REVIEW: The Penguin – Episode 7, “Top Hat”

Television Reviews

“Top Hat” packs in enough story and character development for half a season, but the writers of The Penguin keep it from feeling rushed. Admittedly, part of that is because it’s following a bunch of stellar episodes that made the characters complex and the story a winding road of plotting, politicking, and power grabs that never lets up. But it’s also that the show keeps this up with every episode, and “Top Hat” ramps up the war between Oz and the Gigante/Maronis while keeping every twist and action scene rooted in its wonderful characters who manage to continue growing more layers.

When Oz learns that Sofia and Sal Maroni have taken Francis, he scrambles to save her and preserve his business. Sofia learns more about herself through a pair of women she’s hurt. Maroni is determined to avenge his wife and son.

“Top Hat” begins with an extended flashback that finally shows us Oz’s childhood. He’s one of three brothers, and he vies with them for his mother’s attention, growing hurt and angry when he thinks the others get more of it than he does. The roots of Oz’s inferiority complex are found in these scenes. While his brothers appear fit and athletic, Oz is overweight, disabled (he has his leg injury even as a child), and would rather stay home and watch movies with his mom than go out and play. On this particular day, his mother is working from home, and when Oz asks her to watch a movie with him, she tells him she has to work. When his rambunctious brothers, Jack and Benny, come blasting into the room and disrupt her workstation, however, she joins them in playing for a moment before sending them all outside. And when they go out, Oz notices the local mob boss, Rex Calabrese (whom he mentioned as someone he admired in the first episode) giving Jack some money, but Jack tells Oz to stay away from Rex because he’s a bad guy – in other words, his cool, likable older brother gets to talk to gangsters, but Oz has to sit back and watch.

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The brilliance of “Top Hat,” and really the whole series, is that Oz’s perspective is heavily skewed and demonstrably unfair. Francis does humor Jack and Benny for a moment – but she also sends them out to play while she finishes her work. And she humored Oz as well, assuring him she’d watch a movie with him later and taking a few moments to tell him how special he is. But Oz doesn’t see what’s done for him, only what’s done for those he thinks are less deserving, like the gangsters he envies as an adult. He sees Rex Calabrese as a benevolent local Robin Hood helping out the little people rather than a violent criminal who steals the money he gives away from honest local shopkeepers, which informs his method of lifting up the street hoods he gets to work for him later. Jack wants Oz to stay away from Rex so he doesn’t get hurt, but Oz sees it as the cool kids getting to have fun and make money instead of him, like when he has to sell his soul (what’s left of it, as we’ll see) by ratting out Sofia to Carmine to get in Carmine’s favor. Oz didn’t see the downward spiral he was on, just the money and power Carmine could give him. And, finally, this all comes to a head when Jack and Benny, while playing hide and seek, find a hiding place Oz can’t physically get to, and Oz sees not kids at play but tormentors mocking him. So, just like when Alberto and Sofia’s condescension bring his longtime resentments bubbling to the surface, he kills his brothers.

In these scenes (and I’m only about twelve minutes into the episode), “Top Hat” illustrates that Oz was always a monster, always jealous, always hungry for power in some form – more attention from his mother when he was a child, being the top Gotham gangster as an adult – and always willing to kill to get what he wanted. It’s to the writers’ great credit that Jack and Benny are not portrayed as bullies who hate Oz; they seem quite happy to have him hang out with them, and Jack shows the wisdom of a good older brother in trying to keep Oz away from dangerous people. But because they got in Oz’s way and because they did something he perceived as an insult, they had to die. We also see how Oz never thought about the ramifications his actions would have on others. When Jack got his money from Rex, he was going to give it to Francis like a good son. This never even occurs to Oz; in fact, he tells his mother Jack used the money to go to the movies, further maligning his brother to diminish him in Francis’ eyes. Francis’ devastation at her sons’ disappearance and likely deaths doesn’t occur to him either; all that matters is that he has his mom all to himself now. He repeats this pattern as an adult, not caring what happens to Sofia when he turns her in to Carmine or leaves her for Nadia Maroni to kill. When Oz later promises to take care of his mother, to give her all the things she wants and needs, he sees himself as a hero, the good son forever caring for mommy, rather than the one who caused all her trouble. Her dementia is likely a result of Oz’s murder of Jack and Benny, and he doesn’t care. Oz is a very human character, but in certain ways, he’s like Michael Myers in Halloween: someone who, though he may have motivations, is nevertheless the unexplained evil, the one who was not created by circumstance but simply is because he always was. (Oz’s hideout is symbolic of this; he is operating out of the same place where he killed his brothers because he’s still that same kid, only with more resources.)

