The Fantasy Review’s recap and review of The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 4 – Cent’Anni.
Previous episode: The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 3 Review & Recap – Bliss
Spoiler-Filled Review of The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 4 – Cent’Anni
You’ve Gotta Trust Me
The Penguin, season 1, episode 4 begins where episode 3 left off, but from the perspective of Oz instead of Vic. Nadia Maroni knows about the new drug he and Sofia are cooking up and claims to have control of their lab.
Nadia tells Sofia that Oz killed her brother, and I’m sure Sofia can work out the rest of the plan from there. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and feel bad for her – to be fair, she lost the only person she felt she could trust – but Alberto was a prick, just like the rest of the Falcones.
Oz essentially begs for his life, turning on Sofia and telling Nadia he only worked with Sofia to get the new drug for the Maroni family. This explains why he left her to die at the end of episode 3.
It’s at this point Vic comes crashing in with his car, and we see from Sofia’s perspective how she escaped. She is badly injured, knocking her head hard, and called Jullian Rush, the doctor we saw briefly at the start of episode 2, Inside Man.
Old Wounds
We go back in time with Sofia. She is introduced as the chairwoman of the Isabella Falcone Foundation. Isabella Falcone was Sofia and Alberto’s mother, and wife to Carmine Falcone.
Oz is there in a black suit, clearly her driver at this time, offering support from the sidelines. Sofia gets up to make a speech and talks about how Isabella took her own life when Sofia was nine.
These scenes just go to show how incredible Cristin Milioti’s performance is in The Penguin. In these flashbacks, she comes across almost like a completely different person, with no pain behind her eyes and there’s gentleness there too. Milioti’s portrayal of the character in “present-day” Gotham is very different, showing instead someone who has been through hell, and the contrast is stark.
As Sofia is leaving the gala, a journalist comes up to her and asks her about some strange coincidences including the deaths of several women, all by hanging (like her mother), all of whom worked for her father (Carmine).
We then get an Inception moment where Sofia has a flashback inside the flashback, showing us that it was her who found her mother’s body when she was nine, during a game of hide-and-seek with Alberto.
At home, Sofia dines with Alberto and Carmine (now played by Mark Strong, replacing John Turturro who took on the role for The Batman movie). Carmine struggles with his son being a moron, when his daughter “is so reliable” and yeah, he’s useless.
When Alberto leaves the room, Carmine says Alberto is too soft, unlike himself and Sofia, so he asks her to run the family after he is gone, breaking with tradition. She is delighted, but he notices she is worried about something.
Because of what the journalist said to her before, she mentions her mother, Isabella, clearly having some doubts about Carmine now. She might have been young, but she doesn’t remember her mother being sick or depressed, so the suicide doesn’t add up in her mind.
Carmine bats away her questions, and in his dialogue here we see how manipulative he is of his daughter:
“Why would you do this now? Picking away at old wounds. You know how it upsets me.”
Daddy, How Could You?
Alberto and Sofia are riding in the back of the car, with Oz driving. Alberto has stolen an old, expensive watch from his father. When he spills a drink, he calls Oz a “penguin” and Sofia immediately says, “don’t call him that.” It is clear from this and the supportive and jovial manner between them in the gala scene that Sofia and Oz are pretty close.
Before Alberto leaves, Sofia asks him about their father, and whether he’s had any “relationships” with the women at a club (44 Below, the one where some of the women have supposedly killed themselves). Alberto tells her to drop it.
With everyone telling her to stop asking questions, I have a feeling that Sofia is going to keep digging. This is the story of how she gets framed for these murders, I suppose.
Oz drives Sofia to see the journalist from the gala and the journalist shows her the coroner’s reports on all the victims. They are all listed as “death by hanging” but there are impressions around their necks, indicating strangling – so, murder.
These women also fought back, with images showing broken nails and blood around their fingertips. When Sofia sees these images, she recognises them as similar to how her mother’s fingers looked when she found her dead all those years ago.
Sofia, grappling with the idea that her father might have murdered her mother, threatens the reporter and runs away. Oz, in the car, warns her off talking to a reporter and she bites back sharply, telling him he is nothing but her driver and no one cares what he thinks.
This will have hit him hard, considering he probably thought they had a good, friendly relationship. It doesn’t excuse his coming betrayal of her, but it certainly explains it from his point of view.
