‘The Penguin’ Episode 2 Recap: “Inside Man”

“If it is a mafia present, why is the Penguin in it? If it is a Penguin present, why isn’t Batman in it?” Except and till The Penguin offers a passable reply to those questions — and no, Colin Farrell vanishing into prosthetics and Brooklynese just isn’t ample — it’s going to stay a puzzling, even irritating, present. However then, it is a franchise with a bent to be embarrassed about what it’s, as if altering the surnames of the Riddler and the Penguin from Nygma and Cobbleplot to Nashton and Cobb will make the thought of a billionaire who clothes up like a horror film monster to beat up criminals any much less whimsical at coronary heart. Simply be what you might be!

However this isn’t to say some enjoyment can’t be had even on a present that feels the necessity to preemptively apologize for itself in that means. This week’s episode serves up a robust motion sequence, a tense little bit of murderous skullduggery, and a more in-depth have a look at what sort of villain this model of the Penguin actually is: A enjoyably terrible one, because it seems. 

This episode largely issues Oz Cobb’s try and additional the gang warfare between the Falcones, the household to whom he belongs, and the Maronis, the household for which he serves as a double agent. He’s already pinned his impetuous homicide of Alberto Falcone on incarcerated boss Sal Maroni to power his household’s hand. He then facilitates a profitable, and viscerally thrilling, truck hijacking to take out one of many Falcones’ drug shipments, practically getting killed himself within the course of. 

However he doesn’t appear to depend on Alberto’s insane sister Sofia. On this episode we study she was a serial killer dubbed the Hangman, who murdered seven younger girls that they find out about earlier than her incarceration and rehabilitation (lol) at Arkham Asylum. The truth that she’s tormented by nightmares which have her self-mutilating in her sleep doesn’t make her any much less canny a gangster, nevertheless. Of all of the family members’s braintrust — together with its newly minted boss, her uncle Luca (Scott Cohen) — she’s just one who acknowledges the work of an inside man. 

To take the warmth off himself, Oz makes an attempt to provide her present her with simply such a traitor. Utilizing blackmail pictures of underboss Johnny Vitti in flagrante with Luca’s spouse and diamonds he himself heisted, he plans to pin the crime on Johnny, who’s been freezing him out of the household enterprise. However when Oz’s (for lack of a greater a greater time period) intern Vic botches his try and plant the jewels in Vitti’s automotive, Oz is compelled to go together with plan B: personally homicide the Maroni cap that Sofia captured to interrogate, then determine a option to pin the crime on another person. Whether or not by design or dumb luck, he vegetation the incriminating homicide weapon on Castillo (Berto Colon), Sofia’s lieutenant…who simply so occurred to personally torture Oz within the sequence premiere. 

Buoyed by his success, Oz chooses to make this a teachable second for Vic. Having gotten the task from Vitti to get rid of the corpses of Castillo and the Maroni man, the Penguin makes his assistant do all of the work — then forces him to lie down within the grave with the our bodies to reveal how shut each of them got here to loss of life due to his failure. 

Success awaits Oz ultimately, nevertheless. Now Sofia, who mistrusted his overtures of friendship earlier within the episode, believes him to be the one individual within the household she will belief. Collectively, she says, they’ll take the previous males down and reign of their place. 

So what sort of villain is the Penguin, then? The mendacity form. Like Sauron on the present season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy, he’s a grasp manipulator, susceptible to bald-faced falsehoods mentioned straight into one other individual’s eyes — just like the sob story he tells Sofia about his useless mom, who’s not solely alive however wandering round with dementia when she’s not browbeating Oz about changing into an enormous shot. Is he embarrassed by the reality? Cautious about divulging an excessive amount of of his previous? Or is it merely simpler for him, psychologically, to make issues up than it’s to chain himself right down to one thing so limiting as the reality?

However in contrast to Rings’s Sauron, The Penguin’s Penguin just isn’t mendacity from a place of superior energy and supreme confidence. He’s a hustler, a con man, a sweaty vaudeville performer frantically spinning plates. The truth that he at all times manages to drag himself out of his numerous jams — at least twice now, we’ve seen him fully on the mercy of ladies gangsters whose minions may lower his throat in two seconds if ordered and survive — shouldn’t disguise the truth that he winds up in these jams within the first place. But from Castillo’s loss of life to Sofia’s allegiance, he does at all times appear to get what he desires ultimately, doesn’t he?

With these traits, The Penguin does a superb job conveying why an S-tier liar and killer like Oz Cobb isn’t operating Gotham Metropolis already. Up to now, his presents have all been expended in a determined scramble from the underside to the, let’s say, decrease center. If he had been to try to get any greater, his penchant for overreach and his private unpleasantness — in addition to his incapacity, since these will not be very understanding individuals — would kind a glass ceiling over his head like, properly, an umbrella.

However now the order of issues has been overturned. In The Batman, a trio of unpredictable outsiders — the terrorist Riddler on one facet, vigilantes Catwoman and the Batman himself on the opposite — first expose after which (that is the Riddler’s work) kill boss Carmine Falcone. The Riddler additionally floods and destroys a lot of town, unleashing widespread deprivation and a large crime wave. The chaos ensuing from all that is the suitable time, possibly the one time, a person with the abilities and flaws possessed by Oz Cobb may efficiently make a play for the highest. Which is the place I’m assuming we’ll discover him by the point the following Bat-movie rolls round.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, The New York Instances, and anyplace that will have him, actually. He and his household reside on Lengthy Island.