Batwoman
Season 3, Episode 5 - "A Lesson from Professor Pyg"
Luke Fox/Not-Batwing: Not much to do in this episode.
Alice: Interesting to see Sophie's reaction when Alice mentions Sophie's ex-husband. Clearly, its still a sore point for the ex-wife / ex-Crow.
She's so amusingly dismissive of Montoya with her, "Don't blame me for this repulsive affair, "and every other insult she fires off at everyone.
Wilder/Jada Jet/Marquis Jet: Wilder claims to be stopping the Wayne Enterprise bleeding, but the stocks are still plummeting. A rational mind would suggest Wilder hire a professional to handle the situation, since the former bartender/ex-con is in over her head...but the showrunners will never orbit the world of realistic behavior.
Lazlo Valentin, The Professor: Er...yeah, how does Jada run a stable company when she employs rubber-room candidates like this Metropolis resident? Its not long before he murders Zoey (the other dinner guest), and dons a mask made of a pig's head and grabs a butcher knife...
While Sophie snoops (with Luke's help), discovering a folded photo Jada warns Wilder to stay away from Marquis--or else. Wilder is not at all suspicious that the only way Jada would know Wilder has partnered with her brother, since that information could only come from one source...
At dinner, Valentin drugs Jada, Marquis, Wilder and Sophie, plotting to kill Marquis (as revenge against Jada) due his being fired, losing his financial standing and eventually losing his family. Wilder manages to stab Valentin, giving others enough time to drag themselves to safety (in Jada's panic room), while Valentin dons his pig mask and resumes his would-be kill mission. Marquis suffers from respiratory arrest and a partial seizure....
As Valentin builds a bomb in the kitchen, on Jada's orders, Wilder attempts to sneak into the basement to retrieve an Epinephrine-auto injector to save Marquis. only for Wilder to end up running for her life. In the panic room, Sophie accuses Jada of using the freeze tech on her sister, but Jada denies knowing anything about that...
In the basement, Wilder (now injured) struggles to grab the Epinephrine, just as Valentin hacks his way into the basement...and discovers Wilder succumbing to the paralytic. Before he can kill her, Jada shows up, wanting to exchange her life for her daughter's, giving Wilder enough tome to inject herself (SEE NOTES) and mount a fight against Valentin, which she loses, until a revived Marquis cartoon-ishly and repeatedly stabs him in the back, killing Valentin.
Later, Jada informs Wilder that Marquis is sick; when he was a child, the Joker used a sort of joy buzzer on Marquis, transforming him into a sociopath (SEE NOTES), hence his murdering Valentin. She also reveals she wanted to freeze Marquis in the hope of buying enough time to find a cure. Playing the mama card, she begs Wilder for help to stop Marquis before he kills again, and with that....
Once again....
"Will Wilder buy Jada's story and string nutjob Marquis along long enough to get seek a real partnership with Wilder?"
"Will Marquis play Jada and Wilder, submit himself to unqualified Mary for treatment, and kill someone else?" Is he just a directed missile for Wayne Enterprises?"
"Will Jada's threat to freeze her son be a ploy to distract the Jet family plans against Wayne Enterprises?"
Sophie: ..and Sophie's employed where...?
Well...gee. It just so convenient that Sophie was asked to go to the Jada get-together, so she can have some predictable "oh, isn't it love" moment with Wilder...while the world is falling apart around her. One note showrunner.
Black Glove society: M.I.A.
Mary: The whiner still behaves erratically due to the effects of Poison Ivy's thorn. Later, Mary is triggered (by Alice) to scream about how she saved Sophie's sister, making a pro-plant speech similar to the rambling of Poison Ivy. Further, she tires to psychoanalyze Alice about her medical issues being caused by some guilt for her life as a murderer, but begins to have more fits of her own, which Alice recognizes as the effect of Ivy's vines. Alice takes the dried-up ivy samples to Montoya as her ticket to an early parole, but Montoya notes that if the vines are dead, it means someone else has been infected (SEE NOTES)...
Montoya: Her introductory plot is divorced from sense (...yeah...); she's so concerned with the villain weapons being off of the street, yet needs a vigilante to find the items, which means she's incompetent. Without Alice giving Montoya the only edge--information--to use against the one person (or team) capable of finding said items, then Montoya's failing at her job. This does not make her look some hard, results-driven person, but an opportunist who is falling into a "win" by the pure chance.
...and now, Alice has easily picked Montoya's brain to see she had a past with Poison Ivy (sigh), so, in comes the info-dump of how Poison Ivy came to be (blaming Marc LeGrand), ultimately asking Batman to bury Poison Ivy (away from light and water) to contain her. Suddenly, Alice hallucinates another postcard from Jacob, which shouldn't happen, since she's been taking the proper meds, or so she believed she was taking it...
NOTES:
Epinephrine does not counter the effect of a paralytic in the way presented in this episode, and it certainly does not revive anyone enough to make them capable of fighting an unimpaired man.
Marquis' problems stemming from a Joker attack was..bullshit. Like the thankfully cancelled Supergirl, this series cannot create its own, unique villains, instead, it constantly referring or basing villains off of Batman's rogue's gallery, and will never be effectively handled.
Montoya believes someone else has been infected by Ivy's vines, which the audience is made to believe is Mary, and in the next episode, Alice suspects Mary of being responsible for a number of murders....
GRADE: C-.
