Dude, Birds Of Prey Sucks!

written by: John Robie

It's amazing how they took one of the most fleshed out, detailed and recognizable fictional worlds and one of the most compelling characters in pop culture history and created something which sucks so royally.

First some backstory: Birds of Prey is a new show on the WB based on the DC Comic book of the same name. I'm going to illustrate the differences between the two, not because the changes bother me in principle, but rather because I don't think there's any good reason for them. In the comic, the titular "birds" are Dinah Lance, AKA the "Black Canary" an athletic superheroine with a "sonic scream" power and an old flame of Green Arrow (for you Marvel fans, think Hawkeye and Mockingbird), and Barbara Gordon, daughter of Batman's ally commisioner Gordon and formerly Batgirl before the Joker shot and paralyzed her. Gordon currrently uses her computer as the superhero equivalent of an IT specialist. She uses the name "Oracle" because, presumably, its slightly cooler than "Bat-Hacker." The Huntress, isn't a main character in the comic and is a somwhat unrelated crossbow wielding heroine. The comic occurs in the DC "present," or concurrently with Batman, Superman and the rest of the tights-and-cape set.

Now for the TV show. The first major change is timeline: The show is set some 20 years after Batman's heyday and, in a way that's never satisfactorily explained, he's "gone" Bruce Wayne is still around (and not on the show) but Batman's gone. Second, The Huntress is now the daughter of Batman and (a superpowered) Catwoman (who's since been killed by the Joker (also not on the show). Being Batman's daughter ought to have some import, but doesn't. Dinah Lance is now a superhuman-psychic teenage runaway taken in by the other two girls.

The TV show's mastermind antagonist is Harley Quinn, a character who, interstingly enough, began life as the Joker's sidekick in the (initially excellent and subsequently less so) Batman: The Animated Series. She was later introduced into the comic book and has now been dropped into this crap-ass show. Harley is played by Mia Sara who you probably remember as Ferris Bueller's girlfriend.

Problems With The Show
Birds of Prey sucks so hard that it's going to be hard to name specific problems, but I'll try. There are conceptual problems handicapping the show before it even starts: the most interesting characters, Batman and maybe Joker, are not actually in the show. Then there are problems of execution: the crummy computer graphics "New Gotham" cityscape that the camera flies through by way of transition between scenes looks like it was modelled in "The Sims". Possibly the most unforgivable flaw in the show is the lazy, clumsy writing. The characters communicate by slinging sass and one liners at each other like duelling Schwarzeneggers, all for no good reason.

The only "superhero" character is the Huntress, and she makes no attempt whatsoever to conceal her identity, you can tell when she's "in costume" because she wears a black vinyl coat. The policeman/love interest keeps asking Huntress who she is, but doesn't seem to make even the most cursory investigation into the matter because she began the series in a court-ordered counselling session, which means she has a record and a mug shot.

What I believe will be the most serious flaw in the show is (after 3 episodes) what seems to be a commitment to the dreaded "monster of the week" formula. In episode one, a super powered baddie tried to kill Huntress. In episode 2, a super-powered baddie tried to kill Huntress. Guess what happened in episode 3. This epsiodic formula, wherein there are few or no lasting consequences from one show to the next, and each individual show seems like an arc from a steady state, through a problem, and back to the initial steady state is simply poison to watch. What separates the increasingly putrid output of the Star Trek franchise from the ostensibly similar, yet excellent Babylon 5, is that while the former is purely episodic, the latter series comprises one large story arc from beginning to end.

For a "wierd stuff" show like Birds to succeed, it must be a character drama first, an arcing serial story second, and a monster-of-the-week episodic series a distant third. This is why Buffy The Vampire Slayer is the best in the genre, and everything else is some distance behind. What rescued the first season of Smallville from mediocrity is that although it embraced the Monster-Of-The-Week formula, the characters, and their relationships were allowed to grow and develop. I may be premature in hailing the demise of Birds of Prey, but I seriously doubyt it. I'm just suprised that this DC comics liscence comes out just a year after Smallville.

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