The following review contains spoilers for the seventh episode of The Penguin, “Top Hat.”
The Penguin is doing everything that it’s supposed to do. Modern prestige television has found a formula that tends to work in a world of 6-10 episode runs (though it often works better with 10). One element of that formula is to start the penultimate episode of the season with a flashback, despite the audience itching to know what happened after the previous episode’s cliffhanger ending. It holds back the information you’re most wanting to know while forcing your focus onto something more character-driven, and it’s often to great affect. The writers know that the audience will be locked in for those opening moments, and allows for a sense of delayed gratification when they do eventually cut back to the present day, hopefully with a new perspective on a character or element of the story that’s been recontextualized by the added backstory.
I said in last week’s review that another flashback after The Penguin has already had so many might mess with the flow of the show, and while I don’t necessarily agree with my past self anymore – the placement of the flashback in episode 7 is neatly done – the execution of the story of Jack and Benny’s deaths just isn’t all that compelling. While it shows that Oz was this brutal and callous even as a child,, it doesn’t do much to expand on why Oz did what he did or how he felt about it afterwards. Fratricide will affect a kid’s mental state, surely! And it would have been interesting to spend more time digging into that. It also doesn’t add much to his relationship to his mother, just reiterating on what we’ve heard from Francis before, about how she needs Oz to make something of himself, because she deserves a nice life or whatever (At the risk of repeating myself: she SUCKS). The flashback makes sense where it is, in an episode about Francis being taken by Sofia and Oz’s attempt to get her back. It just doesn’t accomplish much in terms of characterization.
Where “Top Hat” succeeds is in the consistency of its characters. Whenever two of them interact for the first time, it always feels realistic to how these two personalities (as we’ve gotten to know them elsewhere in the series) would get along. Last week, that meant a great conversation between Sofia and Eve, and this week it’s the same for Sofia and Francis. For as much as she sucks, I love how brutal Francis can be and how consistent she is in her defense of herself and Oz. It’s a “No one messes with my son except me” sort of situation. Their back and forth is really satisfying to watch, and the mention of Jack and Benny throwing Francis into a fit of dementia is truly sad. The series has done a really good job of representing dementia throughout, and a ton of that is thanks to Deirdre O’Connell’s portrayal.
The rest of the episode is focussed on Oz and Salvatore, as the Maroni boss reels from the death of his wife and son and takes it out on the man who took them from him. It’s a storyline that mostly goes the only way it really could have, but the heart attack was an unexpected wrinkle (for me as well as Salvatore and Oz). What could’ve been a lackluster way to go out turns into an interesting character moment for Oz, who finally realizes what’s happening and rushes to make sure that Salvatore knows, right before he dies, that he won. Whether or not that message reached its recipient is unknown, but the moment does a good job of reiterating what this is all about for Oz.
“Top Hat” ends in a literally explosive sequence that puts Oz and his crew out of business, resetting the stakes for the finale. I can’t help but feel like the episode ends pretty much right where it began, though, with Francis in the custody of Sofia, and Oz on a mission to get her back. Salvatore is out of the picture and the Bliss business is in shambles, but other than that the story doesn’t feel pushed forward in a substantial way, and with a lackluster set of flashbacks, a lot of “Top Hat” falls flat.
