Recap of ‘The Penguin’, Episode 1: ‘After Hours’

The Penguin

After closing time

Season 1

Episode 1

Editor’s Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: MAX

Gotham City is underwater. For those who breathe the thin air high above its streets—people like Bruce Wayne and the Falcones—the aftermath is felt only in the power vacuum left by a fallen father. For many who live on the street level of Gotham, chaos reigns. For anyone who has spent any time in any version of this city, the succession of news reports and flashes of chaotic images that orient us in the maelstrom of urban decay will be all too familiar.

That’s because we’re in Matt Reeves’ The Batman Universe (recently rebranded as the “Batman Epic Crime Saga”), the latest in a long line of WB/DC projects securing a healthy series-length run on HBO/Max. Under the careful narrative guidance of showrunner Lauren LeFranc, The Penguin casts Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobb in a monstrous (but recognizably human) “takeover” arc that feels as comfortable alongside the HBO crime drama canon as it does in DC villain movies like Peacemaker or Harley Quinn.

We find Oswald Cobb exactly where we left him in Matt Reeves’ The Batmanlooking out over the city, situated in the no man’s land between worlds, the city between two cities. “Things are going to get worse before they get better,” says Batman’s voiceover at the end of the film, over the same shot of Oz that The Penguin. “And some will take the chance to take whatever they can.” Oz sees his opening in the Riddler’s attack on Gotham. A chance to take control of the city once and for all. His plan? Unclear. But those steely eyes speak volumes. If the early reviews of this show are to be believed, we’re in for one of the most memorable comic book villain performances in recent memory. And that will be thanks to Farrell’s eyes, which communicate a world of pain, rage and white-hot ambition behind a misshapen face of neo-Gothic proportions.

A week later, Oz breaks into the Iceberg Lounge in the middle of the night to dig what he can out of his late boss’s safe. He manages to hide a thick file of blackmail material before Alberto Falcone (Michael Zegen) shows up with a gun to the back of Oz’s head. But Oz keeps his cool and goes into full-on blowing-smoke-up-the-new-boss-ass mode. Al doesn’t quite buy it, but he keeps up the facade so he can toy with his newfound servant. At Oz’s suggestion, the two share a drink to celebrate Al’s newfound status as “the kingpin of Gotham.” Oz grimaces when Al tosses him a big old necklace from the family jewelry box; the gesture is downright humiliating. But in his arrogance, Al unveils a new plan to take Gotham’s drug trade far beyond Drops with a new shipment coming in and wonders out loud if he can live up to his father Carmine’s reputation.

Oz launches into a great little monologue about the old-school gangster who ran his neighborhood as a kid. Rex Calabrese was a benevolent underworld leader who earned respect by caring for the people in his care. “If someone in your family was sick, he’d get you a doctor. If he got low rent, he’d pay you the money,” Oz says. “He knew everybody’s name, too. Kept ’em all in his head.” When Calabrese died, they held a parade in his honor. “It wasn’t anything special, but it was a gesture,” Oz muses. “A sign of love. Of what he meant. Can you imagine that? To be remembered like that? Revered?”

The lesson goes unnoticed by Al, and his response costs him his life. “You want me to be a little asshole?” he asks before realizing it’s Oz’s dream. “Do you really think people would make a float out of your stupid face and march it down the street chanting your fucking name?”

Alberto Falcone falls back into his chair, dead and full of lead, and for a moment you can almost see a flash of Travis Bickle’s grin from Taxi driver … until Oz realizes what a shitshow he’s created for himself. Killing Falcone’s heir at the moment of succession isn’t exactly the cleanest way to usurp an empire. First thing’s first: get the body in the trunk. Another chance for Oz to extricate himself from a bad situation.

In the case of the teens he catches stealing his rims on the way out of the Iceberg Lounge, Oz sees Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), the anxious, stuttering kid who can’t get away, as a wondrous new sidekick opportunity. Here’s a kid from the same side of the tracks as Oz, hellbent on dying and hungry for a chance. If this kid wants to live, he’ll have to show some ambition on his new boss’s terms: make the powerful “feel big” by “making yourself small.”

Things are looking shaky at Falcone headquarters. Underboss Johnny Vitti and family enforcer Milos have called Oz to the family home to discuss his Drop operation. They are closing down his factory and moving all operations to Robbinsville. The police are circling and other gangs are closing in. Oz claims that giving up the factory means giving the keys to the kingdom to the Maronis. He pleads for a bigger role in the operations, saying he heard about a shipment coming in that will revolutionize the drug trade.

