The Penguin Season 1 Review – A Gotham Crime Story

As I’ve made clear many times in the past, I’m not the biggest fan of The Batman film by Matt Reeves. They tried to go for something “fresh and unique” but stumbled over some key elements at times. Not the least of which was how basic Batman felt at times compared to the vastly superior supporting cast. One of the supporting cast was Colin Farrell as The Penguin. You couldn’t even tell it was him, and that made his performance even more compelling. Fast forward to now, and it’s Oswald’s time to shine. My The Penguin Season 1 Review will highlight how Oswald’s journey to the top was gripping, even if some odd things left me scratching my head at times.

When I’m writing this, The Penguin’s finale just aired, so I’m going to use lots of spoilers because it’s necessary to explore how great the characters of this show were. You’ve been warned.

Let’s start with the obvious. This “limited series” takes place directly after the events of The Riddler’s attack on Gotham that flooded much of the undercity. Carmine Falcone is dead due to Riddler, too. Thus, there’s a power vacuum among the many gangs of Gotham who want to seize power and see what can be done in the chaos that’s all around.

Obviously, Oswald Cobb (yes, Cobb, not Cobblepot) is one of those people, and he immediately goes to work to try to make his big play. One of the ironies of The Penguin is that it takes all of five minutes for us to get a glimpse of what this version of Oswald will be. He kills the heir apparent in Alberto Falcone right off the bat and then has to work his way out of suspicion and start building the blocks of his future empire.

I truly wasn’t expecting things to go as fast as they did at times, yet it worked. This was one of the rare times when an eight-episode season didn’t hold things back because the episodes themselves were long, paced mostly well, and delivered key elements every time so that not a single episode felt like filler. Plus, the characters made almost every scene important, right up until the very end, when a certain Bat-signal shined in the sky to show that things weren’t truly over.

So, let’s talk about the “man of the hour,” shall we? Colin Farrel absolutely delivers as Oswald Cobb, and the show shines when he’s “doing his thing” and working his way out of any situation he’s caught up in. It doesn’t matter who’s in front of him, how bad things are, how many seconds away he is from death, etc., he finds a way out. At some point, you’d think it’d be ludicrous that he keeps getting away. Yet, every getaway, whether it be through words or actions, resonates, especially when he’s NOT saved by his own direct actions, but by indirect ones.

Yet, to be clear, Oswald is far from a hero or even an anti-hero. I was even tempted to call what he went through in the season a “hero’s journey for a criminal,” but it’s far more nuanced than that. By his own admission, to survive in the underworld, you need to adapt to any situation you’re in, and that’s what he does. If I was to define this version of Oswald, it’d be “The Illusion and The Lie.”

By that, I mean that Oswald builds himself up as something beyond what the other crime lords are. In the opening scenes, he talks about the gangster who inspired him to be what he wants to be. A “man of the people” while also being a “made man.” Yet, as the season goes on, we see that this is just an illusion to gain followers and trust in those close to him. We see that beautifully at the end of Episode 7, where he gives a big speech to his loyal followers about how he “wouldn’t pick any other people but them” to fight alongside. Then, when a bomb shows up, he races out of there, leaving everyone there to die.

Why? While he likely did “care” about them in some respects, his life, ambitions, and dreams are more important than theirs. Sure, he probably didn’t see them as “canon fodder” like the other crime families did. However, that didn’t stop him from using them to be that when the time came. That’s what made him so compelling to watch. His line about “having a code” made you want to see him be different. Yet, in the end, so long as he was the kingpin of Gotham’s crime network…everyone and anyone was expendable…except for him.

Even when we learn about his mother and the “tragic backstory” that led him on the true path to being a gangster, the questions about “truth and lies” never stop, even up to the finale.

We learn that Oswald was so desperate for his mother’s attention and love that he was willing to put his brothers in serious danger just because he was annoyed by them. Now, the question of whether he “intentionally” wanted them to die is something I feel is debatable. Would he really have gone that far at such a young age? Or was he really just someone who wanted his mother’s love, and wanted a “night alone with her” while his brothers got their “just desserts” for going too far in a game with him? That kind of nuance is what made me love this show more times than not.

That “illusion” of his love for his mother continued when he wasn’t willing to admit “what he did” even when she was strapped to a chair and about to have a finger cut off. He couldn’t imagine her being disappointed or mad at him, so he’d rather let her suffer than confess to something. That’s how dedicated to “the lie” that he is, which made him more dangerous than just about anyone on the show.

That’s actually a perfect segue to the show’s supporting cast, which was incredibly strong in unexpected ways. Case in point: Victor, who we meet in the first episode and follow on his “villain’s journey” from unlucky caught carjacker to the right hand of The Penguin. My The Penguin Season 1 Review wouldn’t be complete without talking about him because his journey and fate helped make the show compelling when Oswald wasn’t on screen (and when a certain someone else wasn’t there, either.)

While Oswald was the face of Gotham’s crime underworld during a chaotic period, Victor was the face of Gotham’s population after The Riddler’s attack. His home and family were wiped out, and he was left with nothing. Oswald gave him a chance to be something more, not unlike how Oswald was given a chance long ago. A key thing the show did was highlight how Victor wasn’t a bad guy at first, and even in the end, he wasn’t a true villain. He’s just someone who took an opportunity to get off the streets, and how many of us wouldn’t take that if it were us in that position?

The scenes with Oswald and Victor were well-handled, too. Key ones that stood out to me were the grave-digging scenes where Oswald was trying to teach a valuable lesson to Victor about screwing up and the consequences of it. Then, there was the restaurant scene, which gave a blunt and honest talk about the “American Dream” and how the world doesn’t “allow it to happen” to certain people in certain classes. Given all that’s going on in our world right now…it felt more apt than likely was intended, and it made you connect with the two throughout it.

So, when Victor stepped up multiple times to kill for Oswald, you knew that something big would happen in the end. Yet, his death helped seal the “illusion” of who Oswald Cobb was. He built up Victor from nothing to an accomplished gangster, and then, at just the simple mention of Victor feeling that Oswald was “family” to him…he got killed for it. You can debate the many reasons why Oswald did it, but it was a poignant end that a “gangster story” doesn’t have a happy ending more often than not.

And that brings me to the part of this The Penguin Season 1 review that I’ve been truly eager to talk about: Sofia Falcone. She was played magnificently by Cristin Milioti, and to call her a “force of nature” on screen would be extremely underselling it. Seriously, she was a total boss from the moment she appeared, and even her “ending” was something special, and helped set things up in the future for her.

What I truly loved about this version of Sofia is that she was the “odd one out” in the Falcone family, and she used that to her advantage in various ways. Her being the “Hangman,” or so we’re told, brought intrigue and curiosity about just how “nuts” she was since she was in Arkham. Then, the twist that Oswald and Carmine Falcone betrayed her due to Carmine himself being the Hangman was well done. We got to see her go from being the “loyal daughter” to the inmate to the “free woman trying to make her own path” to a true psycho who wiped out almost all of her family…only for her to be willing to leave it all behind…”Because I can.”

Unlike Oswald’s true origin, you sympathize with Sofia because she was wronged by everyone but her brother. Then, her brother was taken from her, and she was alone, let to deal with “lying men” and a “broken world.” I’m honestly glad they didn’t kill her, because she’s too compelling a character to leave in the ground, especially if they decide to do a second season after the next movie.

By the time you get to talking about the other characters, like Salvatore Maroni, Francis Cobb, and certain others, you see just how well-rounded this cast was. The reason I keep using pictures of the supporting cast with Oswald is that everything truly revolved around him, and their interactions helped make the show shine many times over.

To that end, one thing I appreciated about the season was that it never let things get too stagnant. Everything was happening at a fast pace in the best way. Just when you thought you knew what would happen, something shifted. I honestly thought the “partnership” between Sofia and Oswald would last at least a couple of episodes before going sideways, but it didn’t even last one! Then, when Sofia teamed up with Salvatore to take down Penguin, that was a nice twist, too. As was Sofia’s realization that she was becoming her father and wanted nothing to do with the family name or the business anymore. Or at the end when Oswald used the councilman to pin everything on Salvatore and Sofia, helping him get a “clean as a whistle” persona that Batman fans are very familiar with.

Even the violence within the show was well-paced. You’d expect a “gangster/crime show” to have a lot of fight scenes and such, but they were actually pretty spread out. Yet, when every death was made, it mattered. Whether it was Alberto going down early, Sofia killing Johnny Vitti because he wouldn’t go along with the plan, or the death of Victor, everything was spaced out just right so that this show would focus on the characters and their actions and not solely be about the violence.

Look, not everything needs to be John Wick level of violence, okay? I say that as a John Wick fan.

Sadly, my Penguin Season 1 review has reached the point where I must point out its flaws. There are a few, and some stick out more than others. First, much like The Batman, certain scenes and beats could’ve been easily trimmed down. Some of the episodes lasted an hour or more, and while some were worth that runtime, others weren’t.

The second issue was Sofia’s “relationship” with Dr. Julian Rush, who you might know as “Shades” from the Luke Cage series. That interaction/relationship was weird from the get-go, and it didn’t really make a difference in the end. Plus, the doctor had some weird technology to help “bring up repressed memories,” and it was never explained. She didn’t need a “man in her life,” so it was odd they kept showing the two together.

The third issue was one I truly don’t understand, which was certain “random events” watering down key moments. The first one came when Salvatore finally got his hands on Oswald, and the two were duking it out…only for Maroni to die of a heart attack. Really? Then, the very next episode, Francis has a stroke, and she’s a “vegetable” now. Having one such event happen is one thing, but two in the span of two episodes? Have a heart (pun intended) for the elderly, okay? Oh, and that one “drop sleuth” getting Penguin after the explosion? That was just lame.

Fourth, there was a “time skip” that happened in the back half of the season, and it just felt…off. That went especially because despite the combined forces of Sofia and Salvatore, they couldn’t find Oswald’s underground operation. One could argue it was “part of the point,” as Oswald knew the city better than him, but both families got the drop on him before, and all he had to do to evade them was just go underground? Eh…

Finally, the biggest flaw is one that many were nervous about going in: The Batman. No, he doesn’t make a signal appearance in the show, outside of the ending “stinger” with the Bat-signal going up right as Oswald is celebrating his victory. That was a huge problem for me because this was a DIRECT FOLLOW-UP to the movie, and Batman KNEW about Oswald and the Falcones, Maronis, and so on. Yet, despite all the gang violence that was going on and the opening monologue to The Batman about “striking fear” in the darkness, he didn’t show up for a massive crime war. Heck, he’s not even mentioned by name outside of a news clip!

Even if you play the whole “he can’t watch everything” card, they mention at the beginning of the show that Batman is helping save victims of the flood, which, as shown in the movie, is in broad daylight. Batman even said he wanted to be a “symbol of the people,” yet, neither he nor Gordon appeared when Sofia gassed the Falcone’s, nor did Batman show up when Crown Plaza was blown up partially! Why didn’t he “help the people” there?

Remember, in the movie, Batman was almost running himself ragged trying to clean up the streets of Gotham and became a “force for good” in the people’s eyes by the end…so why wouldn’t he be trying to stop this gang war that apparently went from one season until the other?

Even with all that, and as I wrap up my The Penguin Season 1 Review, I do want to note that this show was high-quality television. I honestly liked it better than The Batman, which makes me curious about how things will go from here.

After all, there are rumors about other spinoffs featuring the “Rogues Gallery,” and The Batman Part 2 won’t arrive until 2026 at best. Hopefully, the quality of this show is kept because this version of Gotham is compelling when handled properly.