The Penguin

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kingpinning by any means necessary. He's also got a rather complicated relationship with his mother, and nope, I'm not talking about Tony soprano, it's Oswald Cobb, the villain of the great HBO series The Penguin. An unrecognizable Colin Farrell reprises his role from The Batman. This time though, the Cape Crusader is nowhere to be found. Instead, we've got an unexpectedly fresh take on Gotham and a crackling turf war involving the vengeful daughter of a crime boss.

I'm Glenn Weldon, and I'm Aisha Harris, and today we're talking about The Penguin on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Okay, so does this sound like you? You love NPR's podcasts, you wish you could get more of all your favorite shows, and you want to support NPR's mission to create a more informed public. If all that sounds appealing, then it is time to sign up for the NPR Plus bundle. Learn more at plus.npr.org.

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you'll want the new NPR Plus podcast bundle. Enjoy an all-you-can-eat selection of NPR Plus podcasts with sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes. Plus, you'll be supporting public radio. Check it out at plus.npr.org. Well, we finally made it Election Week. That is what this whole never-ending election cycle has been building up to, and what happens now will determine the future of our country. You can keep up with election news when it matters most with the NPR

Politics podcast. All this week, we're taking the latest stories from the campaign trail, swing states, and polling places to help you make sense of them. And what they mean for you. Listen now to the NPR Politics podcast. Joining us today is Andrew Limbong. He's the host of NPR's Book of the Day Podcast and a reporter for the Culture Desk. Hey, Andrew. Yeah, what's up? Great to have you here. And also joining us is Vulture TV critic Roxana Hadadi. Welcome back. Roxana.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Great to have you both here. So the Penguin Stars Colin Farrell, Colin Farrell's Italian American Brooklyn accent and pounds and pounds of prosthetics as Oswald. Osgob. Oswars were one of Gotham City's biggest crime families, the Falcones, and the story picks up right after the events of the 2022 movie, The Batman. That's the one with Robert Pattinson,

because we have to clarify, because there have been so many badminton. Now at the end of that movie, the riddler killed the Falcone boss and set off a bunch of bombs that left much of the city decimated. Os sees this as the perfect opportunity to step in as Gotham's new kingpin and take over the Falcones drug empire. But the boss's daughter, Sophia Falcone has some scores to settle. She was recently released from Arkham Asylum after serving 10 years for the murder of several

sex workers. Sophia is played by Kristen Miliati. You think they're wondering if it's really me? Well, I would. What is a psycho killer? Is just roaming around free? Having a salad? You're having a salad indeed. To help Sokayos and plot his way to the top, Os takes a teenager under his wing, Vic Aguilar, who's played by Renzi Valise. And when he's not pinning gangs against each other and murdering almost anyone who stands in his way, Os does on his

feisty but ailing mother Francis, who's played by Deirdre O'Connell. What the hell are you? What? Shit. Ma, sorry, this is Vic. Get out. He's gonna help take care of you. Sokayes said need to handle some things while we're gone, right? Huh. Vic. Yeah. What is he in noise? He's kind of. No, he's got nice like qualities. I'll explain more on the car. These accents are crazy. Nice like qualities. Is this the penguin or goodfellas? I don't know.

It's started to tell us sometimes. The penguin was created by Lauren LaFranque and is streaming on Max. And at the time that this episode is dropping, seven of the eight episodes will have aired. So we're gonna be talking about all of that in case you don't want to get spoiled. And we will leave the finale for everyone else to discuss later. But yeah, let's just get into it. Glenn, you are for better or for worse or however you want to feel about it, our resident

Batman Efficientado. And I know you wrote about this for NPR. You actually convinced me to watch this. You love it. Tell us more. Not only that, not only do I love this and think this is one of the best shows of the year. I can pinpoint the exact moment. I knew I love this show. It is 40 minutes and 45 seconds into the first episode up to that point. Oz has just started to take Vic under

his wing. Right? He said, I owe you in that these and those Brooklyn accent. He's starting to kill him a couple of times and then they have this night where they kind of bond and it's weirdly sweet. And then throughout this entire episode, you're seeing how lonely Oz is. And then you remember the opening scene, which was all about how much he wants to be admired and respected by people. That's his core. That's the entire character. And so throughout the episode, he's kind of puffing

himself up around Vic. He's portraying himself as much more of a made guy than he actually is, more powerful, more plugged in. He's giving Vic advice, like a big shot. And then at 40 minutes to 45 seconds, they go out to a parking lot outside the city where they climb into Oz's Volvo station wagon. Nice touch. And when he starts the car, Dolly Parton's 9-5 starts blasting from another nice touch, a CD. That moment is not there to do any plot work.

