The Penguin Series-Premiere Recap: Wrong Guy, Wrong Night

The Penguin
After Hours
Season 1 Episode 1
Editor’s Rating ★★★★

Gotham City is underwater. For those who breathe the rarified air high above her streets — folks like Bruce Wayne and the Falcones — the aftermath is only felt in the power vacuum left behind by a fallen father. For the many who live on Gotham’s street level, chaos reigns. To anyone who’s spent any amount of time in any version of this city, the succession of news voices and flashes of chaotic footage 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 the “Batman Epic Crime Saga“), the latest in a long line of WB/DC projects to secure a healthy series-length expansion on HBO/Max. Under the careful narrative direction of showrunner Lauren LeFranc, The Penguin casts Colin Farrell’s Oswald Cobb in a monstrous (but recognizably human) “rise to power” arch that feels as comfortable presented alongside the HBO crime-drama canon as it does such DC villain-centered fare as Peacemaker or Harley Quinn.

We find Oswald Cobb exactly where we left him in Matt Reeves’ The Batman, looking out over the city, perched in the no man’s land between worlds, the city between two cities. “Things will get worse before they get better,” says Batman’s voiceover at the end of the film, over the same shot of Oz that opens The Penguin. “And some will seize the chance to grab everything they can.” Oz sees his opening through 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 say volumes. If early reviews of this show are to be believed, we’re in for one of the most memorable comic-book villain performances of recent memory. And it’ll be thanks to Farrell’s eyes communicating a world of hurt, rage, and piping-hot ambition behind a disfigured face of neo-gothic proportions.

One week later, Oz breaks into the Iceberg Lounge in the dead of night to dig up what he can from his departed boss’s safe. He manages to conceal 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, goes into blow-smoke-up-the-new-boss’s-ass mode. Al isn’t totally buying it, but he lets the facade continue so he can toy with his newly acquired minion. At Oz’s suggestion, the two share a drink to celebrate Al’s newly acquired status as the “kingpin of Gotham.” Oz winces when Al throws him a big old necklace from the family jewel case; the gesture is completely demeaning. But in his hubris, Al reveals a new plan to take the Gotham drug trade way past Drops with a new shipment coming in and wonders aloud whether he’ll be able to live up to his father Carmine’s reputation. 

Oz pops off with a great little monologue about the old-school gangster who used to run his neighborhood as a kid. Rex Calabrese was a benevolent underworld leader who garnered respect by looking out for the people under his wing. “If someone in your family was sick, he’d find you a doctor. Short on rent, front you the cash,” Oz says. “Knew everyone’s names too. Kept ‘em all in his head.” When Calabrese died, they threw a parade in his honor. “It wasn’t fancy but it was a gesture,” reminisces Oz. “A show of love. Of what he meant. Can you imagine? To be remembered like that? Revered?” 

The lesson goes right past Al, and his response costs him his life. “You want me to be like some small-time asshole?” he asks before realizing it’s Oz’s dream. “You really think people would make a float of your dumb face and march it down the street chanting your goddamned name?” 

Alberto Falcone falls back in his chair, dead and full of lead, and for a moment, you can almost see a flash of Travis Bickle’s smirk from Taxi Driver … until Oz realizes the shitshow he’s created for himself. Killing the heir of the Falcone throne right at the moment of succession is hardly the cleanest way to usurp an empire. First thing first: get the body in the trunk. Already another opportunity for Oz to improv his way out of a tight spot.

In the case of the teenagers he finds stealing his rims on his way out of the Iceberg Lounge, Oz sees Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), the scared, stammering kid who doesn’t get away, as a miraculous new sidekick opportunity. Here’s a kid from the same side of the tracks as Oz, sacred to die and hungry for a chance. If this kid wants to live, he will have to show some ambition on his new boss’s terms: make the powerful “feel big” by “making yourself small.” 

