take off her pants. So I think there is a germ of truth to this. I don't know if female roommates take off their pants together, which is maybe again the gay undertones of this episode. 

Drew:  So I'm thinking the gay undertones are accidental, and it was probably—this setup was them just being pervy artists, being like, "Oh, yeah. This'll be hot. Let's put them without pants on," and it gives the idea that maybe there's a romantic connection here. 

Glen:  There's more hints at a romantic connection than just not wearing pants, like the way that she is putting the photos of them together on the refrigerator is very cute. They make dinner together. 

Harley:  [hums "Shortenin' Bread" by the Andrews Sisters] What'd you make? What'd you make? 

Poison Ivy:  Steamed chard and beet juice. Mm, yum. 

Harley:  Gee, green. My favorite color. 

Glen:  The dialogue in this scene is very much—Ivy's frustration with Harley Quinn in this scene is very much a frustration shared by any gay person who is dating someone who is newly gay or newly bisexual, and how angry Ivy gets whenever Harley keeps thinking of—

Drew:  Mr. J. 

Glen:  —Mr. J, The Joker, and missing him in a romantic way and just—it's more than just being frustrated that your friend is being stupid and thinking of their ex-boyfriend who hit them. 

Harley:  Somehow I don't feel like my old, perky self. Something's missing. 

Poison Ivy:  Will you stop? I can't believe you're still mooning over that psychotic creep. 

Harley:  Well, maybe I'd feel better if I knew he missed me, too. 

Glen:  "We are happy here, and your connection to your old life is leading you to ignore how happy you are. You are not enjoying this moment with me and what we have in this home that we've built together. You'd rather be in a shitty relationship in a shitty broken-down factory."

Drew:  Right. Okay. Yeah, that's a good read. I like that. 

Glen:  And I'll just say, if this were gender flipped and it was two male villains dressing all comfy and pinning pictures of each other on a refrigerator and making dinner together, people would absolutely say, "Oh, man. That's so gay. They're being gay together." 

Drew:  So you think the fact that it's two women made it a little more ambiguous, possibly, that they're just friends? 

Glen:  Yes. 

Drew:  I just can't imagine how the censors didn't object to—I feel like a note would have been "Can they be wearing pants? Make them wear pants." No one said that apparently. They're not wearing pants. Okay. So the next scene is back at the Laugh Factory, and Joker cannot find his socks. And he's hollering for Harley, and the stooges—one of whom is named Rocco. They are both voiced by the guy who does Harvey Bullock. 

Glen:  That makes sense. 

Drew:  It's the exact same voice. 

Glen:  Yeah. It's the exact same body type, too. 

Drew:  Yeah. It's his range. They have to tell him, like, "Do you not read the news, Boss?" Why would he? And they show him the "Queens of Crime" headline. 

Rocco:  I guess you ain't seen the papers, then. 

The Joker:  Papers? What are you babbling about?! [screams]

Drew:  And it's a very good scream. It's like a possessive, insulted—like, "My manhood has been wounded." 

Glen:  Yeah. Harley has outdone him. 

Drew:  Yeah. Yeah. Not only not died and not come back, but she's thriving without him. Mark Hamill is so good. His acting—even that scream is just—it would be an easy thing to screw up, but it is—that scream is exactly what it should be. Next scene. Harley and Ivy are fleeing the cops again, and it's not just any cop in particular, it's Renee Montoya. 

Glen:  Famous lesbian cop. 

Drew:  Yeah. Renee Montoya was created for the TV show, ended up in the comics before the TV show premiered but did originate with the TV show, and became a bigger deal in the comics and eventually became an out lesbian, sometimes lover of Kate Kane, who is Batwoman. And at one point she became the Question, but I don't think that counts. I think they retconned that out of existence. 

Glen:  Did they? 

Drew:  I believe they did. 

Glen:  That's too bad. She made a great question. 

Drew:  I know. Yeah. She was the perfect one to inherit that suit. It's like an old-fashioned 40s detective's suit. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. With a toxic mask that gives you cancer. 

