Welcome to the Couch Club, our recurring column devoted to all things #DCTV! This week, Jules Chin Greene looks at Oz and Sofia’s struggle for respect in The Penguin.
 

A recurring theme in so many banger Batman stories is the distance between civility and brutality. So many characters in the Dark Knight’s world are on the fringes of society and feel this tension acutely. The Bruce Wayne we see in Matt Reeves’s The Batman is reluctant to dance the steps of accepted social behavior—he’s a recluse, he’s not particularly big on eye contact, he doesn’t even crack a smile when given the warmest of greetings (Officer Martinez’s cheery “Mistah Wayne!” at the funeral of Mayor Don Mitchell, Jr. is maybe my favorite moment of the movie), and he refuses to attend meetings for his family’s company. Being Batman lets him transgress social rules, represented in how he’s able to get past the yellow tape at crime scenes thanks to Jim Gordon’s endorsement. In order to solve the mystery behind brutal acts, like Mayor Mitchell’s murder, Batman can’t afford to play by the rules.

This element is also at work in showrunner Lauren LeFranc’s The Penguin series, only it takes on a much darker flavor. The series offers an unprecedented look at the complexities of the Penguin, known in this version of Gotham as Oswald “Oz” Cobb, as he navigates advancing his own personal interests against the institutional might of Gotham’s oldest crime families. Abandon whatever ideas you had about the Penguin before the show because LeFranc has built a version of the character from the ground up that makes him as compelling as he is chilling. In keeping with so many Batman comics as well as the world of Gotham from Matt Reeves’s Batman film, LeFranc’s The Penguin explores the lengths that an ostracized man like Oz will go to be taken seriously.

Showing Oz’s desire to make a name for himself is a prescient idea for The Penguin because the character has an unusual spot in Batman’s rogues gallery. He’s not a complete joke of a character like Condiment King or Polka Dot Man, but he also isn’t as deathly serious as, say, Ra’s al Ghul. At times in The Penguin, Oz feels like a guy you could have a beer with and talk about how the Yankees are faring in the World Series. Despite his ambitions within the criminal underworld, Oz is remarkably down to earth.

But every now and then, we see glimpses of the violence that underlies Oz’s character, leading back to the tension between civility and brutality that we saw in The Batman. As nurturing as Oz is with his elderly mother, she doesn’t want her son to be soft. She doesn’t want him to play by the rules set by people who make fun of the way that he walks. And as the series eventually shows the origin of Oz’s closeness with his mother, it gives us an even more disturbing picture of the lengths that Oz will go to get what he wants.

Since we’re here to look at civility and brutality in The Penguin, we can’t leave out Cristen Milioti’s haunting performance as Sofia Falcone—or as she’s recently dubbed herself, Sofia Gigante. Freshly released from Arkham, Sofia reenters society with an almost overcommitment to appearing prim and proper. In the first episode, when she quietly announces that she has been “rehabilitated,” she flashes her teeth in an attempt to smile. But the smile doesn’t reach her eyes, which carry a wounded expression. In effect, Sofia’s reassurance that she’s now fit for society again is all a performance, concealing an innate fact about nature: an animal is at its most dangerous when it’s cornered and wounded.

While Oz is certainly at the center of The Penguin, Sofia carries the soul of the show as she provides a mirror to Oz’s character. Like Oz, she tries her best to play by the rules. Early on in the series, her hair is pulled up into a neat updo while a ribbon is tied around her neck. She speaks softly, as if trying not to intrude. But as the series goes on, Sofia becomes more and more disillusioned with trying to play by the rules to earn respect within her family. Her hair gets shaggier, her eye makeup more dramatic, and her clothes darker before she does the unthinkable. In doing so, Sofia becomes an animalistic force not unlike Oz as the Penguin. And while Batman fans all know the type of antics that the Penguin is capable of, Sofia remains a wild card.

The Penguin has proven that there are great stories to be told within the criminal underground of The Batman. It’s felt so good to be back in this version of Gotham City, even as we’ve seen the horrific undersides of it. With two compelling characters at the forefront, it’s clear that The Penguin is here to remind us that this bird’s got teeth.
 

The Penguin airs on HBO and is now streaming on Max. Look for new episodes every Sunday.

Jules Chin Greene writes about comics, TV, games and film for DC.com, and his work can also be found at Nerdist, Popverse and Multiverse of Color. You can follow him on Twitter and Bluesky at @JulesChinGreene.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Jules Chin Greene and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.