What's whoever as it would in any of the other like CW superhero shows. It's only purpose is to take a beat and kind of live in that moment and allow this emerging relationship between Oz and Vic to kind of not deepen but complicate, right, to layer. Because in that second, the power dynamic between them shifts just a tiny bit. And suddenly Vic gets a glimpse of Oz as just a normal guy who loves Dolly Parton because of course he does. He's got two years in a heart,

doesn't he? But the show is so filled with moments like that. And so you got Kristen Leody and Colin Farrell and Deirdre O'Connell. Ah, it's Walt! Someone's here. Get out of my house. Ah, yes. It's Walt. Ah, it's Walt. They get to dig into these characters. And so they let the dialogue to the work along the surface,

but their physicality is telling you what's actually going on. So all these moments between characters are just allowed to hang in the air and not get commented on and not get underlined and not get defined and clarified. There is a very adult ambiguity in a show, This Pulpy, which reminds me of The Sopranos and reminds me of The Wire. We can talk about that. Two quibbles and only two and then I'll shut up. Number one, you don't hire showwright Agdashlou and then just let her sit there.

You got to give her more screen time. Yeah, she plays a wife of another mob boss. And as the show goes on, especially towards the home stretch, it starts to edge closer to comic book stuff. You know, we start to see some iconography. A top hat here is Sigurd Holder there. And every time that happened, I was like, no, no, no, no. I don't want this show to lose the specificity that this show has spent, you know, seven, eight episodes developing so that it would slide into the kind of corporate

mandated DC universe style guy penguin. But man, I love this show. I love everything that all that Colin Fennel was bringing and he's bringing a lot. Yes, Colin, he is doing a lot. Although I do have to say you said that the show doesn't underline. It does have quite a few grandstanding speeches going back and forth here. I just got to throw that out there. But I'm going to let these actors model as long as they want to. Yeah, okay. Alright, that's fair. That's fair.

Roxanna, you also wrote about this for Vulture. I highly recommend our listeners check it out because it's like lens. You all are getting into the nitty gritty of why there's a lot of past each year, but why this stands on its own. So can you say a little bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, I will be honest and say that like I'm a sucker for past each. If you give me like a really good like score sazy copy, I probably will still, you know, like slurp it up. But to follow

what Glenn said, there is so much specificity here, which I really appreciate. But what I also really like about this show and this sort of reveals itself in the penultimate episode is it's doing the classic thing that I love when television does when it's like your protagonist is like very sympathetic. I like feel a lot for us and what he's going through. And then you have that one moment where you're like, oh, actually, this guy is like a monster. And everything that we have been told

is from a very specific perspective. And it's sort of pulling the wool over our eyes and doing all of that. Isn't he likeable and fun? And then he does something that you're like, oh, I've been rooting for someone who is awful this entire time. And what does that say about like the genre, the character, me as a viewer? I just I really love how this show like builds in those turns, both for us and for Sophia. So you have these like really chewy fun moments like Sophia eating.

I think it's pasta like with her hands in a certain scene like a very like what is this choice? Who is this person? But then you get her own flashback episode, right? So yeah, I just think it's doing a lot within the gangster realm knowingly to like build into that genre and also to like interrupt it and find tension points and really blow those up to be narrative. And that's just fun, right? Like yes, sopranos, good fellows, uh, Scarface, I think also Casino. Like there are a lot

of touchstones here that the show is really being like, hey, do you remember these things? Like we also love these things, but we're putting a different sort of spin on it. And I just appreciated that like awareness of what has come before and willingness to play with it. It really felt like a show from a whole team who knows exactly the world that they're building and how to blow it up. Yeah. Andrew, I am very curious to know your thoughts. I'm a little bit more mid on it than

