REVIEW: The Penguin – Episode 8, “A Great or Little Thing”

Television Reviews

It all came down to “A Great or Little Thing,” a title that sums up the entire series, particularly its main character. The Penguin is a story awash in lies and myth-making, with little things – little people – becoming greater than what they are based on the tall tales we tell each other and the ones we tell ourselves. It gets bloody, it gets dark, it gets tragic, and despite seeming impossible, the finale is a satisfying conclusion to what turned out to be an excellent crime story.

Sofia forces Oz and Francis to confront the truths they won’t allow themselves to speak. Vic tries to keep Oz’s gangland alliance together as he looks for his boss.

As with last week’s “Top Hat,” “A Great or Little Thing” begins with a flashback to Oz’s youth, only this time, it’s from his mother’s perspective. Under Sofia’s pet psychiatrist’s direction, Francis relives the days following the discovery of Jack and Benny’s bodies. Her tragedy is even greater when we learn that Francis knows Oz killed his brothers; she found the flashlight he used in the sewers and knows he was the one who locked them in that corridor and left them to die. It’s a harrowing few minutes as she confesses to Rex Calabrese, the local gang boss, that her son is evil, and Rex subtly offers to kill Oz for her. This scene is crucial to understanding Oz – the two people he most admired and whose approval he most sought thought he was an irredeemable monster who needed to be put down like a rabid dog – but what makes it all the more fascinating is that this is just for us; Oz would never know any of it. Well, not for a while, anyway…

***SPOILERS***

“A Great or Little Thing” is about lies, as The Penguin has been from the beginning, and the lies began when Oz was a child. His mother’s love for him was a lie; she was going to have him killed and only relented when she realized Oz so sought her affection that he would break his back to make sure he could take care of her. Rex offered her the choice and advised that she figure out if Oz was desperate for a father (or mother, in his case) or if he had no loyalty and would betray anyone if it suited him. Initially, she decides he is the latter, but upon hearing his insistence that he would do anything to care for her, Francis wonders if maybe she can make use of the son she’ll never love again. And as we learn when Sofia is torturing Francis, she was wrong; Oz is about to let Francis be disfigured to maintain the lie that he never killed Jack and Benny. Even to the woman he loves the most, Oz is only as loyal as convenience allows him to be, and it’s more important that his mother thinks he’s innocent than that she be unharmed or maybe even live. As twisted as this scene is, Sofia comes off looking better than Oz, and she’s kind of right: they all would have been better off if Francis had let Rex kill Oz.

Because, ultimately, Oz is the source of everyone’s pain. Francis would never be the mentally deteriorating shell of herself she became if Oz hadn’t killed his brothers; there would have been no choice between ending the monster while he was still a boy or taking the chance that he could be controlled. Sofia would have exposed her father or perhaps even protected him, which wouldn’t have helped the girls he killed, but Sofia would have avoided Arkham. Alberto would be alive, and Sofia would still have the one person she could trust. Vic would have left Gotham with his girlfriend. Eve would have her business and her girls. Sal Maroni would have his wife and son. But Oz’s selfishness, envy, anger, and corrupting influence denied them all these things, the basic elements of life. It’s also telling that each of these things revolves around love and family – the things Oz was desperate for and, resultingly, took from everyone around him. The tragedy of it is that Oz never realized he had them all along. His mother loved him as much as his brothers; he just couldn’t see it because he wanted all of her love. Sofia was his friend, but he turned on her the first time she snapped at him – and the first time it allowed him to advance his career. Vic loves him like a surrogate father, or maybe a wacky uncle, but betrayal is coming his way as well.

“A Great or Little Thing” is as concerned with Oz now as with his past. The point of this finale is that Oz is the same monster he was as a kid; he never grew, he never learned to love while seeking it in others, and he never stopped lying. When his mother is being threatened with mutilation, Oz refuses to admit the truth about his brothers. His gambit with the city councilman he blackmailed a couple of weeks ago is based on a series of lies blaming Sofia for his most heinous crimes. When he turns the tables on Sofia and wins the war, he gives himself the credit for upending her and the other bosses when it was actually Vic who did it. His threat of killing Sofia is a lie to set her up for accepting a fate worse than death. When he and Vic celebrate their victory, he lies about loving Vic while strangling him to death to protect himself. He even retroactively lies to his mother, keeping her alive in a vegetative state when he promised to let her die (the inverse of his lie to Vic, though both are born of the lie that he loves anyone as much as himself). And, finally, he lies to himself, having Eve pretend to be his mother as she dances with him and comforts him, telling him she loves him, which is a lie for Eve and Francis. Oz is the little thing who thinks he’s a great thing, the weasely little thug who lied his way into being a king.

And everyone who trusted him – to varying degrees and under different circumstances – experiences their worst nightmares. Sofia is now back in Arkham, which is her version of hell. Francis will live on as a vegetable, looking out on a world she will never experience and can never leave, crying for her fate and that of her two other sons while the beast who did this to them dances around his penthouse. Vic never sees the fruits of his hard work and dedication, with his murder making clear to him that he was never the son he wanted to be to Oz, that he already had everything and should have left with his girlfriend, letting his real father be his moral anchor. Eve is once again Oz’s plaything, cozying up to the next big boss of Gotham’s underworld when she’d thought she was finally free of him. And as Oz continues to lie to himself, one by one they learn the truth about him (aside from Sofia, who already knew): Oz is a liar, and they were swept up in his lies like the detritus of a shipwreck. He never cared for any of these people beyond what they could do for him, and now, he’s either discarded them or possessed them on his terms. The Penguin is a tragedy, but not Oz’s; it’s the tragedy of every life this monster ever touched.

One of the many joys of The Penguin has been the dichotomy between Oz and Sofia, and their endpoints in “A Great or Little Thing” sum up their tumultuous journeys. As Oz spun lies to all who would hear, Sofia wanted the world to know the truth about her, and she’s had to suffer for it. She had finally clawed her way out of the pit of lies into which Gotham had thrown her and took the castle she was denied,  but even then, she wanted to be her true self, even if it was a new truth created on the backs of the lies. But last week, Sofia realized that becoming a mob boss wasn’t who she really was; she wanted to be free of everything her family stood for, everything built by the people who betrayed her. Oz sought to take what was never his, while Sofia wanted to build something of her own. The end of her story (so far, it would seem) is the triumph of Oz’s lies over her truth; she’s now back where she started, locked in Arkham Asylum after being framed for someone else’s murders, and she’s so broken she won’t even protest. She knows how this story goes because she lived it once before. I hate seeing her like this, but the devastation of Sofia Falcone, or Sofia Gigante, feels like the only way the story could end. (Part of me thinks the letter from Catwoman – which is a nod to the comics; I forget if they alluded to this in The Batman – is a mistake, and our last image of Sofia should be her slumped against the wall of a cell she’ll probably never escape, resigned to the fate evil men chose for her.)

So ends The Penguin, an improbably terrific show about the success of a sniveling liar and the many victims he left behind. I imagine the sequel to The Batman will pick up the story, and I’m not overly interested in that. I like that they relegated Batman to the Batsignal in the final frame; the show is successful partly because it can exist on its own, and you don’t have to bring the Batman mythos into it. (It helps that Batman in this case is the Robert Pattinson version, of which I am not particularly fond.) Although if I learn that Cristin Milioti will be back as Sofia, I may have to check it out. But if not, I’m content to let “A Great or Little Thing” be the final word on these characters. Now, I await the 4K box set.

Let us know what you thought of “A Great or Little Thing” in the comments!

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