Harley Quinn Season 5, (2025, Max)

Harley Quinn Season 5Even though I’m not a huge fan of Harley Quinn -overall-, there are certain takes on the character that have held my interest. The Max series is one of them. I enjoy the voice actors, and that I am reviewing it the week that episode 10’s finale dropped speaks to how much I like it.

It’s a strange alt-DC where you can have the Joker hanging out with Bruce Wayne and Bane is weirdly passive.  The main plot of the season wasn’t that great, but that’s mainly an excuse to get some interesting B & C stories going with the fairly large cast of characters.

The show hasn’t yet been renewed for a sixth season, and it ends in a satisfying way if this is it for this iteration.  If you’ve never seen it, and you can handle the dialogue that is very much NSFW (or kids) it’s a fun and fast watch with each episode less than a half-hour.

The JFK Conspiracy by Brad Meltzer and Josh Mensch (2025)

The JFK ConspiracyBrad Meltzer is a very successful fiction author and also had a TV show about Lost History some years ago. Out of the show he created this series of books that all have “Conspiracy” in the title.  I bought the first one, but I wasn’t that impressed with the overall read.  To me it’s history-lite and I’m OK getting this series out of the library. The formula is established at this point–start with the “Conspiracy”, go back to establish a short biography of the famous person, draw it out with succinct, easy-to-read prose, and have a wrap-up.

In this case, the interesting parts of the book are detailing the relationship of Secret Service agent Clint Hill and Mrs. Kennedy.  If you like the kind of programming on the History Channel that gives you a little insight into a topic, but draws the stuff out with lots of previews and recaps before and after the commercial breaks–this is a good style of book for you.

The Penguin (2024, Max)

The PenguinThis was a really slow starter for me.  I enjoyed The Batman but I wasn’t sure how I’d connect with a show about Oz’ rise as a crime lord.  Matt Reeves has created a decent ficton for his Gotham and Batman, but did I really want to spend time caring about “Oz Cobb”? I’d probably still say that Burgess Meredith is “my” Penguin, and that’s almost a completely different character.

That said, the addition of “Vic” to humanize Cobb, and several scenes where Cristin Milioti really chews up the scenery helped to make it interesting.  Even though this is another tale where we get Yet Another Origin Story {YAOS(tm)} there is an especially slow burn on revealing aspects of Oz’ character.  I knew his mother wasn’t a throwaway character but it takes until the end of the show to really show case Deirdre O’Connell’s acting.  And I suppose I really need to mention Colin Farrell’s literal transformation into Oz Cobb/the Penguin. The prosthetics are amazing, but so is Farrell’s accent, use of his eyes, and hand gestures.

It’s hard to care about a villain, but what is interesting is that this world is now a little harder for me to discard for the DCU in its coming phase. I hope there is enough room to see how -this- Gotham plays out.