Review: HBO’s The Penguin Buries a Thrilling Thriller in a Clichéd Mafia Story

The central characters in Cobb’s universe are his mother; a sex worker befriended by him named Eve (Carmen Ejogo); and a homeless boy named Victor (Rhenzy Feliz) who catches Cobb red-handed trying to rob him—and who volunteers to be a combination driver and lieutenant. Then there’s Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), the daughter of the slain mob boss, who until recently was serving a 10-year sentence in Arkham Asylum for a series of murders she’s accused of but didn’t commit. Sofia knows Cobb well; before she was locked up, he was her driver.

Unlike Tony, who had a lot of charm, Cobb is an unattractive protagonist. His greatest talent is figuring out in real time how best to manipulate people who find him despicable and pathetic. That’s a small change from the comics. This version of the Penguin is neither handsome nor brilliant. He’s not a resourceful inventor, or good with gadgets. It’s impossible to imagine him planning a heist. The Penguin is a primitive instrument here, whose greatest advantage is that he seems slower and less brutal than he is.

He can be a very hard worker, though. Farrell makes the character’s speech, like his walk, painful and a little labored. There’s not much levity to this show, so watching Cobb trudge through this bleak, hyper-referential mafia story starts to feel a little arduous, too. It’s tough at first, in part because the show’s pacing is awkward. The underbosses are too generic to be interesting, and the rivalries between Gotham City’s disparate elements of organized crime are as predictable as they are dull.

The biggest problem, though, is that Cobb isn’t compelling enough to warrant sustained interest in his backstory. This last point is key to the antihero formula: you have to psychologize the villain, lure the audience into unintentional complicity, and (optionally) blame society for creating him. I was a little queasy at the prospect of having to witness, via flashbacks, the process of yet another villain becoming bad. Cobb is no Tony Soprano. He’s just not likable or smart enough to inspire that kind of curiosity or suspense.

That’s okay, says the show. Which ultimately elevates the show The Penguin Above some of the more transactional, less-than-compelling violence is how definitively it establishes in the latter half of the season that Cobb is not—and cannot be—the show’s antihero we thought we were watching. That revelation is exciting to watch in its own way. I won’t go into details: suffice it to say that late-stage development is crucial and successful The Penguin as a juicy psychological thriller instead of a mediocre mafia story or a mediocre antihero drama.

The twist in question comes from The Penguin’s main antagonist (and the show’s most powerful weapon), Sofia Falcone. The mob heiress, who spent her time in the asylum pondering what she’d do when she got out, begins the series preparing to unleash hell on whoever framed her. She and Cobb spend several episodes circling each other, probing for weaknesses and a possible alliance. Their scenes together are electric. Milioti and Farrell have the opposite of chemistry; their sexless, burning antipathy is genuinely original and utterly fascinating to watch.

Milioti portrays Sofia as sharp-witted and creepily girlish. Her command of her unusual face—large eyes, small mouth—is nothing short of Olympian. Gamin and predatory, she can cycle through a series of micro-expressions with astonishing speed or sustain a single mood for so long that it goes from disturbingly intense to downright creepy. Farrell’s physical transformation into Cobb is, of course, remarkable; he and the makeup department deserve all the praise they’ll undoubtedly receive. But Milioti’s performance is the one that really sticks with you.

The Penguin is billed as a limited series, but the finale feels like it sets up a second season. If the show continues, it could be a problem that Cobb and Sofia’s relationship burns with an intensity that everyday mafia plots can’t quite match. Comic book adaptations usually try to smuggle in a few reflections on society, or injustice, or good and evil. The Penguin There are a few moral philosophies here and there (particularly Sofia’s plot), but the show feels more like a thesis about hate than about criminality. The show is weakest when it strays into sociological territory. The few attempts it makes to thematize inequality, for example, fail to convince, in part because the show’s engagement with the plight of the poor is almost as superficial as Cobb’s. Every character in Gotham City save for the Penguin, Sofia, and Cobb’s mother is paper-thin (that includes, unfortunately, Vic, Cobb’s cash-strapped sidekick who also serves as his main conversationalist).

If on the other hand The Penguin sticks to this one season, I’d call it interesting but imperfect. The finale feels like a cliffhanger, not a conclusion, and the show’s most daring experiment (in genre terms) is just getting off the ground. As executed, the show buries a gripping and genuinely inventive psychological duel in a leaden, paint-by-numbers mafia story.

Fortunately, for those of us who want to see more Milioti, there is hope – especially in this franchise – for future spin-offs.

The Penguin (eight episodes) is out on Max. The second episode will be streamed on September 29th and subsequent episodes will be streamed weekly on Sundays.