The Penguin Episode 2 recap: “Let’s dance”

The Penguin kicks into an even higher gear in Episode 2, with Oz narrowly avoiding death and, somehow, ending up in Sofia’s good books.

Oz Cobb, aka The Penguin (though he doesn’t like that nickname very much), made a right mess in Episode 1. In the wake of Carmine Falcone’s death in The Batman, his son Alberto took over the business… until Oz shot and killed him after he called him a “little bitch.”

It seemed to be the perfect crime: he tied up the loose ends, and he even recruited his own Robin with Victor Aguilar to clean up his mess. But Sofia Falcone saw through his lies and captured him, with her henchman garroting his armpit until he told her the truth.

Thankfully, Victor came through, diverting her pointed finger to the Maroni family and taking the heat away from Oz. In Episode 2, he tries to put his master plan in motion.

Sofia is traumatized by Arkham

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The episode opens in Arkham Asylum, with Sofia shuffling into a visitation room (the same one where Batman shouted at the Riddler) to see Alberto. At first, it seems like a flashback, but it becomes clear it’s a frightening daydream: Alberto’s pinky is missing, and just as he swears to get her out, a hand emerges from the darkness holding a gun and shoots him.

As his blood splatters over the glass, red lights start flashing above her. She falls out of her daydream in Julian Rush’s office (it’s unclear why he was triggering her with red lights), and he manages to calm her down. She doesn’t like that though; maybe it’s because she’s too comfortable, or perhaps she feels violated, presuming he was a guard at Arkham who’s become her therapist on the outside.

“You’re not in Arkham anymore, you’re safe,” he tells her, and before she leaves, she says: “I’m not safe, I’m home.”

Oz butters up Salvatore

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We cut to Oz waiting outside Blackgate Prison, sipping on Pepto-Bismol. When he goes inside, Salvatore calls him a “cocky motherf**ker” for trying to force his hand with Alberto’s corpse (if you don’t quite remember, Victor dumped it at the Falcone house with the message “Payback” engraved under the trunk, so it looked like an act of revenge from the Maronis).

Salvatore threatens to tell the Falcones the truth and have them cut Oz from “air hole to asshole” (yikes!), but as Oz observes, that’s clearly not what he wants. He’s already wearing his ring again; “gloating”, as Oz puts it.

“You might as well lean in… the Falcones are still licking their wounds. They’re distracted, and I got the inside track with the new don,” he says, explaining that Luca is the new boss. Oz believes they could take them all down, and while Salvatore is clearly skeptical, his wife Nadia slyly describes him as a “dog… but a dog can be made submissive.”

Salvatore agrees to claim Alberto’s death if Oz delivers on what he promised: the Falcones’ entire drops operation, which is about to be transported to Robbinsville. He gives Oz one of his capos and they get to work.

Oz’s drug heist goes wrong

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Oz’s original plan seemed fool-proof: Maroni’s crew would attack the trucks carrying the drops, but Oz would be safe in a follow car. However, Johnny Viti (who calls Oz the Penguin, so he clearly hates him) forces him to ride in the lorry, unwittingly putting his life at risk and jeopardizing the heist.

As they approach the underpass, Oz moves to the back of the truck away from the window. It gets messy very quickly: Oz kills two men riding with him, the driver kills Salvatore’s capo, and the capo kills the driver. Oz kills one of the Maroni crew’s men as he’s about to shoot Sofia’s main guard (the same one that tortured him in Episode 1), and they flee the scene.

No witnesses, and as far as anyone knows, it was an ambush – and Oz did his best to save who he could.

Johnny Viti isn’t happy. He thinks Oz is to blame for the Maronis getting all of their product, but Oz thinks they were weak as soon as they decided to ship out.

Oz tries to become Sofia’s ally

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Sofia doesn’t want to hear it. In her eyes, there’s a bigger problem. “They humiliated our family… justice is what matters,” she says, and that’s not all: she thinks there’s a rat among them. Viti is offended by the notion, but Luca orders extra security around the premises.

As everyone leaves, Luca asks Sofia to stay behind. “If there’s a rat, we’ll find them – but the when and the how, that ain’t up to you,” he says, asking her to focus on Alberto’s funeral rather than the business.

Oz plots his next move: getting in Sofia’s good books. He tells her she should be the boss and that someone else in the family likely had a hand in Alberto’s death. So, why shouldn’t she try and take over the business with this “revolutionary” new drug?

She doesn’t buy it. “How are you any different from those pricks in there? It’s very, very convenient that all of a sudden you’re on my side. Will you look at that? My little helper… f**king desperate,” she says. “I owe you,” he tells her (we don’t know why), and she walks away.

Oz needs an inside fall guy

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Later, Oz complains to Victor about the family trying to push him out. Victor is stopped in his tracks by missing people posters stuck to a lampost, but he quickly keeps walking.

Oz thinks Sofia won’t stop until she gets someone’s head on a platter. But they can’t kill her, it’s too risky. She wants to find the rat, so Oz just needs to give her a believable name, and then she’ll see him more favorably.

We learn a little bit of what Sofia (allegedly) did from a car radio: she’s said to have killed seven women, hence why she’s known as the Hangman.

