Harlequin was at her evil best in this one.Too bad they didn't show more of this side of her.
It was apparent all through the episode that Mia
Sara was enjoying being able to get Harlequin out of her Dr.Quinzel personna and just acting the villian to the full hilt,instead of having to sit in the background while her minions do the job for her.
Also Gibson got to do more than stand behind the
bar at No Man's Land.It would be nice if someone else picked the series up as the final episode shows the sort of potential that it had.

I am sorry about the end of this show. Once again, another good show cancelled before its time, a victim of idiotic network bean counters, and $tupid programming managers. I mean come on, they put this show up against Ed (which I understand does well as a lead in for West Wing), Enterprise, and whatever $tupid reality shows ABC and CBS were airing. They will probably replace it with another moronic reality show.

The sad thing is that the characters were developing, and the continuity was very good. This show is better than Enterprise (although most shows are). Dinah was a little weak, but the other characters were excellent. Scott, you are right, Mia Sara did a great job as Harlequin.

The thing that I don't understand is how super hero shows do well in the movie, but badly on TV. Maybe lack of a super villian every week. Anyone have any ideas?

Again, I am sorry to see this show go, especially as a Batman fan. It was really hitting its stride.

One other thing - who didn't see that as soon as Wade knew the situation, he was as good as red-shirted?

...they put this show up against Ed (which I understand does well as a lead in for West Wing), Enterprise, and whatever $tupid reality shows ABC and CBS were airing.

"Birds of Prey" premiered on the WB on October 9, 2002 in the 9 p.m. EST hour. For most of it's first-air run, "Birds of Prey" was up against "The West Wing" on NBC, "The Bachelor" (2nd edition) on ABC, "60 Minutes II" on CBS, "Fastlane" on FOX, and "The Twilight Zone" on UPN. Only "Gladiatrix" and "Feat of Clay" first aired in the 8 p.m. EST hour, and in those cases, each episode aired as the first of two back-to-back episodes for the night ("Reunion" followed "Gladiatrix", and "Devil's Eyes" followed "Feat of Clay").

"Birds of Prey" was in a tough timeslot, and I do think that the WB axed the show without giving it a decent chance build an audience (whether in its original timeslot or in another). In general, I think that this is an increasing problem with all TV networks. The networks rarely give new shows at least one full season to build an audience, as was done in the past (e.g. "Cheers" and "Seinfeld" on NBC). Instead, most new network shows have to meet certain Neilsen ratings expectations for the first two to four episode airings, or else the networks cancel the shows. This kind of performance expectation was unfair to a show like "Birds of Prey", which was about characters who were supposed to develope over time, and which had plot points that were not all supposed to be resolved in the same episodes in which they were introduced.

Harvey Kitzman: The thing that I don't understand is how super hero shows do well in the movie, but badly on TV. Maybe lack of a super villian every week. Anyone have any ideas?
Luigi Novi: Most comic book movies did poorly prior to Men in Black, Blade and X-Men, and conversely, Smallville is doing very well, its ratings up a third from last year, IIRC, and without a supervillain every week.

Luigi,

Some superhero movies did well before the ones you mention - Superman I and II, Batman and Batman Returns.

If you remember, The Flash was also a good TV rendition of the comic book, very influenced by the Batman movie. Unfortunately, it met the same fate as BoP - it was up against Cosby. That show had potential too.

Ryan, you are right - I was off by an hour. I would have to tape either BoP or West Wing. The bottom line is that this show would have worked in a better time slot. This last episode showed what potential it had

Hence my use of the word "most," Harvey.

I couldn't disagree with all of you more. This show was awful.

The metahuman thing was a crutch. The show relied too heavily on special powers.

This show had all the feel of a girls' show. Guys watched it for the girls. Though I've noticed girls who are true fans of the bat-legacy don't like this show either. That's encouraging.

Now I like pretty girls as much as the next straight guy, but the lenghts the producers have to go to keep our attention has reached an all time high (or low, depending on your perspective).

Huntress always dresses like a slut. There's no polite way to put it. She may have a hot body but she's really not pretty. To be fair, she does have that certain feline look in her eyes, so I would've cast her for the role, such as it is.

I've taped the show for only four weeks, and I found myself fast-forwarding through 75% of it every time. The dialogue is awful. It's full of cliches, cynacism, sarcasm, innuendo and sexual innuendo. None of which is the slightest bit subtle, including the slutty scenes. This is what makes the animated series' superior to live action shows. With smarter writers, the dialogue was cut in half, and the in-jokes were craftier.
Batman was never talky, the Robins were, Batgirl was to an extent, the villains were the real talky ones.

Now Oracle is proof that you don't have to dress like a slut to be beautiful. She is hot just for her face and hair and not because she puts on leather or bikinis.

The third girl, Dinah, is pretty, but that's about it. Her powers are merely inducing flashbacks. And she's blond, which completes the standard girl-show formula; blond, brunette, redhead; like The Witches of Eastwick.

