The Fantasy Review’s review of The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 3, Bliss.
This review of The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 3 is full of spoilers because how am I supposed to talk about this show without quoting it?!
Spoiler-filled Recap & Review of The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 3
A Better Life Than This
The first thing we see in The Penguin, season 1, episode 3 are leaflets advertising a candidate, Bella Real for mayor with the words, “VOTE FOR REAL CHANGE.”
Vic meets a girl he kisses before, promising to see her soon. He then heads home and it turns out that he has a lovely family. The following conversation with his father is a fascinating aspect of his character which explains why he is so willing to help Oz – despite initially being forced to.
Vic wants “a better life” than he has, watching his parents struggling with cash, and he is frustrated his father won’t do more to earn more. This drive will be the motivation that keeps Vic working for Oz, as achieving Oz’s goal will ultimately lead to Vic getting what he wants too.
Vic meets up with his friends on the roof – people his father disapproves of because some have family links to crime. Mainly Calvin, and it turns out that his father was right.
Calvin’s cousin, Squid, crashes the party. Graciela and Vic walk away from them and she talks about wanting to get out of Gotham, but he seems to like it. “The city’s wild. It’s like anything could happen.” Smooth.
As they kiss, the bombs from The Batman (2022) go off around the city, flooding the place. Vic watches as the water crashes into his family’s flat.
This was such a great opening sequence. We saw just enough of Vic’s family to empathize with him when he mourns them. We also get a hint at Vic’s motivations here, otherwise he would just seem like some ambitious kid with no motivation other than the power money gives you.
Tonight’s the Night, Vic!
Oz is just so well written and portrayed. He says the weirdest shit without hesitating, and he along with everyone else pretends it’s normal. It’s a quirk of the show I love.
Oz and Sofia are meeting up that night, with Vic as the driver. He’s initially nervous, but Oz brings out some cash and starts Vic on $1000 a week. The kid’s face lights up.
This is what I mean about the opening to the episode being so essential to Vic’s character. We now understand all the emotions running around his head when he sees that cash, including, perhaps, some sadness that he can’t share it with his family.
“How’s anyone supposed know your worth unless you tell ‘em, huh?”
Salvatore Maroni calls Oz, forcing Vic to take the door when Sofia arrives (which terrifies him) and Oz to take the phone in the other room.
The look Sofia gives Vic when he opens the door is priceless. Cristin Milioti is going to win awards for this performance.
Sofia takes a nosey around Oz’s place – “tacky” – and asks Vic how he met Oz. “I worked on his car.” Oh my God this scene is amazing. She’s terrifying and he looks like he wants to run away!
She reveals Oz used to be her driver – perhaps showing Vic what’s possible for him, as Oz’s driver – and Oz returns from the phone call. Oz and Sofia leave Vic behind, despite that not being the plan. I’m sure Vic is relieved, but Oz looked nervous.
The Fuck You Cooking?
Oz and Sofia arrive at a drop. She uses the jewels from episode 2 as payment and Oz notices the “ARKHAM STATE HOSPITAL” labels on the bags. This can’t be good – and it means it was Sofia’s plan all along, not Alberto’s, so she definitely knows Oz is blagging his way into this.
We meet the nicest drug chemist, Trey Bloom: “welcome, brother!”
Bloom takes them to see the product and it’s revealed the drug comes from some rare mushrooms. Oz isn’t impressed, but I have a feeling he will be – or he’ll be horrified.
There is a strange moment when Sofia sharply tells Oz not to touch the mushrooms because it’ll fuck up the whole batch, but then the picks one to show him it? Perhaps this isn’t a mistake, and it’s just that touching it will make you high and she’s always on it to keep calm? Or, it’s a mistake.
Sofia tasks Oz with finding a distributor, as she can’t use her family’s connections for this.
I Missed You
Elsewhere, Vic invited Graciela over to Oz’s place. They haven’t talked since he met Oz, so there’s a lot of catching up to do.
Graciela reveals she is leaving for California to escape the “FEMA camp” – but Vic doesn’t understand. He says her life is in Gotham, but she quite rightly points out that their families are dead and they’ve got to look after themselves now.
She offers to take him with her, starting over together, but he doesn’t think he can because of all that he has seen with Oz. Graciela makes the very good point that “nothing good can come from working with a guy like that,” and he definitely shouldn’t stay.
Then we have an important moment that will push her away and keep him there. She tells him, “that is not who you are,” and he says she sounds like his father. We learned a the start of the episode that Vic was disappointed by his father’s lack of ambition and drive, so he’s going to do the opposite of something he might have suggested.
