Summary
The Penguin reaches a turning point in Episode 7, revealing the horrifying fullness of Oz’s psychopathy and the lengths that Sofia might go to make him pay for it.
On the press tour for The Penguin, Colin Farrell responded to fans saying they had to come like the complex nature of Oz Cobb with something of a warning – that they probably wouldn’t like him after Episode 7, “Top Hat”. Well… he was right.
Not that “like” was ever the right word, at least not for me. I was surprised by Oz, though. I respected his nous and his awareness of the circles he moved in and the company he kept. I appreciated that the only reason he was able to get as far as he did – by Episode 6 he was pretty much solely in control of Gotham’s drug trade – because nobody took him seriously. There’s an underdog quality in that, and people root for the underdog.
And we were on Oz’s side to a certain extent because it felt like it wasn’t just the Falcones and the Maronis who were against him, but the city and the system, too. He came from nothing. His brothers were dead and his mother was dying. He was the chubby kid with a bum leg. He was a victim, on some level, or at least he used to be.
“Top Hat” challenges all these ideas and then some.
How “The City” Killed Jack and Benny Cobb
The Penguin Episode 7 opens with a pretty lengthy flashback to Oz’s childhood. He was one of three boys, all raised solely by Francis. His brothers, Jack and Benny, were older. They earned a little scratch from a local mobster, Rex Calabrese, who Oz has mentioned before in the present-day sequences. But they were struggling.
Oz wasn’t lying to Vic when he told him that he and his brothers used to play in the trolley station tunnels that now house his Bliss empire. He technically wasn’t lying when he said his brothers were killed by the city, either. But there’s more to it than that. Oz was visibly jealous of his brothers. They were cooler and older, and both of their legs worked. He had clearly been the butt of a few jokes. During a game of flashlight tag, Jack and Benny hide in one of the trolley station’s flood tunnels, knowing Oz struggles with the ladder. It’s cruel, but innocuous, just sibling banter, really.
Oz responds by locking his brothers in the tunnel and leaving them there. Eventually, it floods. All the while, Oz is at home doting on Francis as she deteriorates from the subsequent grief. It’s clear he has never said a word about this to anyone. He has never confessed – perhaps not even to himself – to killing his brothers. But that’s exactly what he did.
Cristin Milioti in The Penguin | Image via HBO
Salvatore’s Demise and Sofia’s Houseguest
Picking up from that chilling cliffhanger at the end of the previous episode, Vic is sporting a head wound and Francis is nowhere to be seen. Sofia has her. Vic is barely able to slip out of a window before a vengeful Salvatore Maroni comes knocking, insisting that Oz take him to the Bliss operation.
Sofia is keeping Francis hostage to ensure Oz plays ball. And he does, to an extent. He takes Sal to the trolley station, but when he spots an opportunity, he takes it. Goading Sal about burning his wife and son alive, Oz creates a distraction so one of his guys can cut the power. In the ensuing chaos, Oz fights Salvatore, but he keels over from what looks like a heart attack. And Oz is furious. It’s obvious from his ranting at Sal’s body and filling it full of bullets so that he can claim the kill that this is a real psychopath. And yet he’s a charismatic psychopath, so he inspires enough loyalty that his goons are emboldened by their victory. Oz isn’t defeated yet.
The Scars
Sofia thinks she has the upper hand on Oz in The Penguin Episode 7, and in a way she does, but it isn’t that simple. Her interrogation of Francis doesn’t go to plan, for a start. When she’s present, she’s hostile. And when her illness takes over, she’s vulnerable and pathetic, just an old woman trapped in a prison of her grief. Sofia visibly takes no pleasure in that.
And Sofia has another problem. Gia, the sole survivor of the Falcone massacre, saw something that night that she might intend to talk to the police about. Sofia goes to see her at the children’s home where she’s being kept, playing the doting aunt. Gia saw the gas mask in Sofia’s bag. She knows she killed her parents. Sofia denies it, but when she sees the self-harm scars on Gia’s wrist, she whispers to her that her parents were bad people and they deserved what happened to them. In other words, they weren’t worth her hurting herself. It’s a chilling scene, but as soon as Sofia leaves the room, she has a visceral reaction to what she has seen.
This is where Dr. Rush comes in, I think. Yes, he spends a good chunk of the episode “working with” Francis, which I suspect will amount to something in the finale, but he’s also there to help Sofia through her crisis of conscience and to realize what she wants. It’s to be free, first and foremost. But it’s also to cause Oz as much pain as possible.
Deirdre O’Connell in The Penguin | Image via HBO
Full Circle
Oz calls Sofia from Salvatore’s phone and offers to hand over the keys to the kingdom, his entire Bliss operation, if she just gives Francis back. He’s lying, of course – he has all his men waiting to ambush Sofia as soon as she arrives. But he catches her right as she’s coming out of Gia’s room, so she agrees, believing that perhaps any more violence wouldn’t be worth it.
By the time Sofia pulls into the trolley station in her G-Wagon, she has had a change of heart. Violence is the only thing on her mind. And for once, it turns out someone has gotten the upper hand on Oz, and not the other way around. Sofia isn’t even in the car. Neither, for that matter, is Francis. Instead, it’s filled with explosives. Oz has just enough time to rush into a side passage and descend into the same flood tunnel he condemned his brothers to in order to survive the blast.
Oz’s men, the ones whose loyalty he won and who were willing to put their lives on the line for his operation, he doesn’t even warn them. They’re all killed in the blast.
The Penguin Episode 7 ends with Oz emerging from the collapsed tunnels, covered in dust and soot, his ears ringing from the blast. He’s greeted by a Gigante man who thwacks him unconscious with a nightstick. Sofia wants to see him.
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