Warning.
Today's episode Katay spoilers for The Penguin episode four Shintan, so watch that before you listen to this ah Shantani.
Hello.
My name is Jason Ecepcion and I'm Ersday Night and welcome back to X. Review of the podcast will be done dee bit to your favorite shows, movies, comics and pop culture coming to you from our podcast where we're bringing you three episode every Tuesday Thursday, with extras on Wednesday.
In today's episode, we are talking about maybe my favorite episode of TV I've seen this year, Absolutely heartbreaking stuff in Penguin one O four. It's a Sophia Falcone episode and get ready to hear me absolutely take back anything nice I've said about Oz because I am fucking pissed off.
But before.
It's going to be fun, let's mention the success that HBO is having with this series.
First, wonderful viewership numbers for The Penguin the premiere from September nineteenth through ten point four million viewers across platforms HBO Max and other streaming platforms and online and including cable platforms. I would assume this is nearly double the viewership from opening weekend, which saw five point three million viewers, and it's just great. That's great news.
And I think it's got a wider viewership than ill usual superhero shows.
That's right.
My partner is watching it, despite the fact that she is not a comic book person. I think that there's a lot of you know, the dramatic weight and the fact that this is a very high quality, well written, well acted show is drawing people in. And the fact that there are the connections to the broader DC universe and Batman himself, that they're only that they're better if you.
Want to find there, if you want them, but you don't need to not.
That's right, and I think that has helped widen the audience for this. So let's get into the episode.
Okay, Episode four, Tantani Tantani.
We open with the final moments from episode three. From Sophia's perspective. Oz is pleading with Nadia Falcone as the mafia boss's wife, airs.
Out all of his dirty and she's taughting him up. She's telling him everything.
All the laundry.
Sophia learns that Oz pitched murdering Alberto to the Falcones, with him taking over as the new boss. She learns that you know, Oz has been working with the Falcones. Oz says that he was getting the new drug for the Falcones and that Sophia was just his dupie. Says this with her right there, and then Vic comes crashing in as we saw at the end of the episode, and we understand why Oz says, just leave Sophia, just go.
Yeah, because she's onto him now.
And as this is occurring, Sophia has like a psychological break. She's crashing out. She calls doctor Rush and we flash back to over ten years earlier, before her stay at Arkham. Sofia is giving a speech in front of the mental Health Foundation that she founded with her father, Carmine Falcone, boss of the Falcon family. As her driver, Oz looks on and it's very clear at this point in time that their relationship is very different. She is very much
the power player. He is very much just a guy in the world.
Yeah, just the little guy bought. She's kind to him, that's what we learn. She's kind to him.
She's kind kind of is like she's kind of everyone and.
Then everybody else.
Certainly she'll tell she'll correct people say don't call him that, don't call him the penguin. Yeah you know, and uh yeah, we get. This is a very interesting episode because, as always, very feels very disconnected from the wider world, but is actually our most connected episode, not only to the Batman. And it also made me realize, wow, like they're doing such a good job separating these things that I never even put together.
Who she was obviously the patsy for.
And also we get some really deep cut connections here, like what basically what happens next is, Sofia gets approached by a woman called Summer Gleason with a reporter, and this is so great because this is a character who has only appeared in the New Adventures of Batman, the sequel series to Batman the animated series, and some like noncninical comics since then. But I thought this was a great example of how they pepper those little names and stuff in there for people, but they bang you over
the head with it. So if you don't know this stuff, it doesn't matter.
It's just a name.
But if you do, you can kind of go, oh, I think I recognize that, and do your research. So I thought that was really cool.
So from miss Gleeson, Sofia learns that there has been a recent death of a young woman at her father's club forty four below. She died apparently of a suicide by hanging, that's the official story, and that this death is quite similar to other deaths that have occurred at other places, namely the Iceberg Lounge owned by her father, deaths of young women who worked at these clubs who died by asphyxiation in some form of fashion and that
have been ruled suicides. This makes Sophia think about her mother, her mother's apparent suicide and the day that she found her mother's body, she found her hanging in the master bedroom. After the foundation event, Sofia and her brother Alberto have dinner, family dinner with their father, Krma and Carmean Falcone, who always wears sunglasses.
Also, I want to say great casting here because in the Batman movie that elder Falcone, Carmen Falcone, is played by John Taturo.
But here they cast Mark Strong as young.
These wonderful marks, and I just think.
This is such good casting. I think I totally bought it. It really gives a similar vibe. And I had this moment, this just heart wrenching moment because earlier in our coverage of this, I had guessed that, unlike the comics where Sophia really is the Hangman, I had guessed she was probably a patsy, maybe for Alberto, because she loved him and she wanted to take But I.
