Gotham S5 Ep. 8 Quick Thoughts

"Nothing's Shocking"

This week’s episode of Gotham was the perfect example of what a typical “Gotham mixed bag of treats” entry looks like. You have 2 main plot points battling with each other tonally and screen time-wise as opposed to spreading them out throughout the season to flesh them out better individually. Sadly, I do understand why this was done considering this season's shorter time span meaning certain narrative components will either be rushed over, sidelined, or squeezed together somewhere. One of these being an absolutely compelling, dramatically engaging, and utterly twisted story surrounding a new villain known as Jane Doe (deep cut from the comics) who has a tragic connection to Harvey’s past as well as ties to Hugo Strange’s Arkham experiments. Honestly, this story should have had its own episode considering how well thought out and executed the premise was.

Side Note: The performances during this particular story were fantastic

The Jane Doe story perfectly reminds the audience of Bullock’s checkered past on the police force refreshingly putting him in the spotlight with for a villain arc. We see one of his biggest regrets as a once shady rookie cop come back to haunt him in the form of a girl who was sent to Arkham due to a coverup that he aided in now returning as a mentally damaged shape shifting murderer. Sounds insane? Trust me, strangely enough, the character development and narrative is really well put together and almost plays out like one of those eerie yet tear jerking episodes of the classic 90's Batman: The Animated Series. You have a villain that first comes across as a generic horror movie monster only to then surprise the audience with an intriguing, tragic, and genuinely sympathetic origin story. Add on a heart string yanking conclusion with our hero and you have yourself a praiseworthy piece of television. 

This my fellow comic book fans. This is what a quality Batman prequel show looks and feels like. THIS is the side of Gotham that I wished took over more.

However, you also have The Ventriloquist plot, which for me, was a bit of a mixed bag in of itself. I’ve always wanted to see this character (who I was first introduced to during the 90’s Batman animated series) adapted to live action so you can imagine my happy surprise when he showed up out of the blue here. So, did Gotham do the character justice? Well, they definitely succeeded with the overall character presentation and casting choice. They nailed all of the essentials of The Ventriloquist: the classic timid older gentleman with glasses carrying and interacting with a stereotypical mob boss persona dummy. I also thought that it was brilliant for them to take an already established yet minor background character from the previous season (Arthur Penn/Penguin’s assistant) and transform him into the C-List Batman villain. I'll be very curious to know how long they actually planned this character transition.

Unfortunately, due to the very serious horror-drama tone being displayed with the Jane Doe-Bullock story, the fact that they took a more cartoonish route with The Ventriloquist subplot simply didn’t fit for me. Don’t get me wrong; I did enjoy seeing this character finally make his live action debut, but this brief villain introduction would’ve been far better suited either during Season 4 or simply in another episode. Every time the episode shifted between the deeply twisted and gut punching story of Jane Doe to an over the top dummy dressed like a 1930's gangster, I felt I needed to abruptly adjust my mindset. As I mentioned this is typical Gotham programming as they've struggled with tonal shifting in previous seasons but have gotten better overtime. I see this as only a slight hiccup.

...oh and Bruce and Alfred encounters a mutated man in the sewers that may or may not be a reference to Killer Croc...

Bonus Content/Easter Eggs

1. Clayface Namedrop/Hugo Strange's Experiments

During the 2nd half of Season 3 followed by the entirety of Season 4, one of my smaller but frequent nitpicks was the bizarre absence of Gotham's metahuman escapees. We had this massive build up of Hugo Strange's experiments running rampant in the streets of Gotham and then...silence. It's great to see not only this plot point return in some form with the Jane Doe character's debut but also the namedrop of Basil Karlo (AKA Clayface) given by Bullock. Funny enough, I listed him as one of the villains that Gotham may have forgotten. Happy to see that I was wrong.

2. The production values continue to impress me on this show.

Episode Rating: 9/10