The Penguin (Recap) | Homecoming (S1 E5)

There’s a lot going on in this episode of The Penguin, and I mean a lot. You ever go to one of those places where they serve you a burger or a sandwich or a hero or something and it’s just like, there’s no possible way this is all fitting into my mouth? I mean, there’s no conceivable way you could take a bite of the thing that encompassed it from top to bottom. Like it wasn’t even designed with being eatable in mind. Just a huge hunk of stuff you need to cram down your gullet one bite at a time, you know what I mean? That’s this episode of The Penguin. It’s a triple-decker plot sandwich, with layer upon layer of stuff happening. I suppose that’s what making a densely plotted no-nonsense crime thriller that runs nearly a full hour every episode gets you.

But as is often the case with such culinary monstrosities, there’s one ingredient that stands out from the rest and makes you think “wow, this was worth the effort.” In this case, that’s Cristin Milioti’s Sofia Falcone — excuse me, Sofia Gigante, rechristened with her mother’s maiden name after wiping out the family’s entire upper management tier. This is a Gotham City crime boss worthy.

Is she sexy? Oh, you better believe it. Her huge dark eyes perpetually accentuated with thick black eyeliner, she adopts a dress code of low-cut off-the-shoulder numbers to show off not just her skin, but the countless scars that criss-cross it, some of them fresh. And in an inversion of the Joker/Harley Quinn origin story, she effortlessly — and I mean no effort at all, this was not something she was even thinking about trying to do on purpose — secures a submissive sycophant in the form of Dr. Julian Rush, who abandons his career to serve by her side. (It’s a bit like how Victor became the Penguin’s sidekick the same way the second Robin, Jason Todd, became Batman’s: by trying to steal the rims from his ride.) When he begs to join her, she’s not even wearing pants. 

But she’s also a fun, supervillainous bad guy. She openly takes credit for gassing her family to death. She chains up underboss Johnny Vitti and tortures him with near-hypothermia to get the location of her father’s hidden cache of cash out of him, has him arrange a sit-down with the family’s low-level associates, then kills him in front of them all to make the point that there’s a new boss in town.

Read the rest of the recap, HERE.