You gotta love a good flashback episode, especially one that looks at how a character may or may not have fallen in love with somebody. Yes, Harley and Ivy are definitely meant to be. Wait, you thought I meant Harley and Joker? Get real! But let’s not focus on that so much right now as we recap this episode. Check it out below.

1. Fuck, Marry, Not Killed: Harley and Ivy are hanging out at their usual goon bar playing a classic game of “Fuck, Marry, Kill,” when Harley spots a bartender who looks exactly like a de-Jokerized Joker. Ivy wants to kill him, but Harley convinces her to sneak away with her instead.
2. Falling, But Hopefully Not For You Again: Unfortunately, as Harley tries crawling away out the door, Joker trips over her. He appears to be perfectly normal (Almost to an extreme) and is very nice about the accident. He mentions his kids, which causes Harley to think maybe Joker really has changed for the better, but Ivy doesn’t think people can change. So, Harley goes into a flashback to prove to her that that’s not true.
3. Fire Solves All Problems: Several years ago, Dr. Harleen Quinzel arrives to her first day working at Arkham Asylum and meets a much more stable and physically fit Jim Gordon as well as the head DA of Gotham: Harvey Dent. They go over Harleen’s mission: talk with the Joker, get him to tell her where he put a bomb somewhere in Gotham. Just then, an alarm goes off as Poison Ivy is staging a brawl with several guards. The guards overpower her plant abilities with flamethrowers courtesy of DA Dent’s rather brutal criminal justice policies. Harleen watches sadly as Ivy is dragged away, and Gordon orders her to go talk to Joker.
4. Meet The Inmates: Harleen walks to Joker’s cell, passing several familiar faces in Arkham’s cells such as a non-melted Scarecrow and a currently-balding Riddler. When Harleen gets to Poison Ivy’s cell, she shows sympathy towards Ivy over what the guards did to her, but Ivy just tells her to fuck off and calls her a narc. Harleen gets to the Joker’s maximum security cell just as he’s being served lunch. Harleen tries to get him to tell her where the bomb is, but Joker attacks her and mocks her efforts. He appears to be trying to kill her with a pen, but Harleen uses her gymnastics skills to get away from him, though not before Joker draws a smiley face on her neck, proving that he wasn’t trying to kill her, but testing her.
5. Enter The Bat: Harleen is chewed out by Gordon and Dent for not getting the information on where the Joker’s bomb is. Harley asks for another shot, but Batman shows up from out of the shadows, apparently having been in the room the entire time, and insists that he take a crack at the Joker. Batman beats the Joker around a bit trying to get the information out of him, but all Joker does is mock Batman and remind him of how he recently killed Jason Todd. Batman declares Joker a lost cause and insists on evacuating the city to protect Gotham from the bomb, but Harleen figures out a possible way to get the info after going through Poison Ivy’s file and seeing that she was once in group therapy with Joker.
6. Mr. Ferris: Harleen goes to Ivy to ask her about Joker. All Ivy says is that in group therapy, Joker didn’t like talking about his family. Ivy then yells at Harleen to leave her alone and Harleen does now that she has the information she needs. She goes to talk with Joker again and gets him talking about his abusive father and his beloved pet ferret Mr. Ferris whom his father killed after a young Joker caught him cheating on his wife with the maid. Joker then chooses to tell Harleen where the bomb is hidden on the condition that he be able to dine once in the Arkham cafeteria that night and have a real meal. Harleen agrees to this and Joker tells her that the bomb is in the heart of Little Italy.
7. Love Begins To Bloom: As Batman and Gordon roll out to stop the bomb, Harvey Dent chooses to stay behind because he doesn’t want the press seeing him around an armed bomb. Meanwhile, Harleen goes to speak with Poison Ivy who is surprised to see Harleen still alive. Harleen thanks Ivy for helping her and offers to be her friend. She gives Ivy a small plant as a gesture of friendship and Ivy remarks that she could kill Harleen with it easily. Harleen simply says “Yeah. You could.” and walks away with a smile as Ivy smiles too and makes the plant blossom. At the heart of Gotham’s Little Italy district, Batman finds no trace of a bomb. Back at Arkham, Joker dines with Harleen on a first date of sorts, as Joker calls it. He remarks that the reason he keeps coming back to Arkham is because of the asylum’s cook Luigi who it turns out has a nickname which Harleen quickly realizes is “Little Italy” as Luigi starts having heart problems before exploding and blowing a hole in the asylum wall for Joker to escape through.
8. People Change: Joker escapes Arkham, carrying Harleen with him on his shoulders. Harvey Dent and the Arkham guards give chase. Harleen is furious, but the Joker remarks that as long as he has her hostage, the guards won’t shoot him. He’s wrong, however, as Dent’s desire to win re-election trumps his nonexistent morals, and he orders the guards to open fire. A bullet is blocked by a vine produced by Poison Ivy who has come to Harleen’s rescue. She restrains the Joker just as guards arrive with flamethrowers and guns, ready to kill everyone in sight. Ivy surrenders so the guards don’t hurt Harleen in the crossfire, and she asks Harleen if she would be willing to be her therapist as the guards take her and Joker away. Harleen says yes and then disses Dent, becoming the first person to call him Two-Face. We flash back to the bar in the present where Harley tells Ivy that since she could change, Joker could change too. Ivy says that Harley didn’t change her from hating people, she helped her, and also that she didn’t always hate people. She says it wasn’t until Mr. Ferris, who it turns out was really Ivy’s first plant as a kid, died that she started hating people. Apparently, Joker stole Ivy’s story from group therapy and made it his own to gain sympathy from Harley all those years ago.
9. Psychos: Harley and Ivy decide they need a way to make sure that Joker really has changed, so they call in Dr. Psycho. He reads Joker’s mind in the bathroom and reveals that he doesn’t have any memories from before he was dropped in the normalizing acid. Harley and Ivy leave satisfied, only to be captured by Two-Face and his many goons outside the bar. Inside the bar, Joker receives a text from his girlfriend’s kids of their faces covered in what looks like blood but is actually just pizza sauce. Joker starts laughing at the photo, finally showing some semblance of his old self in his classic insane cackle before reverting back to the overly-normal person he is now.

And that was it for this week’s episode! Be sure to join us here next week for another all new episode and recap!

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