Things are looking a little shaky at Falcone headquarters. Underboss Johnny Vitti and family enforcer Milos have called Oz to the family mansion to discuss his Drop operation. They’re shutting down his plant and moving all operations to Robbinsville. The police are circling and other gangs are encroaching. Oz argues that giving up the plant is handing the kingdom’s keys to the Maronis. He makes his case for a bigger role in operations by saying he got word of a shipment coming in that will revolutionize the drug business. 

Enter Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), a.k.a. the Hangman — the family’s resident serial killer newly released from Arkham Asylum. The second Milioti’s eyes meet Farrell’s, a great DC duo is born. And their impromptu lunch in the next scene makes for a stellar sparring of damaged but cunning wits. 

Vitti may have ignored Oz’s offer to oversee a new drug operation, but Sofia reels him in with an appeal to their shared sense of outsider status. Then she flips the switch and lets Oz know Alberto told her he was going to the Iceberg Lounge the night before. Lo and behold, the next day, Oz pitches 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 save himself in the response, for now, with the right mix of “he kept us both in the dark, sweetheart” and “I’m sure he’s just on another bender, he’ll turn up soon.” Oz goes into emergency-plan mode and takes the train out of the old neighborhood to pick up his mom (Deirdre O’Connell). Through Victor’s perspective, we get a good look at Oz’s family life as he gazes at the pictures on the wall of Francis’ living room. A single mother with three boys. Looks like Oz is the youngest. Francis is your classic mafia mom — a confidant and active molder of her son and his underworld career. Oz didn’t shoot Alberto Falcone out of impulse, she suggests, but instinct. Now’s 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 back at the station. “The world wasn’t built for guys like us,” he says. “That’s why we gotta take whatever we decide is ours. ‘Cause no one’s gonna give it to us. Not without a fight.” 

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

Oz heads back to his pad to find Sofia and some henchmen waiting for him. They spot his purple (sorry, I guess it’s “plum”) car straight away and manage to knock him out and hold him captive (after a little brawl in the driver’s seat and morbidly hilarious confrontation with a school bus). He wakes up naked in the Falcone’s greenhouse, Sofia standing over him. Just as it seems like Oz is out of cards to play and Sofia is going to have her goon rip Oz’s arm off with a scary wire, a car with Alberto’s corpse in the trunk comes crashing through the front lawn and into a garden statue. Alberto’s pinky is missing, as is Salvatore Maroni’s ring, and “PAYBACK” is scratched underneath the hood. Oz laughs in relief — now that Sal has the ring, it looks like Sal ordered a hit on Alberto. Victor was supposed to leave only Alberto’s head in the trunk, but he did well, nevertheless. 

And with that, the plot to take the city is in motion: one need only stroke a few more egos, take a little more cruelty, then dish it all back out tenfold and reap a kingpin’s reward. 

Under the Plum Hood

• Well, what do you know, your humble crime-show recapper is also something of a “real head himself” in the Batman department. The old Dark Knight saga has been my main superhero bag as long as I’ve been watching 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 which The Penguin takes direct inspiration). This is all to say I’m 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 as compelling a neo-gothic crime series as Matt Reeves’ The Batman was a moody, emo-Dirty Harry refraction of the ever-reinterpreted “Batman origin story.”

• From the looks of things, there won’t be much more in name or appearance of Bruce Wayne/the Batman on this show. That’s just fine. We’ll see old Battinson soon enough and I don’t know what his inclusion would bring to the story. The villain is sort of the protagonist of every good Batman story anyway (from such disparate 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 where I’m sitting, most of those will prove only skin-deep and probably unnecessarily unflattering for The Penguin. It is hard to compete with one of the most legendary shows of all time, even if only by an HBO-adjacent brand association. Sure, showrunner Lauren LeFranc’s “making of a monster” construction of the character, drawn from the psychological trauma of the underprivileged street kid-turned-hardened criminal archetype, occupies some similar thematic territory. But it’s also all as firmly in the tradition of the Batman rogues gallery as it is a Tony Soprano or Vito Corleone story.