Drew:  Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. It makes you a blank-faced character. 

Glen:  Do you think that Renee Montoya was the basis for Elisa Maza in Gargoyles? 

Drew:  I do. I absolutely do. And God bless them for making her an even bigger part of Gargoyles and being like, "Oh. There's something here with this sexy-but-tough Latina cop." 

Glen:  Latina Native American cop. 

Drew:  Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Yeah. I would love to have them be like, "What were you all cherry picking when you made Gargoyles? How much of Batman did you feel like you could just do your own thing with? 

Glen:  I mean, Goliath is basically Batman colors. 

Drew:  Oh, you're right. Yeah. And Demona is Catwoman in some ways, I guess. And then Xander—Xander? Is that the bad guy? 

Glen:  Xanatos. 

Drew:  Xanatos. He's like a weird Lex Luthor. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Montoya's chasing them. They shoot out her tire. They get away. The cops apparently don't follow them beyond this, and then there's [another] weird scene that I can't imagine the censors wouldn't have objected to. But they were speeding away from a crime, and they get to a red light—and they stop [laughs]. Like, you guys are already breaking the law. You can probably just go. And the car next to them has men in it. 

Glen:  Ugh. Men. They're a bunch of rowdy teens or young 20-somethings objectifying the women and ignoring the fact that they're supervillains. 

Drew:  They don't read the news either, I guess. 

Glen:  Also, if you see a car with two people dressed like a clown and a plant lady, maybe don't taunt them with your ass. 

Man:  Aoogah, aoogah!

Man 2:  [howls]

Poison Ivy:  Excuse me, boys. Didn't your mommies tell you that's not the nice way to get a lady's attention? 

Man 3:  Oh? And what are you going to do, spank us? 

[doofy laughter from boys]

Harley:  That's right, pigs, and here's the paddle. 

[men scream]

[explosion]

Poison Ivy:  There may be hope for you yet. 

Glen:  It's not a joke bazooka. She blows up their car. 

Drew:  It's a big explosion. They are not killed. They knew to not let these rowdy youths get killed onscreen. But again, I get what they were going for and I get why that scene's in there, but I can't wrap my head around—because you don't see guns like that on cartoons anymore anyway, and as the show went on you would see fewer and fewer guns. But I just can't imagine the censor being like, "Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. That's fine. Blow up the car." I guess it's for—it's for feminism. 

Glen:  This may be better as a final thought in the episode, but I think it's worth bringing up that I do think Ivy's portrayal of lesbianism, if that's what it is, is a little—it definitely leans into the concept that women are lesbians because they hate men. Ivy clearly hates men and hates patriarchy, and I just don't want that to be endorsed. 

Drew:  Right. I see what you mean. Yeah. That's something they probably would have tempered a little bit. She hates all humans. She doesn't like—she hates humans. She likes plants. She just seems to have a weird fondness for this one human who needs a little bit of help. 

Glen:  Yeah. But I will say, in this episode, there's a lot of Ivy saying how awful men are. 

Drew:  Right. Yeah. There's that one that's coming up very shortly. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm.

Drew:  So as they're towing away the mangled wreck of the car that got blew—blewed—blown up—

Glen:  Blewed up. 

Drew:  —blewed up, you see Batman, and it's like, "Oh, my god. Batman hasn't shown up for 14 minutes." 

Glen:  It was shocking. 

Drew:  Yeah. You're like, "Oh. This is not his story at all, really." It is basically a Harley story, and it cuts to Harley. She calls Mr. J. 

Glen:  Well, I want to go back to this Batman scene because he is going through photos of them on his computer, and some of those photos are clearly pinups. There's just a photo of Ivy—it's supposed to be a crime photo, but she's on her knees and kind of bent, being very sexy, and it's like—but she's in costume, so I'm like, "Did she take this and submit it to the news?" 

Drew:  If I were a supervillain, I would totally have professional portraits done to be like, "Just keep this on file for when I do stuff." 

Glen:  I would send photos to the AP and say, "Listen, here you go. No charge." 