My Sweet Sofia
Sofia is at a party when Oz comes inside – which surprises her – and he’s got a new jacket. Some subtle clues that he’s risen up in the world already, and we are not going to like how. He tells her Carmine wants to see her in his office.
Carmine tells Sofia off for talking to a reporter, especially as there is now an open investigation into him for the murder of the women from 44 Below. He then gaslights the fuck out of her, asking her how she could betray him like this, after all he has done for her.
Sofia says she trusts him and loves him, but then says, “I know there is an explanation,” referring to the scratches on his hands the day Isabella died. She’s essentially accusing him of murder, but lying to herself about it.
Carmine ramps up the gaslighting. He calls her confused, sick, “clearly not yourself.” He tells her to leave, essentially confirming her darkest theory about him.
In the car with Oz, they are pulled over by the police. You can hear the officers talking about turning the lights off, Falcone’s orders, so Carmine sent the police to pick her up. They get her to step out of the car and arrest her for the murder of Summer Gleeson (the reporter), Yolanda Jones, Taylor Montgomery and Nancy Hoffman – all of Carmine’s victims.
Oz never saw this coming, which is clear. It was an unforeseen consequence of his actions that I am sure a part of him regrets, but he always moves on.
The Hangman
Arrested and jailed, Sofia talks with Alberto and a solicitor. Carmine has been telling people that Sofia has a history of mental illness, leading to a court-ordered psychological evaluation. It’s worse than that though, several other family members have written affidavits saying the same thing, including Luca, Johnny and Carla Viti.
And again, it gets worse, as they all blame Sofia’s supposed mental illness on her mother’s “suicide”. I could have guessed a lot of this from the information that has been hinted at in the previous three episodes of The Penguin, but this story is so dark. It is no wonder Sofia is so determined to destroy the lot of them and take the seat at the head of the family.
Sofia will be taken to Arkham until the start of the trial, which would mean six months in that place. Alberto shows a side of his character that has been hiding behind his drunken, playboy personality when he offers Sofia support. In this moment he tells her she can survive in Arkham and then she is going to survive the trial and she is going to get out.
We then get arguably the most uncomfortable scene in The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 4, seeing Sofia being stripped and put into Arkham. The music is so tense, and the way it is filmed reminds me of the Saw movies when Jigsaw’s victims are fighting to survive one of his “tests”. I think it’s the diagonal angles of the shots and the monotone colour layered over the image.
I’m not going to describe the specifics of the scene because it’s barbaric and awful, but after she is put in the jumpsuit and chained up, Sofia meets Dr Ventris, chief psychiatrist at Arkham, and his “associate”, Dr Julian Rush.
I Saw You on the TV
Sofia is taken through some dark corridors in Arkham to her cell, where she will live during the next six months of mandatory isolation, cut off from the outside world. She’s about to break down into tears, when a screw falls out of the wall and her new neighbour, Magpie, peers in through the hole. Magpie tells Sofia that she will get used to the noises eventually.
This is the story a lot of people will have been excited for. After being teased for a full Arkham show, the people behind The Penguin and Matt Reeves’ universe decided to park that project and instead incorporate some of those ideas into other shows. So, here it is, Arkham in its full glory, and it’s absolutely terrifying.
The food is scary enough. Sofia is taunted in the cafeteria, being called the Hangman by everyone, but Magpie has saved her a seat. How lovely. Magpie is given some pills, and when she takes them we recognise them as the same ones Sofia will use to create Bliss, which we saw in episode 3.
Sofia is then attacked by one of the inmates. It turns out they don’t appreciate being incarcerated with a woman who killed another woman.
In a cell where she is recovering from the attack, Julian Rush comes in, calm as a cucumber. I don’t trust him and he seems to be as manipulative as her father was, but he’s way more subtle. This is an intelligent, terrifying villain, who uses the tone of his voice to gaslight, and the offer of help with kind eyes to gain her trust.
Sofia is then taken back to the cafeteria, released from her chains, and given a fork. The woman who attacked her is chained to one of the tables, and the guards just stand there and wait, with Dr Ventris, chief psychiatrist watching over the proceedings.
Sofia won’t kill the woman, because she’s not a murderer, but in some confusion the other inmate grabs the fork and kills herself. Sofia is then taken away and strapped to a bed for electroshock therapy.
I Told You, I’m Fucking Innocent!
This “therapy” goes on, and on, and on, and it’s awful. The trauma of everything that is happening to her could drive her insane, making her the person her father wants to portray her as for the trial.