Completely forgot that.
In the end of the Batman Movie by Matt Reeves, we learn that Carmi and Falcone has been killing women.
He tries to kill catwomen. He killed her mother, And.
I never even put the fact that those two things would be connected into this version of the Hangman, And just seeing him reappear here, I suddenly kind of started coming together, and I was just so impressed by how distinct this show has made itself.
In three episodes. I literally had never even made that connection.
So they're having dinner with Carmea and Falcone. The wonderful Mark Strong arsenal supporters is good in everything, even if the movie's bad, Mark Strong is good. Carmine wonders why Alberto is such a moron while Sophia always seems so squared away and Carmine, when Alberto leaves, Carmine tells Sophia, listen, why don't we break with years of mafia tradition? I will name you as my successor to the family, and we'll push Alberto, who is often an embarrassment to the side.
Sophia's like, what will the family say that, and he says, they'll say they'll do whatever they I tell them to do, because I'm the boss. Sophia then takes this opportunity to kind of ask questions about her mom's death, noting, you know, she didn't seem depressed, and Carmin is like, yeah, she was great at hiding it.
Uh.
And it's clear that Sophia has some niggling suspicions and that maybe those suspicions have been there for quite a while, but Carmine very strongly shuts down the questioning. Later, Sophia asks Alberto as they're driving off somewhere with Oz behind the wheel, if their dad was involved in any way with women at any of the clubs.
His face is just like are you dumb?
Like, yeah, are you dumb? What you why are you asking?
What do you think?
She says, you know, how much do we really know about him? You know, because he's the line of work that he's in. Alberto is like yeah, again, He's like, what the fuck are you? What don't ask this meanwhile Oz listening the entire time.
Yeah.
Sophia then meets with Summer Gleason secretly at night, late at night, and.
She tries odds enough to have him drive. He's there, he is.
He is not like in the meeting, but he's like across the street in the car watching and Gleason has the autopsy photos. She notes that the physical evidence does not match the official cause of death. There are there's evidence of defensive wounds, broken nails, et cetera. She says, like, how about you go into the forty four below wearing a wire? So if he's like you fucking crazy, absolutely not. She's like, okay, well, how about can you get the employment file so at least I can prove that they
that they will work there. Again, Sophia flashes back to the day that she found her mom, and she notes that her mom had a broken nail, showing that that maybe there was some sort of struggle that happened. And you can tell that she's increasingly convinced that her father was involved. But our, she says, just to Gleason, absolutely not. You have no evidence. I don't believe any of this. You're this is really a reach goodbye, and that's it,
and she goes back to the car. Maybe that was for Oz's public consumption, but that's what she does.
I think she's like so in shock at the realization she's having, because we get to see that when she found her mom, she saw the broken nails, and then when her dad came and kind of swept her.
Up and was like, no, no, you don't need to notice, like.
She noticed that he has scratches on his face. So I think she's aware, but she's in that mid space between like should I be telling my dad?
Should I like? What should I do?
This is basically an unenviable situation, Pacivia.
We'll be right back after a quick break.
And we're about Oz tells Sophia when she gets back in the car, Hey, you gotta be careful meeting with reporter. People are gonna think a certain way, and she rebukes him quite sharply, saying, shut up, no one cares what he thinks.
Yeah, and this is like, this is like a fateful moment in that relation.
It's a it's a feels like a very very faithful moment. Later at Falcone manor big party for Carmine. It's his birthday, all the important people are there. Oz comes up to her. He's inside wearing a nice jacket. She's like, what the fuck are you doing inside? You should be outside with Cark. But he tells her, hey, your dad wants to see her, and she it has a bad feeling, so she goes with a present to try and break the ice. But Carmine knows about the reporter. It's very clear that Oz
rated her out. He's very mad. He says that reporter has been working with the cops investigating him for the murder of quote, some hookers at the club. Is the way he phrases.
Nice, so you can guess like he definitely really respects these women's life.
Yeah, he wants to know if Sophia thinks that he killed them, and she says, no, what I never doubted you. And she says again, faithfully, there must be some explanation, explanation for what he says for the scratches on you in the and Mom's nail when she died, those the scratches weren't from Mom, right, And Carmi now gets very spooking, very scary. And this is where I'm like, whoa this? I feel very bad.
Bad, bad, bad stuff. This was the moment very bad vibes.
Oh.
I was like, oh, dear, I shall say, I gotta say.
