While the notion of a crime boss in Gotham named Carmine Falcone came from Frank Miller & David Mazzucchelli’s seminal “Batman: Year One” storyline in four issues of the Batman comic in 1987, the extended Falcone family was developed by Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale in their two miniseries The Long Halloween (1996-1997) and Dark Victory (1999-2000). These two miniseries were very influential on screen adaptations of the Batman mythos, as elements were mined for Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (the use of Falcone) and The Dark Knight (the alliance among Batman, Jim Gordon, and Harvey Dent until the latter becomes Two-Face), for the TV show Gotham (mostly in its fourth season), and both The Batman (in general the notion of a serial killer targeting corrupt Gothamites, in particular the plot points that Thomas Wayne saved Falcone’s life and that Catwoman is Falcone’s illegitimate daughter) and The Penguin.
The Batman, like the “Year One” storyline, only gave us Carmine Falcone. Like the Loeb/Sale miniseries, The Penguin is making use of the rest of the family. In this continuity, the “holiday killer” from The Long Halloween was the Riddler (and the holiday theme was only used insofar as the first murder was on Hallowe’en), so Alberto instead gets to be the plot catalyst by getting his ass shot by the Penguin, rather than the bad guy.
This week’s episode of The Penguin gives us some more of Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone. The comic book iteration of Sofia is revealed at the end of Dark Victory to be the “Hangman” murderer who kills various cops and others who were important to District Attorney Harvey Dent, who, after becoming Two-Face, killed her father. The Penguin has that as Sofia’s backstory: she killed multiple women and was committed to Arkham.
We open with Sofia undergoing a kind of hypno-therapy with Dr. Julian Rush (Theo Rossi), in which she hallucinates herself still in Arkham and helpless to stop her brother from being killed. After that, she spends the entire episode trying to get shit done and being shut down from all sides.
Penguin’s task this week is to continue playing the Maronis against the Falcones. Sal Maroni, unsurprisingly, isn’t thrilled that he’s been framed for Alberto’s murder (though his parading around prison wearing the pinky ring is kind of a thing), but he’s willing to own it if Penguin makes good on his promise to get Maroni the supply of drops that the Falcones are taking out of the flood zone and moving to Robbinsville.
The plan goes sideways when Johnny Viti insists that Penguin ride in the FEMA truck carrying the drops, not the follow car. (Using a FEMA truck—of which there would be many in Gotham following the flood—is a masterstroke.) Penguin’s entire plan rests on his being in the follow car, which Maroni’s people aren’t going to touch. In the end, the heist goes off as planned, but Penguin is able to bluff his way through it, convincing the surviving members of the Falcone gang that he wasn’t in on it, and killing a few members of Maroni’s gang to make it look good. However, the Maronis still get away with the drops.
Nobody outside the Falcones knew about the FEMA truck and its use as a disguised drug courier, so the Maronis have to have someone inside the family. Here’s where Sofia tries to get shit done, but she’s shut down by her uncle Luca (the always-excellent Scott Cohen), who has taken over the business. (Luca was established, not in the Loeb/Sale miniseries mentioned above, but rather in the 2013-2014 “Zero Year” storyline that ran through Batman Volume 2 #21-33 by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, & Rafael Albuquerque.)
Sofia, however, doesn’t take “don’t worry your pretty little head, let the men handle it” for an answer. She blows off Penguin when he tries to suck up to her, and makes use of a corrupt detective, Marcus Wise (Craig Walker) to find out who the rat is. Wise gives her one of Maroni’s thugs, Arvad, who got shot during the FEMA truck heist, having kidnapped him from the hospital.
Wise, being a drugged-out idiot, brings Arvad to the Falcone manse the same day as Alberto’s funeral. The funeral itself is a dreary affair, livened up by the gaggle of protestors who are not thrilled that a mass-murderer (Sofia) is free in the world. Penguin finds Sofia hiding in a corridor smoking a cigarette, and they both agree that Alberto would have hated this solemn funeral. Penguin tries once again to suck up to her, talking about what it was like when his brothers died, and how his mother wouldn’t get out of bed for weeks. Then one day she got up, got dressed, and took him to a jazz club. It was his first time seeing live music, and he and his mother danced all night. Grief can cripple you, he warns her—sometimes it’s better to dance. It’s a lovely scene. Colin Farrell plays it with the same rough and raw charm that he has imbued Penguin with all along, while Milioti’s facial expression shows the wheels turning in her head, as she finds herself reevaluating him. (Tellingly, Penguin states overtly what was implied last week by how squirrelly he was when he visited his mother with Vic. He tells Sofia that his mother died a few years earlier, a lie that he’s obviously eager to maintain, and which you just know is going to bite him on the ass before this miniseries is done….)
