Jeff Dunham and his ventriloquist puppets

Previously

…Walter’s jaw dropped, a rare sight. Peanut let out a small, excited squeak. Achmed, for the first time in his undead existence, felt a flicker of something akin to optimism. The backstage tension hadn’t dissipated, but it had transformed. It was no longer the tension of rebellion, but the quiet hum of anticipation. The old guard, the grumpy old man and the dead terrorist, had found common ground. And Jeff, the master ventriloquist, was about to discover that sometimes, the puppets weren’t just speaking his words. They were speaking their own. And that, he suspected, was where the real comedy lay.