I want to call myself out here because in the previous coverage of the Penguin on HBO and Max, I had been an Oswald supporter.
I had said, I love this little guy. He's just doing things.
He's just you know, he's a bad guy, but he's just trying his best to like climb up the ladder of Gotham.
I take you back. I am now Oswald hater. I am an Oscarp hater. I understand his mentality.
But the point of this episode is to show how like, whether it's some aglesum, whether it is Sofia, whether it's Oz, these tiny moments that people act almost like impulsively on. Whether it was Sophia, you know, snapping at Oz when she's usually patient with him, whether it's Oz deciding to you know, snitch on her to her dad. These moments have like massive implications that are going to be going on in Gotham for like decades.
I'm not going to defend ours, but I will, I mean, I'll talk about my view on this after we do the recap, after we go through the recap. So on the ride home, Oz is like, hey, I'm sorry, you know, what do you expect me to do? It's Carmen's the boss. He pays my salary. I'm doing my job, she warns him. Then again, it feels like a very faithful moment that you're on his radar now and your family his radar,
which everyone you lie. Probably why Oz moved his mom, faked her death and moved her out to the suburbs.
Oh yeah, great, cool. I didn't even think about that. That's obviously.
Yeah, that moment they get pulled over, the cops want Sophia and they arrest her for the murder of Summer Gleason and all the women who died at her dad's clubs.
And obviously, I will say Oz did not know about this.
I do need not know that that was going.
He didn't know that she was that fucked like he thought he would just scare her a little bit, be able to be there for her as a driver.
He definitely in that moment you see the connection between them because he is in the cops.
Yeah, he's he's like, what are you doing? Yeah, So her dad and other family members including uncle Luca. They write sworn declarations that Sophia has been mentally ill for a long time. They get her put into Arkham for what appears at first to be just an observation period of six months to see if she can stand trial, but obviously ends up being much much longer. Alberto is the only one who visits her during this time and really tries to tell her that she can do this.
She's a Falcone, she's strong, she can do this. And Arkham is as excruciating as you expect it is. She's stripped shirt, she's examined, she's chained in manacle. This is where she meets doctor Rush. She also meets doctor Ventris, who runs the place, and they lead her, you know, through the haunted halls, past hollow eyed patients, to her isolation cell. In her cell, she hears a voice from the neighboring room. It is a patient that apparently is Magpie, the Claw.
Nail fun creation DC jewel thief who likes.
To make like booby trapped versions of jewels to kill people.
Again, very fun play on expectations.
Here. The actress who plays Magpie does a very good Holly Quinn impression. You'll supposed to think that's who it is. And I think that there's just a lot here that for me personally, this is a very hard episode.
To watch because like it is actually hard.
It's so hard to watch because Kristin Malotti is obviously amazing, but also like, this is a very real thing that has been happening to women and continues to happen to women, where they will be institutionalized if they don't agree with a family member, or they get pregnant outside of marriage, or you know, many other reasons. In England, they were actually still women who had been institutionalized for becoming pregnant outside of marriage, who were only released in like the early nineties.
So this is like a very real thing.
And I think that they do a great job here showcasing just how horrific that is. And I think this is another really fantastic way that they ground the show, because you know, I've seen a lot of memes going around going ooh ooh, they grounded the show by calling him Oz Cobb, and everyone thinks that's really funny that his name's Oz Cob.
I mean, it's kind of funny.
But the reality is the grounding that they actually do is by putting real world situations, whether it is Vic and his startering and the way his family died in a climate crisis disaster added with terrorism and how he's had to now live on the streets and kind of deal with that, which feels extremely real right now, or whether it's Sophia being institutionalized by her father and having all of her family turn on her to back him up and kind of being stuck in this like nightmare
prison system. It's great TV that really fits into the world of the best of what Matt Reeves Batman did, and I just this is such a hard episode to watch.
So in the cafeteria later, Sophia sits with Magpie and this is where she first learns about the bliss pills. You only get them when you're good, Magpie says, and it immediately goes into a stupid her. Another patient comes in, unchained, wandering around, comes up to their table, Sofia tries to raise the alarm about this patient accuses Sophia of killing those girls and then beats Sophia pretty badly in her cell.
Rush comes in and he's apologetic. He says, we'll look into why this, why was around, but Sophia is, like, I think, very rightly concerned that this was a coordinated attack by her father to silence her in a way that could not tie back to him. Yeah, and when she voices those things, Rush, because of the situation they're in the context, sees these as perhaps delusions and begins to wonder, like, you know, do you so you think that you know, are you being paranoid?