Back in Oz’s apartment, he tells Victor how a gangster called Pinchy Rovegno asked him to be his driver. He didn’t know how to drive, so he stole a car and learned before he started work on Monday. Pinchy was eventually “popped” for talking to the feds, but Carmine kept Oz around. Moments later, Eve arrives with a few of her ladies, and they “put on some tunes.”

Sofia goes to the cops

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Elsewhere, Sofia meets a drop-addicted detective who used to help her father at a bar. He’s hesitant to help, but as soon as they give him some drops, he starts talking.

She tells him what happened, and with a bit of persuasion (a lot of money), he agrees to “dig up” whatever he can find. The next morning, Sofia wakes up with blood under her nails and scratches on her neck: she’s been clawing at herself in her sleep.

Back at Oz’s, he pays tribute to the men who died in the ambush. He introduces Vic to Roxy, an expensive cam-girl. He stumbles over his words, explaining that he’s from Crown Point. “They lost everything,” she says, likely referencing the Riddler’s attack that flooded Gotham.

Eve knows why Oz needed her alibi, and she’s not happy. There’s a difference between covering for him when he’s stolen a car and when he’s killed the newly promoted don of Gotham’s biggest crime family.

Oz tells her not to worry because Johnny Viti will end up taking the fall for everything. “You bet on the right horse,” he assures her, promising to open another club when the coast is clear. “I know what I’m doing,” he says.

Oz dances with his mother

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Oz receives a call from his mother’s landlord. He found her staggering across the street without a coat, confused and unsure what day it was. “Her dementia… it’s getting worse,” he says, but Oz doesn’t want to hear it. He gives him a wad of cash and asks him to keep looking after her. As he walks out, he tells Vic: “Be careful.”

Oz doesn’t scold his mother or lose his temper. He puts on Dinah Washington’s ‘Tears and Laughter’ and the pair dance together in the living room. “I don’t wanna be cooped up in this sh*tty house forever,” she says, and he tells her to be patient.

“If my son is a nothing, then what am I?” she asks, but before he can get too upset, he leaves for Alberto’s funeral.

As Oz arrives at the funeral, the flashing lights of paparazzi line the pavement alongside people chanting: “Send her back,” in reference to the Hangman. Sofia is standing out of sight smoking a cigarette.

“We didn’t have a service for my brothers,” he tells her, explaining that his mother didn’t want to deal with people’s pity after Jack and Benny’s deaths, especially when she was struggling to get out of bed. Suddenly, she got up and took Oz to a jazz club, and things started to get better.

“I’d like to think it was me [that changed her], but I dunno. She died a few years back, I never asked,” he tells her (lying, obviously), and says Sofia shouldn’t let her grief consume her. “It’s a hell of a lot more fun to dance,” he adds.

Oz has a big problem

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Sofia’s detective turns up at the Falcone house with Ervad, Salvatore’s presumed-dead capo, but he’s still alive… and he’ll know that Oz is the rat (if he ever wakes up).

Nadia isn’t impressed, but Oz tells her it wasn’t Luca, but Sofia acting on her own. “You should know all the movements, or else you have no value to us,” she warns.

Before they kill him, he asks her to check his jacket pocket and look at the photos of Viti having sex with Luca’s wife. Oz promises to find Ervad, get him out, and offset the blame onto Viti.

Back at the funeral, Sofia walks into the house, greeted with nothing but hushed, judgmental whispers. She starts eating like an animal from the buffet before dabbing her mouth with a napkin.

She meets her cousin Carla, who introduces her to her daughter Gia – but her unexpected kindness turns frosty when Sofia bends down to say hello. Everyone is scared of her, and she’s tired of it.

Oz asks Vic to plant the Falcone jewels in Viti’s car while he tries to find Ervad. He slyly reveals to Viti that Sofia is keeping him in the basement without his knowledge. Meanwhile, Vic tries and fails miserably, forced to run into the woods and hide.

The Penguin takes control

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With Vic unable to drop the jewels, Oz has to give Sofia something more concrete, or else she’ll always think he played a part in Alberto’s death. So, Oz kills Ervad (brutally, I’d add). “We all gotta make sacrifices, pal,” he tells his corpse as he walks out.

Sofia and Luca find his body, so they lock the doors and start searching people for weapons. Oz still has the knife in his pocket, so he comes up with a brilliant plan: he antagonizes Viti as soon as he walks in, and in the ensuing scuffle, he slips the knife into Sofia’s guard’s pocket. Luca doesn’t hesitate: he shoots him dead on the spot.

Sofia is angry she wasn’t the one to kill him, but Luca says it was his call. He tells her she should leave Gotham and go to Italy for a while – for her “safety.”

Later, Oz gets Vic to bury the bodies and lie down in the hole with them. “How does it feel? This is what happens when you choke. Death is a one-way street, Vic. You know how close I got to getting popped tonight, cause you f**ked up?” he tells him, asking him to adapt when things don’t go to plan.

“There ain’t no playbook for this sh*t, kid,” he adds, before he gets a call from Sofia.

He meets her at the Falcone graves. She tells him about her and Alberto’s plan to run the family together and she wants to force everyone to her knees. “What do you say, Oz? You in?” she asks, and he replies: “Let’s dance.”

Make sure you check out our Episode 1 recap of The Penguin and when you can watch Episode 3. You can also learn more about The Batman 2, and find out why the Batman isn’t in The Penguin.