Penguin gets in trouble of his own, as Arvad’s capture is bad news for him. Maroni’s wife, Nadia (the magnificent Shohreh Aghdashloo) is ready to kill him, but Penguin saves his own ass by giving Nadia the blackmail material he got from Falcone’s safe last week of Johnny Viti sleeping with a woman—whom we now know is Luca’s wife. Penguin intended to give it to Luca at the funeral, but Luca blew him off. He gives it to Nadia to save his own skin—which works as far as it goes, but he needs to take care of business if he wants to keep Arvad from spilling the beans.
The first thing he does is give Vic the jewels he lifted from Falcone’s safe along with the blackmail photos. Vic’s instructions are simple: put the jewels in Viti’s car. Penguin bitches to Viti about Arvad being captured and not being told, only to “discover” that Viti (and Luca and the rest) don’t know about it. Predictably, they go to Sofia to bitch about it, leaving Arvad alone in the basement. Penguin convinces Arvad to finger Viti as the inside man, after which Penguin says he’ll smuggle Arvad out and back to the Maronis.
But then Vic screws up and gets caught breaking into Viti’s car. He was unable to plant the jewels. So Penguin goes with a hastily conceived Plan B, which is to kill Arvad. He then plants the knife he used on Sofia’s right-hand guy, Castillo (Berto Colón), also having Vic plant the jewels in Castillo’s apartment.
Luca then helps Penguin’s plan along by shooting Castillo in the head before Sofia can deal with him in any way, further isolating her from the rest of the family. (Luca afterward suggests she go to Italy for a vacation to get away from it all. Sofia does not take kindly to this notion.) And so, just as Penguin was hoping, Sofia asks Penguin to come in on her plan to take over the family, using the new drugs that Alberto was planning to bring in. They can even use the jewels that she found in Castillo’s apartment to finance it!
Watching Sofia’s frustrations in dealing with a family that refuses to take her seriously is very compelling. She has two strikes against her: she’s a woman and she’s tainted goods thanks to her stint in Arkham.
The most spectacular scene in the hour is at the post-funeral gathering at the Falcone mansion. It’s set up first with a room full of people and a susurrus of noise that goes completely silent as soon as Sofia walks into the room. Then she starts sloppily eating the finger-food, which she’s obviously doing to troll the family. Then she walks in on home movies of her and Alberto as kids. Then the scene itself: Carla Viti, Sofia’s cousin (Aleksa Palladino), approaches. They engage in ridiculous small talk that obviously makes Sofia uncomfortable, with Carla even suggesting they take a “girls’ trip” to Italy, like they used to do when they were younger.
Then Carla’s daughter Gia (Kenzie Grey) comes over, and the entire tenor of the scene changes. Sofia kneels down to say hi to Gia, and Carla tenses, wraps an overly protective arm around her daughter, and says, “Gia…” in a strained voice. At that point, Sofia knows she has stripped away all the artifice of their earlier conversation, and forces Carla to admit that she’s scared to death of Sofia and is only making nice for appearances. Sofia deliberately fixes a barrette that’s loose in Gia’s hair, sending Carla into a virtual panic. It’s a tour de force, brilliantly put together by Milioti, Palladino, Grey, scripter Erika L. Johnson, and director Craig Zobel.
Penguin lays out one of the episode’s major themes in a lecture to Vic, who once again is mainly serving his purpose of Guy Penguin Talks To In Private Moments So We Know What He’s Really Thinking, since when he talks to other people he’s working an angle. You have to adapt, you have to think on your feet, you have to adjust. Throughout the episode, Penguin’s plans are messed up by unexpected events, whether it’s being forced to ride in the truck or giving Nadia the blackmail photos of Viti or rearranging who to frame once Vic fails to plant the jewels in Viti’s car. Each time, he pivots and adjusts. It’s a lesson he’s trying to teach to Vic.
For Vic’s part, we get two hints as to stuff happening in his life, about which we know nothing so far beyond the fact that he’s newly homeless after the flood. His eye is caught by a “missing” poster on a lamppost, and he gets a text from someone named Graciela wondering where he is. One hopes that will be dealt with soon…
