The Penguin
Week on week coming back to the show has been a delight. What the show managed to capture very early on was a sense of urgency and desperation within all its characters, perfectly picking up where The Batman left off, in building upon the world Matt Reeves so brilliantly started.
It’s truly a testament to the show that with eight episodes you’re feelings for characters changed drastically. The show aims to humanise the deplorable, in a way that is really powerful and actually makes you sympathise with these characters a lot of the time.
For the majority of the show nothing really is black and white, you dip into loving characters and then next episode hating them. Oz is such a fascinating protagonist because while he is inherently cruel and evil for a large portion of the show, you are able to sympathise with how he feels.
Oz, his character is in conversation with the way a lot of people are feeling in the world right now. I made jokes with my friends while this was ongoing about agreeing with The Penguin a bit. It’s also not a joke, wealth has accrued at the top and it’s not so often that the working man sees that wealth and must take work into their own hands.
The genius of the show is that you do become quite attached to Oz’s character and you believe in his cause, in this righteous idea of looking out for the little guy, for the guy who’s always overlooked, and in this you overlook some of his flaws until they really can’t be ignored, which makes his rise to power feel devastating and unrewarded in a way.
None of this would be possible without said incredible performance from Colin Farrell who absolutely embodies The Penguin, and loses himself behind not only the layers of make-up, but also the quest for righteousness which consumes him and it’s truly wonderful. I mean the biggest compliment is that you aren’t able to find a sense of Colin Farrell in his performance, Oz feels like a real life living person.
Farrell‘s performance would be nothing if it weren’t for the counter performance given by Cristin Milioti as well. She manages to play this fine line of psychosis so expertly that she becomes quite unnerving to watch. Perhaps the strongest episode of the show is learning her backstory and how she enacts her revenge in the present.
It’s rare to get such complicated characters in such a short miniseries but the show has given us two and what’s even more fascinating and rewarding is really we get a female character who is this layered and allowed to complicated. She isn’t black or white, she kind of has the reverse journey of Oz where the more you learn about her the more sympathetic you become to who she is and where she ends up, making her causes feel more justified than Oz.
Much like the movie which came before, Gotham is its own character in this and it’s incredibly rewarding to get more grounded and real Gotham. You feel the hardships people are going through and why people return to life of crime. It just adds more to the feeling that this is a real life place still with its comic tinges but it feels based on reality.
I’ve sat the finale for a little bit now cause initially I don’t think I was particularly satisfied. It wrapped up very neatly and I feel like the majority of the season was this relationship between Oz and Sophia, but what didn’t appreciate was that in the back half of the show they are really building this relationship with his mother and that seems to be the landing punch which is perhaps not what I expected but upon reflection, it’s devastating, it’s quietly devastating. It’s not as loud as other superhero media normally is, it’s more focused on character and it’s simply devastating. Perhaps where Oz ends up as a character is kind of where he starts, in his position within Gotham, however we know so much more about him. What makes this man, that journey was worth this being produced.