well Color Me shocked I mean who could have predicted that a spin-off TV show about a periphery character from a moderately successful Batman movie would turn out to be an extremely well- written brilliantly acted competently directed and generally excellent crime drama with a complex and sympathetic protagonist and possibly one of the best comic book adaptations we've had in years not me that's for sure the hype around the penguin was basically non-existent as far as I was concerned because I was about as enthusiastic for this show as I was for telling my AA sponsor that I'd
fallen off the wagon for the third time today and it was only through the combined recommendations of a few people whose opinions I actually respect that I finally sat down to watch the First episodes and damn I've got to admit they pulled a Blinder with this one unapologetically violent gritty complex hard-hitting and mature the penguin strikes exactly the tone I'd expect from a show like this unlike the MCU whose laughable attempts at producing more grounded and realistic TV content ended up more like Tulsa King mixed with the Teletubbies the penguin actually feels like a show
written by and for adults starring actors who can actually act and a script that neatly establishes its world and characters within a single episodes the show picks up right after the events of the Batman with Gotham recovering from the flood that destroyed half the city and the criminal underworld reeling from the death of Carmine Falcone with his son Alberto struggling to fill his dad's shoes and his Empire faltering it seems like a power vacuum is developing in Gotham and sooner or later someone's going to have to fill it enter Oswald Cobb his former right-hand man
who now has aspirations to move up in the world and when he gets into a heated confrontation with Alberto one night well let's just say it doesn't end well it's not long before he runs into a local gang member trying to steal his car but rather than just kill him Oswald sees something of himself in the kid and decides to put him to work heartwarming stuff indeed but things soon go south when Oswald gets word that the Falcone family are moving their drug operations out of Gotham basically cutting his business off at the knees even
worse Alberto's batshit crazy sister Sophia has been released from Arkham Asylum and clearly suspects that Oswald knows something about her brother's disappearance but what to do well rather than skip town Oswald decides to stand and fight working hard to play his enemies off against each other and bring down the Falone Empire from the inside so that he can eventually take over himself and as we soon find out he's willing to go to some pretty [ __ ] extreme lengths to get what he wants as a character the penguin always felt like a weird out ofpl
Edition in the Batman movie awkwardly inserted into a narrative that didn't really need him and abandoned when the script decided it was done with him the decision to smother Colin Farrell in enough latex to supply a dozen of PD's House Parties just to make him look like a fat ugly middle-aged man instead of hiring an actual fat ugly middle-aged actor was another bizarre creative choice that felt like it was done just to get another big name on boards so like I said before I wasn't exactly pumped to watch an entire TV show based around this
guy after all we've had plenty of other Batman spin-off shows over the years that have ranged from pointless to obscure to downright abusive it will be when it fits a woman and that's what this felt like just another spin-off show with no clear reason for existing that nobody particularly wanted or asked for but the thing that the penguin does so well and so efficiently is to get you invested in its protagonist literally by the end of its first scene a short conversation with the new head of the Falone Empire really tells you everything you need
to know about what drives oswalds he's a man born into a hard and cruel world who was forced to become hard and cruel himself to survive but there's also something else in him that sets him apart from his peers he aspires to become something better even if he's forced to become something worse in order to get there he's a man handicapped by crippling disability who clearly didn't start with any advantages in life but through ruthless cunning careful planning and sheer balls out bravery he's clawed out a place for himself in the worlds and beneath it
all he's still very much a human being broken and damaged by a tough life and the little glimpses of vulnerability and Humanity that we see are just enough to make us empathize with him as he mentions at one point he's learned how to make himself small so that his bossies can feel big around him careful never to rise too far or say too much in case he paints a Target on his back and big props to Colin Farrell who turns in what might be one of the best performances of his career it would have been
easy for an actor to look kind of laughable under all those Prosthetics but the strength of Farrell's performance shines through so that you kind of forget he's even wearing makeup after a while and that's not to put down the rest of the cast either who all deliver brilliant performances Clancy Brown is always Dependable as a menacing villain but the real standout is Christen motti as Sophia who is highly intelligent brutal and always balanced right on the edge of Madness you really feel like she could do anything at any moment she's a perfect foil for someone
like Oswald and it's going to be great fun watching them spar with each other for control of the city in terms of plot and pacing if you're a fan of The Godfather movies or shows like The Sopranos then you'll be pretty familiar with the story Beats at work here it's your typical organized crime drama for the most part lots of plotting and scheming alliances and double crosses family loyalties and bit or feuds but it's all handled pretty competently and for the most part I didn't feel like events or decisions were forced for the sake of
moving the plot along yeah you could probably argue that Oswald choosing to spare Victor's life was a bit contrived when it would leave him dangerously exposed and he almost certainly has other men that he can trust at his disposal but mostly I'd put that down to his more sentimental side getting the better of him and in some ways it kind of makes sense for him to get someone outside the family who's completely insulated from all this stuff in terms of the cinematography one one of the things I really appreciated about the Batman movie was the
way it reverted back to the gritty dilapidated Gotham City that fans of the comics knew so well compared to the Bland sterile version that we got in the Dark Knight trilogy and whatever the [ __ ] Zack Snider was trying to do the Batman felt like just the right balance between grounded realism and the industrial gothic look of the comics and that aesthetic gets carried over perfectly well here it's obviously still based on New York but rundown neglected stricken by crime and Corruption and Decay so basically just actual New York then we're only one episode
in so far so it's a bit too early to say for sure but for the most part I think I'm pretty impressed with what they've managed to do with the penguin if I had to compare it to something else I'd say it feels like the Netflix Daredevil series something that used its parent movies as a jumping off point to Branch off into its own self-contained narrative that's way more violent and mature than anything the movies could ever hope to be and if that was their aspiration for this show then well hats off to you Gent
mission accomplished let's just hope you don't drop the ball on this one because you have my interest so far anyway that's all I've got for today go away now