Yeah? Yeah, all you being paranoid?
Also, I just want to say I think that they did a really good job with this character who attacks Sophia because she gives big joke of vibes.
It's like another thing.
It's like, you know, it's not the Joker, and then going to do a female version of the Joker, but she has red hair and she's kind of got this kind of scary grin, and she's very gone and tak They just they have a good understanding of how to tease feelings and evoke characters, even when they're not going to commit to that being the character.
We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back, and we're back.
So Rush starts to delve into Sophia's case, specifically her emotional reaction to the death of her mother, you know, wondering if this is the cause of these delusions she's having. Sophia's like, I'm here because my dad wants to keep me quiet.
That's it. Period.
And again Russia's acting like this is a psychosis, and he insists that he just wants her to get better. Later in the mess hall, Sophia is taken to men. She's given a fork. Her attacker is led in and chained, and the guards and the doctors just kind of all crowd around like a gladiator fight, which is a thing that happens in actual institutions. And it's I don't want to delve into that now, but like, and it's very clear that they're like, okay, you want to deal with it here, deal with it.
Yeah, and then so like and then you'll have killed someone, so then you're gonna be here whatever. So, Sofia is in this like and again just like an impossible position.
It's just terrible.
The patient, the unnamed patient, meanwhile, is the one who takes the aggressive action. She attacks. She grabs the fork and then stabs herself, begging Sophia to end it, to end it, the doctors rush in. They take Sofia to get electroshocked, and she's electro shocked numerous times.
The implication here as well is like the version the alchemists telling people is that Sofia killed this other patient, right, yeah, because they take her to and the electroshock sessions horrific to watch, another real thing that people are put through in real life. And I thought they did a really beautiful and heartbreaking kind of rendition of the hallucinatory effects.
When she's kind of peeling back the prison the prism paint and finding her home wallpaper under there, Kristin Malot is just like if they beg of her an Emmy for this episode, she's.
So six months past, you know, of electroshocks. Alberto comes to visit. He says, I'm so sorry, but Ventres that says you have to stay in Arkham, you know, for an unknown period of time, like there's not going to be a trial. You've been deemed mentally unfit and so you have to stay here. Later at chow, Rush tries to apologize for this, and he says, like I tried
to convince ventures otherwise. Magpie is happy though that her friend is staying, and Sophia begins to wonder maybe not unfairly, but it's never quite clear if Magpie has been informing I would.
Say, yeah, I thought I had to, you know, when I was rewatching this, this was a moment that I kind of returned to a lot because it's just horribly vague, and you kind of think, well, if Magpie is, you know, informing on her, she needs something to get her through the day at this horrible place, and that's those bliss pills. But also she does seem very eager to have this
connection with Sophia, so maybe she's not. And it's just this really heartbreaking, sad moment, and you know immediately what's going to happen.
So Sophia kills Magpie. So now she has roots on and she comes to after this, and we snapped back to the present story. She's in Russia's office after making that phone call. He's holding her hand.
Later and she's wearing his clothes.
She's wearing his clothes of what has gone on in this period when she's been out of it. She's sitting at his desk, she's snooping around while Rush makes breakfast. He comes in and she n low on him about Oz. She should have killed Oz when she had the chance, and Rush's like, maybe you should just go to Sicily and get away from all of this fresh Sophia asks Rush.
Why say he's looking suspicious when he says that, I'm just stand agree.
I'm just like, bro, like, don't say that shit because you'll go get a dinner. Trate to your head too, like what are you talking about?
So Sophia asked Rush why he's doing this. He says, my guilty conscience for everything that happened at Arkham, and she says, well, you miss the way it was there, right when I was completely under your power you could control me. And she says again, I think quite accurately that every doctor she has ever seen has lied and said she's sick. But she's not sick. It's the world
that's sick. She notes that clearly rushes in love with her, and Sophia knows it, and she's twisted now she understands that he's in love with her or something, and so she has managed to twist it so that she can use that as leverage and power over him. She then goes home, has dinner with Luca and the family. She's she is such a good scene when she walks in.
She just walks in, and you're just like, this is It's just everything she does Like The Bear. You remember the first season of The Bear where Kami goes to alan On and then at the end.
He does a big monologue.
I was really getting like vibes like that because she gives this huge monologue about how they all, you know, betrayed her, and she's standing at the head of the table in this gorgeous neon yellow dress with diamonds, and you there's great moments here too, where you kind of start to see the women in the room realizing what actually happened to Sofia. There's these great subtle moments.
