House and Garden

  A killer cactus victimizes wealthy bachelors.
  Original Airdate: May 2, 1994
  Episode # 70
  Rating: * * * 1/2

Just the briefest mention of "toxin," and all eyes swivel toward Poison Ivy. Unfortunately for those looking for quick and tidy conclusions, she appears to be leading a new and idyllic existence in suburbia: picturesque house, loving husband, tousle-headed sons. Halfway through the episode we (and Batman) are convinced that she is innocent, reformed by a desire for a better life.

Well, at least her desire for that better life is genuine—everything else, husband and kids included, is a fake. This is another episode where the normal meets the bizarre. But where the familiar is usually a lonely flower in a luxuriance of evil, this time we find that Poison Ivy has planted her brood in a garden of the ordinary. It has the scent of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers about it: Beneath a pleasant greenhouse, monstrous pods birth things that only look human.

The horror is balanced by by the pity of Pamela's yearning for a life more ordinary. The series sometimes seems Calvinistic in its determination to keep its villains unreformed. All the more necessary, then, to show how occasionally their bad actions flow not from a desire for the warped, or even from warped desires, but from desires for the good, pursued in warped ways.

Related Episodes
   * Pretty Poison
   * Chemistry
   * Heart of Steel
   * Terry's Friend Dates a Robot

What Others Are Saying ...
"... a bizarre 50's movie mixed with detective work.... not too spectacular." –World's Finest