“The Penguin” continues to be amazingly fantastic and full of surprises

Last week’s episode the penguin featured a very emotional moment between Colin Farrell’s Oz and Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone. “How can I trust you?” he asks after they finish a deal with the Triad gangs. We learn that he was the one who turned her in a year ago—out of concern for her, he insists—and eventually took her to Arkham Asylum. With tears in his eyes, he tells her how much he cares for her. How can you trust him? “Let me keep showing you how,” he says.

And then the Maronis appear with screeching tires. They think Oz has set them up and it’s time to pay the piper, but before they can be executed, Nadia Maroni spills the beans: Oz killed Sofia’s brother, Alberto. It’s an incredible moment. One second, Oz is telling Sofia how much he cares for her, with tears in his eyes, and she’s clearly thinking to herself, “Okay, maybe I can learn to trust him again,” and the next the whole terrible truth is revealed. Let’s talk about whiplash! You rarely see this kind of thing on TV, with such a big reveal happening so quickly after an emotional character moment.

Victor (Rhenzy Feliz), who took off earlier in the episode after a fight with Oz, reappears in the nick of time and crashes into one of the Maroni gunmen in Oz’s purple Maserati. We didn’t actually see Maroni spill the beans about Oz’s betrayal last week, so when he gets in the car and Victor asks “What’s up with Sofia” and Oz says “Leave her!” comes as a bit of a shock. It makes more sense when we see the scene again this week.

And then we see the true extent of Sofia’s betrayal and what Oz did to her when she told her father that she had met a reporter. I don’t think he meant to get her into this much trouble, but he certainly doesn’t feel the kind of remorse that you or I might feel if we screwed up an innocent person so badly. We also learn how vile, evil and despicable Sofia’s father, Carmine Falcone, really is. When she discovers that he almost certainly murdered a number of working girls in the same way that he almost certainly murdered his wife, the mother of Sofia and Alberto, she confronts him.

Within hours, he has framed her for the murders and has her locked up in Arkham Asylum and throws away the key. If she wasn’t crazy before, a decade of torture, drugs, electrotherapy and the worst certainly helps her lose her mind. Isolated and alone, only her brother appears to try to help her, and the assistant psychiatrist, Julian Rush, who helps her but possibly only because he wants to put her to sleep. His only “friend” in Arkham is Magpie, but he discovers that he has been working for Dr. Ventris and kills her with blows. “I told you I was innocent!” he calls out to Ventris as he looks at him with a smile.

In the end, it’s not until her father dies that Sofia is freed from her torment and returns to a mob family that would rather still be locked up and, thanks to Oz, a dead brother. The only family that cared about her or tried to help her is taken from her the moment she is released. I’ll admit, this really changes the way I see our titular hero. I felt much more sympathetic to the Penguin when he killed Alberto the cocky and then took Victor under his wing than I did at the end of this episode, when we see what a cunning and ruthless opportunist he is. Knowing what we know now, it’s no wonder Alberto was so smug and haughty with Oz.

After this latest humiliation, Sofia has pretty much had it with everyone and everything. Her old doctor Julian Rush picks her up at the club and takes her home and even he tells her she needs a fresh start so she goes to her uncle Luca’s house and kills everyone from her cousins ​​to to his uncle, with carbon monoxide. . He saves only two people: his niece, Gia Viti, and the underboss of the family Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly). I don’t know why he saved him. She and Oz blackmailed Johnny into helping them with the Triad, but now that Luca is dead, that blackmail has no teeth and feels more like a threat than an asset to me. I’m sure Sofia has a plan!

This was a bottle episode, but an important one. The expansion of Sofia’s story adds important layers to her character, making her much more likable now that we know she wasn’t really the Hanged Man, but was framed by her own father, a serial killer mob boss who he was much more evil and sadistic than we realized. Expanding on Sofia’s story and fleshing out her character casts Oz in a new light, making him even more complicated and less likable, just when we were starting to think he might be a mobster with a heart of gold thanks to his soft spot for to the weak and oppressed.

I continue to be pleasantly surprised the penguin which is better than it has any right to be, with strong characters, solid writing, and just the right amount of twists and turns to keep us on our toes without overdoing it. Colin Farrell is great, but Cristin Milioti is the dark horse here, and he gave us a truly phenomenal performance in this episode as he fought and survived the horrors of Arkham and came out the other side.

I know who I’m rooting for now; they better not give us another “shocking twist” revealing that yes, she was in fact the Hanged One all along and was so crazy that even she didn’t realize it. I mean, I guess it could be cool, but since I’ve already said it, I think it would be a little too obvious. we’ll see.

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