Oz is on his way back so Vic rushes Graciela out of the apartment, putting some cash in her hands and saying he’ll meet her at Gotham Station. He won’t, and we know this, but the fact he is willing to take an out at this moment is important. Will he grow resentful of Oz in the future because of this?
This Business Ain’t Your Business
Sofia gets home to find armed guards everywhere, and Johnny Viti comes round the corner asking where she has been. She mocks him for “throwing a fuckin’ sleepover” instead of being out there, fighting back against the Maroni family.
Viti takes that personally, and makes it certain he’s going to die in this season by saying, “This business ain’t your business. Take a fuckin’ hint.” He tries to make her go to Italy, calling her insane, and then saying he isn’t scared of her.
This scene feels similar to the scene in episode 1 right after Oz tells Vic that he makes himself small so that the guys in suits can feel big and powerful. Sofia is doing that right now, putting on a calm, polite smile and making herself small. Now is not the right time to strike.
Chinatown, Huh?
Sofia and Oz meet in Chinatown, with Vic tagging along. Oz has a link with the Triad – with someone called Link Tsai, which is a joke I actually laughed at – who he hopes can distribute their product.
Oz obviously owes this guy money, but Link is calmed down by the offer of a partnership in a new drug they are calling Bliss.
Meanwhile, in the car, Vic practices telling Oz he wants to leave with Graciela. But, he gets interrupted by a police car pulling up behind him. The officer gets him to step out of the car and pats him down for parking in a loading zone.
This all looks like it’s going to end very badly, but luckily for Vic, he is a quick learner. The police officer finds cash in Vic’s pocket and he bribes the upstanding public servant who then leaves. This is Gotham, after all.
Back with Oz’s link, Link, Sofia and Oz are selling the Triad member on their plan to take over the Falcone Family. They need approval from the Triad boss, Zhao, but first they need to somehow get Johnny Viti to call Zhao to tell him everything is shipshape (after lying that Viti is backing Sofia).
How are they going to get this all to work? Oh, maybe that blackmail he gave the Maroni family about Viti will come in useful – if they let him use it.
You Got Fight In You
Vic and Oz are at a restaurant having a nice meal together and Vic tells Oz about the police officer taking the bribe. Oz laughs, clearly proud of Vic and even bonding a bit. Vic laughs and looks happy too, but then he remembers Graciela. He tries to say something in that moment, but a waiter interrupts.
We get another great moment from Oz here when the waiter, thinking he’s helping, finishes Vic’s sentence while he orders and struggles with a stutter. “Don’t do that! Let the man finish his sentence.”
This expands upon Oz’s reasons for keeping Vic alive at the end of episode 1, with his empathy for someone else who struggles with a disability. This is the closest Oz has come to connecting with someone who isn’t his mother, I think, as it seems that he is willing to lie to and kill anyone else.
Oz then asks Vic about his family and we get some backstory there. It turns out his father was a mechanic, which explains Vic’s reaction to Sofia asking him if he was a mechanic earlier in the episode.
“The world ain’t set up for the honest man to succeed.”
When Oz says this, he isn’t wrong, but he also isn’t an honest man. Perhaps he was once, or he wanted to be, but to succeed he feels like he has to be dishonest. Instead of fighting against the grain, he joined in and got good at it.
They toast Vic’s father and you can’t help but feel warm in that moment, despite who is giving the toast. Oz is not a good person. The writing of this show is so good that we can empathize with him, and the other “bad guys” are worse than him, or irritating, so we root for him. But, he’s brutal and twisted, like the world around him.
Oz walks over to another table to a lady called Tina and asks for a favor.
Entertainment
Oh, it’s that Tina. Oz and Sofia walk in on Johnny Viti and Tina – Luca’s wife – having sex, giving them some leverage over Viti.
They try to blackmail him to support them in their plan. But Johnny has more guts than I gave him credit for. He goes into a rant about Sofia working with Oz, saying no one works with Oz because they trust him or respect him:
“People keep the Penguin around as entertainment, because everybody knows that you’re a goddamn joke.”
Oz proceeds to shove the mobile phone down Viti’s throat, and I thought he might kill him, but Oz is smarter than that. The best part about this scene was Sofia watching on, mildly entertained. So, was Viti right? She’s got him around for entertainment?
I Believe in You, Kid
They’re all set up and ready to start trialing the drug with customers at Oz’s club. Vic’s responsible for the bag of drugs the distributors will restock from.
Oz notices Vic looking down and misinterprets it as nerves. He then gives the kid a pep talk. Oz has really taken Vic under his wing and feels like he has grown close with the kid. It’s just a shame that Vic is thinking of leaving – but I still don’t think he will.
