The two great houses of organized crime in Gotham lie in rubble. Their wounded figureheads, Sal Maroni and Sofia Gigante, are consolidating their remaining powers to take back the city before it falls into the grubby fins of Oz Cobb and his underground band of misfit drug runners. It’s hardly a spoiler to point out that The Penguin is about Oz Cobb’s rise to power, and “Gold Summit†shows us what’ll get him to the top of the Gotham heap in the end. Every crumbling institution of the city — from the halls of justice to the backrooms of Crown Point — is a pressure point that demands attention. And Oz knows you have to work them all to rule them all.
“We have to make it clear that playing with Oz comes at a cost,†Sofia tells Sal as they discuss what to do next with the penguin in the hen house. The next day, Oz has Victor bring up the news on his phone to see three hanging bodies of executed gang members, heads and pinkies all removed. Sofia and Sal have made their statement: You work with Oz Cobb, you lose your head … and pinky (geez, maybe Oz is right about “picking a fuckin’ laneâ€). The stunt works, scaring off the triads from finalizing their international distribution deal with Oz. Time for another round of mommy trauma to put the fire back under our guy’s belly.
Things are only getting gnarlier with Francis and her physical and mental state. As Oz reveals later on to Victor, her most recent diagnosis was Lewy body dementia, and her memory episodes are getting worse. At their makeshift breakfast at the condemned hideout apartment, Victor is able to calm Francis down by playing along with her fleeting memory states, but Oz doesn’t take kindly to Victor evoking his dead brother’s name and talking about him like he’s alive. He’d rather keep his mom in the now, where her only son is about to make all her dreams come true, earn her approval once and for all.
However much he’d like to avoid it, Oz and his mom are locked in a bitter dance with incriminating memories. Now that her disease is advanced (to the point of making Oz promise to take her out before it reaches its terrible conclusion), it’s only a matter of time before those memories erupt into an inconvenient truth bomb.
In the meantime, Oz needs some more leverage over at City Hall. He pays a nighttime parking-lot visit to Councilman Hady (Rhys Coiro) and threatens to talk to the Gazette about paying off his gambling debts with city funds. That and a pair of pliers to the nose is enough to get Hady to agree to get the city power flowing back to Crown Point. It’s a masterstroke on Oz’s part. Now he’s got a connect in city politics that his enemies don’t. Plus, he gets to stop interruptions of his Bliss operation and save the day for his old neighborhood at once — just like his old hero Rex Calabrese.
Meanwhile, Sofia tracks down Eve to have an intimate and illuminatory chat about their mutual fair-weather friend. They instantly size each other up as female peers clawing their way up a criminal world of men, but Eve stays weary of “The Hangman†until Sofia lays out the truth: It was her father, Carmine, who killed Eve’s friends, not Sofia. And Oz, who told Eve that Sofia was to be pitied and avoided, helped cover it up so Carmine could keep killing women — leaving Sofia to rot in Arkham. “It’s better for him, isn’t it,†Sofia says, pointing out the real boot on Eve’s neck. “If you fear me.â€
Sofia leaves Eve alive and unscathed, impressed with her crew’s loyalty and found-family vibes. Something she’ll never have. In return, Eve gives up the location of Oz’s Bliss operation. The choice is clear in light of what she’s learned: Sofia deserves her shot.
But in the words of Clint Eastwood’s William Munny in Unforgiven, “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it,†and Oz has assembled his Gold Summit — shaken up the streets of Gotham with a free sample of Bliss to all who want a taste, enough to gather the remaining leaders of the boots-on-the-ground gangs and underground orgs not already loyal to the Maronis or Gigantes.
Fashionably late, like he thinks he’s the Fonz or some shit, Oz makes a tailgate party of his “Gold Summit,†passing around beers with the same veneer of menacing, cloying folksiness that repels and draws people in at once. A man for the times, Oz strikes a populist chord with the assembly. The Maronis and Gigantes are their oppressors, along with all the corrupt politicians and government power players. “They run shit, we eat shit,†he says. Real “drain 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 from Miami Vice — hamming it up and steely-eyed steaming it up in equal measure. It draws you in even when you know half of what he’s talking about is total bullshit.
Triad leader Zhao doesn’t take the bait at first, but the size of the territory this group controls would be too big to ignore, should they form a collective. “Better to work with the ones we hate than under the ones who don’t even know our fucking names.†Whaddya know, it’s an offer no one can refuse — a cliché that’d be maddening if it weren’t so undeniable. Consider the beers cracked open and the deal struck. The only thing standing in Oz’s way now is the Hangman in his mother’s doorway, crowbar in her hand.
Under the Plum Hood
• Sofia and Sal talking shop in the kitchen was a highlight of the episode, performance-wise. Only their second scene together in the series, and Clancy Brown and Cristin Milioti prove riveting scene partners. Particular kudos to Brown for playing the grief and ecstasy and anger at tasting his departed wife’s recipe in an illuminator instant. Big, beautiful stuff.
• Oh, and right before that, remember how Sofia was deep into some dom-y candle-wax play with a tied-up Julian Rush? I gotta say, when Sofia realized she had use for Rush’s pathological guilt and admiration for her, I didn’t think this was exactly what she had in mind. Hell yeah, though — girl, get your rocks off, am I right?
• If this episode has a weak point, it’s Victor’s whole first-time-killing arch. Sure, Oz gets to whisper, “It gets easier,†after he’s done the deed. And Rhenzy Feliz continues to evoke maximum pathos and sympathy from the drama surrounding this character. It’s just the guy he had to kill was so set up to have undoubtedly had it coming without even the slightest hint of a notion we’re supposed to care about this bully of Victor’s. It’s all efficient, but there’s not enough else there when so much of the show is refracting its own sense of comic-book weirdness through all the noir and crime-drama tropes.