The casual comics fan remains blissfully ignorant of Earth-2, but it’s made for many headaches for DC Comics. The parallel Earth, and its doubling of characters in the DC pantheon, made for some confusing reading at points. While their never-ending “Crisis” series was intended to do away with the parallel Earths that kept popping up like trolls on Spill forums in their continuity, it only seemed to make things worse. However, having that alternate version of super hero story-land out there made things easier on the writers sometimes (they could say whatever the frak they wanted and later claim it happened on Earth 692 or whatever) and it’s the basis behind the WB series “Birds of Prey.”

The show only lasted for one season in 2002-2003 despite moderately good ratings for a show of it’s ilk. The conceit was that Catwoman had a baby girl using the ol’ BatSemen and she retired from crime to raise her. Years later, as Batgirl and Batman track down The Joker, someone murders Catwoman right in front of her now 16 year old daughter, Helena Kyle. The Joker (briefly voiced by Mark Hamill) shows up and shoots Barbara Gordon/Batgirl (Dina Meyer), paralyzing her legs. According to an awkward exposition moment on the show, this was all just too much for Batman and after putting The Joker in a more permanent prison outside town, he left town himself permanently. Barbara adopted the orphaned Helena and immediately started training her to become The Huntress (Ashley Scott) so she could beat people up in Barbara’s stead. It’s kind of her Bat-thing, if you will, training kids to beat people up. Wonder where she got that from? Seven years later, Dinah (Rachel Skarsten), the daughter of Black Canary, shows up to town with psychic powers that are barely ever relevant. Together they become the Birds of Prey which makes the dastardly criminals of New Gotham laugh themselves to jail.

Where does one begin critiquing this? The show has a tenuous executive producer link to the show Smallville, which is mysteriously a giant hit and lends a lot to understanding how product recognition is more important in today’s market than good writing or acting. It’s also the only explanation as to why this show was so heavily requested by fans to be released on DVD.

A primary conceit of Birds of Prey is the idea of “meta-humans” which means humans with super abilities. The Huntress is one (unlike any previous iteration of her character) and she hangs out at a “meta-human” bar with other “meta-humans” doing “meta-human” things and presumably doing rounds of “meta-human” Irish Car Bomb shots in between rounds of playing the "meta-human" edition of Scene-It. I couldn't help but feel that this whole set up wears its influences on its sleeves a bit too obviously: I see mutants from the X-men hanging out at Caritas, the monster bar from the Joss Whedon show Angel. It would be laughable to watch the them limp along the thin line between tribute and theft if only any of the jokes they were making were funny. That’s not the only thing this show steals from Angel. Compared to the sunnier Smallville, which borrows heavily from Buffy itself, Birds of Prey goes for the darker, grittier, urban feel in the look and themes which too obviously resemble Angel at points. Comparisons are inevitable, but in a ‘we never really got how this works’ sort of way.

As mediocre as the acting is, and some of it is downright embarrassing, I blame the writers more than anything else for this mess. Can anyone in this day and age actually say the line “It’s quiet. Too quiet” without irony and keep a straight face? Repeatedly the dialogue and plots are overly juvenile and derivative. I could forgive this more if it was an animated series for kids but it’s darker themes make clear this was meant for the slightly older comic fans. I could also just let this go if it wasn’t so gorram sloppy.

Over and over and over and over again they forget things that just happened, often even within the same episode, in order to bang out the story. These types of shows REQUIRE a continuity editor but there’s no one keeping an eye on their own internal mythology here. Hell, in the last episode, “Devil’s Eyes”, suddenly both Barbara Gordon and Harley Quinn can make giant hero-powered jumps for no explainable reason other than it suited that week’s typist. Speaking of lazy writing, the endings for the episodes more often than not feature one of the Birds or the side characters getting ready to kill a villain and one of the others talking them out of it, usually because of daddy issues. People, this is crap and I’m absolutely shocked it had a fan following. I mean, Ashley Scott is hot and all, but she’s not THAT hot.

I gotta find something good to say about this and believe it or not there are a few things. Mia Sara, best known as Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend, is still as smoking as ever here as Dr. Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn. Out of everyone in the cast, her season-wide super-villain role is the best written and performed. I like that the creators threw in tons of subtle (and some not so subtle) references to things in the DC universe. The characters discuss other famous heroes and villains, and we even get to see a few of them (Black Canary, Clayface, Scarecrow.) Peppering the dialogue and the scenery are cues to make the fans go, “Look, it’s a street named after a famous Batman writer” or “Hey, that’s the famous line from Superman!” but unfortunately it’s often done as such a ham-handed, terribly misplaced afterthought that one finds oneself actually groaning at the references as if someone had just told a bad cow pun. (I know, I know, I’m being udderly ridiculous. I should just moooove on. Yeah, like that.)

All that being said, all three seasons of the web-based flash show Gotham Girls are included as a nice little extra sans the useless “choose their path” internet options. The cartoon follows lunchbox friendly versions of Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Catwoman, Zatanna, Batgirl and a few others in a short animated comedy format. Surprisingly, it’s actually pretty damn amusing some of the time and features the regular voice actors from the Batman The Animated Series show as well: a smart move to appeal to the hardcore fans. Season three takes the idea to a more serious long-story format but thanks to more characters, more money pumped into the story-line and a cool cross-over to the Batman & Mr. Freeze: Subzero animated movie, it kept me entertained. Dren, I’d almost recommend buying the DVD just for this (and maybe for a scene early on in Birds of Prey of Mia Sara in the shower...more like Ferris Bueller's Jack Off), but I can’t QUITE bring myself to do it….especially with all of these cartoon episodes still available for free online. Also present is the original unaired pilot which is different from the regular first episode pretty much just because Sherilyn Fenn played Harley Quinn (and really really badly.)

It’s a shame. Something like this could have been a contender. The WB network never did figure out where that cheapness vs quality line is drawn and it doomed many shows with potential because of it. Birds of Prey showed just enough promise that if the WB had thrown a bit more money at some better writers and actors, it might have been a show worth following. Maybe now with The Dark Knight being lauded by audiences as well as critics as not only great comic movie fare but as a great serious drama as well, we can get some frakking executive types to start to treat this stuff with a little more respect.

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