than Glen and Roxana. I think the first three or four episodes when it is 60% gangster, 40% comic bookie is kind of boring. I mean, it tries to do the like pitting the families against each other like that these other, you know, gangster movies and TV shows do so well, but it is just like, I don't find it as good at that part of it as those other things are. I think once we get to the layer, once we're reminded that this is a comic book show kind of, then I think the show kind of

loosens up and fits into itself a little bit more and it moves a little bit faster. Like the plotting of like OzCob is pitting these guys against each other. It doesn't engage as much, but then once the once the two like quote unquote enemy families like merge and then we have like a one that are common defined sides, I think the tension comes a lot tighter. I can't deal with these accents, but I cannot. I love it. I just so eat it up with a big ol' spoon. It's Italian,

but also like Jewish, right? A little bit of like, it's like when I make fun of my wife's Italian side, it's so broad and it like pulls me out of it every time. Yeah, I did have a few moments where I was wondering to myself, if I was Italian American, how would I feel about yet another show that is just

playing into every conceivable stereotype of Italian Americans? And I'm not Italian American, so I'm not here to answer that question, but I do think it's one worth asking is like that and also the fat suit, the prosthetics, like how much of this is Colin Farrell being great and how much of this is the caution is a Sajayak, or Hoover, Leo DeCaprio situation, or is this a little bit like stronger? And I think, you know, I totally get your point, Andrew, about both the accents and

also just feeling that at times this can kind of feel like a slug. I have to say, I'm not a superhero person. I consciously avoid these things, and I think it says something that this is actually like, it is a superhero, but it's not because there really are no superheroes here. It's really all about just the people, like the lowly gangsters and all the people who were scrambling. Pearl Terrier. Exactly. This is a very like at times it even feels like newsies, like it's like

what are we doing here? And I have to say that like overall, I think I fall somewhere in between Andrew and then Glenn and Roxanna on this. And I think for me, what I found most compelling about all of this, yes, Kristen Miliatti is doing amazing work here. I love the evolution of her hair and her style, the fact that she ends the show with like a Joan Jett mullet, like what are we doing into it? Because usually when female characters turn back or like they emerge into their

their villainousness, it's usually like the bob cut, like the very sharp angle button. No, she goes for a mullet. It is great. Oh choppy mullet. Yeah. Really choppy mullet. But for me, what I really, really appreciated about this is the relationship between Oz and his mother because we've talked about all the like Italian American pastiches and all that stuff. But I kept hearing in the back of my mind

Norman Bates and Psycho saying, a boy's best friend is his mother. And the way that this takes that like we've seen it before the son who's way too devoted to his mother, blah, blah, blah. We've seen it before. It emits the Norman Batesness of it. But I do think that the way, especially in the seventh episode, we see just how twisted their dynamic is and how it's not quite as edible. Yeah, it's weird. And I like that. I was not expecting those twists. And that to me is what kept me going back.

And of course, Jettro Connell is like that accent aside is just so embracing and but like vulnerable and layered in ways that I really, really appreciated. I'm kind of mixed. But overall pro and glad that I watched it and glad that I enjoyed a superhero adjacent property for the first seven of very long time. Yeah. I mean, look, the people who have called those bat sopranos, it does not rise to level sopranos. No, no, let's not pretend it does. We're good fellows.

We're good fellows. But like those properties, it finds something messy and human inside even the most unspeakable acts of humanity. The characters are very crude, but the approach, this is why I tried to sell it to you. I issued because the approach here is different from a lot of other superhero shows. The approach here is the way the show presents them to us. Let's us see them in ways they don't see themselves. We understand what's arriving them, even if they don't understand

it and could not articulate it. The characters are crude, but the show is elegant. And the reveals that happen like the one we're kind of alluding to are not plot twists, but emotion reveals. Characters have known things all along that they pretend not to know. And the cool thing about that, I used to go back to the early episodes, you can see that knowledge bubbling just under the surface because the character in question is so good. So it's a psychological study. It's a

character piece dressed up in mob drag. And I am here for it. I think it's very deliberate in doing all of that Glenn. And I do have to say that I don't think they could have done this if the Batman were in the show. And I know that was a lot of like the early buzz of like how can you make a show about Penguin without Batman? And at certain points, I do feel like when Sophia takes out her entire family, I'm like, what is Batman? Notive. What is he? So concerns about escalating gang warfare.

