Review: The Penguin, “Inside Man” | Season 1, Episode 2
Get it? Like the bread!
“It’s a hell of a lot more fun to dance.”
I noted in last week’s review of the premiere of The Penguin how much I enjoy Colin Farrell as an actor, but he’s one of the moderately rare combinations of a talented performer who is also a very capable talk-show guest. I note this because in the run-up to the series, he did a two-segment interview on Seth Meyers’ NBC show where he charmed his way through anecdotes about the Dublin Marathon as well as the experience of getting made up for hours at a time to transform into Oswald Cobb. It was telling, to me, that near the end of the interview, Meyers noted that through Farrell’s work, we sympathize (somewhat) with Oz in spite of the fairly cold-blooded murder he unleashes to kick off the plot of this show. In response, Farrell smiled somewhat slyly and suggested that by the end of the eight episodes, the audience’s capacity for sympathy towards Oz is going to be very minimal.
And of course, that’s as it should be. You don’t have to be a comic-book obsessive to know that the Penguin is not some secret antihero when placed opposite the Caped Crusader. Even in the cheerfully bleak Batman Returns, despite the knowledge we have in the opening scene about how callous his birth parents are towards him, Oswald Cobblepot (at least as he’s named in that film) is awkward, strange, and ultraviolent in immensely discomfiting ways. He may be as broken as Bruce Wayne or Selina Kyle, but those characters have a line they’re unwilling to cross. Cobblepot? Less so.
Does the Oswald Cobb of The Penguin have a line he’s unwilling to cross? Anything is possible, and within the confines of the 2022 film The Batman, he’s far from the worst villain with whom the eponymous hero tussled. But although we get one scene of Oz dealing with his infirm mother who suffers from a worsening case of dementia in “Inside Man,” the various machinations he attempts to enact serve as reminders that few, if any, of the people in this limited series are remotely relatable or likable. Oz is still convinced that a lifetime of benevolent power is his for the taking, and his desperate attempts to shift Sofia Falcone’s focus away from himself and onto anyone— from the more powerful Johnny Viti (always-reliable character actor Michael Kelly) to one of Sal Maroni’s men during a drug delivery gone haywire—are a means to that end.