5 Things About ‘The Penguin’ That Made Zero Sense and 5 Things About It That Made Perfect Sense

Gotham is still picking up the pieces after the flood in ‘The Batman’, and ‘The Penguin’ drops us right into the scramble for control that follows. The series shows how Oswald Cobblepot moves from mid level enforcer to a player who wants the whole board. That setup invites a lot of questions about how power really shifts when a city’s underworld loses its figurehead and its logistics are a mess.

This list looks at moments that strain basic city and crime world mechanics and balances them with choices that line up with how real organizations grow. Each entry focuses on the practical details that make a criminal empire collapse or cohere, from supply lines and shell companies to political leverage and information control.

Zero Sense: Overnight rise after a citywide disaster

The show places Cobblepot in a Gotham that just suffered infrastructure failures and mass displacement, which would slow every kind of operation including crime. Ports need inspections, electrical substations need crews, and roads need debris removal before trucks can move regularly. In that environment, expanding territory overnight would face bottlenecks in fuel allocation, warehousing space, and safe cash handling.

A quick takeover also conflicts with how crews protect their revenue when things break. Street level earners tend to hoard cash, lie about numbers, and wait for signals from whoever can guarantee payroll and protection. Without consistent pickups and a trusted accounting chain, weekly envelopes shrink, which makes sudden growth difficult no matter how tough the new boss looks.

Perfect Sense: Using Falcone’s existing networks

Falcone’s organization already ran clubs, gambling floors, trucking routes, and off book cash rooms, which means a capable lieutenant can inherit more than muscle. A working book of drop times, stash apartments, burner rotations, and trusted drivers lets operations continue even if the top man falls. If Cobblepot holds that book and the relationships behind it, he can keep the machine running while he swaps faces at the top.

Transition plans do not need to be formal to be useful. Longtime lieutenants know who clears shipments at terminals, which patrol commanders look away, and which accountants balance collections against skim. Keeping those people paid on the same schedule stabilizes territory and makes a handover look like routine business rather than a revolution.

Zero Sense: Weak institutional cleanup after exposed corruption

The prior scandal pulled back the curtain on city level graft connected to renewal money and narcotics distribution. After an exposure that public, standard practice would include emergency audits of major contracts, rotation of command staff, and fresh internal affairs tasking. Allowing the same channels to keep moving favors and cash without interruption would be unlikely right after a televised reckoning.

A real cleanup also reaches into the courts. Prosecutors often recheck past cases tied to compromised detectives, and judges push for stricter discovery on narcotics and racketeering matters. That process creates fear among facilitators who once felt untouchable, which slows bribery pipelines and complicates any plan that depends on the old price list.

Perfect Sense: Disaster creates ripe markets for protection

Large scale flooding concentrates people in temporary housing and storefronts in half open neighborhoods. When insurance adjusters are backlogged and small businesses need cash for repairs, protection rackets return quickly because they sell immediate certainty. Crews that can guarantee no one breaks your shutters and that your generator stays where you left it get cash flow even before normal retail spending rebounds.

Construction booms follow disasters, which brings in contractors, unlicensed crews, and trucks loaded with copper and tools. Those are high value targets without stable security. A crew that controls access to staging areas and offers watchmen and night patrols can convert chaos into steady income without needing the city to be fully functional.

Zero Sense: Smooth returns of rival heirs without realistic resistance

When jailed or exiled heirs reenter a contested market, they normally face crew fragmentation, unpaid soldiers, and captains who started freelancing to survive. Reclaiming command requires clearing debts, arbitrating grudges, and proving that supply lines will not dry up again. A return that skips these reconciliation steps and lands at immediate loyalty ignores how rank and file members think about risk and payroll.

There is also the paperwork and surveillance that trail any high profile heir. Parole conditions, watched associates, and monitored calls force careful movement and slow meetings. That friction means a power bid cannot be clean or fast. It usually involves stand ins, lawyers fronting talks, and a patient calendar that spreads changes across weeks.

Perfect Sense: Legitimate fronts and shell layers keep cash moving

Clubs, catering, private security, and waste hauling give cover to cash deposits and payrolls. A club can report higher weekend receipts after a flood driven nightlife bump, and a security firm can bill overnight details on rebuilding sites. Those invoices help justify bank activity while the real money moves through cash rooms and couriers who match the paperwork.

Shell companies add distance between the street and the bank. A holding company can own vehicles and lease them to a subcontractor, which then bills a construction site that is already awash in change orders. Each layer makes it harder for investigators to map the route from a corner tax to a wire transfer that buys a warehouse.

Zero Sense: Uninterrupted import routes despite damaged terminals

If a coastal city loses berths and warehouses to flooding, shipping schedules do not snap back in a week. Cargo gets rerouted to secondary ports, trucking firms face driver shortages, and insurance underwriters demand new inspections. Large narcotics loads that rely on predictable containers and loaders would suffer delays and higher prices, which forces crews to cut orders or dilute product.

Even if some docks are open, the new security environment changes the risk math. Inspections increase, manifests get spot checked, and private terminal operators track unusual patterns while they are under pressure to prevent theft and fires. Treating the pipeline as fully restored while the waterfront is rebuilding ignores how carefully smugglers time their moves.

Perfect Sense: Tight information control keeps crews loyal

A boss who controls who knows what keeps rivals from forming coalitions. Compartmentalizing jobs so drivers do not meet loaders and collectors do not meet suppliers limits the damage from one flipped soldier. Rotating meeting spots and using short lived phones reduce the paper trail and make it harder for investigators and rivals to map the structure.

Blackmail files and quiet favors also anchor loyalty. If Cobblepot tracks personal debts, family needs, and legal vulnerabilities, he can assign help that feels irreplaceable. People stay with the person who got a cousin’s charges dropped or paid a mother’s medical bill. That kind of ledger is worth more than a threat because it binds in both directions.

Zero Sense: Open meetings in famous haunts without heat

Known hangouts draw attention after a major case breaks open. Health inspectors, tax agents, and fire marshals run spot checks, which makes back room meetings risky. Crews normally shift to apartments with working elevators, after hours offices, and parked vans with lookouts rather than public clubs that just made the news.

A watched venue also attracts tech. Unmarked vans can sit on a block with microphone arrays and plate readers can log every car that comes and goes. Using a high profile spot for strategy sessions while the city is on alert makes surveillance easier and gives investigators ready made probable cause for future warrants.

Perfect Sense: Incremental moves fit the way empires actually grow

Territory usually changes block by block. Shifting a numbers route, replacing a loan collector, or taking over one storage unit does more long term damage than a flashy shootout. Small moves let the new boss test who pays on time, who leaks, and who can handle more responsibility without burning the map.

Incremental changes also hide in the noise of recovery. When landlords are fixing basements and inspectors are grading walls, a new tenant in a small warehouse means nothing to anyone but the people who need a quiet place to break down shipments. Building power through a hundred small adjustments keeps attention on the flood while the hierarchy resets.

Share the moment that made you pause in ‘The Penguin’ and the detail that clicked perfectly in the comments.