The Fantasy Review’s review of The Penguin, season 1, episode 1, After Hours.
A spoiler-free review of The Penguin, season 1, episode 1, is easy: this is one of the best DC projects of all time, even from the first episode alone. You can tell, immediately, that The Penguin is going to be something special.
Colin Farrell’s performance as the Penguin is comparable to Heath Ledger’s Joker. Many of us will never be able to see another version of this character done on live-action projects without comparing it to Farrell ever again.
Right, on to the spoilers.
Spoiler-Filled Review of The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 1
Now He’s in the Shit
It has only been one week since the events of The Batman (2022). Carmine Falcone, Kingpin of Gotham’s underground, is dead and there is a power vacuum. His son, Alberto Falcone, turns up at the Penguin’s club for some personal items.
This is an incredible opening sequence. They set the scene perfectly with the Penguin brooding out of the window onto the city, with news clips playing in the background, telling us everything we need to know.
Oz gets Alberto (an addict) drunk and pushes him, gently, for information. Knowledge is power, after all. We learn that Alberto has a new drug in the pipeline, with a shipment coming in soon, but no one else knows about it. You can’t tell me that this won’t be important later.
During their conversation, we get the first major characterisation for Oz Cobb (why is he called that? Anyway…) in his recounting of a personal story. He talks about a man from his home community that everyone respected and admired, someone who went out of their way to help the people of that community. When he died, the people there threw him a parade.
Oz says, “Can you imagine? To be remembered like that? Revered?” This tells us a hell of a lot about his character and motivations right at the start of the first episode. This is a man who wants to earn the respect of the people around him, but he also has no respect for those who have power but have never earned it (by his logic).
Just when I got over my shock at Alberto even being in this show, that idiot goes and responds to this story by calling the dead man “a little bitch” and he laughs at Oz. Oops. Of course, he gets killed immediately.
If you are going to set a tone and make some narrative promises, this is how you do it.
The Penguin laughs, then realises he’s in the shit.
No Ambition
Oz is clearly insane.
As he goes to dispose of Alberto Falcone, he sees a group of teenagers trying to steal the rims off his car and he shoots at them, damaging said car, and bringing a lot of attention to himself – right after he killed someone and still hasn’t gotten rid of the body. He’s supposed to be a criminal genius!
Farrell’s performance shines through. Honestly, just him shouting “hey!” at the teenagers made me smile. That voice, his mannerisms, everything is just perfect.
He holds a gun at one of the teenagers who failed to escape but doesn’t kill the kid when he notices he has a stammer. We see Oz empathise with the kid – called Victor Aguilar – and he recruits him for a spot of corpse disposal.
There is a great introduction to the character dynamic between Oz and Victor. Cobb’s character is fascinating and mysterious. We have hints of motivations – from symbolic actions like taking Salvatore’s from Alberto, but also verbal, like the man he admired in his neighbourhood as a kid,
Also, his reaction to Victor’s stammer and the anger at the teenager for having “no ambition.” Oz has risen so far and doesn’t understand people worse off than him not thinking big. We later see Oz massage his bad foot. Someone coping with that kind of pain and discomfort, in this world… it makes sense he wants to prove a point to people.
A Song and Dance
The setting looks amazing! They have repeated their amazing work bringing Gotham to life from The Batman (2022) movie. The camera panning from the nice bit of the city down to the dirtier, run-down part of Gotham was gorgeous.
Oz calls the riddler “a fucking madman” in reference to the chaos and destruction he caused. This is yet another indication of what Oz wants: order, and a status quo where he is at the top.
We are taken to the drug warehouse where we learn things are a bit complicated on the street-level. Not much happens here except a hint at other crews encroaching slightly on their territory, now that Carmine is dead.
Oz is called into the Falcone mansion. He settles Victor’s nerves about it all, saying “It’s all a song and dance. Nine times out of ten, these top tier guys wanna meet face to face to feel big, so I make myself small, they feel better about themselves, and I get to go back to work.”
The dialogue, the tone, the atmosphere… Everything about this show so far is absolutely what every fan wants from a Penguin story!
Inside, Oz has a meeting with Johnny and Milos who are shutting Cobb’s drug operation down and moving it to Robbinsville. When he says they can’t move his operation they say it is “our” operation, so taking everything from him, making him feel small, insignificant. “You work for the family. Have you got that?”
When Oz fucks all these people up, eventually, it is going to be so satisfying! This is how you make an audience root for a guy who is clearly a horrible, twisted person. You make them punish people who are worse.
Oz offers to “revolutionise” the drug business – referring to Alberto’s new drug he was talking about – hoping that this might buy him some time or good will. Oops, because then Sofia Falcone, Alberto’s sister, walks in.
Sofia asks about her brother. She’s recently been released from Arkham. Cristin Milioti gives an amazing performance immediately. Her character gives off a presence that demands respect from those around her, but also shows a little crazy hiding behind her eyes.
