Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind Review: A Fresh Origin That May Require Re-evaluation

For DC fans, Harley Quinn’s the core of the iconic antihero’s origin story is well known. Once a career-focused psychologist, Dr. Harleen Quinzel’s life took a dramatic turn when, while working at Arkham Asylum, she encountered the Joker, falling not only in love with him but in his thrall, giving into madness, and becoming his sidekick before ultimately going her own way and, in more recent stories, seeking redemption for her past. While the details of that origin shift and change, that’s the core: brilliant woman led astray. But what if that wasn’t the story? What if Harley was the mastermind? What if instead of the Joker manipulating Harleen, it’s Harleen who is pulling the strings? That’s the premise of Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind, the latest audio series from Spotify, DC, and Warner Bros., but while the series has an intriguing premise as well as a solid vocal cast, it’s not without its issues that require, perhaps, a bit of extra evaluation.

The seven-episode series stars Christina Ricci as a young Dr. Harleen Quinzel, a fresh-out-of-grad-school psychologist new to Arkham Asylum who is determined to help her patients, especially patients who her more jaded colleagues have written off. At the same time, however, Harleen’s dealing with challenges in her personal life. Specifically, her father is sick and requires an expensive life-saving operation. It’s a perfect storm: Harleen is pushed to her breaking point trying to resolve the issue with her father’s need for life-saving medical care when she is assigned to “Patient J” — a.k.a. the Joker (Billy Magnussen). The Joker can manipulate everyone except for Harleen, and Harleen finds herself making a fateful decision to use the Joker to get what she wants, thus leading both down a dangerous path that will have serious implications for both Harleen and the Joker, as well as Gotham, Bruce Wayne (Justin Hartley), and Batman, too.

At under thirty minutes each episode, Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind is, like Batman Unburied before it, a quick and easy listen. The episodes flow and are very well-paced, giving listeners just the right amount of suspense, action, and world-building each episode to draw them deeper into the world and keep them hooked, while also prompting them to think about where the next episode will take them. In the case of Sound Mind, this is particularly excellent because, while the details of Harleen’s story are different, you get the strong impression that the outcome will be somewhat the same with the good doctor breaking bad at some point. By making the journey engaging, it’s a journey worth hanging out for.

However, despite this solid pacing and well-chosen episode length, there are some issues. The biggest is perhaps Harleen’s turning point. Without giving away details, at one point in her story, Harleen must decide what side she’s really on and, while that’s a natural aspect of the story, the way it is executed seems incredibly rushed and abrupt. The series does a lovely job of establishing Harleen’s story as one that feels genuine and authentic, something that many women can identify with, yet it almost feels like she simply shrugs her shoulders and just shifts gears. It’s that sudden shift that, in a sense, almost wastes some of the very salient points the series makes about the root causes of the violence and problems in Gotham. The series does a good job of exploring Gotham’s issues and poses some excellent contemporary questions, but lacks bite in dealing with them by, again, choosing to just hop merrily into a foregone conclusion about its central character in a way that feels almost unearned.

There’s also some issues with characterization, particularly in terms of the Joker. Magnussen is quite creepy as the Joker, but more in a needlessly sexual way than a criminal mastermind sort of way. Much of the character’s dialogue contains sexual banter and jokes that feel deeply unnecessary to the point of being jarring and almost ick-inducing — particularly when paired with Magnussen’s very flip delivery. Ricci, as Harleen, does a sound job of making the young doctor sound very eager and well-intentioned, but when it comes to her more emotional moments, a lot feels superficial. You don’t get any sense of her discomfort or her personal anguish, and even when she comes into her own, there doesn’t really feel like much bite to it — Mary Holland’s Margaret Pye, however, comes with plenty of bite, so that’s a treat. Truthfully, the real standout performance in the series is one that we don’t get much of at all: Amy Sedaris as Harleen’s Aunt Rose, who is infuriating in her brief, but important, appearance.

As revamped origin stories go, Harley Quinn is certainly due for one and the idea that she could be the architect of her own downfall rather than the Joker’s puppet is an intriguing one worth exploring. Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind is certainly an enjoyable approach. It’s an easy listen, one that makes some strong points about Gotham, its real problems (some issues that we ourselves face in contemporary society), as well as larger issues that don’t always get addressed when talking about the mental health system or criminal justice. Unfortunately, it does still have a lot of work to do in terms of telling a sound origin for Harley breaking bad on her own accord. This is one case that could use a little bit of reevaluation.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Harley Quinn and The Joker: Sound Mind debuts January 31st on Spotify.