Harleen Quinzel is about as interesting as duck doo. If she's not in costume and doing that trademark high-pitched bubbly Brooklyn accent, who cares? Actually, she looks kinda like present-day Arleene Sorkin with short hair. Arleene, as you know, is the First Lady of Harley Quinn. Hmm, Arleene-Harleen, Selena-Helena, which one is a coincidence and which is dumb?

Okay, so Joker took out Barbara, and Batman gets bummed to the point of abandoning Gotham City (I'm sorry, "NEW" Gotham City). Duh, okay, fine, I guess.

Batman finally did Catwoman (out of wedlock, presumably) she dies, but this illegitimate love child lives on, takes over the family business but wants none of the Wayne fortune and Wayne/Batman is unaware of this? Whatever.

This fantasy series probably would've worked in the 80's. It might've worked on the heels of the first Tim Burton Batman movie. This series was made 10 to 20 years too late because all this series has going for it is a Charlie's Angels/Charmed/Buffy-like chemistry of the girl cast, a hunky detective for the girl viewers, the occasional love-interest-of-the-week for the girl cast, computer-generated transitional arial zooms of the city, and The Matrix-like fights scenes of Huntress as she swoops, slinks, and kick-boxes.

This show must've cost The WB in excess of a million dollars per episode, but the action and dialogue looks just like everyting we've seen in sci-fi/fantasy series of the last decade. This show doesn't appear profitable even with heavy promotions and any merchandising tie-ins. I didn't see a long shelf-life for this Batman: The Next Generation series. And I called it correctly on October 28, 2002, on another discussion board Gotham City USA

This thing going on where Harley doesn't know who the hero (Huntress) is and the Birds of Prey not knowing who the criminal mastermind (Harley) is ...is really got old! The menacing Harley Quinn never impressed me. Not even the charm and wisdom of Alfred and the occasional nostalgic bat-red herring they toss us was worthy. So I took the advice that defenders of any given show tell us bashers with a looking-down-their-nose condesention -- if you don't like it, don't watch it. So I gave up after Episode IV or V (The Momma Canary episode).

The show satisfied the recommended daily (or should I say "weekly") allowance of gratuitous violence and gratuitous sex. And that's what lures the advertisers, which is where the money is made. Anything else we crave in a Batman series got lost in the mix. In television, sometimes what you see is what you get... Television budgets = television plots. Where they blow the budget on special effects, there's almost always an equal amount of faceplates. Scenes where the characters do nothing but banter while the cameras keep cutting and/or panning all angles of the characters (the exposition).

The bad dialog combined with the special effects ad naseum served to redefine "camp", and IMHO this show was campy.

And for those of you who wanted to see Reese and Helena get it on, beware! There is this unwritten rule in Hollywood where if characters marry, or basically "do it", then one of them is going to die (or otherwise leave the show). This is no secret, so don't ask me why. It is true more often than not. This series was founded on a dead Catwoman and an absent Batman. Two "birds" with one stone.

Here is a link to a forum that properly trashes BoP. If you don't mind long reads squeezed between ads and oversized pull-quotes, there is a lot of amusing swipes taken at the series that was full of promise, but was filled more with cliches and all-around bad television writing.
I thought about cutting-and-pasting some of the more funny observations, but like I said, it was a long read and now I'm sleepy. I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Television Without Pity/Birds of Prey

In that website, I read the reviews of episodes I didn't see but felt I did and I'm glad I didn't.

I loved the show! (Forgive me, I'm bad with names)The actress who played the leader of the group, Oracle-the former Batgirl, played her exactly right. I especially loved the Lady Shiva episode where she had to come to terms with the fact that she wasn't Batgirl anymore.

One of the nits or complaints about Huntress is that she didn't need super-powers. The actress who played her did a fine job and the character would have worked as a female Batman-Batwoman, type. Both adult women were very beautiful.

I even liked Dinah, especially the part that she could have been the new Black Canary, but she was underused in the series. It would have been interesting seeing a female "Robin" get trained and seeing her get better week after week. One nit I thought in the writing was that she got good too fast and they should have stuck to canon and given her the sonic scream too.

I also thought the actress who played Harley Quinn was good, really good. They should have expanded her role. I hated the fact that the show was cancelled. The Sci-Fi network should have picked it up. If they would have gotten even better writers and made a few changes I'm sure it would get the ratings. The Shamar guy who used to host "Soul Train" was good too.

Holy cow, I despised this show (and I'm the forum moderator!).

When I go watch Smallville, I enjoy the show. I even tolerate Whina Lang (though I wish they'd just kill her and be done with it, canon or not). But the writing is good, the casting is great, and continuity is splendid, season to season.

What did this show have going for it?

Ummm...well, not much. Writing was terrible, acting was worse (but then, that could have been the writing), and continuity? HA!

I would much prefer to watch pink and whiny Lana "Made of Styrofoam and Cheese" Lang to Helena Kyle or what's her face Dinah something any day of the week.