“What's the matter, Penguin? Maybe the cream of society’s
curdled, huh?”Upon his latest release from prison, The Penguin (Paul Williams) finds himself alone, dogged by a Dark Knight who mistrusts his intentions. A call from socialite Veronica Vreeland (Marilu Henner) sets Penguin on a path to reform and perhaps true love, but poor Penguin remains unaware of Veronica’s true intentions – to use Penguin as an accessory to spice up her dimming importance in Gotham’s social scene.
“Birds of a Feather” is this amazingly unsettling blend of tragedy and comedy that behaves like something very unique on Batman: The Animated Series. We had high tragedy in “Heart of Ice” and laugh-out-loud comedy as recently as last week with “Almost Got ’Im,” but to blend the two on a level that feels self-consciously operatic isn’t something the show does very often. We’ll see a similar plotline further down the line in “Riddler’s Reform,” but where that episode delves into Riddler’s psyche, this one asks pointed questions about how precisely how monstrous Penguin can be compared to the suave sociopaths jousting for party-crowd superiority.
For being an episode not written by Paul Dini, the script is surprisingly punchy. There are several lines in this episode that catch one off guard, like the afore-quoted prison guard’s quip to The Penguin. Veronica’s plot is hatched when her friend Pierce – think a droll, effete Jimmy Stewart – recalls with an impeccable deadpan, “Remember when the Joker crashed Muffy Van Alten’s last affair? He robbed us blind, but hey, what a giggle.” Then there’s Penguin himself, who ascends the ladder of metafiction amid the episode’s fiery climax astride a giant flaming dragon to intone, “And who says opera has to be boring?” If opera were like this, it might have a less patrician reputation.
You’ll see below that I list The Penguin as the villain of this episode, but it’s equally viable to say that Veronica Vreeland is the episode’s real antagonist. The writers of this episode do a remarkably fearless job portraying a human being as vile as Veronica and yet inescapably human; indeed, it does appear that Veronica grows disgusted with her own role in treating Penguin like a social prop, particularly when it seems Penguin really does have feelings for her. The episode allows us to fill in whether Veronica’s change of heart is genuine or merely convenient, but it’s not afraid to let us know how contemptible her plan is and how black her soul must at least initially be. (Her spineless friend Pierce comes off even worse, though coding him as gay seems a bridge too far these twenty years later.)
Meanwhile, Paul Williams turns in a killer performance as Penguin. Even if his episodes haven't been the best, he’s done well to play the pseudo-sophisticate in episodes past, winding his way around impressive polysyllabic tongue twisters and bird puns, but here he’s given the opportunity to humanize Penguin. We see that Penguin’s reputation is important to him, that his image matters, but we also get to glimpse some of the acute loneliness the bird-man feels. The closest thing he has to a friend in this episode is Batman, which isn’t saying much; Batman comes around to believing in Penguin’s efforts to reform, but let’s not forget this episode largely consists of Batman stalking Penguin to see if he’ll slip up. The tragedy of The Penguin, then, is that no one gets past seeing him as a monster; no one looks at the soul of The Penguin. (Sidebar: for a twisted take on this episode, seek out Joker’s Asylum: The Penguin, a tale in which Penguin’s own paranoia prevents him from falling in love; the standout sequence is a chilling page in which Penguin presumes he’s being laughed at and proceeds systematically to destroy the laugher’s life.)
This idea of a lovelorn lonely Penguin has caught on in recent years; you’ve seen it on Gotham, for one, but it’s a staple Penguin story (just like the one where he runs for mayor, also late of Gotham) because it accesses something true and unique about the core of the character. And if every Bat-villain is a dark reflection of Batman himself, it’s because Batman is a monstrous perversion of Bruce Wayne that could destroy his life if he lets it. At Batman’s core, though, is a good man; Penguin defaults to a monster with delusions of sophistication and is all too happy to revenge himself on Gotham. He is, in a sense, Shylock with an exploding umbrella, and Veronica is the spitting image of Venice itself.
Writers: Chuck Menville and Brynne Stephens
Director: Frank Paur
Villain: The Penguin (Paul Williams)
Next episode: “What Is Reality?”, in which The Riddler mishears the Olivia Newton-John lyric as “Let’s get digital / digital.”
🦇For the full list of Batman: The Animated Series reviews, click here.🦇
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