Ignorance Is Bliss In ‘The Penguin’ Episode 3

The Penguin is excellent in a way that doesn’t make much sense, and Episode 3, “Bliss”, exemplifies this in several interesting ways. It’s a Batman story without Batman, a mob drama with comic book-y embellishments, and an acting showreel with the lead obscured behind makeup and prosthetics. It’s about how a wacky one-note henchman is really smart and capable and charismatic; about the interiority of a character defined by affectations and ostentation.

It shouldn’t work, should it? And yet it works tremendously well, bristling with energy and ideas in every episode, especially in this one, which works to humanize Oz Cobb by paralleling his motivations and goals with those of his reluctant new driver, Victor Aguilar.

Parallels

Vic, the son of hard-working first-generation migrants, lost everything in the Ridder’s bombing of the seawall in The Batman and the resultant city-wide flood that has left large parts of Gotham City still underwater. Even before that tragedy, he wanted more. He couldn’t understand why his mechanic father would rather work for peanuts than pursue his culinary dreams. He’s reminiscent of the Tyson character in Tulsa King, whose father would similarly prefer a modest, honest living to a lucrative one requiring moral compromise. Oz’s point of view, which is rapidly becoming Vic’s, is that morality has no value in a city as decayed as this one.

A couple of flashbacks are threaded throughout “Bliss”, but with the context established his predicament mostly manifests in a present-day dilemma. One of his friends, Graciela, who also lost everything in the floods, is leaving Gotham and wants Vic to go with her. Throughout the episode, he tries to pluck up the courage to ask Oz for his freedom, swayed by fear of being killed for what he knows and, on a deeper level, the possibility that he might not really want to leave.

In case it wasn’t obvious, Vic is becoming Oz; he perhaps already is him. When Sofia Falcone reveals to him that Oz was once her driver, and when Oz later reminds him that he should take what he deserves and stand up for himself, the same way he had to, their twin paths are laid out very clearly. Both would have rather been someone – anyone – else. But their cards were dealt. They have to play them.

Ignorance Is Bliss

After teaming up at the end of Episode 2, Oz and Sofia start making their own moves here, starting with taking control of Alberto’s big drug shipment, which turns out to be from Arkham State Hospital. What looks like a minor mushroom-growing operation is actually a harvest of red psychedelic spores that can be bottled and sold as a party drug. It was also, rather grimly, given to inmates at Arkham Asylum, including Sofia, so she knows first-hand that controlling this product, which they dub “Bliss”, means controlling Gotham’s drug trade.

Oz has to prove his utility by finding a distributor, and for that, he turns to the Triads, who have a testy relationship with the Falcones because Carmine ran them out of the drug trade and confined them to Chinatown. Oz’s associate, Link Tsai, isn’t thrilled to see him, and Sofia even less so, but they manage to sell what they’re describing as a “corporate restructuring” (read: coup) on the strength of Bliss and the word of Johnny Viti.

There’s just a slight problem here – Viti has no idea what they’re up to and would never endorse it even if he did. But Oz has a plan for that too.

That plan involves Oz and Vic staking out Luca’s wife, Tina, at a swanky restaurant, which is where Oz reminds Vic that he should speak up for himself more – the server cuts him off while he’s ordering, frustrated by his stammer – and “take up space”. It’s classic villain manipulation tactics – or is it? Personally, I don’t think so. I reckon Oz genuinely thinks this way and sees himself in Vic; and, conversely, I think that Vic, while sensing some degree of gaslighting, sees Oz as a rubric for how a guy like him can navigate a dangerous world.

Cristin Milioti in The Penguin | Image via HBO

The Move

Oz and Sofia use Tina’s intimate liaison with Viti to spring their trap. Now they have incontrovertible proof that he’s banging the boss’s wife, he better endorse them to the Triad boss, Mr. Zhao, if he knows what’s good for him.

Viti doesn’t go quietly. He takes his ire out on Oz, who he claims has only ever been kept around as a joke. He calls him “The Penguin” as what is quite clearly an insult, which is a nice reminder that, no, this isn’t a traditional Batman story.

But Viti makes the call. With that, Oz and Sofia are able to make a big show of Bliss in front of Zhao by having Eve and her girls distribute it around Oz’s club, with Vic playing the role of bagman. This, Oz and Sofia explain to Zhao, is the power of Bliss, a product that they’ve raised the price on twice without losing sales. It gives people who have lost everything a salve for their pain. The club morphs, through the power of montage, into a drugged-up dreamscape, though admittedly it turns nightmarish for Vic, who is reminded by the pyrotechnics of the explosions and subsequent rush of water and bodies that cost him everything.

It’s a turning point for everyone. Zhao is sold. Vic is ready to run. Sofia has settled on the idea that Oz can’t be trusted. Chaos is looming, and The Penguin Episode 3 provides it.

Decisions

Oz catches Vic trying to sneak off and treats him to a lengthy but excellent monologue, feigning offence at Vic’s fear of him after everything he has done, and giving him his blessing to leave, to consign himself to the life of a nobody. Vic leaves, stealing Oz’s plum Maserati to make the journey to the bus station, where he tearfully watches Graciela depart. Vic is staying.

And a good job, too. Just as Oz was starting to convince Sofia that he’s on her side by being surprisingly truthful about a) playing a role in having her sent to Arkham and b) considering the minor rewards he got for doing so totally worth it, Nadia Maroni shows up with some choice words and a gun for Oz, who she now knows has been playing both sides. Both he and Sofia – who must now know what he has been up to since the premiere – are at their mercy until Vic drives Oz’s Maserati right into one of Nadia’s gunmen. Oz gets inside and the two of them speed off, leaving Sofia behind.

Read More: The Penguin Episode 4 Recap