Dinner for Two
Sofia and Oz go for a “catch up” over dinner. She clearly scares the shit out of him.
I had a few thoughts and questions running through my head while watching this scene. They clearly know each other pretty well from before she went to Arkham. She has killed a lot of people, with newspapers calling her “The Hangman.” How exactly is she free from prison?
This scene with Sofia was amazing. She was so certain Oz knew what happened to her brother, and from the look on her face, it looks like she now knows Oz has killed Alberto, but she’s pretending that she doesn’t know.
There are so many layers to all this it is dizzying and exquisite. To be able to write a scene like this, and then have two actors who deliver the lines perfectly, is an amazing thing.
Mama Raised Me Good
Rather than going into action scenes, or anything else you would get in an MCU project, we instead get more characterisation. THANK YOU!
Oz and Victor travel by train, then car to meet Cobb’s mum. There is a brief scene on the train where there are two obviously empty disabled seats, but Oz refuses to sit on them, barely acknowledging them. Characterisation without words – this is how you show your audience what is going on in a character’s head without a load of clunky dialogue.
Also on the train, we see someone sharing a QR code on a piece of paper “scan the code. See Gotham’s true face.” This feels like it is something to do with the Riddler? I’m looking forward to reading endless theories about it online and eventually seeing it become important in the show later.
When we get into Oz’s car, 9 to 5 by Dolly Parton blasts from the speakers and Oz quickly ejects the CD. The look on Victor’s face! I love the humour in this show.
When we get to Cobb’s mum’s house, it is clear she is ill. She has to take pills for her mental health, and I think she sometimes believes her sons are alive, or in the house? I don’t know really, they were subtle about it and moved on quickly.
Oz wants to take her away from the city, run away, but she refuses and tells him to tell her everything. So, he tells her he is worried Sofia knows he killed Alberto, or she will, and that will put her in danger.
Oz then tells her he killed Alberto because he laughed at him. She’s weirdly proud of him. You can start to see where he gets some of his personality traits from.
“You’re so close to having everything you ever wanted, everything you deserve. You wanna run? You wanna hide? No. This city is meant to be yours, sweetheart. What are you gonna do to get it?”
And a plan begins to form in Oz’s mind. Outside, he convinces Victor to help him by talking about what I mentioned before. Instead of thinking small, stealing things to sell for a quick buck, he could think big and live big, never wanting for anything ever again “in a mansion,” with “maids and butlers and shit.”
“They don’t know what they got because they’ve always had it.”
“The world wasn’t built for guys like us. That’s why we gotta take whatever we decide is ours…”
The Penguin is already so quotable, and we are only at episode 1!
The Plan Falls into Place
The plan begins at Blackgate Penitentiary, Gotham’s prison for criminals who are not insane. Oz meets Salvatore, the old King of the underworld before Carmine took his crown. He gives Sal his old ring back, and makes him an offer to work together, but the old Kingpin refuses.
After, Sofia and a group of thugs are outside Oz’s place (I think it’s his place). She sees him in his car and he drives off quickly. We are reminded again of his disadvantage in this world when he hits a dead end but can’t just get out and run.
He is inventive, though, hiding in the boot, but leaving a door open so it looks like he tried to run. However, he is found and captured anyway.
Sofia has Oz tied to a chair, naked. She has a witness from the other night – one of the teenagers trying to steal the rims off his car – and questions him about it.
Penguin says the teenager is lying and Sofia kills the boy. “That’s what you wanted, right?” she says, “to have my reputation precede me?”
“You are so good at talking your way out of things. Even at the cost of someone else’s life. Especially then. Right?”
I wonder if this isn’t just a general stab at his personality but a reference to something she hates him for? Something that he did in their past.
Oz’s torture is paused when Alberto’s car is driven into the side of the Falcone mansion, with a brick on the accelerator, and Alberto’s corpse in the boot. So, that was what Victor was busy doing!
The word “payback” is scrawled on the inside of the hood of the boot. Oz is clearly pinning the murder on someone, but who? Almost definitely Salvatore, as Alberto’s little finger is cut off, and Penguin just gave the ring back to Salvatore in the prison.
It’s cool to see all the pieces of Oz’s initial plan come together in a satisfying way. Now he just needs to move on to the next stage of the plan.
The Next Stage
In the final scene of The Penguin, season 1, episode 1, Oz and Victor have slush puppies at the side of a road. Oz’s plan is to be first at the shipment of the new drugs and take control through selling that on the streets, pitting the Maronis and the Falcones against each other, hoping they are too busy dealing with each other to bother much with him.
They underestimate him at his peril. But Salvatore knows that Penguin is slippery, so I can see him being careful of Oz, and Sofia will never trust him either.
I am so hyped for the rest of this show! The Penguin might just be the best TV show of 2024.
