The Penguin Recap: Episode 3 - Bliss

Ash Walker • 07 Oct 2024 Features

“America’s a hustle.”

SPOILERS AHEAD!

This week’s visit to the seedy underworld of Gotham City was all about Victor Aguilar (Rhenzy Feliz), giving the lovable street kid some well-deserved backstory. In an incredible opening flashback, we get to meet his charming family, briefly, before everything and everyone Victor loves is swept away in Riddler’s devastating attack on the city.

It’s a terrifying sequence, really hammering home the extent of the damage done by Riddler’s bombs, in a way that we didn’t really get from The Batman. It’s also heartbreakingly tragic.

Victor and his girlfriend, Graciela (Anire Kim Amoda), survive, but they have lost everything, and now Graciela is planning on leaving town and starting afresh somewhere new. And she wants Victor to go with her. He’s sorely tempted, too, but first he’ll have to find a way to wriggle out of the clutches of his new boss.

Speaking of, Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) is busy with Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), enacting the first phase of their big plan to seize control of the Falcone crime family - not a coup, as they later tell Triad lieutenant Link (Robert Lee Leng), but a ‘corporate takeover’.

Key to this is the mysterious new wonder drug which, it turns out, was Sofia’s baby all along. It’s a psychedelic, derived from the excretion of the bleeding tooth mushroom - a real thing, by the way - that Oz quickly dubs ‘Bliss’.

The drug immediately proves popular, but Oz and Sofia need a distributor if they’re going to get it onto the streets in any meaningful way. They can’t use any of their own guys, for fear of discovery by the Falcone leaders, so instead they go to one of the family’s old enemies - the Triads.

It’s all going well, until Victor gives Oz the news - he’s decided to take Graciela up on her offer and skip town. Oz is clearly hurt, not only by the kid’s decision to leave, but by the fact that Victor, a young man he has come to like a great deal and think of as an apprentice, felt that Oz was holding him against his will.

It’s becoming clear that this show is telling two complimentary stories - Oz’s rise to power and Victor’s descent into the dark underworld of organised crime. Both of these stories are tragic in their own ways, but Victor’s especially. This is a fundamentally good kid who has been dealt a terrible hand and, like Oz, is always letting his own ambition get the better of him.

Of course, that’s exactly what happens at the end of the episode, as Victor leaves Graciela at the bus station and chooses to go all-in on this newfound life of crime. It’s a good job he does, too, as he arrives back at the Iceberg Lounge just in time to save Oz from being executed at the hands of the vengeful Maronis.

But, in making their escape - and under Oz’s orders - they leave Sofia behind. Big mistake; I’m sure she’ll have something to say about that next week.

Easter Eggs & Comic Connections:

• The drug Bliss is ripped directly from the comics, originally appearing in 2010’s Titans #26. Although in the source material it’s derived from the hormones of imprisoned children, rather than mushrooms. So… probably a good thing they changed it up a bit for the show.
• The name of Sofia’s pet botanist, Trey Bloom (Tyler Bunch), could be a reference to sinister Batman villain Mr Bloom; they both have a penchant for plants, after all. We’ll have to wait and see if this seemingly friendly guy transforms into the Slenderman-like ghoul from the comics.
• In the opening flashback, Victor drops an offhand reference to a gang leader called Squid, who also has a history in the comics. First appearing in Detective Comics #497, Squid is a crime boss with a pet giant squid named Gertrude. So that’s fun.

Shout-Outs:

• One of the coolest things about this show is the chance to see Gotham without Batman, from the point of view of regular people. Scenes like those early, Victor-centric flashbacks really help to make the city feel like a real place, filled with living, breathing people - not just populated with masked vigilantes and insane criminals. More of that, please.
• Colin Farrell turns in another outstanding performance in this episode, particularly in the scene towards the end with Sofia, where she asks if everything he did to her was worth it. Oz gets visibly emotional - vulnerable - for the first time, and you have to keep reminding yourself that Farrell is wearing a ton of prosthetics and still able to convey that level of emotion. It’s astonishing.
• It’s easy to compare Oz Cobb to a character like Tony Soprano - Tony was a big inspiration, after all - but he’s also got quite a bit of Goodfellas’ Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) in him. Neither of them can stand to be laughed at - “You think I’m funny? Funny how?!”
• Wild Theory Time: I’m calling it now, Sofia Falcone is not actually the Hangman. As scary as she is, she just doesn’t seem like the serial killer type. Not to mention all the hints she keeps dropping that there’s much more to this story.

My guess is she took the fall for someone else, someone close to her, probably unwillingly. Maybe her brother, Alberto, but probably her father. Did Carmine pin his crimes on his own daughter? If so, why? It seems likely that we might find out in next week’s episode, which looks to be flashback-heavy and focussed on Sofia.

Verdict: A little more introspective than past weeks, but still packed with drama and consequence - and it was nice to finally get to know Victor a little better. Another excellent trip to Gotham City.

The Penguin airs every Monday at 9pm on Sky Atlantic, and can be streamed from 2am the same day.