FOX's Gotham season 5, episode 8 recap: Nothing's Shocking

Gotham returned to its wacky roots tonight with an episode that can best be described as Cold Case meets Hannibal Lecter meets Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

When a woman who can become anyone’s doppelgänger (just by touching them) goes on a killing spree, a man driven mad by toxic chemicals goes on a cannibalistic killing spree and a gun-toting puppet tries to kill even just one person, you know it’s going to be a good episode of Gotham. Here’s a look at what went down in the aptly titled, “Nothing’s Shocking.”

Cold Case

When two ex-GCPD cops, Boggs and Lewis, get their carotids slashed at The Sirens Clubs, and Harvey’s wheelchair-bound ex-parter Dix is identified as the prime suspect, Harvey and Jim hop on the case. Unlike Harvey, Jim is reluctant to take Dix at his word when he denies doing the deed. But, soon enough, Jim doesn’t have to.

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Dix shows up Dix’s apartment to kill Dix. Trippy, right? As it turns out, the real assailant is wearing a Dix “mask,” seemingly made of real human skin. Harvey rips it off, and the person flees in horror.

The only thing tying Boggs, Lewis, Dix, and Harvey together was a murder case they worked back in the day. Despite a lack of physical evidence, a woman named Victoria was convicted of murdering her husband. It was the testimony of Victoria’s seven-year-old daughter, Jane, that put her away.

Jim benches Harvey and brings a team to Jane’s childhood home. When a uni gets attacked, he realizes that Jane is the person they’re looking for. But she’s a little hard to keep tabs on. At the house, she turned into a body double of the uni by touching his forehead and almost got away, until Jim spotted the real uni’s body.

In the GCPD’s interrogation room, she’s back in her own form and wearing a white mask she refuses to take off. Jim says he knows she had a rough childhood and eventually ended up in Arkham. Jane then reveals that Dr. Strange experimented on her and basically turned her into a human chameleon. However, she insists that it was Harvey, who’s listening in, and Co. who really screwed her up.

Harvey proceeds to choke out Dix in the locker room, except it’s not Harvey. Jane Doe, as she prefers to call herself, is on the loose again. Right after Jim locks down the precinct, two Barbaras show up. Both are adamant that they’re the real Babs, but the jig is up when Jim asks them where he met Barbara.

Jane pulls a gun on Barbara, but Barbara is hardly intimidated. She demands that Jim shoot Jane, but when he refuses for fear of missing, she takes matters into her own hands and breaks free by elbowing Jane.

Jane flees, and Harvey soon finds her back at the house. He apologizes for not protecting her, but it’s too late. Jane, who claims he “destroyed her soul,” isn’t going to surrender. She wants to kill him or for him to shoot her; and in the end, she gets her wish. After revealing her true face, which is surprisingly not disfigured, Jane points her gun at Harvey again, and he shoots her twice in the chest.

Back in Jim’s office, Harvey finally comes clean. Shortly after being arrested, Victoria had admitted to the crime, but then she’d recanted. With no physical evidence to rely on, Harvey and Co. had leaned on Jane and forced her to implicate her mother.

Harvey had only learned later that the husband had abused both Victoria and Jane. However, he had felt that something was wrong at the time. The others had told him to keep quiet, and he hadn’t pressed the issue. Over the years, his guilt faded, until he met Jim and started to turn over a new leaf.

Hannibal Lecter

A severely injured woman turns to Bruce and Alfred for help finding her husband, Hank, who’s trapped in a network of tunnels under Gotham with a mysterious predator. Bruce wants to loop in Jim, but Alfred insists that Jim is busy enough and that the two of them can handle it.

However, neither of them are quite prepared for what they discover in the tunnels. First, they find a dismembered arm, which Alfred determines must have been bitten off of someone. Then, Hank quite literally runs into them. He’s fleeing the predator, who has killed everyone else in the tunnels. Naturally, the predator comes out nowhere, gets the better of Bruce and drags away Hank away.

Fortunately, Bruce and Alfred are more successful in round two against the predator, who turns out to be a man and a victim of the chemical spill. Bruce injures the man just enough to stop him from killing Alfred and then has to stop Alfred from killing the man.

At the hospital, Hank is reunited with his wife, and Bruce has a heart-to-heart with Alfred. He knows that Alfred blames himself for the destruction of Wayne Manor. Alfred laments that he wasn’t strong enough to fight Jeremiah’s mind control, but Bruce counters that “part of being a family is that we can be strong for each other.” (Aww!)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

So remember Mr. Penn, Penguin’s dearly departed accountant? Surprise! He’s alive, and he’s out for revenge… sort of. Specifically, his puppet (or dummy) “Mr. Scarface” is.

Penn (Gotham‘s version of The Ventriloquist) claims that he bears no ill will toward Penguin and that he’d wanted to reunite with Penguin earlier. Scarface hadn’t let him. Oswald is ready to die from laughter until Scarface “forces” Penn to shoot the bodyguard Penguin hired.

Penn reveals that after getting shot in Haven, he woke up in the GCPD morgue and patched himself up. He then holed up in a magic shop and confided in Scarface about how Penguin had “used him.” Scarface had subsequently made it his mission to steal Penguin’s treasure and become “the boss of Gotham.”

To buy some time, Ed sides with Scarface and calls out Penguin for mistreating Penn. Penguin, however, argues that Scarface is also manipulating Penn. At least, he never forced Penn to kill anyone. Penguin admits he was a bad friend, but he insists that he did value, Penn.

The tactic doesn’t work, though, and Scarface starts going off on Penguin. And then, suddenly, it’s Penn (in his natural voice) who’s yelling at Penguin, choking him out and pointing a gun at him. When Penguin manages to get his hands on the gun, he hilariously ends up shooting off Scarface’s head.

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Penn immediately backs off and thanks to Penguin for freeing him from Scarface. And then Penn gets shot in the head… from behind. Ed points out to a shocked and furious Penguin that 1) he and Penguin work well as partners because they balance each other out and 2) Penn/Scarface needed to be stopped. Penguin realizes he’s right, and the two laugh off the double murder they just committed.

What do think of season five so far? Do you think Ed and Penguin’s partnership will last? Let us know in the comments section below.

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Gotham season 5, episode 8 recap: Nothing’s Shocking

By Catherine Palmer | Mar 1, 2019

Gotham returned to its wacky roots tonight with an episode that can best be described as Cold Case meets Hannibal Lecter meets Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Cold Case

More from FOX

Hannibal Lecter

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde