So, uh…where the hell is Batman?
Look, I'm not naïve enough to think Robert Pattinson was going to take time out of his busy “racing Kristen Stewart to see who can have the most impressive post-Twilight career” lifestyle to show up for a series like The Penguin. Series creator Lauren LeFranc, and The Batman’s own Matt Reeves, have both made it clear Bruce Wayne won’t be showing up here, for a variety of good reasons, including simply not wanting to overshadow Colin Farrell’s (generally very good) central performance. But The Penguin—a show that is, at least nominally, interested in the life of Gotham City, if not its most famous resident—seems almost allergic to the idea that this is a world where Batman even could show up to fight a little crime—or, say, investigate how the mysterious murder of a major crime boss has turned into a drug-fueled gang war that has now, as of this week’s installment, escalated into running car chases and lethal gun battles in the streets. These seem like things Batman would be interested in. I'm just saying.
It brings me back to the questions I asked last week, about what this show actually aspires to be: Is this just a Trojan Horse that LeFranc, Farrell, and this week’s credited writer, Erika L. Johnson, are using to get genre fan eyeballs on a story they actually wanted to tell, about a middle-manager mobster with mommy issues making good? Shorn of any kind of heightened comic-book reality, and beyond the basic novelty of getting to spend more time under the sodium lamps and grainy skies of The Batman’s Gotham, what does The Penguin actually have to its name that’s unique, outside strong central performances from Farrell and Cristin Milioti?
I’ll begin with the latter of those two this week, since that’s where the episode starts, too: with Sofia Falcone flashing back to her time in Arkham, during what looks to be a pretty harrowing EMDR session with hug-heavy mental health professional Theo Rossi. After letting her haunt the edges of the premiere, The Penguin moves Sofia into a deuteragonist position with its second episode, putting us in the shoes, if not the head, of a woman capable of generating crowds of angry protesters at her own brother’s funeral. The public perception of Sofia is as a deranged serial killer who murdered seven women—and the familial one isn’t much rosier, as we glimpse in the episode’s most interesting scene, when she “reconnects” with one of her cousins at Alberto’s funeral. Milioti, a deft hand at comedy, manages the sudden social awkwardness—and another unexpected hug!—from Cousin Carla with aplomb, but then gets to go delightfully frosty when the appearance of the woman’s daughter makes it clear just how scared everyone in this family still is of “The Hangman.” As we watch Sofia get treated with dismissiveness, disdain, and fear by everyone around her, it’s hard not to feel sympathy. Which is an interesting place to be, given that we’re just a week past watching her brutally torture our title character. But the episode’s decision to split its focus, and bring Milioti from an antagonist to protagonist position, is probably the installment's smartest move. You could make a TV show that lives entirely in Oswald Cobb’s head, but the endless tension would ultimately get kind of claustrophobic. Milioti helps carry some of that weight.
Which brings me to another question that’s been dogging me as I think about this episode: Is Oz Cobb a good criminal? Not in the ethical sense: “Inside Man” lays out, in case it wasn’t blindingly obvious, that Cobb is a survivor, first and foremost; he’s genial enough not to kill you if he doesn’t have to, but if it’ll secure him an advantage, well, just ask poor Ervad down in the Falcone’s basement how that'll go. (He also displays a noticeable tendency to kick down, ending the episode by dispensing a grisly punishment to Rhenzy Feliz’s Victor for failing him in the guise of a lesson of tough love.) What we mean to ask is: Is Cobb supposed to be good at this? “Inside Man” suggests not: He’s less a criminal mastermind than a reasonably talented improviser, only managing to survive his own ambush on the Falcone’s drug-transportation operation by the skin of his teeth, and then spending the rest of the episode desperately spinning plates to keep the various people who think they own him from believing he’s outlived his usefulness. Farrell’s own comedy chops come in handy here: Cobb can be sinister, and even occasionally warm, but many of his best moments come from a full flop-sweat panic that shows just how thin his veneer of “seen-it-all” criminality actually is.
If the character has a real strength—beyond Farrell’s gift for quick-talking bullshit—then it’s in his ability to sense, and exploit, the weakness in others. We see those instincts in play throughout “Inside Man,” whether Cobb’s exploiting the Maroni’s desire for leverage and respect, or his girlfriend Eve’s dreams of security, or, in the episode’s slowest-burn plot-line, Sofia’s paranoia about the people around her to slowly chisel out an alliance with her. It’s here that Farrell’s slightly goofy take on this character has its best payoffs: We’ll watch him fumble awkwardly at a characters’ levers, lobbing manipulations that are borderline laughable—and then, at the last minute, we’ll see him clue in to the actual weak spot and strike. If one of the throughlines of this series is Sofia’s quote from last week about how Cobb is a man who kills other people by talking, then these are the moments that sell the concept, the dangerous opportunistic predator lurking underneath all the jowls and jokes. A lot of people think they know what Oswald Cobb is; a lot of people have died, already, from underestimating what he'll do.
“Inside Man” is lucky to have those two lead performances anchoring it, if I'm being honest, because it’s otherwise a little dull. Sure, we’ve got the brief battle at the beginning and the tense little funeral witch hunt at the end. But this is an episode mostly about moving our two main characters into position in relation to each other. (I know that framing gives Feliz's Victor short shrift, but that’s just following in the episode’s footsteps; I assume we’ll eventually get a payoff for Penguin’s personal Robin that’s more impactful than watching him be too sad to score at a party or lying down with corpses. But for now, Feliz is still mostly trapped in audience surrogate mode.) Farrell and Milioti get one absolutely dynamite scene together, as Cobb earnestly describes luring his mother out of her grief over his brothers’ deaths by, uh, taking her out on a date, with Milioti connecting to her scene partner’s genuine emotion even as she keeps Sofia’s shields resolutely up. And there’s fun to be had watching Cobb run the numbers on the various people he might pin his mole activities on, ultimately dismissing Michael Kelly’s Johnny Vitti as just too damn hard to frame. But this is an episode of TV that’s less about what’s happening now than what’s happening next, and the ultimate effect is leaving me less interested in what I just watched than what’ll arrive next week.
