BATMAN: CAPED CRUSADER Recap: The Stress of Her Regard

One of the most significant tweaks to character origins in Batman: Caped Crusader is Dr. Harleen Quinzel’s origin story. Instead of an off-shoot result of Joker’s maniacal influence, Jamie Chung’s Dr. Quinzel is a coldly calculating, highly intelligent, and deeply twisted villain in her own right. She also happens to be besties with Barbara Gordon (Krystal Joy Brown) which complicates things when Dr. Q’s after-hours activities become a public menace.

Batman (Hamish Linklater) is tying up a mundane Gotham bank robber when he spots a man dressed in an Egyptian costume walking through the traffic fearlessly, making proclamations and declaring himself king over everyone.

Harley Quinn stands mostly backlit by a door behind her wearing a black and yellow jester's costume with a wide white frilled collar and her face painted dramatically with diamonds around her eyes and pink cheeks on Batman: Caped Crusader Season 1 Episode 5, "The Stress of Her Regard." — Credit: Courtesy of Prime Video

Batman: Caped Crusader’s “The Stress of Her Regard”

The next day, Batman shows Alfred (Jason Watkins) the mugshot of the delusion Egyptian cosplayer. His name is Fletcher Demming (David Krumholtz), a Gotham City real estate baron. Batman says he was fine a few months ago but now he’s in Arkham. He can’t afford better treatment because he’d recently donated his entire fortune to charity. Alfred thought he was a deeply selfish man. Batman says he was exactly that. He suspects something else is going on.

In a white-walled room, a man dressed as a clown (David Kaye) is being tickled relentlessly with a feather on the sole of his foot until he agrees to give everything away. He is locked into the chair, unable to move his arms and legs. A woman’s voice gives the order to stop over a speaker in the room. She asks if he’s making a promise, and he promises on his life. There is a pause and the woman says she doesn’t believe him. The tickling resumes with him begging for them to stop.

Hopeless

At the Gotham Diner, Barbara Gordon confides in Dr. Quinzel that she sometimes feels that Gotham is past the point of saving. Dr. Q recommends learning to laugh it off. Montoya (Michelle C. Bonilla) comes in and joins them. She tells Barbara she’s concerned about Commissioner Gordon (Eric Morgan Stuart) and was hoping Barbara could talk to him. Barbara says she’ll try but wouldn’t know what to say to him. Dr. Q suggests roleplaying it but both women shut her down.

Montoya and Dr. Q see Barbara to her car. After she leaves, Dr. Q asks Montoya out to dinner at a nice restaurant, her treat. Taken a bit by surprise, Montoya agrees.

Batman searches Demming’s office for clues. He finds a secret room filled with Egyptian decor. In the desk drawer, he finds a used checkbook with stubs for payments to Dr. Quinzel. Suddenly a smoke canister lands in the room. Bullock (John DiMaggio), Flass (Gary Anthony Williams), and a half-dozen police are outside with guns drawn. Batman throws the canister back out at them. Bullock heads into the secret room. Meanwhile, Batman takes out each of the officers in the smoky room. When the smoke clears, Flass is standing alone among the fallen cops.

Dr. Quinzel at Work

In her office, Dr. Q listens as her patient vents his frustration about his workers wanting to unionize. The alarm buzzes and the patient, Emerson Collins (Jim Pirri), tells her he finds her therapy really helps him. She appreciates that but tells him that she sees no progress at all. Hitting a button on her chair, restraints appear on his chair, binding his arms to the armrests. She tells him he’s a menace to society and since he’s not responding to regular therapy, she believes it’s time to get more intense with his treatment.

The Playpen

A sliding door to a dungeon space opens. Dr. Q enters, dressed in her Harley Quinn costume. Glassed-in chambers branch off from the central control panel, each containing a “patient.” One, Mr. Morehouse (Jim Pirri), is dressed as a school boy and he is struggling to write lines on the chalkboard. She reminds him that, “If you’re not bleeding, you’re not working hard enough,” the adage he used with his son. He tries to attack her by banging his fists on the glass, but it’s electrocuted and he falls to the ground in pain. She assigns him ten thousand more lines to write.

In another chamber, Mr. Smith (Gary Anthony Williams) is dressed as a Christmas elf and forced to search a string of holiday lights for a single bad bulb. Dressed as a baby in diapers, Mr. Belsky (John DiMaggio) refuses to eat the green mush he’s been given, demanding dessert instead. Checking in on her newest in-patient, she finds Mr. Collins in his chamber sitting on a wooden throne, dressed as a king. She opens the glass partition and welcomes him to her facility, The Playpen.

She explains the jesters rule this court. Her assistant, Hastings (David Kaye), opens Belsky’s chamber. Offering Belsky a sledgehammer, she promises him all the pudding he can eat if he makes Mr. Collins give up all his worldly possessions.

Changes of Heart

In the Batcave, Alfred and Batman research instances of wealthy men who have suddenly given away their fortune. Alfred wonders who could convince rich men to change so dramatically. Batman hands him the checkbook stubs and suggests their psychiatrist could.

Barbara visits Demming at Arkham as she’s been appointed by the court to represent him. He asks her to help him get out of Arkham and then demands she address him as “Pharoah” which causes her to pause. She suggests they get an independent evaluation by her friend, Dr. Harleen Quinzel. At the mention of her name, Demming repeats it dreamily but can’t recall if he knows her.

When the orderly comes to give Barbara a five-minute warning, Demming rushes the door and makes a dash for freedom. Barbara chases him down the hall and up several flights of stairs to the rooftop. Laughing maniacally, he tries to throw himself off the roof, shouting, “I’m coming!” Grabbing the strap on his straightjacket, Barbara reels him back. He fights back, saying he wants to be with her. Barbara asks who he wants to be with. Institution staff arrive and sedate him before he can answer.

