The penguin

Gold Peaks

Season 1

Episode 6

Editor's Rating

4 stars

****

Photo: Macall Polay/HBO

Gotham's two major organized crime houses are in ruins. Their wounded figureheads, Sal Maroni and Sofia Gigante, consolidate their remaining forces to retake the city before it falls into the dirty clutches of Oz Cobb and his underground gang of drug-smuggling misfits. It's hardly a spoiler to point this out The penguin is about Oz Cobb's rise to power, and “Gold Summit” shows us what will ultimately bring him to the top of Gotham. Every crumbling institution in the city — from the courtrooms to the back rooms of Crown Point — is a pressure point that demands attention. And Oz knows that to master them all, you have to work through them all.

“We have to make it clear that playing with Oz comes at a price,” Sofia tells Sal as they discuss what to do next with the penguin in the chicken coop. The next day, Oz has Victor pull up the news on his phone to see three hanging corpses of executed gang members with all their heads and little fingers removed. Sofia and Sal made their point: When you work with Oz Cobb, you lose your head… and your pinky (man, maybe Oz is right about “picking a damn track”). The stunt works and prevents the Triads from completing their international distribution deal with Oz. Time for another round of mommy trauma to put fire back in our guy's belly.

With Francis and her physical and mental condition it becomes more and more difficult. As Oz later reveals to Victor, her most recent diagnosis was Lewy body dementia, and her memory episodes continue to get worse. At their makeshift breakfast in the demolished hideaway apartment, Victor manages to calm Francis down by playing with her fleeting memories, but Oz doesn't take kindly to Victor mentioning his dead brother's name and talking about him as if he were alive . He would rather keep his mother in the present, where she is only Her son is about to make all her dreams come true and earn her approval once and for all.

As much as he wants to avoid it, Oz and his mother are locked in a bitter dance filled with troubling memories. Now that her illness has progressed to such an extent (that Oz demands that she promise to eliminate it before the disease reaches its terrible end), it's only a matter of time before these memories become an inconvenient truth bomb.

In the meantime, Oz needs a little more influence at City Hall. He pays the city councilor Hady (Rhys Coiro) a late-night parking lot visit and threatens to talk to him gazette about paying off his gambling debts with city funds. That and a pair of pliers on the nose are enough to get Hady to agree to let the city's electricity flow back to Crown Point. It's a masterstroke from Oz. Now he has a connection to city politics that his enemies don't have. He can also prevent disruptions to his Bliss operation and instantly save the day for his old neighborhood – just like his old hero Rex Calabrese.

Meanwhile, Sofia tracks down Eve to have an intimate and revealing conversation about their mutual fair-weather friend. They immediately recognize each other as peers making their way into a man's criminal world, but Eve remains weary of “The Executioner” until Sofia reveals the truth: it was her father Carmine who killed Eve's friends, not Sofia. And Oz, who told Eve to pity and avoid Sofia, helped cover it up so Carmine could continue killing women – and left Sofia to rot in Arkham. “It’s better for him, isn’t it,” Sofia says, pointing to the real boot on Eve’s neck. “If you’re afraid of me.”

Sofia leaves Eve alive and unharmed, impressed by her crew's loyalty and the feeling of having found a family. Something she will never have. In return, Eve reveals the location of Oz's Bliss operation. Given what she has learned, the decision is clear: Sofia deserves her chance.

But in the words of Clint Eastwood's William Munny Unforgivable“Earning has nothing to do with it,” and Oz has put together his Gold Summit – shaking up the streets of Gotham with a free sample of Bliss for anyone who wants a taste, enough to keep the remaining leaders of the Boots-on to gather ground gangs and underground organizations that are not already loyal to the Maronis or Gigantes.

Fashionably late, as if he thinks he's the Fonz or some shit, Oz turns his “Gold Summit” into a tailgate party, handing out beers with the same façade of menacing, intrusive folksiness that repels and attracts people in equal measure. As a man of the times, Oz hits the populist nerve of the congregation. The Maronis and Gigantes are their oppressors, along with all the corrupt politicians and government power brokers. “They make shit, we eat shit,” he says. Real “draining the swamp” type stuff. Colin Farrell plays Oz's big soapbox moment like a Kabuki version of an undercover midnight drug or arms deal scene MiamiVice – it hammers and steams with a steely gaze in equal measure. It draws you in, even if you know that half of what he's talking about is complete nonsense.

The Triad's leader, Zhao, is not initially lured in, but the size of the territory this group controls would be too large to ignore should they form a collective. “It's better to work with those we hate than with those who don't even know our damn names.” You know, it's an offer no one can refuse – a cliché that would be crazy if it didn't would be so undeniable. Imagine the beers were cracked and the deal was struck. The only thing standing in Oz's way now is the Executioner, standing in his mother's doorway, crowbar in hand.

• The talking shop between Sofia and Sal in the kitchen was an acting highlight of the episode. Only their second scene together in the series, Clancy Brown and Cristin Milioti prove to be captivating scene partners. Special praise goes to Brown, who expressed the sadness, ecstasy and anger of tasting his late wife's recipe in an eye-opening moment. Big, beautiful stuff.

• Oh, and just before that Theremember how Sofia was engrossed in a cathedral-esque candle-wax game with the tied-up Julian Rush? I have to say, when Sofia realized she could use Rush's pathological guilt and admiration for her, I didn't think that was exactly what she had in mind. But damn it – girl, get the fuck out, am I right?

• If there's a weak point in this episode, it's Victor's entire first killing arc. Sure, Oz can whisper, “It gets easier,” after he does the deed. And Rhenzy Feliz continues to evoke maximum pathos and compassion through the drama surrounding this character. It's just that the guy he had to kill was so prepared that he undoubtedly did it without having the slightest idea that we were actually supposed to care about this tyrant of a Victor. It's all efficient, but it's not enough different Where so much of the series breaks its own sense of comic weirdness through all the noir and crime drama tropes.