I reviewed the first couple of episodes of The Penguin a few weeks ago. I liked them both and I was happy to carry on watching. The series finished this week and I’ve seen it all. Overall, it’s pretty feckin’ good!
You know the details, set directly after The Batman, stars Colin Farrell, blah blah blah.
The Story
The story of this series starts right after the events in The Batman. A flood took place, I forget what happened to Bats, and the gangs of Gotham are all up in the air. The Falcone Family was the biggest but with the head of the family dead, anyone could take over.
We meet Oz (Farrell), a low level enforcer, but with plans to make it big. He could make a killing with the Falcones out of the picture, so he starts to maneuver things. Oz is clever, very clever, he can play the long game and bend people to his will.
It’s like Game of Thrones or any other TV show with political maneuvering. You can’t just kill the king and take over, you have to bring the king down using his enemies, then usurp the throne.
Up against Oz is up against Sofia Falcone (Milioti) and she has… umm… issues. She was supposed to take over the family business, but ended up being betrayed and put in Arkham Asylum. Now she is released, she’s out for revenge on Oz, who she believes helped put her in there.
There is much more to the story, such as the different gangs of Gotham, with them all vying to control the underbelly of the city. It’s really engaging.
There is a subplot about Oz taking a young hoodlum under his wing. One night he finds Victor (Feliz) trying to steal the wheels off his car. Oz catches him and puts him to work. I found Victor’s storyline really good. A little cliched at first, but he had a great story arc.
She Ain’t No Mary Sue
They say that James Bond is only as good as the bad guy he’s fighting. I think this is why The Penguin works because Sofia is a great bad guy! Milioti is a very attractive lady and, at first, you’re thinking how hot she is.
After a while, you realise what her character is like, she’s a few donuts short of a cop. In fact, the time she spent in Arkham pushed her over the edge, from slightly unhinged to all out evil.
Milioti steals the show for me. She plays the innocent seeming, but very unhinged, Sofia really well. As the series goes on, the worse she gets.
The Cast
Farrell is excellent in this. If he doesn’t win any awards for this performance, there is no justice in the world. You see nothing of Farrell in Oz, from the makeup to the way he talks, to the limp he has. It’s brilliant.
Young Feliz is very good too. He plays the character with a stutter, and it’s well done. So much so, there are moments you want to smack him around the head just to get the words out of him.
Deirdre O’Connell plays Francis Cobb, Oz’s mother, and her performance is amazing. She isn’t quite all there but Oz still loves her. As her story unfolds throughout the season, it just gets better and better.
The rest of the cast of The Penguin are all great, I honestly couldn’t fault anyone.
The Writing
I think what I loved most about The Penguin was the writing. I cannot imagine any blue-haired half-man, half parrot he/she’s in the writing room. I felt like it was back to good old-fashioned writing, just telling a story well.
There’s no modern-day politics in here. I’m sure I read in the comments a while ago that someone said that it promotes the ‘strong independent female’ with Sofia. No, it does not! If a strong independent female is like Sofia, we are all screwed!
It reminded me of things like The Wire or The Shield, where the writers cared about a story arc, kept it interesting, and focused on the plot, rather than ticking boxes for cry babies on social media.
The Penguin is a grown-up show, written for adults and I didn’t see anything in there for the “modern audience”.
Overall
I haven’t seen a show as good as this for a while. I honestly couldn’t wait for each week’s episode. Now it’s finished, I’m annoyed, as I would like to see more. The last episode was really well done and finished it off well.
I would highly recommend The Penguin. At the very least, try the first couple of episodes, if you like them, you’ll like the rest of the show. It is finally a pearl in a quagmire of the usual crap we have to wade through from Hollywood.
The Penguin is now streaming in full.
