The Penguin Recap: The Monster Show

The Penguin
Top Hat
Season 1 Episode 7
Editor’s Rating ★★★★
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Come see Gotham’s newest baddie at Vulture Festival, November 16–17 in Los Angeles, where we’ll be talking to Cristin Milioti.

The Penguin’s penultimate episode asks: What’s inside a monster? Whether it’s in the campy Pop Art satire disguised as normie children’s entertainment or Christopher Nolan’s Michael Mann–larping Dark Knight trilogy, the most resonant tales of Gotham City are the ones that tap into the triangulation of noir films, B movies, and EC horror comics that, midway through the 20th century, reflected America’s broken postwar soul. “For those unlucky enough to be living and sane, society was a noir film running in an endless loop,” writes David J. Skal in his book The Monster Show of the mid-century intersection of pulp, noir, and postwar terror fueling the whole mad comic-book scene from which Batman sprang. “Marriage as an institution existed only as a setup for murder. No good deed would go unpunished.” If Sofia the Hangman’s horror origin story in episode four, “Cent’Anni,” made the case for The Penguin as an essential Gotham City tale, “Top Hat” will go down as the chapter that sealed the deal.

The episode opens with a flashback to Oz’s childhood and the horror story we’ve heard tell about all season long, as yet shrouded in the fog of unreliable narration. Little Oswald Cobb isn’t like his brothers. A deformed leg and an awkward body to match cut him off from the frivolities of unfettered urban boyhood, and from his penguin’s perch, Oswald has already observed what it takes to get ahead in this world. And he’s personified it in Rex Calabrese (Louis Cancelmi, seemingly on loan from Martin Scorsese’s current evil-gangster rep company), the local capo and criminal protector. Crown Point’s “Dark Knight,” as near as little Oz can see. “Mr. Calabrese ain’t a good guy,” older brother Jack tries to warn him. “You ever wonder where he gets all that money?” Oz doesn’t have to wonder. “He’s a gangster.” 

Oz clings to their mother (played in flashback by Emily Meade) with a possessive, oedipal affection, while his brothers are a cloying reminder of his physical deficiencies and a boyhood innocence he never even had the chance to lose, much less enjoy. He’d much rather be cocooned in his mother’s arms watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in Top Hat than playing flashlight tag in the abandoned trolley tunnels. Boyhood revelry doesn’t fill Ma’s coffers or get her a penthouse view of the city from which the two of ya’s can dance the night away.

Did little Oswald know he was locking Jack and Benny in a watery grave when he closed that door on them? Probably not. At least, not on a completely conscious level. Regardless, the making of the monster lies not in the moment of senseless cruelty but in the selfish impulses most ardently encouraged and cultivated by an unforgiving world. 

Back in the present, Oz arrives at his hideout apartment in Crown Point to find the door open, his mother gone, and Victor knocked out on the floor. Sofia has taken Francis, and Sal Maroni is right on her heels with a bunch of his goons to give Oz a few whacks with one of his own stupid golf clubs, then down to the trolley station to take over the Bliss operation. But Sal underestimates the scrap and loyalty of Oz’s gang of misfit toys, and when the firefight breaks out, Oz comes out on top. It’s a cheap-ass win to stand over your opponent as he’s dying of a heart attack, especially when he was seconds away from delivering your death blow. But Oz was born to take every cheap shot presented by the cruelest of fates. Better to be the lowest-down dirtiest devil of the underground than get your ass handed to you by one. 

Meanwhile, Sofia is splitting the difference between grilling and taunting Francis, but the sparring of wits is more equal than she anticipated. “It’s a good thing you let the boys die before you could turn them into monsters like Oz,” Sofia says to get a rise, unwilling to hear the hard truth that Francis has already delivered: changing your name doesn’t change the game. “It’s all the same shit. Same winners, same losers.” 

But the truth sinks in when Sofia visits her cousin Gia at her drab, unwelcoming children’s home. Gia has raised alarms by asking to talk to the police and confirms right away that she saw a gas mask in Sofia’s bag before that fateful night of “the big sleep.” Sofia denies having killed Gia’s parents and the rest of the family, but it’s in the moment of her denial that she realizes what she’ll tell Julian Rush later on: “Francis is right … I’m still playing my father’s game.” And the moment, she realizes she’s perpetuated the totality of her father’s crimes against another innocent girl, the best she can do is tell Gia that their family were bad people who deserved what they got — kill whatever unvarnished, unreliable childhood memories she had left. The cruelest consolation for an innocent life made ashen before her time. 

Sofia is still shedding a tear for Gia’s lost innocence when Oz calls her with the news he’s killed Sal. His offer is simple: the whole operation, “the keys to the fucking kingdom,” in return for his mother unharmed. Sofia knows it’s a trap, but she’ll try to play a new game now — ending the old one by literally blowing it all up. 

But leaving the game a winner is more challenging when you’re hell-bent on making the old opponents suffer. As Oz falls through the same hole he locked his brothers in — ironically saving himself from the same fate he locked them in — we go back to that fateful dance between little Oswald and his Ma at Monroe’s, where the adult Oz claims Francis got her mojo back. It’s a moment Sofia is fixing to reenact in some diabolical way or another in the present, having accessed Francis’s memories of the place with a little help from Dr. Rush and taking her there to await Oz’s potential survival. And survive he does, fixed with the same insatiable drive that made him a monster all those years ago: “You deserve the best life,” little Oz tells his mom. “I’m gonna get it for you, I promise. And I ain’t gonna quit till I do.

Oz awakes and emerges from the freshly strewn rubble, surrounded by screams and carnage and twisted metal and greeted by a dirty cop with an invitation to the final showdown. The great American film-noir freak show runs on a loop. Same monsters, same losers.