He's on PTO. Yeah, he's actually like visiting Catwoman wherever she went. Yeah. I like the erasure of him just because I like the idea again of like if so many people think of Batman as like this weirdo freak vigilante, people aren't spending their entire days thinking about that weirdo freak vigilante, right? Like they are living their lives. And so I really like that sort of grounded approach. And the way that I have been describing it to people is gangs of London in Gotham. Oh,

sure. I love gangs of London. I don't know you guys have watched that show, but I haven't. It's on AMC. It is about like a multi-cultural gang war in London. I love that Gotham does that too. It's like, yes, there are these Italian stereotypes, which unfortunately seem to come with the genre at this point. But I also love that there are like Iranian gangsters slend by short, uh,

Dushloo. And there is like an Irish gang and a triad like I think it's trying to say something about like America in this current moment in this made up world that feels very relevant to what we're like living through now. And I appreciate it all of the grasping of that. It doesn't always land, but I appreciated the attempt. When we talk about, you know, pastiche and what makes something rise to the level of not just being an imitator, but also bringing something new to the table.

And I did see some parallels that had this been made 10, 15 years ago. I might not have either clocked it or might not have even arisen in this work, which is like I think about the fact that Vic, the the teenager that he takes under his wing, he has an opportunity to leave Gotham, go with his girlfriend and go to California, like start a new life. He has no family at this point, and he loves her, we think. And he's like a sweet kid who just like loses whole family and is now

had to turn to like petty crimes to survive. And instead, he decides to stay behind. And I kept feeling, oh, wow, this feels like a metaphor for like young men of America becoming radicalized and vulnerable. Like, am I projecting here or is that something that maybe the show seems to be at least trying to wrestle with in a way? Yeah. I read it as he taking the risk to go to California

to be with the girl was like the scarier risk. He's got these great sad eyes. I don't know what's going on with his brows, but he has this like such and like a sad expression on his face all the time. And I read that as both him being scared to commit to his woman that he loves. And then also, am I not mistaken, it's like right before he makes that decision when they're in the club, Oz makes like a speech about like this is America, right? Yeah. He makes his grand overture. He gives a

very gags of New York speech, treasured text for me. Yeah. And I think it's very much buying into Oz Cobb's American dream. Yeah. And what it takes is sort of like make it here. Yeah. But I think that's the really smart thing about the show is how eventually that is all revealed to be like performative, right? Like Oz is great at saying what people want to hear. And so I like that the show is more complex than look like I love a class struggle story like it's very much my bread

and butter. But the show isn't exactly giving you that, right? It's giving you how a figure can use that wording to sway people to his cause. And that just feels like the smarter approach for this kind of character. The thing with Vic, they give him a try. I just figured the show was just being smart about characterization and giving that kid a choice and letting the ramifications play out. But there is something about the Oz character as he's played by Colin Frail, because there's

such a wounded quality. But he is also incredibly impulsive and destructive. And when he does something impulsive and destructive, he can usually talk his way out of it until the day he can't. And that's that's kind of the story of the show. No one is more surprised than me that they built a show around this thing because like when I saw the Batman movie, you know, Colin Frail is in it. He's under 18 pounds of makeup. And I thought, well, that's random, but kind of funny. Never thought that you

would build an entire show around frankly a delist Batman villain. Well, he was a Batman return. That's right. You know, you know, it's cool. Yeah, but as they made him like a Danny DeVito freak thing and that's just just to make him more interesting than he is because he's just a gangster who's a little who has a monocle. I mean, it's not a character. Just a gangster, Glenn, Derek. Yeah, I never liked the thing. But here it's just I just love to see these choices,

these swings he's taking because he's taking swings. I think one of the fascinating things this show does is its treatment of goons, which is, you know, happens in both gangster movies and in superhero comic books stuff like that, right? Like I always think about whenever like a bad guy kills off like the Alice Boke and Goon for like not obeying. It's like bad business ethics.