In that way, Oz is the opposite of Sofia, and illustrating that makes “Top Hat” important because the last few episodes have been highlighting their similarities. While Oz was always a monster, “Cent’Anni” showed that Sofia was anything but, turned into the ruthless killer she is by a family that betrayed her. And “Top Hat” expertly reinforces that without retreading old ground. This week’s standout scenes both belong to Sofia (as usual), and the first is her showdown with Francis. Their back-and-forth begins as a way of Sofia trying to scare and intimidate someone she sees as an enemy because she assumes Francis made Oz the despicable creep he is – she assumes that Oz was created just like she was. But Francis manages to turn the tables on Sofia and cut her to the quick, exposing her recent actions, her reinvention of herself as Sofia Gigante, her seizing control of the former Falcone empire, as the desperate attempts of an angry little girl to get back at daddy, regardless of the reasons. (And boy, if you want an acting masterclass, this scene is it; Cristin Milioti and Deidre O’Connor are powerhouses.) Then, Sofia visits her second cousin Gia, the sole survivor of Sofia’s massacre, when she learns Gia is telling her doctors that she saw a gas mask in Sofia’s bag, which would incriminate her. But in talking to the little girl she orphaned, Sofia sees herself through the eyes of her victim. Sofia can talk about her trauma and the righteousness of her rage all day, but all Gia sees is the lunatic who killed her mom and dad, and Sofia is faced with the little girl she tried to save as a self-destructive orphan who is now cutting herself to lessen the pain in her heart. Oz will always see himself as the hero, but Sofia is starting to realize she might be the villain.

The differences in their characters are seen in their reactions to those who “wrong” them. When Francis’ dementia flares up, Sofia shows genuine concern and tries to help Francis snap out of it. When she does and slaps her, Sofia lets it go, telling her bodyguard not to retaliate. She realizes she was wrong, that this woman is not Oz’s creator, just another one of his victims. Sofia would be much better off killing Gia, but she can’t. She genuinely wanted to save her cousin, and she still believes she can, but she acknowledges the hurt she caused her. Despite her grand speeches about reform and doing right by her men, she knows that Gia will only heal if she’s as far away from Sofia as she is from the rest of that demented family. This is as much an acknowledgment of her agreement with Francis as when she admits it to her whacked-out psychiatrist. She knows they’re right, that she is merely becoming Carmine Falcone rather than erasing him and his legacy, living the life he’d planned for her before he sent her to Arkham. As she puts it, she’s traded one prison for another, and her reaction to the facility where they’re keeping Gia suggests that she realizes she’s created one for the little girl she thought she was helping. (They show a quick flashback to Sofia in Arkham to drive this point home, but Cristin Milioti is so incredible that you can read exactly what Sofia is thinking on her face.) Francis and Gia represent the past and future Sofia wishes she had: a loving family and a chance to grow up without the evil one she ended up with. And I believe this is why she still wants to get revenge on Oz; he is the cause of both these women’s suffering, just as he is of hers, at least in part. Like Francis, Sofia is what she is because of his betrayal, and the pain visited on Gia is a result of the psychological damage done to her with Oz’s help. And the only way she can get it is to let go of all the things Francis made her realize are holding her back, which is why she bombs the Bliss lab. She’s setting herself free by abandoning the hold her business – which was really her father’s business – had on her.

And while Sofia attempts to evolve, Oz is still the same sniveling, selfish, treacherous, delusional vermin he always was. “Top Hat” once again puts Oz’s back up against a wall to show us who he really is when the speeches are done, and it’s time to prove himself. When he finds Victor unconscious and learns that Sofia took his mother, Oz helps Victor escape as he awaits his inevitable capture. And while I do believe Oz likes Vic – he’s a monster, but he’s human – he tells Vic he needs him to escape so Vic can get reinforcements to fight Sofia and Sal. This is a play to protect himself and his mother more than an attempt to save a friend. When Sal brings Oz to the Bliss factory and declares it his and Sofia’s property, Oz gets his men to stand up to the Maronis, then runs as they fight and die for him. When Sal catches up to him and wails on him, Sal suddenly has a heart attack and dies mid-fight. Oz’s reaction is anger, followed by an imagined confrontation in which he kills Sal. This is Oz’s penchant for delusion at work; he not only imagines that he could have beaten Sal in a fight, but he acts out that fight, then shoots Sal’s dead body so he can tell people it was his victory, gloating that he won when he’s only alive because fate intervened. (This is the significance of the title, which refers to the movie Top Hat, which Oz and his mother watched after he killed his brothers. He watches Fred Astaire dance, something he can never do, and lives vicariously through the fantasy, and he creates these fantasies in his real life, making him seem like something he’s not: the loving son, the noble protector of the little people, the creator of Bliss, the loyal friend of Sofia, the victim of everyone he victimized, and finally, the tough guy who killed Sal “The Boss” Maroni.) And when Sofia sends him a bomb instead of his mother, Oz hightails it, letting the men who were loyal to him blow up without even trying to warn them. This is what all of his ballyhooing about the “family” they created, his love and appreciation, and the plight of the working man came to; he’s a self-serving weasel who cares about no one but himself… or, at least, no one above himself. And after jostling back and forth in their mob war, Sofia now has Oz at a severe disadvantage, and she’s got all the motivation in the world to make sure he pays.

With one more episode to go, “Top Hat” has left me with the same problem I’ve had since The Penguin began: I’m entirely on Sofia’s side, and I want her to win despite knowing she can’t. But that bittersweetness aside, “Top Hat” is yet another phenomenal episode, with more character development than I thought was possible at this late stage, and while I’m sad to see the great Clancy Brown go, it was smart to set up Oz and Sofia as the final confrontation. I’m going to be sad to see this one go.

Let us know what you thought of “Top Hat” in the comments!

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