REVIEW: The Penguin – Episode 4, “Cent’Anni”

Television Reviews

The Penguin’s trend appears to be one-upping itself every week, but I don’t know if it will be able to pull that trick again; although it’s following the excellent “Bliss,” “Cent’Anni” is even better than its immediate predecessor and the best episode of this series yet. This week focuses entirely on Sofia Falcone, telling her tragic backstory before setting up a tantalizing new beginning for her, and it’s perfectly done every step of the way. This is a great showcase not just for Sofia but for Cristin Milioti, who’d better be swimming in offers after this performance.

As Oz flees the scene of the Maroni ambush, Sofia Falcone escapes and calls for help before passing out, leading to an extended flashback of her life before Arkham Asylum, the hell she endured while imprisoned, and the truth about what made her so crazy.

“Cent’Anni” begins just before “Bliss” ended, with Oz and Sofia being held at gunpoint by Nadia Maroni and her henchmen. As they await probable execution, Oz does what he does best and tries to weasel his way out of the death anyone in their right mind would deal out to him (by the way, Nadia is very smart not to trust him, and I like that the show points out how dumb it is that anyone believes a word he says), selling out Sofia by saying he was using her to get control of Bliss and all but admitting to killing Alberto. Then, when Victor shows up to rescue him and Oz leaves Sofia to die, the Maronis chase him, not even bothering with Sofia as she crawls away, having hurt her right arm, and calls her seemingly friendly psychiatrist for help. Now, this scene is easily overlooked when taking in the many outstanding aspects of “Cent’Anni,” but it’s actually the lynchpin of the episode and probably of the rest of the season. I’ll explain why a little later because it’s not clear until we learn Sofia’s story.

***SPOILERS***

The bulk of “Cent’Anni” is devoted to explaining how Sofia got to where she is now, and it’s surprising. She used to be… normal. She was a nice girl; she helped with a lot of charity events in her family’s name, she was the only member of the Falcone crew who was nice to Oz – at that point, just her driver – and she was the apple of her father’s eye while her cokehead brother was the black sheep. And when they’re alone, Carmine tells her that he wants to break with Mafia tradition and have her succeed him as the boss of the Falcone family. (Okay, she’s still essentially a gangster, but perspective is important.) But she’s plagued by the memory of her mother’s suicide… by hanging. And when reporter Summer Gleeson (Batman: The Animated Series reference!) asks for her help in identifying the murderer of a series of women who work for one of her father’s brothels, she’s compelled to break her family’s code because she still sees her mother hanging from the ceiling, and despite that it seemed like an obvious suicide, something still gnaws at her. Seeing the pictures of the dead girls brings it back – there were scratches on her father’s hand when he comforted her, scratches that make her wonder whether it was the suicide she always thought it was, scratches that make her wonder if her father has a penchant for hanging women.

And that’s what changes the course of her life… or, rather, what Oz does in response to this changes everything. Suddenly, we realize that we didn’t know what we thought we knew. In “Bliss,” we learned that Oz ratted her out to Carmine, and Carmine had her locked up in Arkham Asylum. We assumed Oz learned she was the Hangman and told her father so he could get her some help, but that’s not what happened. Oz told Carmine she had talked to Summer Gleeson, which is much more egregious. He wanted, as Sofia puts it later, to be noticed by the higher-ups, to sate his ambition just a little bit. And Carmine, who was clearly the real Hangman, had her accused of the murders and locked away to protect himself. Now, she’s got nothing; her driver and confidant sold her out, her father cast her aside, her family helped him do it, her future as the head of the family is dust in the wind, she’ll never see daylight again, and the world thinks she’s a serial killer. On top of that, Carmine has paid the doctors in Arkham to psychologically torture her, to give her electroshock therapy to warp her mind so no one will believe her and so the judge will rule she’s incapable of standing trial. She went from the Falcone heir apparent to another problem Carmine had to lock away, with only her brother trying to help her.

This is brilliant because it actually sets up Sofia as the hero of the story. “Cent’Anni” portrays Sofia as a victim of Gotham’s corruption, with a Mafioso running the city, doctors all too willing to become sadists for money, a justice system happy to write her off as a lost cause without even hearing from her, an affluent family who lied about her, and a Judas who got rewarded for making it all happen. And nothing, including refusing to kill the maniac they send after her in Arkham, will convince anyone she’s sane; the system is rigged against her, the conclusion already decided. She can’t even trust the “friend” she makes in Arkham, who is just another traitor, another tool of her father to keep her locked in a hole forever. And that’s when she snaps, when she gives in to their narrative and becomes the monster they want her to be. The sight of Sofia streaked with the blood of her first victim is her true baptism, and she is reborn the unholy vessel of the madness they forced on her and the death she now embraces. And God help everyone if she ever gets out of the hell they thought was her fate. I remember years ago reading a review of Kill Bill where the author – I think it was Drew McWeeny, but don’t hold me to that – said the moment Uma Thurman wakes up in the hospital, feels that her baby is gone, and lets out that scream of pure anguish, you are immediately okay with whatever she does to the animals who did that to her. “Cent’Anni” is that moment for Sofia Falcone.

