It seems impossible, but HBO is excellent The Batman spin-off series, The penguinis getting better and better. Last weekWe watched Cristin Milioti give a masterclass as Sofia Falcone, learning how the scorned woman went from mafia princess to Arkham inmate to de facto head of the Falcone crime family after killing them all in one fell swoop. This week Sofia, dressed in a brown fur coat, black underdress and fox eyeliner, presents us with a new mafia business model: socialism.
The penguinIn the fifth episode, the series switches back and forth between our princess and the duo Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) and Vic (Rhenzy Feliz), who are now on opposite sides in the war for control of Gotham. As Oz and Vic work to get back the psychoactive mushroom drug they plan to sell on the streets, Sofia must convince a group of men that she is innocent (of killing her family, which she is not) and capable (of leading her family ) is. what she is). After skillfully dealing with Gotham’s police chief Mackenzie Bock (Con O’Neill), he stepped back into his role The Batman), who has shown up to “investigate” (read: revel in) the mysterious deaths of her entire family, it is revealed that Sofia is holding Johnny Viti (Michael Kelly) in the Falcone family’s catacombs, running cold water in the process his almost naked body is subjected to a form of torture in an attempt to get him to hand over the unmarked wads of cash that her father had snatched away.
And she gets her money (torture works!) but she doesn’t keep it for herself. Sofia Falcone (now Sofia Gigante, since she decides to take her mother’s maiden name to honor her memory and distance herself from her father) wants to lead a more egalitarian famiglia, a socialist-oriented mob, if you will. She wants to end this senseless war between the Falcone family and the Marone clan, who used these men as disposable chess pieces while the capos sat in their mansions and got richer and fatter. She wants to share the wealth – in the truest sense of the word.
Sofia gathers all the men to explain her new business model and hands them a huge bag of money, which she slams on the table to show them that this is what the Dons have been hoarding while they worked and bled for them have. Viti starts to protest and talks about Sofia while she’s in the middle of the tirade – so she shoots him in the head. As his blood spreads across the table, she places the bag of money on the table after promising that in the future they will have more money than they know what to do with and that they will share their earnings .
“Go ahead,” she says sardonically as one of the men reaches for a wad of cash. They all fall into the pile and grab as much as they can carry. This is a fair distribution of wealth in a mafia business model. Welcome to socialism, Gotham.
It’s fascinating that both Oz and Sofia hold the same ideals but use completely different methods to move Gotham’s criminal enterprise toward justice. In this episode, Oz reminds his crew that when he eats, they always eat, while Sofia points out that Falcone’s henchmen were never “made men” and were never given an equal piece of the pie. But Sofia knows she has to tend to the men’s precarious egos while ensuring her power never falters, so she navigates the negotiations with purpose and grace. She is a scalpel while Oz is a bulldozer, destroying everything in his path to ensure he can rise through the ranks and become King of Gotham.
It will be interesting to see how their very different approaches play out as the season progresses. The next episode of The penguin airs Sunday, October 27th at 9pm ET on HBO Max.
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