Today I watched the Poison Ivy episode of Batman The Animated Series; Pretty Poison. And I gotta say, Ivy was right.
Harvey Dent spearheaded a project to use Wayne Foundation funds to turn a field of wildflowers into a penitentiary. The twist: That field contained the last surviving specimens of the Wild Thorny Rose. Poison Ivy, a chemical botanist, saves the last rose and uses it for revenge. She kisses Harvey with a poison made from the rose on her lips. Batman grabs a sample and tried to synthesise an antidote, but doing so requires a sample of the origin of the toxin: the wild thorny rose, extinct. So he goes and fights Poison Ivy for the antidote and saves Harvey.
But I think Harvey is the bad guy here. He destroyed a piece of nature to build a prison. And he didn’t even conduct an environmental survey to look for ecological damage first! If he’d have hired Ivy, she could have warned him about the rose, and he could have come up with a plan to save it. Also, prisons are bad! Harvey is the district attorney, he’s part of the power structure. And he has Bruce Wayne’s money behind him. Ivy had nowhere to turn for justice other than vigilantism. I stand with Ivy.
I liked the episode, but it was unrealistic even by animated superhero standards.
The realistic version would have had Ivy going to Bruce long before construction began and proving the field had to be saved.
Now you’ve got a love triangle. Bruce is one of the few [the only?] guy she’s met who takes her seriously and never looks below her eyeline. She’s nuts about him, and hates Harvey, who is smitten.
And then Harvey’s face gets burned…