The Penguin

I very much enjoyed The Penguin.

Spoilers Ahead.

Matt Reeves accomplished lots of incredible things with The Batman. We can all pick and choose our favorite parts. And at some point I’ll have to do that - focus on mine - but not today. Because today, like Gotham, belongs to The Penguin.

One of the accomplishments of The Batman that I appreciated most - but still, not my favorite part - is a very specific thing about its atmosphere. Anyone who saw the movie knows it did atmosphere incredibly well, but I think the truly unique thing it did with that feeling was not just to make you feel the world, the tone, the tension, all of that present in the room with you as you watch it — which it does - but to make you feel time with the world, as the world feels time.

The Batman is a movie that captures the feeling of 3:00 in the morning.

Nothing good happens after midnight. And 3 a.m. is about as late as it gets. The weight, exhaustion, sickly adrenaline of staying up deep into the night pervades the screen, the sound, the feel of the film.

So much of it is about perspective, and it’s another way it puts you in the shoes of its characters. You feel what they feel. Even the lateness of the hours they operate in the dark.

So if The Batman feels like staying up till 3:00 in the morning, then The Penguin feels like the next day. That adrenaline is gone, that clarity has left you, and all you have is the understanding that you have to survive the next day, and god have mercy on whoever comes across you while you do it.

The show is rooted very clearly in the history of gangster stories - The Sopranos connection most of all.

But I also see a different crime story influence: Breaking Bad.

Walter and Jessie’s descent into hell was a road paved with bad decisions justified by the idea of good intentions. One misstep led to another. Each episode, each season, was a constant escalation of consequence. Walter gassed some guys. He’s got to get rid of the bodies. One of the guys survived. He’s got to finish him off. Those guys worked for a guy. That guy is connected to this guy. That guy wants this. One step after another, one logical progression onto another logical progression. All carried and often interrupted by the unshakable will of who these people are.

That is exactly what we got.

Alberto insulted Oz. Bang.

Oz has to clean up. Victor.

Sofia is out and knows things. Frame Sal.

All this in just the pilot sets the tone and the pacing for what the show will be.

And as it progresses, we are consistently shown a sharp dichotomy: what Oz wants, and what is.

That is his defining trait. He is trying to make the world his. But he can’t. Like Walter White before him, he will justify that everything he does he does for his family. But it’s not true. He does it for him. He does it because he likes it.

And crazy enough, he’s not good at it. Not in the way he thinks. Oz thinks he’s an old school gangster and will win the war by being an old school gangster. But he’s not. He’s an oaf. He’s deluded. He doesn’t live in the real world. He bumbles through botching plans that would work in the movies, but his gift is not succeeding by pulling them off — it’s by failing spectacularly and knowing exactly how to lie about it.

But no matter what happens, Oz cannot force the world to follow his rules.

His final scene with Sal: He tries to bend the facts to his will, his narrative that would make him something other than he is. But the facts are what they are.

His entire relationship with his mother: He is forcing the narrative that he is her caretaker and her favored precious angel. But we get to see through her eyes. We get to know what she knows. We get to know what he doesn’t. But down to the last moment, that awful awful last moment, Oz will forever force the world to follow his rules — and never acknowledge that he’s actually not capable of that. He can make a temporary mirage, but reality will never bend to his will.

And then there’s Victor. God, Victor. Victor is the one that sees (almost) everything Oz does, and believes him. Believes in him. It’s through Victor that we the audience find a way to see Oz the way Victor does. Even with what we know, we hope, because Victor hopes. So we hope that maybe there will be something more that Oz can grow into. A villain, sure, but one we can understand and feel for. But in controlling his world, the one honest thing Oz does in this series is to take that hope away, without any chance of redemption.

The thing about living in delusion to the degree Oz does, with the violence and the cruelty and the manipulation and control and ego and mania that he has — all that puts Oz into a very specific category:

Oz Cobb is criminally insane.

He belongs in Arkham.

My favorite thing about The Batman is still a topic for another day, but it does apply here: it has to do with how people see people. Perspective and understanding, or lack thereof, of those around us — and ourselves.

We’ve spent a season of a show learning not to trust Oz, realizing that he is deluded. The framing of the world has constantly pulled back to show us what is, versus what he wants. And by the end we know he will always choose his delusion.

And his biggest delusion of all, is in that final line.

“There’s nothing standing in your way now.”

Oz agrees. The camera pulls out. We are not close to him, not seeing the world through his eyes.

We are seeing the world as it is. He is a psychopathic monster, one that believes he rules the shadows now, with no one to oppose him.

But we know better.

We know who really owns the shadows.