Suspicions Grow

Barbara catches Dr. Q as she enters the courthouse and asks if she knows a Fletcher Demming. Dr. Q pauses briefly and admits the name sounds familiar. Barbara mentions he’s a new client and needs a psych eval, but he seemed to recognize Dr. Qs name. Dr. Q brushes that off and changes the subject to her date with Montoya.

Barbara brings her father some lunch in his office. The Commissioner tells her about how the mayor has given Flass and Bullock all his resources to catch Batman. Seeing Barbara looking troubled, he asks about her. She explains the evidence is pointing in a direction she doesn’t want to look. He recommends looking for the truth. She thinks that over. Walking to his side, she tells him Montoya feels he needs a day off. He says he’s not interested. Barbara gives him a kiss on the cheek and leaves.

Barbara goes to see Dr. Q at her office and finds it ransacked. She spots Batman disappearing over a nearby rooftop. Looking around the office, she finds an appointment book next to an open floor safe. Flipping through it, she finds an appointment for Fletcher Demming and realizes her friend lied to her face. She discovers a missing page in the book. Rubbing a pencil on the next page, she finds William Hastings’s name and address written on the missing page.

Closing In

She drives out to Hastings’s isolated mansion and he answers the door. Explaining that she represents Fletcher Demming, she mentions that they both saw Dr. Quinzel as patients. As she had learned that he hadn’t been seen at his office in weeks, she came to check on him. He gets upset, calling this an invasion of privacy, and demands she leave the property immediately.

Having had a door slammed in her face, Barbara drives away only to park her car in some trees and return to the mansion on foot. Just as she’s about to try climbing the wall, Batman appears. He tells her he believes Dr. Quinzel is brainwashing some of her patients. Barbara explains that she wants to know if her friend is hurting people. He says he’ll handle Dr. Q and advises she go back to Gotham City. Using his grappling hook, he ascends the wall, leaving Barbara behind.

The Price of Madness

At a nice restaurant, Montoya and Dr. Q laugh and talk over dinner. A waiter interrupts their flirting with a phone call. Dr. Q picks up the handset and listens intently. She apologizes to Montoya, saying she needs to see to a patient emergency. Montoya looks disappointed so Dr. Q tells her they can meet at Hopper’s later and pick up where they left off. She kisses Montoya lingeringly and leaves.

In Hastings’s mansion, Batman discovers The Playpen. Upstairs, Dr. Q arrives and Hastings tells her Batman is in The Playpen. Barbara eavesdrops from the upper level.

Batman looks over the Playpen controls. Dr. Q, costumed as Harley Quinn comes in, stating she knew he’d come for her. She asks him how many criminals he needs to catch to feel better. Easing her way around him, she presses the button to open all the chambers. She tells her patients that she will be happy with the one that gets Batman. The others are dead. Every patient grabs a weapon and they attack him. While fighting them, Batman rolls into one of the chambers. Harley Quinn closes the partition, trapping him inside. She gasses the chamber and sets a five-minute timer. The house is rigged to explode when the timer hits zero.

As she leaves with her patients, Harley Quinn reveals she knows who Batman is under his costume, commenting they should work on his childhood trauma next time. Upstairs, Barbara waits until Harley and her patients leave then sneaks down to The Playpen. Seeing Batman lying unconscious in the chamber, she picks up a baseball bat and tries to break through the partition.

Land’s End

Hastings chauffeurs Dr. Q away from the house as she removes her makeup. She spots Barbara’s car parked by the trees and orders Hastings to turn the car around. With only one minute left in the countdown, Barbara manages to crack the partition. Dr. Q runs in and tells Barbara they need to run because the house is going to explode. Barbara demands to know what she’s been up to, and Dr. Q promises to answer all her questions once they’re safe, but Barbara won’t leave without Batman. Dr. Q hits the button to open the partition but it doesn’t work because Barbara was hitting it with a bat for nearly four minutes.

The explosives in the house begin to detonate. Batman’s cell falls into the ocean. The two women run as parts of the mansion begin to slide off the cliff. Dr. Q falls but Barbara catches her and tries to pull her up. Dr. Q tells Barbara that she’s not going to prison or Arkham. The board Barbara’s holding onto breaks and they both fall. Batman swings through and catches Barbara, leaving Dr. Q to continue her descent into the water. Once on solid land, Barbara runs to the cliff’s edge to see if she can spot her friend. Batman admonishes her for not returning to the city when he told her to. She tells him to shut up, shedding tears for Harleen Quinzel. Sirens are heard in the distance. Awkwardly, Batman says he has to go but expresses his sympathy before disappearing.

Those Left Behind

Outside Hopper’s, Montoya waits. A payphone nearby starts ringing. She picks up and it’s Dr. Q apologizing for not making it to Hopper’s. Montoya asks if everything’s okay, and Dr. Q says she’s leaving town for a while, but she’ll look her up when she’s back.

The entire 10-episode first season of Batman: Caped Crusader is streaming now on Prime Video.

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Diana Keng

Diana lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where she invests her time and energy in teaching, writing, parenting, and indulging her love of all Trek and a myriad of other fandoms. She is a lifelong fan of smart sci-fi and fantasy media, an upstanding citizen of the United Federation of Planets, and a supporter of AFC Richmond 'til she dies. Her guilty pleasures include female-led procedurals, old-school sitcoms, and Bluey. She teaches, knits, and dreams big. You can also find her writing at The Televixen, Women at Warp, TV Fanatic, and TV Goodness.

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