Gotham S05E08 Review: Ventriloquism

Gotham, Season 5, Episode 8: Nothing's Shocking

A pretty fun episode, even if it's pretty much what you'd call a filler episode. A classic Batman villain and a less-well-known one end up basically as villains of the week, and it's interesting that in this season's limited episode count, they still have the time to do a bunch of filler episodes. I guess they just want to quickly wrap up all the remaining ideas they have, while also giving more focus to the No Man's Land storyline.

And... and it's a very, very entertaining episode. The main focus of this episode is, I suppose, the Bullock storyline as his past sins caught up with him. Despite being supposedly Gordon's main sidekick, Bullock has honestly been pretty sidelined for a huge amount of Gotham's five-season run, and it's great to see him get some spotlight. More importantly, Bullock's dark past catches up with him once more, and it's always neat to shine some light to the original first couple of episodes of Gotham where Bullock was the model corrupt cop, willing to shoot... was it Oswald that he shot? I think it was Oswald.

Either way, a series of murders happen in Barbara's bar, and Bullock recognizes them as his old partners. The main suspect in Bullock's team seems to be the killer, but Dix is wheelchair bound and can't have possibly done it. There's some great moments and haunted looks in Bullock's face as he realizes that it might tie in to one of Bullock's old cases, where they essentially put pressure on a girl to rat out her murderous mother.

While investigating Dix, they get attacked by a walking Dix -- who is actually wearing a full face mask. Turns out that this lookalike killer is Jane Doe, one of Hugo Strange's experiments from Indian Hill, and one who keeps referring to her original persona of Jane Cartwright as dead. She's clearly lost her marbles, and later on when the GCPD manages to bring her in, she escapes after killing Dix. There are some genuinely fun bits with her, and the scene where Bullock just gets really scared and has this haunted, guilty look on her face... before going off on his own, telling Jane to surrender herself and is forced to shoot and end her before crying his heart out... genuinely great stuff. His not-apology to Gordon, noting that he doesn't exactly seek forgiveness, is definitely well done as well.

The secondary plot is by far my favourite, and is definitely some guilty pleasure from my love of classic Batman lore. While Penguin and Riddler (always an entertaining and hilarious duo) are arguing about building submarines and Nygma's silly bell-based alarm system, we get the surprise and genuinely random revelation that Mr. Penn is still alive... and he's the god-damned Ventriloquist! The resemblance is pretty dang uncanny, too, particularly when he pulls out Mr. Scarface, and the acting in this scene of Penn as squeamish but being whacked around by big boss Scarface and his exaggerated accent is genuinely fun. Ventriloquist was always one of Batman's sillier enemies, and one that I've never thought they would get to work in a live-action show. But hey, they did!

Scarface makes Penn shoot Oswald's bodyguard, and basically tries to steal, uh... submarine parts or something? We get the genuinely hilariously half-hearted explanation to Penn's survival, before Scarface's condemnation of Penguin using other people like dummies. Riddler playing along with Ventriloquist's insanity is also pretty fun, as is Oswald basically throwing some confusion into Ventriloquist and Scarface's relationship. "I never had you kill anyone!" In the ensuing struggle, Oswald shoots Scarface, 'freeing' Penn... before Riddler shots Penn in the head.

It's hilarious, with Riddler and Penguin basically acknowledging each other's mental damages (Oswald's chronic backstabbing disorder and Nygma's 'cold calculating logic'). It's also a fun little showcase of what Ventriloquist would've been like in the show, but the show also recognizing that it has way too many moving parts already. Definitely an entertaining take and certainly an accurate one to show how meek little Arnold Wesker/Arthur Penn is compared to the liberating yet manipulative Scarface. Great stuff.

The final B-plot and one that's most inconsequential is Bruce and Alfred hunting sewer monsters. While you might think this would be a way to introduce a one-off Killer Croc or Sewer King the way they just introduced a one-off Ventriloquist, nope, it's just some random dude mutated by Joker chemicals. It's neat and nicely shot, but it's a filler plot in an already filler-heavy episode, and the revelation that Alfred gets super into the whole hero mentality partly out of guilt for letting Wayne Manor blow up isn't that engaging. Also nowhere as interesting is the nonsense drama with Gordon insisting he be a part of Barbara and his child's life. 

Very entertaining, honestly, and I am still geeking out about the whole Ventriloquist thing.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Scarface & Ventriloquist are, of course, one of Batman's more iconic villains. Arnold Wesker is a meek fellow who is bossed around by the hammy, mobster ventriloquist dummy called Scarface, who whacks him around and bosses him around. Depending on the author, Scarface is either a genuinely supernatural being cut from a cursed hangman's tree, or just some really bad schizophrenia. 
• Oswald calls Arthur "Arnold" a couple of times by mistake as a little reference to Arnold Wesker. 
• Jane Doe is one of the main villains featured in the Arkham Asylum: Living Hell miniseries. While here she has metahuman powers of copying the appearance of anyone she touches, Jane Done in the comics actually cuts up her victims' body parts and uses them as 'bodysuits' while also perfectly impersonating their mannerisms. 
• Basil Karlo, a.k.a. Clayface, is briefly mentioned by Bullock.