The Penguin 1×01 Review – Meet Oz Cobb
Historically, I’ve avoided comic book shows where the showrunners are afraid to put costumes on characters. Part of the fun of comic book stories are the characters and their incredible designs. The Penguin, despite being deeply grounded and skirting around even mentioning Batman, absolutely must not be missed. While you’ll find reviews of the series as a whole around, we’re taking an episode-by-episode approach to hopefully drill a little deeper into the show. Spoilers follow for The Penguin Season 1, Episode 1, “After Hours.”
The whole thing starts on a foundation of awesome performances. Of course, there’s Colin Ferrell as the titular character. For some reason, they’re insisting on calling him Oz Cobb here, not Cobblepot. Maybe that’ll come up later as part of his story. Colin Ferrell is decked out in his full mask and fatsuit here, and it’s truly a testament to both how incredible Hollywood makeup can be, and how strong Ferrell’s performance is that I completely forget that it’s makeup every time I see him. Ferrell vanishes into the make-up, but his performance brings the character to life.
Right from the start, Ferrell made this version of the Penguin one of the most compelling, and even in this first episode it’s clear that he’s going to be a compelling guy to watch. All the core aspects of the character are there, aesthetically and thematically. He has the waddle and the penguin-beak nose. He aspires to an ostentatious version of class, driving a purple-and-gold Maserati around Gotham, and he wants more than anything to be taken seriously. But never once does it feel like we’re watching a cartoon character. The only weirdoes in The Batman were Batman and the Riddler, and Oz Cobb is a real guy. Ferrell isn’t the only killer performance in The Penguin, and arguably not even the strongest one, but he’s the foundation upon which everything else is built.
Alongside Ferrell is Cristin Milioti (How I Met Your Mother, Palm Springs) as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of the recently-killed mob boss Carmine Falcone and recent parolee (is that the right word?) from Arkham Asylum. Having killed a bunch of people via noose, she picked up the moniker The Hangman. Even in this first episode, she’s already stealing the show as the coolly terrifying mobster. She’s much smarter and more aware than anyone around her thinks. Oz sees her as someone he can manipulate into being on his side, but he’s immediately having to dodge her, and only doing so by the narrowest of margins. Oz is mean, but Sofia is legitimately terrifying right from the start.
There’s also Vic, played by Rhenzy Feliz (The Runaways), the poor kid who ends up entangled in Oz’s big ambitions. If any character is the viewer’s way into the show, it’s Vic. He was just trying to steal a few parts off of a nice car parked in a crappy part of town, and instead ends up being an accomplice to Oz. I loved him in Runaways, and he’s a very different character here. There he was always too smart for his own good, and here he’s just in way over his head and trying to keep afloat. He was, ironically, one of the many people who ended up without a home as a result of the Riddler’s seawall bombing that flooded a significant portion of Gotham. I’m looking forward to seeing how this character evolves–he has a lot to learn.
Finally, there’s Francis Cobb, mother to Oz, played by Dierdre O’Connell. If anyone is responsible for dropping off the last two syllables of the family name, I’m betting it’s her. She might be my favorite performance. We only get hints of it in this episode, but she’s clearly a major driving force behind her son’s ambition. She’s also aging and we get hints of dementia around the edges of her performance–something the later episodes will build upon. She’s going to be one of the characters who pushes Oz, but also a tragic character who could hold him back.
The rest of the cast is killer, too, with actors like Clancy Brown filling out roles like Falcone rival Salvatore Maroni, and each new addition to the cast seems to add something to the show.
These characters form a strong foundation for the whole show to build upon. The story itself is taking inspiration from The Godfather, Goodfellas, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, and every other story about ambitious criminals you can imagine.
The Penguin is, admittedly, more of a standard crime story than it is specifically a Gotham story. There’s no mention of Batman or Bruce Wayne, and producer (and The Batman director) Matt Reeves has made it clear that we won’t be seeing Pattinson’s Dark Knight here. It’s not a fake-out–don’t wait for a surprise cameo. This is one of the things that I know is going to bother me. There aren’t many chances for Batman to show up in this episode, but there absolutely will be. There will be shootouts and chases through the city and more where you could imagine him appearing to put a stop to the mob endangering dozens or hundreds of lives with careless infighting. Knowing that isn’t happening is going to be the thing that reminds me over and over that this is, in actuality, a crime story that happens to feature a Batman character rather than a Gotham crime story.
With that said, I’m very much excited about what they’re doing here. Don’t expect much in the way of MCU-style tie-in content. This isn’t required watching if you want The Batman: Part II to make sense. But it does so much, even in this first episode, to flesh out Gotham in a way we rarely see, especially in live-action. Reeves did an incredible job in the movie of making the city feel both like comic-book Gotham and like a real place. It was one of the parts that I felt was indisputably better than any previous live-action Batman to date. The Penguin just builds on all of that, and it makes just watching this series fun. It’s a great way to spend more time in our favorite fictional city.
Disclaimer: HBO provided Batman-News with early access to The Penguin episodes for the purposes of review.