Drew:  "Use this one, please." [laughs] Yeah. I would imagine being a villain in Gotham City requires a considerable amount of PR considering how much competition there is. So, yeah. Batman looks at a soil sample and figures out there can only be one place where this car is from—the toxic waste dump. And then we cut back to Paradise Meadows where Ivy lives, and you see Harley furtively calling The Joker and just wanting to see if he's still mad at her. He traces the call. He's headed there. But then you hear a glass door shatter, and Batman is in the living room. They're not wearing pants again [laughs]. 

Glen:  No. 

Drew:  They're back home. They finished their caper. They're going to take off their pants. Okay. That's fine. 

Glen:  But they do get into full costume after they knock out and restrain Batman. 

Drew:  They restrain him with the plant thing, like the peapod that turns into tendrils, which is not as good of a plant weapon as her first episode, which is the giant Venus flytrap whose name is Georgia, which is—

Glen:  A reference to Delta Burke. I don't know. 

Drew:  Georgia O'Keefe.

Glen:  Oh. Okay. 

Drew:  Yeah, who painted vaginas, and a Venus flytrap looks like a vagina dentata. They restrain Batman. He wakes up. He's strapped to the kitchen table—[laughs].

Glen:  With appliances. 

Poison Ivy:  Here we have the typical male aggressor fittingly imprisoned within the bonds of female domestic slavery. 

[intense music plays]

Harley:  And frankly, folks, he's never looked better. 

Glen:  Again, she comes off in this episode as a very militant lesbian. 

Drew:  Right. It's a little over the top, even for a Batman villain. And also, you had the tendrils already. You had to change costumes and then get all your appliance cords to tie Batman up? That's a lot of work. I guess he was out for a while. 

Glen:  Could have just stabbed him while he was out. 

Drew:  Or taken off his fucking mask, but no. They didn't think to do that. And then they slide him down a trash embankment into a trash pool full of toxic scum water or whatever that is. 

Glen:  He seems fine, though. 

Drew:  He's always—he's Batman. And then Harley's like, "Oh. Did you leave the lights on?" And inside it is The Joker and his goons. He refers to them as "busy little bees." Talk about Poison Ivy's body language in this.

Glen:  Like I said before, she knows how to own the room, and she doesn't love the fact that The Joker is there to dissuade her from it being her house and doing whatever the fuck she wants. And there's this moment where the goons are at her table eating, and when she sits down with them she just pulls out the chair, turns it around, and sits in the chair backwards. It's a masculine maneuver. 

Drew:  Yeah. Swaggery. 

Glen:  Yeah. She has big dick energy. 

Drew:  [laughs] You found a way to work that in . 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Yeah. Very topical. 

Poison Ivy:  I hope you realize we're on a toxic waste dump. I'd say you've got 10 minutes to clear out before the fumes do you in. 

Goons:  [cough]

Rocco:  She's right, boss. I'm feeling kind of sick. 

The Joker:  Hold it in, Rocco. I'm only staying long enough to collect what's mine. 

Harley:  [squeals]

Drew:  Clearly, The Joker's there to start shit. He wants to take all their loot. He thinks it's rightfully his. And he tries to take Ivy out because Ivy is obviously a threat to everything he wants to do, and the reveal of—I love the voice acting in the reveal. He tells her, "If you like flowers so much, have one of mine!"

The Joker:  Oh, Pammy. I wouldn't leave you empty handed. Since you like flowers so much—

Harley:  Oh, puddin'—no!

The Joker:  —you can have mine!

[poison hisses]

Harley:  Oh, Red!

Poison Ivy:  [coughs] [laughs maniacally] It doesn't work on me. 

Drew:  It lands perfectly, and she's such a good villain. She knocks everybody down. She knocks The Joker down, she knocks the goons down, grabs Harley by the hand and gets the fuck out of there. They're gone. They're not going to stick around to collect their money. They are just leaving. 

Glen:  Their relationship is the real treasure. 

Drew:  I mean, clearly. Yeah. They can also steal more loot. When does Batman get out? I don't know. I didn't write that down. 

Glen:  He gets out. 

