3x06 Joker: The Killing Vote

[8.5/10] This is a great spoof of both 1990s sitcoms and The Killing Joke, while also managing to reconstruct both forms in striking ways.

Joker here follows a pretty standard sitcom arc. He wants something vital for his kids. (In this case, a spot in the bilingual education program.) He goes all out to get it for them, only to lose himself in the means rather than the ends. (In this case, being more obsessed with his mayoral campaign and the vanity it feeds than actually connecting with the stepkids he’s trying to help.) Only then, he has a moment of truth and realizes what’s really important -- his family. (Albeit here it involves a parade float, a child kidnapping, and a hostage situation.)

Aside from the abduction of a child and the friendly bank-robberies, that could easily be a storyline on Full House or the other Miller-Boyett productions in the same vein. Danny Tanner running for the school board to help his girls, only to get obsessed with the campaign, and relent when he realizes he’s neglecting them, would totally work. Taking that stock sitcom story shape,and grafting it onto the Joker’s vibe is masterful.

This one is especially funny for Joker as step dad/candidate. The way he spars with Debbie (Amy Sedaris!) over parking spots and program slots is a funny low stakes conflict for the Clown Prince of Crime. His lines about “speaking of racist” and frustration at his goons not knowing how to stop doing that Reservoir Dogs thing is a laugh. And the maniacal menace running for mayor on a platform of populism and socialist policies is very funny at a conceptual level.

Hell, there’s also great homages across the board here, from Joker’s campaign song to featuring lines from The Dark Knight, to his parade setup invoking Batman ‘89, to even an homage to the “We live in a society” meme. There’s scads of amusing easter eggs for longtime fans, mixed with amusingly down-to-earth problems for the Joker as a suburban dad.

This is also a nice episode for Jim Gordon! Frankly, despite loving most of Harley Quinn’s fresh takes on notable D.C. Universe figures, I haven't been the biggest fan of their version of Commissioner Gordon. But I like the idea here that despite running for mayor, he doesn’t really know what he stands for, and is just sort of doing this thing without reason beyond the fact that he wants respect.

His realization that Two-Face is doing a lot of shit Gordon disagrees with in his name, to where he has a change of heart and tries to save his political opponent, is good stuff. There’s great humor in Gordon’s almost pathological inability to understand the fact that Two-Face is, well, two-faced. But his efforts to intervene, set things right, and tell his daughter she was right all along are surprisingly stirring.

And therein lies the rub. The brilliance of the episode is that the entire climax is a clever remix of the famous final sequence in The Killing Joke. The fact that everything’s mish-mashed, with Joker rushing to save his kid, Gordon acting to save them both through a roller coaster gone wrong, and Joker talking Gordon down from acting rashly or harshly because to do anything else would be giving in to something cruel and unhealthy turns the original story on its ear in a delightful way.

At a base level, it’s unexpectedly wholesome to see Joker be willing to give up his campaign at the drop of a hat to save Benecio. It’s unusual but redemptive to see Commissioner Gordon put his neck out to save his onetime enemy and Joker’s stepson. And the fact that what pulls them both out of their vain tailspins is reminders of how much they care for their children is genuinely heartening.

That's the biggest twist in this whole thing. The riffs on classic Alan Moore stories and old sitcoms are fun. But the most impressive part is how “Joker: The Killing Vote” is able to both poke fun at those things but also earnestly adapt them for its own purposes in a way that is, against all odds, pretty moving at the end of the day. Harley Quinn continues to surprise me, in the best ways, and this episode may be the peak of its cleverness and willingness to reimagine the famous faces from Batman’s world, putting them in a hilarious but heartening new light.