But what kind of monster did they create? That’s something the rest of “Cent’Anni” teases us with. Sofia is out now, and when she wakes up in her psychiatrist’s office, she has what feels like an epiphany. Oz’s newest betrayal is the last straw, and that’s why the opening scene is so important. She wakes up with the same injury she got in Arkham, the wound on her right arm, and once again, she realizes she’s all alone; the psychiatrist is only helping her to assuage his guilt over assisting in her torture at Arkham… and, it’s implied, because he’s attracted to her. She’s got a family full of people she once loved who helped her father condemn her to a life of torture, a business partner who sold her out to save himself and was never really on her side, a psychiatrist who helps her only because he wants something from her, and a guillotine positioned over her head that she can only escape by fleeing the country as her betrayers claim her birthright. After hijacking a dinner in her uncle Luca’s honor (a great scene with some genuinely funny moments that never undercut the drama), Sofia agrees to get out of their hair with a toast of “Cent’Anni.” And as she prepares to leave, Sofia leads her second cousin, the little girl from a couple of episodes ago, to the estate’s greenhouse to feed her some cake. This is the make-or-break point for Sofia, and it looks like she’s been driven so crazy that she’s about to murder a child to get back at her family.

That doesn’t happen, but it’s to “Cent’Anni’s” great credit that I was convinced it would. The music, the framing of these scenes, and Cristin Milioti’s incredibly unhinged performance all suggest that Sofia has turned into what her father wanted to convince everyone she was, and the signs pointed to it. This would have been the mirror of her killing the Arkham informant, showing her enemies what they made her through the murder of another. But no… she was actually protecting the girl by keeping her out of the kill zone. In what is easily the most satisfying payoff on the show (and, I think, in recent memory), Sofia has gassed the Falcone estate, killing everyone except herself and the little girl she ensures will never become the plaything of her former puppet masters – that she won’t end up like Sofia. Then, Sofia dances gleefully through the mansion, past each dead body, wearing that lovely dress and, until she doesn’t need it anymore, a gas mask. This is the melding of the girl she was and the killer she’s become; she is her past and present both, and she’s on her way to ensuring her future when she puts a gun to sole survivor Johnny Vitti’s head and tells them they need to talk. “Cent’Anni” is a traditional Italian toast that means, “May you live 100 years.” It turns out that the Falcone hierarchy wouldn’t live another day, but Sofia is just getting started.

I can’t do justice to how wonderful Cristin Milioti is, partly because I’ve been doing so for the past three weeks. In “Cent’Anni,” she plays several different versions of Sofia, and she’s entirely believable as all of them. When the flashbacks start, and Sofia is just the sweet, innocent daddy’s girl, the psychopath we’ve come to know washes away before she even speaks; Milioti holds herself differently, smiles differently, even seems to project a different mindset from her eyes. Her initial sadness comes not from seeing what Carmine is capable of and what he did to her mother when she was a child but from the fear that she could upset the man she believes is her loving father. This slowly gives way to frustration, fear, pain, and, ultimately, madness as she’s transformed into something much more dangerous than the Hangman. Her lilting glide through the Falcone mansion as she surveys the fruits of her massacre feels earned on a character level; Sofia was denied what others would give her, so she seized it for herself, and now, she can finally be happy because she knows she deserves it, just like the rest of the family deserve her parting gift to them.

But what does Oz deserve? That question is going to inform the rest of The Penguin. As much as “Cent’Anni” makes Sofia the most sympathetic character on the show, there are human dimensions to Oz and his decisions. When Sofia meets with Summer Gleeson, Oz warns her against doing it, and she admonishes him to keep his mouth shut and do what he’s told because he’s just a driver. And we know how Oz reacts when he feels disrespected; he lashes out, sometimes in very stupid ways. There’s no doubt he saw an opportunity to get a promotion, and he took it, even if he had to sell Sofia out, but you can see how much hearing Sofia berate him stung. She was the one who told Alberto not to call him “Penguin,” and when the chips were down, she was just like the rest of them. It was the same in “Bliss” and the first scene of “Cent’Anni;” Oz was self-serving, of course, but after her insulting him again, he probably had a lot less trouble leaving her to die. And this is necessary because, in a way, “Cent’Anni” causes problems for the series going forward. I can only speak for myself, but I am now 100% rooting for Sofia, and I know she can’t win. But I want to see her gut Oz like a fish. Showing Oz having a human reason for betraying her at least makes it understandable, certainly more so than her family serving her up on a platter, so maybe that’ll soften the blow when he inevitably takes what is hers. But damn, I wish it didn’t have to be that way.

However, that’s a problem for another day. For now, we’ve got an absolutely outstanding episode of television in “Cent’Anni,” a showstopper of a performance from Cristin Milioti, and a delicious setup for the second half of the season. And am I the only one who hopes she makes Johnny Vitti her new driver, replete with an insulting little cap?

Let us know what you thought of “Cent’Anni” in the comments!

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