Julian Rush does look like he genuinely believes her and doesn’t like torturing her with the “therapy” but there is nothing he can do with Dr Ventris in charge.
I said “could drive her insane” but it seems they came close to succeeding, as when Sofia returns to her cell, she slowly peels away the paint from the walls, uncovering a familiar wallpaper. The cell eventually turns into her mother’s bedroom, the same as the day she found Isabella dead.
It turns out that this vision is a dream, and she wakes up clawing at her own neck, leaving marks there. This must be the same dream she still has, as we see her in a previous episode wake up from a nightmare in the same way.
This torture ends with her receiving a visitor – Alberto. She is initially glad to see him, but he has bad news. She isn’t going to court. Ventris has written a report stating that she is too insane to stand trial and the judge has agreed to it – there is no doubt that this is all Carmine’s doing.
Alberto tells her he is not going to give up, and begs her to keep fighting.
Julian Rush comes up to Sofia later in the cafeteria and tells her he tried to stop Ventris from writing that report. She is gone though, broken. With no potential light at the end of the tunnel, what has she got left to fight for now? She is at her lowest point, all but given up.
Sofia questions Magpie’s reasons for trying to befriend her, accusing the woman of spying on her for Ventris. So, Sofia lets out all her anger that has built up in the past… however long she has been there, and beats the shit out of Magpie, slamming her face into a table and killing her.
She then turns to Ventris, who saw the whole thing, and yells:
“I told you, I’m fucking innocent!”
You Don’t Have to Pretend With Me
Sofia is drugged after killing Magie and wakes up in present-day Gotham, in Julian Rush’s office/home. She gets herself cleaned up and has a snoop about his office while he makes breakfast.
Sofia says she should have killed Oz when she had the chance, because now she is screwed. She has no allies, no plan, and if she doesn’t get on a plane, she’s dead.
Rush suggests that she should go, to have a holiday, essentially. He says, “You deserve a fresh start. An opportunity to heal.” But Sofia asks precisely what I am thinking at this moment, because I don’t trust this guy – she asks him why she is helping him and what he wants.
He says he wants to help her, but that’s a pretty weak response that she doesn’t fully believe. It turns out he feels pretty bad about what happened to her, and he quit Arkham when she was still in Arkham.
Then Sofia says something that surprised me: “You don’t have to pretend with me. You miss how it was at Arkham, don’t you?… The control that you had, treating me, rehabilitating me.”
She then talks about the way he looked at her in Arkham, “so curious.”
“What did it feel like…to get to watch a person unravel?”
Sofia to Julian Rush
This is such a fascinating scene, where the roles are reversed immediately. Rush goes from looking almost predatory, with all the power in his role as a therapist, to Sofia turning the tables on him, weakening his power over her by acknowledging how he is attracted to her. These power dynamics are fascinating and this scene alone deserves an essay written on it.
To New Beginnings
The Falcones are having a lovely dinner together when Sofia waltzes in wearing a bright yellow dress, contrasting their blandness. Her hair is made to look wild and she acts the part of the lunatic in the family.
That’s what it is, an act, and she does it brilliantly, putting everyone in the room on edge.
Luca is giving a speech about coming together as a family to fight their enemies, but as he goes to quote Carmine, Sofia taps her glass and interrupts him. That is certainly not a coincidence.
It is while she talks about being framed for the murder of seven women I realise that everyone in that room had a hand in putting her in Arkham, at the orders of Carmine. They all know she was innocent.
Johnny Viti tries to tell her to stop, but she’s on a roll. She tells them all that she trusted and loved all of them, but they betrayed her, writing letters saying she was crazy like her mother, and not helping her when she needed it.
At the end of her speech, she tells them all that “tomorrow, I start a new life” and toasts “to new beginnings.” She is either actually going to leave, or the lot of them are going to be dead by the end of the night.
Later that evening, Sofia takes her cousin’s daughter out of the mansion to the greenhouse to eat cake. She’s never been so terrifying as when she talked gently with the little girl in the greenhouse… Cristin Milioti’s performance is utterly chilling but you can’t look away.
The next morning, Sofia waltzes back into the mansion, walking past dead body after dead body. It turns out, she gassed the entire building, killing everyone in it, which explains why she saved the little girl, who was innocent.
After skipping through the mass murder scene, she ends the trip at Johnny Viti’s room, who she left alive (by opening the window to his room the night before), and The Penguin, Season 1, Episode 4 ends.