Sofia and Oz wait for the Triad boss, Feng Zhao, and Sofia says, “I don’t know who wants this more, me or you.” I feel the same way.
They keep alluding to what Oz did to Sofia ten years ago, but nothing has been revealed yet. Is Oz the reason Sofia got locked up in Arkham?
Bliss
The drug is selling like candy – or like drugs – which is keeping Vic very busy. Feng Zhao sees potential in the plan – ignoring Oz and talking directly with Sofia. This makes sense, as she is the Falcone and the top person, but Oz is going to take this personally. It is him he wants to see at the top, not Sofia.
Zhao worries about the risk of linking with the Falcones under Sofia, because of her father’s bloody history with the Triad, and her history in Arkham. She’s ready for this though, and gives the selling pitch of the century.
On the dance floor, Vic gets PTSD from the explosions we saw in the flashback at the start of the episode and he drops all the drugs. He has a nervous breakdown, but Roxy, one of the distributors, pulls him back together.
Back with Feng Zhao, Sofia tells him that they were given this drug in Arkham. “It made us content…submissive. Any pain that we had just floated away…”
You Goin’ Somewhere?
Vic tries to calm down in the bathroom, the stress of potentially leaving Oz is getting to him, plus the memories of the night his family died. Just as he calms a little, Oz barges in and excitedly tells him they closed the deal with the Triads.
Vic is the person Oz went to with the good news. He wanted to share something he thought was exciting and we went to Vic. But, then he takes Vic’s phone and learns the kid was thinking of leaving. That must have felt like a kick in the teeth to Oz, who had bonded with Vic and tried hard to reach out and develop a relationship. That’s new for him.
This is a very emotional scene. Oz tells Vic he can go, but Vic says he can’t leave. Then Oz, realizing that Vic thinks he is trapped, being held hostage, gets mad.
Oz believes he has offered a “nobody, a loser” a chance to improve themselves. He gave Vic a roof over his head, money, and opportunity, and he feels surprised that Vic feels like a hostage. What he is blind to is his own darkness.
The first thing these guys did together was get rid of Alberto’s body. What else is Vic supposed to think in this situation?
Oz says the truth when he says Vic wanted what his father never had, and even though Vic tries to deny it, he can’t really. What he does say, however, is that his father would be ashamed of him, and that truth might just be more powerful than his ambition.
“You still think there’s good and bad? Right and wrong? There ain’t. There’s just this. Survival. Security. Pleasure.”
Vic leaves, borrowing Oz’s car. Hey, he’s only taking his advice! However, he sits in the car and watches Graciela’s bus leave.
This moment shouldn’t have the emotional impact that it does, considering we haven’t seen much of the two of them together. But, those few scenes we have seen were concise and emotional, so the emotional beat still hits.
Trauma Sells
After Vic leaves, Oz tells Sofia that the Triads are in. He’s trying to get her pumped about it, but she’s very nonchalant.
Oz “apologizes” for what he did to her. We still don’t know what it was he did, but he told Carmine, her father, something, and then Carmine had Sophia put in Arkham. Jesus, that’s dark.
It’s also revealed that she’s not the Hangman. I wonder who is then? Or if it even matters?
Oz then says it was all worth it. Because he crossed her, Carmine gave him the club, the Drops, “my own thing.” He says this while crying, so perhaps his head and heart don’t align on the costs to his actions.
“A guy like me. Getting all that? That don’t mean nothing to you, maybe, but it does to me.”
It is incredible how Colin Farrell can pull off that much emotion in his face when it is covered in prosthetics. It is helped by the way his voice cracks as he speaks and the way he uses his eyes to evoke emotion.
Oz then says he’s not sorry for what he has got, but he is sorry that it came at the cost of all that Sofia has gone through.
“You meant something to me.”
Sofia looks like she’s about to cry, but she keeps it in. She tells Oz she doesn’t know how to trust him, and can you blame her? He will betray anyone to achieve his goals.
You Think You Can Play Us?
Nadia Maroni and some of her henchmen turn up and hold Oz at gunpoint.
“We’ve been watching you, motherfucker.”
Nadia has Oz and Sofia on their knees at gunpoint, but Vic shows up in the car.
He drives into one of the henchmen like a badass, allowing Oz to escape into the car. We do hear another two gunshots though, in the background.
Oz says to leave Sofia. Like I said before, Sofia has a point when it comes to not being able to trust Oz.
Vic’s face as he drives off is full of regret. He should have gone with Graciela, and instead he ended up in a gunfight and driving into someone.