It's like very bad in Motivane trip. Yeah, but there's this one scene where Sophia Giganti, one sheet, once she like takes on the throne, right, of the family and tries to assemble the goons out her side. I think we've got the clip of her little like populist speech that she has here. You did the dirty work and they kept it all for themselves. If you join me, you will have a new family. Talk about like juridying in the moment. She's also like this close to

starting the union, right? Like a coons union. Cobb also does similar things to, there's a couple like times where he's like, you know, fellas, you're the best that we got here. We're in his together or whatever. And you know, they're both kind of full of it. But I think this show is also trying to say something about how like people in the middle management of power kind of have to use the goons and have the rally the goons in order to like take their place at the top. Which I think

it's just like an interesting twist rather than having like faces goons die off. Yeah. The only other thing I would add in Roxana in your Vulture review, you actually talked about how, and you've already hinted that as well and this conversation of how we often want to label characters like the Penguin in these shows and movies, especially in prestige TV as like these anti heroes. But really, right. This what I think is the trick another trick and you highlight this in your review is that like,

yeah, no, he's still a villain. And the fact that he, you know, as we've already discussed, he is constantly talking his way out of things. When he's talking his way out of things, he's almost always throwing someone else under the bus. Sure. Right. It can even be someone he proclaims to actually love. I just think about the comparisons we've already made to Tony soprano. And I think about how Tony for all of his terrible deeds and all of his like, horribleness, he still seemed to care

about his kids, even though, you know, sometimes his bigotry and pride would get in the way. Like, he wanted his kids to not live the life that he, like, he wanted better for them. Like, he wanted them to go to college and whatever. And the Penguin. No. No. But Tony's in therapy, right? That's the difference. Well, yes, Tony isn't therapy. Yeah. No, I do feel like that is a very clever thing that the show does to have him give to Andrews Point all of these like populist speeches. That's how

he gets all the gangs to come together. Right? Like, we're going to take on the 1%. Yeah. But it's not like Vito Corleo and being like, I wanted something different for you, Michael. It's like, I'm shoving Michael out of the boat. That feels true to the character to me. But it does create this rhythm of each episode where you're sort of watching with the entertainment of who's he going to screw over

next? Like, how is he going to keep surviving here? And that's just fun, I think. I think it's fun to have a grasp of like what the genre normally is about, but allow the character arc to be as messy and as destructive as it needs to be so that he's still recognizably the penguin, right? He is still that figure. We've talked a lot about like what Colin Farrell does, but I've been rewatching some episodes and just watching like his eyes. And I think his eyes under all of those prosthetics do so

much to sort of clue you into who is he identifying as the next person he can betray. And that's just a very like talented, subtle performance under this costume that he has said that he hated, right? Very upfront about like loathing the experience, which I understand, but he's doing great work from under it. Yeah, he really is. And I hope it doesn't get a season two. I hope he hates the costume so much that when they come back to him and say, please, please, please do a season two. He'll

just say no because this is all I want. I don't want it to go more V Batman, you know, it's kind of to stay where it is. Agree, agree. I will say at the time of us recording this, I looked at the HBOS site and they are calling it a limited series. So that's promising, but we've been lied to before. Big little lies. So who knows? Well, obviously, you know, we all liked it enough at least. Uh, some of us mind thiziasically than others, but look, we, we want to know what you think about

the penguin. So find this at facebook.com slash pcaj and that brings us to the end of our show. Roxana Hadadi, Andrew Limbong and Glenn Weldon. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And just a reminder that signing up for pop culture, Happy Hour Plus is a great way to support our show and public radio. And we get to listen to all of our episodes sponsor free who doesn't love that.

So please go find out more at plus.npr.org slash happy hour or visit the link in our show notes. And this episode is produced by Hopsopathema and Liz Metzger edited by Jessica Reedy and Mike Katzif. Hello, command provides our theme music. Thanks so much for listening to pop culture happy hour from NPR. I'm Aisha Harris. We'll see you all tomorrow. Once again, we find ourselves in an unprecedented election. And with all that's happening in the

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