Drew:  He gets out. Batman—he actually unshackles himself offscreen. You see the table float below the bottom of the screen, and then all of a sudden he's just out. You're like, "Oh. He got out. Good for him." Climbs back up, tries to prevent anyone from shooting because the place is, as he terms it, a powder keg. I'm not really sure why that would be because I don't think toxic waste is flammable. It's just bad. But Joker is crazy, and is firing everywhere. Whole place goes up like a lit match, and all the water catches on fire because it's Gotham, and Gotham is terrible. And somehow Joker gets rendered unconscious. Batman tosses him in the passenger side of the Batmobile. I assume the thugs perish. 

Glen:  Yeah. They're dead. 

Drew:  They're burned to death. And he heads out, and—

Glen:  The end. 

Drew:  Almost. 

Glen:  I know. 

Drew:  The best part. 

Glen:  The end for them. Like, the end for Joker and Batman. 

Drew:  Right. You don't see Batman again. And then you see, Thelma & Louise style, Harley and Ivy speeding—

Glen:  No man can take us!

Poison Ivy:  No man can take us prisoner. 

[explosion] [tires screeching]

Renee:  All right, ladies. Raise 'em. 

Drew:  What is it—hubris? Hubris. Yeah. It's hubris because they think they're getting away with it, and all of a sudden their tire gets shot out, and it's Detective Montoya who has stopped them—they don't really seem to put up a fight—and arrests them both. And next time we see them, they're working in the Arkham Asylum garden. They give them sharp implements [laughs].

Glen:  Yeah. I was worried about that, too. Those trowels or whatever—

Drew:  They're just going to kill the guards. 

Glen:  Yeah. 

Drew:  Yeah. Clearly. It's a terrible idea. She's looking up at The Joker's cell and wondering if maybe he's thinking about her, and Poison Ivy throws dirt in her face. 

Glen:  We hope it's dirt. 

Drew:  It's probably fertilizer, actually. That'd make a lot of sense. 

Glen:  Human fertilizer? 

Drew:  No. I have no idea what the sanitary conditions are like in Arkham Asylum. Her throwing dirt in her face is jealousy. It's annoyance with the fact that this person's still hung up on a bad relationship, and it is a much gentler version of the kind of physical reprimand The Joker would have given her. She's not going to actually hurt her, but she just wants to knock her into her senses. 

Glen:  But it's also Harley sort of dragging Ivy into the same toxic relationship dynamic she had with Joker where Ivy gets frustrated and resorts to—not physical violence, but a physical action to try and make her point, which is not a good way for their relationship to be. And that's not me victim blaming or victim shaming Harley. I'm just pointing out that she has ended up in the same relationship dynamics. 

Drew:  That's true. There's a sequel to this episode. It's the one with Livewire. It's a Superman episode, but they go on a crime spree again, and they team up with Livewire, another character created specifically for the cartoons that transitioned to the comics, and she's voiced by Lori Petty. I haven't seen that one in forever. There's probably some sort of sapphic energy to that triad as well. But given that Poison Ivy had only ever really been one thing in the comics and kind of on the show, this gave a new dimension to her character that transitioned into the comics, and this pairing became very popular. They had stories together. They had scenes together. They had moments together, and people really enjoyed them together. And then in 2015, the writers of—I think it's the Harley Quinn solo series—did say, "Yes. We are confirming on the record, these characters are in a non-monogamous romantic relationship," which is crazy to think about that all coming from this episode of a kids' show that had the biggest seeds of actual female-female romance. 

Glen:  No pants. Those were the seeds. 

Drew:  [laughs] A lot of things can grow from people not wearing—no, I'm not going to do that. So I don't know what DC's official take on Harley Quinn's sexuality or either of them, really, but if you think of her as "Okay. She's queer. She's in a relationship with another woman," she's probably the most famous queer comics character of all time. Right? Or the most popular? 

Glen:  I'm not going to commit to that. 

Drew:  I may be—

Glen:  I mean, Wonder Woman is bisexual now, I believe. 