Meet Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), aka the Hangman—the family’s serial killer, recently released from Arkham Asylum. The moment Milioti’s eyes meet Farrell’s, a killer DC duo is born. And their impromptu lunch in the next scene makes for a great sparring of damaged but devious minds.

Vitti may have turned down Oz’s offer to oversee a new drug operation, but Sofia reels him in by appealing to their shared sense of outsider status. Then she flips the switch and lets Oz know that Alberto told her the night before that he was going to the Iceberg Lounge. And lo and behold, the next day Oz is presenting her brother’s secret new drug operation as his own. “So I’m going to ask you again,” Sofia says, “do you know where my brother is?”

Oz manages to redeem himself for now in the reaction, with the right mix of “he kept us both guessing, honey” and “I’m sure he’s just on another binge, he’ll show up soon.” Oz goes into emergency mode and takes the train out of the old neighborhood to pick up his mother (Deirdre O’Connell). From Victor’s perspective, we get a good sense of Oz’s family life as he looks at the photos on Francis’ living room wall. A single mother with three boys. Oz, it seems, is the youngest. Francis is the classic mob mother—a confidante and active shaper of her son and his underworld career. Oz didn’t shoot Alberto Falcone on impulse, she suggests, but on instinct. Now is his time to shine, to take control of the city. Running is the last thing he should do.

Course corrected, Oz has another sinister heart-to-heart with Victor at the station. “The world wasn’t built for guys like us,” he says. “That’s why we have to take what we decide is ours. Because no one’s going to give it to us. Not without a fight.”

With Victor’s loyalty secured, Oz heads to Blackgate Penitentiary to chat with the incarcerated Salvatore Maroni (Clancy Brown) and begin his takeover plan in earnest. He proposes having Maroni’s crew rob the Drops operation with his information—he plays the victim, they split the payoff. Sal says “fuck off” for now, but Oz has Sal’s old ring with him—the one Carmine wore as a constant “fuck you” to Sal from prison, and a show of power from the top dog in town. Maybe there’s more to Oz than Salvatore thinks.

Oz heads back to his cabin to find Sofia and a couple of henchmen waiting for him. They spot his purple (sorry, I think it’s “plum”) car right away and manage to knock him out and hold him captive (after a little scuffle in the driver’s seat and a morbidly hilarious confrontation with a school bus). He wakes up naked in the Falcone’s greenhouse, Sofia standing over him. Just when it looks like Oz is running out of cards to play and Sofia is about to have her henchman rip Oz’s arm off with a creepy piece of wire, a car with Alberto’s body in the trunk comes through the front yard and crashes into a garden statue. Alberto’s pinky finger is gone, as is Salvatore Maroni’s ring, and “PAYBACK” is scratched into the hood. Oz laughs in relief — now that Sal has the ring, it looks like Sal ordered Alberto’s murder. Victor should have only left Alberto’s head in the trunk, but he did it anyway.

And with that, the plan to take the city is set in motion: all you have to do is stroke a few more egos, endure a little more brutality, and then give it all back tenfold to reap a drug lord’s reward.

• Well, guess what, your modest summary of a crime series is also a kind of “real head himself” in the Batman department. The old Dark Knight saga has been my main superhero bag for as long as I watch Saturday morning cartoons (firmly in the Batman: The Animated Series generation), watching superhero movies and reading comics (from the New 52 era to Tim Sale’s Long Halloween And Dark Victory runs from where The Penguin takes direct inspiration). All this to say that I am a Batman fan, but far from precious about any particular incarnation or approach to the character. My main beat will be whether The Penguin makes an equally compelling neo-Gothic crime series as Matt Reeves’ The Batman was a moody, emotionalDirty Harry refraction of the ever-reinterpreted “Batman origin story.”

• As it stands, there won’t be much more in the way of Bruce Wayne/the Batman name or appearance in this show. That’s fine. We’ll see old Battinson soon and I don’t know what his addition to the story would bring. The villain is kind of the main character of every good Batman story (from such diverse corners of the Batman universe as the Adam West TV series to Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy).

• The Sopranos comparisons will inevitably abound, but from my point of view most of them will prove merely superficial and probably unnecessarily unflattering to me. The Penguin. It’s hard to compete with one of the most legendary shows of all time, even if only by way of an HBO-adjacent brand association. Sure, showrunner Lauren LeFranc’s “making of a monster” construction of the character, based on the psychological trauma of the underprivileged street kid-turned-hardened-criminal archetype, covers similar thematic ground. But it also all sits as firmly in the tradition of the Batman rogues gallery as it does a Tony Soprano or Vito Corleone story.