She brings up her father's birthday ten years ago that she was framed for the murder. She recites the names of the murdered women. She says she was surprised how many people in that very room have wrote down that she was mentally ill, sent that sworn declaration to the and says she's leaving the family, She's leaving town, and
she toasts them. She later sneaks her cousin's daughter, who we met in the previous episode where that first the offerer to go to Sicily was first tendered and says, let's go to the greenhouse and have I'm gonna eat some cakes Monday night in the greenhouse and in the morning she goes back into the house wearing a gas mask and you realize she is carbon monoxide.
Yeah, like cheering her on, I was like, except for Johnny, you except for Johnny b who, by the way, like how does this guy keep surviving?
But you know what, he is a rat. So I just want to say, though I love I think something they do really.
Really well here in this episode is understanding of how scary Sofia is, no matter what has happened to her or how terrible all the reasons behind it. And obviously I am a support of women's rights and women's wrongs, and in Sofia's case, I fully support these wrongs. But what I loved was I was like, legitimately on and it raises edge when she took that kid to the greenhouse and fed her that cake, because I was like, is she just going to leave this dead kid there?
Like is that going to be the punishment to these people who did that? But obviously we get this inversion where she saves the kid goes back into the house and you will, and she walks through every single room, opening the windows, opening the doors. As you just see, the whole family just completely wiped out. Except as we said, Johnny V and she said, we need to talk, and you're about to be my bitch.
He has been there.
So now I will not defend Oz, but I will I think, add proper context to what's going on. First of all, I don't blame Oz. I blame the person who murdered seven women, plus Sophia's mother.
I blame very fair Carmine Falcone. He is to blame.
And I will point out again that I as and I think we both agree on this that Oz did not understand what would happen, did not understand, No, he didn't what the what the fallout would be, and did not understand what Sophia was pursuing, did not understand that she was pursuing the truth.
It was an impulsive it was an impulsive choice.
Amia points out, in that world, that is a decision that makes sense. Yeah, boss's Carmine Falcone. It makes sense to inform him about the things that are going on. Okay. Secondarily, it appears to me that Sofia had no problem living in luxury, a luxury provided by the fruits of organized crime, violence trafficking, drug trafficking, sexual trafficking, etc. Until this moment
when it appeared that it touched her personal. So while I have deep empathy for what Sofia went through, I also feel like we have to say.
That I think that's very I think that's very sensible, rational and true. And I'm also just like I will kill every man who did this to Sofia.
Yeah, it was obviously what happened to her was en kashmol was terrible and end it was Carmine style Cone's fault.
It's Falcon not as fault really, although.
It did snitch and I think it's absolutely fair to say that he's snitched.
It was a it was like a domino effect that I was unintentionally set off. And I will say, I'm really this episode leaves me like deeply interested in where that relationship goes because I think they did such a good job Melotti Farrell, the creators of the show in this episode of like even through this like strife and grab handing kind of trying to work out where and when they can take power or strength I think that they did actually establish this really interesting connection between these
two kind of outsiders in the show, and I'm interested to see where it goes next. And I can't believe there's only four more episodes of this show because this is just so fucking good and I'm gonna be so bummed when this ends, and we have like two years to wait till The Batman two and whatever other kind of spinoffs, and obviously we're definitely gonna get other spinoffs.
I mean, the end of this episode, before we saw what her real plan was, when she was toasting the family, I was like, I would just actually love to see a spinoff where she goes to Italy and like tries to start a crime family in Italy and leaves Gotham behind, But obviously that's not gonna happen. So yeah, just another
fantastic episode, but definitely big. Like, if you're listening to this recap because you're not sure if this is for you, take all of our warnings seriously, because this is like a rough watch.
This is it.
There's nothing actually, I mean, there's one moment of there's one moment of violence, but it's the it's the subject matter and the ominous, very very heavy vibe of the episode that I think makes it a tough watch. It truly was tough to watch this episode. On the next couple episodes of xt ra Vision, We're diving into Agathol Long episode five on Tuesday, beginning our extras weir watch of ar Cane season one on Wednesday, and.
Our Spooky Halloween.
Coverage continues this Thursday. That's it for this episode. Thanks for listening. Bye x ray Vision is hosted by Jason N. Sepsion and Rosie Knight and is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our executive producers are Joelle Smith and Aaron Kaufman. Our supervising producer is a Boo Zafar. Our producers are Carmen Lawn and Mia Taylor. Our theme song is by Brian Basquez.
Special thanks to Soul Rubin and Chris Lord, Kenny Goodman and Heidi on Disco Moderata