Drew:  That's right. I forgot about that. I was thinking of her—what—Iceman, and she's probably a bigger deal than Iceman, I would guess. 

Glen:  Sorry, Sina. 

Drew:  [laughs] Sina, come on the show one day. 

Glen:  Northstar. 

Drew:  [scoffs] No one—

Glen:  America. 

Drew:  Who's America? 

Glen:  It's a Marvel character. 

Drew:  Oh, okay. I know who you're talking about. So just this week, they announced what characters will be featured in the Harley Quinn movie, and it is going to be more of a Birds of Prey than a Gotham City Sirens. Initially they were talking about it being Gotham City Sirens, and I was excited because that would be Catwoman and Poison Ivy and Harley together. This movie is apparently going to have, at this point, at the time we're recording this, Huntress, Cassandra Cain—who was a Batgirl at one point. I have no idea what version of her we're going to see. 

Glen:  Probably not Batgirl version. 

Drew:  Yeah. That would be weird. Black Canary and Renee Montoya is going to be a character in the movie. So I'm excited about that. I'm sad Poison Ivy won't be a character. I would like to see her given more to do, I guess. 

Glen:  But I'm happy that the people they've chosen to be in the movie are a little bit more grounded considering how poorly used magicky type effects were done in Suicide Squad. 

Drew:  Oh. You didn't like Enchantress? You didn't think that was a great bonus to the DC Live Action canon? 

Glen:  No further comment. Please hire me for something, DC.

Drew:  Right. Yeah. Montoya's in there, so maybe we'll also see a little bit of Harley's bisexuality? I was trying to think, and I don't think we saw any flashes of that in Suicide Squad, unless I'm mistaken. 

Glen:  No, she was just generally oversexed. 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  Well oversexualized, I would say, as opposed to oversexed. 

Drew:  She's super sexualized now. She doesn't dress like a jester anymore. She dresses like the Suicide Girl with a mallet or a baseball bat. You've seen—

Glen:  There's lots of debates on the internet about this—about what has been done to her and taking away her costume, so she walks around in hot pants and pigtails. And I'm not going to contribute to that debate. It is—of all the opinions I have, I will recognize that my opinion on that matter doesn't really matter much. 

Drew:  Okay. I'll take the same stance on it. I will say that I'm glad that she's officially not heterosexual and that it all started on the show that we're talking about. 

Glen:  That made us gay. 

Drew:  Made us gay. Mm-hmm. This is what made us gay. Yes [laughs]. Sexy lesbians made us gay. That's true. Glen, where can—[laughs]. Glen, where can people find you online? 

Glen:  Let me think. It's been a while. @BrosQuartz on Instagram—that is B-R-O-S-Quartz. And then on Twitter I am @IWriteWrongs—and I believe that's R-I-T? 

Drew:  Yeah. 

Glen:  Okay.  

Drew:  No. RIT—no. W-R-I-T-E. 

Glen:  Oh, okay. It is W [laughs]. So on Twitter, it's I-W-R-I-T-E-Wrongs. 

Drew:  As in he writes wrong things. 

Glen:  Mm-hmm. 

Drew:  Right. I am on Twitter @DrewGMackie—M-A-C-K-I-E. And you can follow Gayest Episode Ever, @GayestEpisode on Twitter. Also, just check out our website, GayestEpisodeEver.com. If you missed an episode, all the new stuff is going to be going up there. If you're already a subscriber, thank you very much for subscribing. We've got some cool stuff—not this show, but perhaps of interest to the show. 

Glen:  How dare you? 

Drew:  There's going to be promos for two new projects that are going to be coming out in the new future that if you like this show you might like these other shows that I'm also taking part of, and one of them is a movie show. Glen will be a guest one day. 

Glen:  One day. 

Drew:  One day. But that's it for us. How do we—is there anything—I forgot how we end [laughs]. 

Glen:  Bye forever. That's how I end. 

Drew:  Yeah. All right. So I guess that's it for today. Thank you for listening. 

Glen:  Bye forever. 

Drew:  Bye forever. Episode over!

["Bonnie and Clyde" by Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot plays]